Been reading my newest SimCity-related book acquisition, "Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine" by Chaim Gingold, who worked with Will Wright on Spore and The Sims Online.
While the book is academic in nature (the citations span over 100 of the 486 pages), it's not a dry read at all.
Before treating SimCity itself, it goes into the background of simulating cities (pre-computer) for different goals, and the origin of simulations in the 20th century.
It has me totally fascinated.
@loadhigh okay, WOW need to read this one, didn't know about it! I'm a Sim City fanatic haha
@jake4480 I can totally recommend it if the word "academic" didn't turn you off.
It's making me want to make my own proto-SimCity (because I will never have the time to make a full-fledged recreation), and also making me miss Maxis and their knack of combining the serious with the playful.
These books are real gems, full of history and anecdotes! :0)
@loadhigh hahaha oh man yeah - your review is great, you mentioned it's not a dry read, I think I'm crazy enough about SimCity to enjoy it. I love SimAnt too, they were both so big to me, we played SimCity in school, the original, then I loved 2000, I even tried the newer mobile EA one & dug it ok, I've tried the SNES one (not big on it) and the DS one I have a copy, that one's pretty cool. I have Skylines on Switch I need to get more into, I have like, actual city research I was going to build something intentionally instead of just jumping in and doing whatever like usual haha.
But the original and 2000 are so special, and really my favorites. Yeah, it was that 90s Maxis magic. I wrote about SimAnt here (it was really the basis of the post - the list is alphabetical).
https://spacetimetech.wordpress.com/2024/04/06/20-video-games-i-cant-stop-thinking-about
I have a post on 90s Mac games in general in the pipeline - Marathon, Glider, all that wild stuff. Really gotta finish that one haha
@WoodooProd It certainly is, thanks to the input of Will Wright himself.
Older SimCity books, like "SimCity 2000: Power, Politics, and Planning" and "SimCity Planning Commission Handbook", are also interesting for anecdotes because they were written during the time the games came out.
The former has interviews with several people of the SimCity 2000 team, even about "mundane" things like the manual and the audio drivers (I forgot if "planning handbook" also has interviews.)
@loadhigh @WoodooProd haha wow I didn't know about these either - and apparently a lot of/all of them are here at archive.org!
@jake4480 I'll have to try some of the games from your list, because the vast majority I hadn't even heard of before.
Coincidentally though, I've been playing through Golden Axe (Mega Drive/Genesis) the past two weeks to see if I can finally beat it. I managed to defeat Death=Adder so I'm close.
SimAnt I've only played in passing. I always thought of it as odd, like SimEarth and SimLife. Maybe it's because I couldn't really visualize their subjects as I could with SimCity and SimFarm.
@loadhigh wild! Beating Golden Axe! Now THAT is a feat. I love ALL the Axe games, never beat any. I can get.. kinda far? haha. I love the 3rd one a lot too. SimAnt is SO bizarre, I played it on a Mac Performa and I was able to figure out a strategy to win every time, basically, I love all the indie game devs today still making the weird games because the AAAs are all about super-realism basically and people like us, not always our bag, right haha
@loadhigh I can claim responsibility for it being such an engaging read; I worked with Chaim as editor to shrink an overlong manuscript (with 30 or 40k words of footnotes!), focus the story, and make the writing more accessible/palatable to a general audience.
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@MossRC Well done then! It can't easy to cut into someone's work when there's apparently so much to tell.