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Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug Or a Feature?
sarahnaomi writes: SimCity players have discussed a variety of creative strategies for their virtual homelessness problem. They've suggested waiting for natural disasters like tornadoes to blow the vagrants away, bulldozing parks where they congregate, or creating such a woefully insufficient city infrastructure that the homeless would leave on their own.
You can read all of these proposed final solutions in Matteo Bittanti's How to Get Rid of Homelessness, "a 600-page epic split in two volumes documenting the so-called 'homeless scandal' that affected 2013's SimCity." Bittanti collected, selected, and transcribed thousands of these messages exchanged by players on publisher Electronic Arts' official forums, Reddit, and the largest online SimCity community Simtropolis, who experienced and then tried to "eradicate" the phenomenon of homelessness that "plagued" SimCity."
You can read all of these proposed final solutions in Matteo Bittanti's How to Get Rid of Homelessness, "a 600-page epic split in two volumes documenting the so-called 'homeless scandal' that affected 2013's SimCity." Bittanti collected, selected, and transcribed thousands of these messages exchanged by players on publisher Electronic Arts' official forums, Reddit, and the largest online SimCity community Simtropolis, who experienced and then tried to "eradicate" the phenomenon of homelessness that "plagued" SimCity."
I found this one on a trip down memory lane. Runs in a DOSBox and works great on my Win7 laptop! Yes, it's ENTIRELY LEGAL. you can get the download here.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
A limited run of 99 copies of How to get Rid of Homeless is available from Bittanti's Concrete Press via Amazon. Volume I is $150 and Volume II is $70.
Like anyone's going to pay $220.00 for a collection of reddit posts ...
They lost their way after SimCity 4 + Rush Hour. For aficionados of previous versions of the game, read the reviews first, it'll save you money. As for the "books", you can get the raw posts from reddit and the Simcity site.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
That game has more problems than just the homeless population.
So does the author:
Bittanti says that it's impossible to distinguish between videogames and America in the same way that Jean Baudrillard thought it was impossible to distinguish between Disneyland and America. The book, he told me, is about simulation and its discontents, the unexpected convergence and collapse between reality and simulation.
"To me video games are the so-called 'real America,'" he said. "The real America operates according to a video game logic, and that game logic is neo-liberalism, and that absolutely manifests in San Francisco, that to me is the epicenter of inequality. In San Francisco you either have a Tesla and you drink a seven dollar cappuccino or you're homeless in the streets."
I think he's been playing games too long. SimCity's reality distortion field claims another victim, which is amazing because it's crap compared to its' predecessors.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Are...are you kidding? Cities XL is barely a game. It has some really nice features that were innovative for its time, like free-drawing roads, but a lot of its implementations are complete and utter BS. Like, you have to zone regions based on social class. Part of the challenge of SimCity is that you can't directly control that. Natural resources are garbage... the supply/demand graphs of different zones have hardly any bounce or buffer zone and your citizens move in with no intelligence at all. If you build twice as much unskilled-labor residential than you need--probably because you're trying to plan your city out early--people will SWARM in, and then whine about how there's not enough jobs. Even the very first SimCity game made people only move in if there were jobs (+/- a fudge factor). This is a really huge problem because you have to micromanage your zoning and build it a little bit at a time, rotating through all different kinds. You can't prebuild or everyone goes ballistic. Oh yeah, and road widths. God damn it, road widths. Hey great, I can upgrade this three-lane to a four-lane!...if I bulldoze everything along it, because the game cares about road width down to the foot, and you aren't allowed to build small roads with extra buffer on the side for future expansion. Dump tons of money now to build the nice roads, or you're hosed later.
All of this leads to extremely formulaic gameplay. There's not much variation in what works, and it feels tedious to do. I spent a lot of hours trying to find the fun, on a couple different versions, and it wasn't there. Went back to SC4.
Like other countries we have people that camp on welfare because it's easier than working.
I do agree with the substance of your post, but what do you mean by welfare? The United States doesn't really have any unconditional cash transfer programs, which is what most people think of when they hear the term "welfare." TANF for example is restricted to families with children, has a lifetime limit of 60 months of benefits for any individual and recipients must have a job within 24 months of joining the program. After doing a bunch of research on our means-tested social programs, I just don't see how it would be possible for a single, able-bodied, working-age individual to satisfy all their needs using federal transfers alone.
I also don't think it's far to call social insurance programs "welfare." They're insurance policies operated by government, with mandatory premiums garnished from wages. You have to have paid the premiums to get the benefits.
Where the US differs greatly is that our programs are abused at the top as well.
Agree 100%, though I don't think the US is alone worldwide in this regard, even if it stands out among OECD members.
.: Semper Absurda