Slashdot Mirror
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.
It sure is a good thing that players' behavior as modeled in games has no effect whatsoever on their offline behavior, or in any way informs us about their attitudes toward the real world. That might be disconcerting.
host the Olympics?
If this dude is morally outraged by the way people play Sim City I can only hope someone alerts them to the way people play Dwarf Fortress.
This simply isn't true. If were simply a question of the amount of resources available, then the U.S. is not much different than any other developed country. San Francisco in particular has a more progressive homeless outreach program than almost any other city in the entire world--if the homeless population hadn't doubled in the past 15 years, we'd have already housed every last homeless person in the city.
The problem with homelessness in America is complex, but it mostly comes down to two things: 1) you have to jump through a ridiculous amount of hoops to get assistance, and 2) the people most vulnerable to falling into homelessness (i.e. those with mental illness or disorders) are the least capable of jumping through those hoops.
We have lots of hoops because of two things: 1.a) our patchwork of federal, state, and municipal programs and 1.b) the American idea of self-help and individualism. The source of 1.a is obvious. 1.b is problematic not because our ideas of self-help and our belief that America is a meritocratic land of opportunity is fundamentally bad. As an American I'm aware of and conscious of my own emphasis on these qualities, and I frankly I like that I'm that way. The problem is that too many Americans don't realize that these ideas are just cultural preferences, and are not connected to reality. They're aspirations rather descriptions of our society. Because people don't realize this, they think that self-help is easier than it is. To admit that self-help isn't very easy is in some sense a denial of the vision of America they hold in their head.
As for #2, since we've dismantled our mental institutions we've abandoned a huge segment of our population in dire need of state assistance. We did that for two reasons, 2.a) money and 2.b) concern with freedom. Regarding 2.a, I think it's fair to say that we're losing more wealth thanks to our failure to address these problems. Regarding 2.b: it's true that the government once abusively used it's power to commit people to mental institutions without them having committed a crime. From the perspective of a society obsessed with individual liberty, that's an abhorrent state of affairs. However, the problem with mental illness and disorders (of all varieties, not simply clinical illness) is that it's fundamentally in conflict with our assumptions about free will, as well as with an economic approach (personal incentives, costs, etc) to the problem. We need to adjust the way we resolve this conflict and become more comfortable with the idea of _forcing_ people into assistance. And we need to realize that the moral of hazard of "handouts" is nowhere near as significant as it would be if we were all perfectly rational actors, _especially_ when we're giving handouts to those people at the very bottom.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1.a) our patchwork of federal, state, and municipal programs and 1.b) the American idea of self-help and individualism.
And reason c: People are worried someone might abuse the system. For some reason, people like the idea that it is better to let 9 guilty men go than an innocent man go to prison, so promote the idea of a justice system that makes it harder to get convicted (or at least used to...), but think it is better to let 9 people starve so one person can't scam his way into a small amount of money and crappy way of life.
I am not sure of the difference between the two programmes, but what failed in Dallas 10 years ago seems to be working in Salt Lake City now: http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/lntv3q/the-homeless-homed
Yeah, it is not the best source for news, but it is the only way I heard about it.
No, the truth is uglier than that. A society committed to "self-help and individualism" would strive to ensure opportunities are available to anyone who cares to take them, no matter where they happen to be, and that one can actually risk failing without also risking homelessness. Such societies exist, and are typically derided as "nanny states" by Americans - because compensating for human frailties and failings is what it takes to actually make it possible for people to follow their own path and seek their dreams.
Someone once said US's problem is that everyone thinks they're a temporarily embarassed millionaire. But that leaves out a key fact: everyone thinks they're a temporarily embarassed millionaire who wants to ensure they can stomp on those below them, once they get to the top, and votes accordingly. Thus the seemingly irrational support from middle class to policies destructive to said middle class. It's a self-made hell.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
There is also an incredible lack of knowledge about other systems. The choice isn't between working people starving on the streets and French style socialism where every job and employer has tons of regulation and tons of worker classifications along with huge welfare payments.
I've come to enjoy the Japanese system. It has a fundamental thread of responsibilitythat resonates with me and a strong sense of EVERYONE pays something, even the guy with 0 income for an extended period. It may not be much (20 bucks a month for health insurance) but you are legally required to get it and pay for it. The state will watch out for you, as long as you always fulfill your own responsibilities to society.
And yeah, if you go cheap and try to save 20 bucks don't get sick because you are expected to show an ability to pay immediately (but you can always get back into the state program by paying all your owed back premiums).