<story><title>CityBound – An open source city simulation game in Rust</title><url>https://github.com/citybound/citybound</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lowkeyloki</author><text>Please think hard about the design decisions of your game. I grew up with SimCity and later SimCity 2000. It informed many of my young opinions about government policy. But I later came to find out that SimCity wasn&amp;#x27;t nearly as objective as it looks. There are a lot of conservative politics baked into the design of the game that I&amp;#x27;d argue were potentially damaging to the kids who played it back in the 90s.&lt;p&gt;This article from 1992&amp;#x27;s LA Times quotes Maxis president Jeff Braun saying how they&amp;#x27;re pushing a political agenda. Specifically pro-mass transit and anti-nuclear power.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.latimes.com&amp;#x2F;archives&amp;#x2F;la-xpm-1992-10-02-vw-391-story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.latimes.com&amp;#x2F;archives&amp;#x2F;la-xpm-1992-10-02-vw-391-st...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;What really opened my eyes, though, was this excellent article from LOGIC magazine about how Will Wright based the entire simulation on the work of Jay Wright Forrester. I don&amp;#x27;t know if it was a conscious choice to adopt Forrester&amp;#x27;s extremely conservative social policies, or if Will Wright just happened upon a bunch of ready-made algorithms he could use. But the result is the same. SimCity teaches us many fallacies about urban planning and finance that Republicans have historically used to justify certain policy choices.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;logicmag.io&amp;#x2F;06-model-metropolis&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;logicmag.io&amp;#x2F;06-model-metropolis&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;My point is just to be very conscious of the biases you&amp;#x27;re encoding into the logic of your game. What may just be a game to you may be someone&amp;#x27;s first lessons in politics.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>trickstra</author><text>If you try really hard, you can find little pieces of evidence of any agenda in any material. It seems like Jeff Braun tried really really hard if he says SimCity is bad because it pushes the opponents agenda. The evidence quickly disappears once you step back and try to see the big picture. It&amp;#x27;s just a game. And mass transit actually makes sense.</text></comment>
<story><title>CityBound – An open source city simulation game in Rust</title><url>https://github.com/citybound/citybound</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lowkeyloki</author><text>Please think hard about the design decisions of your game. I grew up with SimCity and later SimCity 2000. It informed many of my young opinions about government policy. But I later came to find out that SimCity wasn&amp;#x27;t nearly as objective as it looks. There are a lot of conservative politics baked into the design of the game that I&amp;#x27;d argue were potentially damaging to the kids who played it back in the 90s.&lt;p&gt;This article from 1992&amp;#x27;s LA Times quotes Maxis president Jeff Braun saying how they&amp;#x27;re pushing a political agenda. Specifically pro-mass transit and anti-nuclear power.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.latimes.com&amp;#x2F;archives&amp;#x2F;la-xpm-1992-10-02-vw-391-story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.latimes.com&amp;#x2F;archives&amp;#x2F;la-xpm-1992-10-02-vw-391-st...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;What really opened my eyes, though, was this excellent article from LOGIC magazine about how Will Wright based the entire simulation on the work of Jay Wright Forrester. I don&amp;#x27;t know if it was a conscious choice to adopt Forrester&amp;#x27;s extremely conservative social policies, or if Will Wright just happened upon a bunch of ready-made algorithms he could use. But the result is the same. SimCity teaches us many fallacies about urban planning and finance that Republicans have historically used to justify certain policy choices.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;logicmag.io&amp;#x2F;06-model-metropolis&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;logicmag.io&amp;#x2F;06-model-metropolis&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;My point is just to be very conscious of the biases you&amp;#x27;re encoding into the logic of your game. What may just be a game to you may be someone&amp;#x27;s first lessons in politics.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>theanzelm</author><text>I appreciate the sentiment and always suspected as much about SimCity. My goal for Citybound is really a meta one: to be flexible enough to try out any number of government and planning styles and for the simulation to be tweakable enough to set up any real-life or imagined political context for a city.</text></comment>