Re:The SimCity Planning Commission Handbook
by danharaj on Thursday September 03, 2015 @08:43PM
(#10168280)
Ideas of "right" in open-ended games where the goal is merely to keep going are always weird to me. I know exactly what you meant by putting it in quotes.
Re:The SimCity Planning Commission Handbook
by hguant on Friday September 04, 2015 @12:09AM
(#10168770)
"Right" as in "more optimal", not "only correct solution".
Re:The SimCity Planning Commission Handbook
by JoshTriplett on Friday September 04, 2015 @12:56AM
(#10168876)
More optimal only in the context of the game's engine and ruleset, which is what danharaj was saying deserved the quotes around "right".
Re:The SimCity Planning Commission Handbook
by danharaj on Friday September 04, 2015 @10:23AM
(#10170626)
Actually, I meant "right" in a weirder sense: The only goal of Sim City and many other games is to endure and persist. Any strategy that survives is a strategy that 'wins' Sim City. In what sense are some strategies more optimal than others? Usually they maximize some other measure of fitness, like land usage or average commute time.
That's cool. I think it's perfectly reasonable to call efficient strategies 'right'. But calling something right means you know something is wrong, and the 'wrong' that comes with this 'right' includes strategies that survive. Clearly, there's room for more than one right.
Agreed. For instance, it takes a while to find out that the "right" way to build a successful city in SimCity (and not necessarily in reality) is to never build a single tile of roadway, and instead construct an exclusively rail-based grid.
On the other hand, some of its city planning lessons work very well: for instance, interleave residential and commercial every other 9x9 block (3x3 set of 3x3 zones, with a non-RCI zone in the middle), rather than separating residential and commercial, to avoid creating huge commutes. (Meanwhile, keep industrial far away from everything so it doesn't bother anyone.)