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Comment by NikolaNovak

13 days ago

Thanks! If you don't mind some more detail

- how much does it go into people and personalities of the team and stakeholders, besides the technical design of the game?

- it sounds like first part of the book is historical and talks about various games, second focuses strictly on simcity?

- does it only cover first simcity? What about latter generations and competitors, or maxis follow ups like simearth etc?

Thx muchly!:)

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NikolaNovak

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chaimgingold  13 days ago

Hi! The focus is SimCity, but once the book gets into Maxis I get into SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife, and The Sims. They aren't treated in as much detail, but they are here because they are crucial for understanding the overall arc of Maxis, SimCity's consequences, and Will Wright's career.

You can't understand Maxis without understanding the relationship they had with the world beyond videogames. Consider SimEarth. Stewart Brand (should need no intro; Kevin Kelly introduced them—he and Wright bonded over their love of social insects) introduced Wright to James Lovelock (co-inventor of Gaia hypothesis), who happily collaborated, and Maxis donated money to Lovelock's nonprofit. And Brand's GBN consultancy was interested in using SimEarth for their work. There's more context to all this I get into, but that's the super short version.

I'm still stunned by how much Brand thinks I got all this right (and how much he loves the book): "Of course I checked the few moments where I intersected with the events in the story. They are tone-perfect, detail-perfect, and context-perfect. More so than I've ever seen before." See his review on X:

https://x.com/stewartbrand/status/1800941614287946003

chaimgingold  12 days ago

I forgot to answer your first two questions:

> - how much does it go into people and personalities of the team and stakeholders, besides the technical design of the game?

A lot; it all goes together.

> - it sounds like first part of the book is historical and talks about various games, second focuses strictly on simcity?

Yes. And not just games, but computer history and simulation practices (like system dynamics, cellular automata, artificial life) that influenced SimCity and shaped its reception.

chaimgingold  13 days ago

Building SimCity only talks about pre-EA SimCity. So there's SimCity, SimCity 2000, and SimCity for SNES, but not much else—aside from how SimCity 3000 was a train wreck that helped destroy Maxis.