Comment by yellow_postit
17 days ago
I’m not sure I’m following the distinction you’re trying to draw. SimCity is a simulation — just a simplistic one with many simplifications and short cuts.
It’s a toy model.
There’s always simplifications made in any model — SimCity’s happened to be made with “fun” in mind.
The point is SimCity is no more a simulation than Monopoly is.
The rules of both are explicitly set up to be fun not a simplification of some model.
I’m not convinced anyone described monopoly as fun
It's mostly that the rules are propagated by hearsay from 10 yo:s.
If you don't add all the house rules all kids use to prolong the game, it is quite playable.
For some reason alot of kids love it. I think handling money is the main lure.
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I think Monopoly is very fun, and I think the vocal haters online are obnoxious as hell. It's snobbery, but for board game nerds.
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> The point is SimCity is no more a simulation than Monopoly is.
Simulation or Game is a false dichotomy, there's plenty of opportunity for overlap.
Consider the original X-COM: obviously a game, yet also a simulation, not withstanding that the situation it was trying to simulate was not real. Units with individual statistics, status effects, individual gear with weights and placements that affected movement and actions, etc.
Another example to consider might be the Napoleonic warfare origins of Dungeons & Dragons.
Overlap is coincidental, yes people may be doing similar kinds of things in a game. But Microsoft flight ‘simulator’ doesn’t come with a bunch of built in systems for handling loss of hydraulic pressure the way actual training systems do. The general public doesn’t want to spend time memorizing checklists for minor systems issues etc.
The other kind of simulation where people are trying to understand how systems interact is even further removed in how they are used. Running the exact same hour plus simulation repeatedly while only changing initial conditions isn’t fun, but it can be informative.
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The funny thing about this is that Monopoly was designed to be a simulation of capitalism rather than a fun game. So it's arguably less of a simulation.
Not quite the goal was to be illustrative not a simulation.
I think he is actually trying to say it IS a simulation and NOT emulating the real world.
At least in the hardware world, there are simulators (which are faux short cut versions that work reasonably like the real thing) and emulators (which are software versions that act exactly like the real thing, but usually are very slow)
That’s actually the point. SimCity was made to be fun, not to be a simulation.
To put the dissonance in clearer terms, imagine a book described as "Analyzing interpersonal relationships through the lens of The Sims". Would you take it seriously?
It doesn’t seem like a pedantic distinction to say that the goals of SimCity are different from the goals of simulating reality.