Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine

As play is intrinsic to humanity, it should come as no surprise that the history of computing is veined with playful simulations and games of all kinds. From the Balinese cockfight to Los Alamos’s Monte Carlo simulations, play and games, in all their kaleidoscopic glory, reflect the diverse cultures and communities of those who make and play them.

This talk focuses upon SimCity, the genre-defying urban planning hit from 1989, and the people who made it. We’ll examine how SimCity’s design counts urban planning, videogames, graphical user interfaces, and complexity science among its many influences. This set the stage for SimCity’s reception and enabled Maxis, SimCity’s developer, to establish relationships with wide-ranging communities: Nintendo, the Santa Fe Institute, Wall Street venture capitalists, and more.

Focusing on people such as developers, managers, and investors sheds light on the messy process of software development??"a negotiation between individuals, their aspirations and worldviews, and shape-shifting technologies. Springing forth from this mess came The Sims, which required an extraordinary amount of research and development. But this same mess also thwarted Maxis’s solvency and its attempts to bring The Sims to market. Ultimately, we’ll see how SimCity, Maxis, and The Sims??"like games, play, and software more generally??"reflect their time and place, and the people who make them.

Speaker: Chaim Gingold, Author