DGC Ep 317: SimCity 2000 (part three)

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on SimCity 2000. We talk about the lore of SimCity and what Brett and Tim appreciate or don't about sim games these days. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played:
Speed-playing to modern day and beyond

Issues covered: unsung hero CPAs, playing on cheetah speed, taxing different areas at different rates, digging into a hole, being in a deficit spending, the tech tree, the money cliff, what preconceived notions the game requires, what's cheating, experimenting through multiple cities, not caring about what the buildings are, seeing the numbers and ignoring the lore, having to grow the city to survive, changing tastes as you get older, a city in flux, the ant farm (and not the ants), contrasting with Civ, modernizing your city, losing humanity, feeling joy playing it as a younger person, the melancholy of small towns, philosophy, disruption, cities and where you like to live, the game for kids vs the game for adults, missing the sense of human scale, moving to more relatable levels as designers, being conservative/preservative and progressive, the constant churn of capitalism, textile mill porn, the explosion of games, defaults vs choices, how you'd fix SimCity, Tim designing a different game, leaning in to politics, taking an overt stand, finding other local maxima, inclusive design, assuming your audience.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Marc Elrich, Ronald Reagan, Joker, Scarecrow, Civilization, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Sam Anderson, Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum, Animal Crossing, SimTown, MacWorld, Next Generation, Cities: Skylines, The Sims, SimAnt, Dungeon Keeper, UbiSoft, Watch Dogs, Peter Molyneux, Sid Meier, Will Wright, Black & White, Fable, Populous, Ole Sollie, Megaman, 20XX, Super Meat Boy, Fez, Legend of Zelda (series), Dark Souls, Artimage, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time:
More SimCity!

Notes:
The Sam Anderson book Brett was referring to was Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City

Links:
The Secret Ideology Hiding in SimCity's Black Box

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