Slashdot Mirror
Everything I Needed To Know, I Learned From "The Sims"
There's a great article by JC Herz about The Sims and its implications for information architecture versus urban planning. Cool article - I've certainly planned a lot of The Sims, and can testify to its addictiveness. The whole aspect of involving the community with "skinning" and object creation - in an environment *designed* to accept it has made the difference, IMHO, for the game.
If the /. title here is true, then what I learned from the Sims is awfully depressing: Life is intensely interesting for about 3 days, and then you never want to see it again.
I have to agree with you. It was addictive, but there were parts of it that drove me so nuts, it killed the addiction:
... NO TIME. I don't understand how people got anything done in this game. You barely get out the door in time for work (since it takes you an hour to get up and shower, never mind trying to eat). You get home, and you've got to focus on whatever you need to do to make your sims happy (read, watch TV). You barely have time to make dinner and clean it, never mind tring to make peopl e happy. Then they get so tired they can't even walk to their beds. All so they can get up right away the next AM and do it all again!
... couldn't stop for a second! Had to be at your quickest reflexes 24/7!
:).
1. It takes over half an hour to get out of bed. Come on, people, move.
2. If one sim cuts the other sim off, he sits there like an idiot for, again, half an hour.
3. You had
4. No weekends. Weekends might have helped solve #3.
5. Suspension of disbelief thrown out the window. Come on. Why do my neighbors just drop by for a visit while I'm in my pajamas?
6. No time! (did I mention this already?) How am I supposed to let my sims socialize when I can barely keep them fed and well-slept? I mean, I can barely make them happy, how am I supposed to supplement this with visiting?
Basically, the sims as an exercise in stress management -- my own stress! Never having enough time, constantly rushing until it's time to sleep. As they sleep, you catch your breath, focus, and get right back into it. It felt more like an action game than a sim game
Geez I can feel my heart tensing up as I write this
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
A little offtopic but I really mean this, so think before you moderate me down ...
When SimCity was popular I played it a lot. My strategy was to build the railroad in an early stage, even when I had no money. This prevented me from having to demolish houses at a later stage when the city traffic became to heavy. It meant an expencive start up, but payed off in the long run.
I work as a Software Architect in a Danish IT company. We have tried all of the known development methods: Waterfall, prototyping etc. They all failed and ended as a kind of iterative feature driven development case. We came up with the idea of implementing SimCity in our development: Make a base line platform, that all developers can build on.
The Sys. Arch. is respontible for all the OO planning.
The Senior Developer is responsible for creating/coding the platform, which will consist of fractures of the 1st, nth and last tier in order to "make the railroad work". This e.g. is a control class (1st tier), a logic class (2nd tier) and a database connection class (last tier). This MUST be functional code. Look at this as a horisontal platform.
Now its up to the developers. They can work vertically on each their part/module/object just by looking at the existing code and adding controls to is.
It worx! It pays off, since the developers can code more effectively and independantly - with fewer errors. Somebody calls it vertical iterative prototyping, but "The SimCity Model" is a more attractive name =)
Eih bennek, eih blavek
---
1. Workplaces have no toilets. If you don't go before you leave the house in the morning you'll just have to wet your pants!
2. If a car pulls up outside a house where you are sitting with your friends, you may encounter a strange twist in the fabric of space-time, where every action will take twice as long to perform as when the road outside is clear.
3. Drinking coffee can sometimes be so much fun that it causes the consumer to whoop loudly, even when standing totally alone in a kitchen filled with buzzing flies.
4. Many burglars are equipped with special tardis-bags which, despite being the size of a small purse, are easily able to accommodate a fridge-freezer or oven. The bag can then be easily slung over the shoulder as the burglar sprints away!
5. Some of the best weddings are impromptu ceremonies in toilets. It's true I tell you!
It strikes me as odd that a game like SimCity was such a huge success in among american computer enthusiasts.
Think about it, the basic of the game clearly implements the basic framework of a socialist state in which the player represents the central planning authority of a virtual state. You're main task is to eliminate the effects of random events such as monster attacks (Godzilla), earthquakes, chaotic traffic and urban development to maximize the efficiency of your carefully established development plans.
This is definitively not how western cities have been evolving in the last century. Sure, there is some larval attempt at central planning (witness for example Paris/France and Mitterands "Great Works: the Defense district, the Louvre etc. -- but then again most americans would consider France a socialist state), but most would agree that a city like LA looks more like a fast growing cell culture than anything else.
Games such as Quake 3 have been under heavy attack by conservatives as direct causes for violent youths, but I have yet to see a rant about the "five-year-plan" mindset SimCity and it's clones or similar works (Populous, Theme Park et al.) instill onto the gamer.
Face it, the concepts of central planning, authority and legal power is very analogous to the basic premises of engineering and software architecture. Every professional in these fileds (myself included) needs to have some sensibility for these propositions in order to manage his projects efficiently...
In short:
There is a repressed communist in every one of us!
Cui peccare licet peccat minus. -- Ovid, Amores.