Re:The ideology hiding in SimCity’s black box
by hypertele-Xii on Sunday April 04, 2021 @08:00AM
(#26688769)
> Want to build a European style city centre which is pedestrianised, mixed-use and has controls on building style? Nope, you can't
Because it's a 28-year-old game with the computational limitations of the time. It does not simulate people walking. It does not simulate multiple types of buildings existing in the same plot. It does not simulate building styles (I think?). And it has nothing to do with ideology. No-one could make such a simulation in 1993.
Re:The ideology hiding in SimCity’s black box
by notahacker on Sunday April 04, 2021 @12:02PM
(#26690550)
I dont think the requirement for road access or the US-style zoning or the only way to stop low wealth apartment towers popping up next door to shiny condos being to raise taxes on the poor or the impossibility of centrally planning a housing development without using a cheat/mod was down to computational limitations, especially not by SimCity 4 in 2003. It was a game based on a US vision of what a city is and how (un)involved its planners are, and ideology certainly shaped city planning in the US, if not Will Wright.
Sure, not all the design assumptions align quite so neatly with American and right wing sterotypes: suburbs are really inefficient to provide services for and Sims aren't at all bothered about religion in many versions. But they are designed limitations rather than the product of players' imagination.