Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 100 posts

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#21

Post by CalRobert »

andys627 wrote: post #3

It's crazy how much SimCity cities look like the cities we've built for the last 75 years. Our cities really can be simplified to a game "fun" for someone to dive in right away. My thesis is that cities are oversimplified and stratified into easily separable blocks because they're easier to "industrialize" that way. This is causing crazy transportation requirements and isolation. If we mixed uses up a bit we could sa…

There's no conspiracy needed, the push towards stealing roads from people and horses and taking them for cars is pretty well documented. Once we decided it was ok to tell kids they couldn't play in the street, our cities were lost.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/04/invention-jay...

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#22

Post by protomyth »

standardUser wrote: post #11

Cities: Skylines is an outstanding successor, but it lacks much of the charm of the SimCity series and feels more like a sandbox than a simulation. It's too bad Maxis decided to take the series in a simplified direction before killing it off. If anyone knows of any other city-building simulators worth mentioning, please let me know.

One of the great things about Cities: Skylines is the whole mod community. Its amazing some of the stuff they have added to the game. Plus, the developer continues to add amazing add-ons themselves.

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#23

Post by nkrisc »

InitialLastName wrote: post #17
andys627 wrote: post #3

It's crazy how much SimCity cities look like the cities we've built for the last 75 years. Our cities really can be simplified to a game "fun" for someone to dive in right away. My thesis is that cities are oversimplified and stratified into easily separable blocks because they're easier to "industrialize" that way. This is causing crazy transportation requirements and isolation. If we mixed uses up a bit we could sa…

My biggest problem with both SimCity and City:Skylines (its spiritual successor) is that neither allows mixed-use zoning, forcing you to rely heavily on either cars or dense (expensive) transit networks. It's like they can't break the mold of the US suburban mindset.

In the latter, while you can't build a building zoned for multiple uses, you can certainly very much blend zoning very thoroughly, alternating commercial and residential buildings as you go down the street. Of course, the simulation likely isn't sophisticated enough to make full use of that (people will travel across the entire map to go shopping). I can also understand from a gameplay perspective why this is the case.

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#26

Post by vokep »

protomyth wrote: post #22
standardUser wrote: post #11

Cities: Skylines is an outstanding successor, but it lacks much of the charm of the SimCity series and feels more like a sandbox than a simulation. It's too bad Maxis decided to take the series in a simplified direction before killing it off. If anyone knows of any other city-building simulators worth mentioning, please let me know.

One of the great things about Cities: Skylines is the whole mod community. Its amazing some of the stuff they have added to the game. Plus, the developer continues to add amazing add-ons themselves.

Installing a mod for more intelligent/realistic behavior of various aspects of the city, and then another mod for watching citizens first person/third person view...holy shit, its the closest thing to watching p-zombies live out their lives. They wake up, goto work/school, go shopping, get food, drive home. And the economy does its thing

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#27

Post by darkpuma »

billfruit wrote: post #15
darkpuma wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass transit enthusiasts would probably love OpenTTD. Instead of managing a city, you manage a transit company that operates ships, planes, trucks, buses, and most of all trains. Cities grow as you serve them with more mass transit, which maybe is more optimistic than real life, but on the other hand the game also teaches you that tearing up half the city to install a massive train yard is very expensive and will mak…

While OpenTTD is a fun for a time, I think the Rail Road Tycoon (Esp 2 and 3) are more detailed games, with a simulated stock market and financial system, where one realizes that though through a well planned rail network and well maintained rolling stock, you could stay afloat and expand some, greater personnel wealth is more often and more easily obtained through creative ploys in the financial markets.

OpenTTD's economics is fundamentally flawed, it's trivial to have billions of dollars before long, meaning you never have to worry about money again (although local authorities will still hassle you for too much demolition.) It would be nice to see the economic system revamped completely, but I don't think it's a high priority for anybody. I think most of the fun in the game is in the finer logistics of optimal rail networks, particularly junctions and switching, not so much the money management.

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#28

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

standardUser wrote: post #11

Cities: Skylines is an outstanding successor, but it lacks much of the charm of the SimCity series and feels more like a sandbox than a simulation. It's too bad Maxis decided to take the series in a simplified direction before killing it off. If anyone knows of any other city-building simulators worth mentioning, please let me know.

> Cities: Skylines is an outstanding successor, but it lacks much of the charm of the SimCity series and feels more like a sandbox than a simulation.

I feel the opposite.

I think SimCity's charm is just nostalgia. C:S is definitely more of a simulation, as it simulates individual vehicles, including commercial traffic. All the SimCity games before SC4 used a statistical model for traffic, and SC4's path finding was very unlikely to use highways and mass transit without a mod.

And with mods, you can make C:S look like a photo [0], or add outlights to make it look like Borderlands [1].

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/axhrg7/stre...

[1] https://imgur.com/a/GY7Tn

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#29

Post by joshstrange »

standardUser wrote: post #11

Cities: Skylines is an outstanding successor, but it lacks much of the charm of the SimCity series and feels more like a sandbox than a simulation. It's too bad Maxis decided to take the series in a simplified direction before killing it off. If anyone knows of any other city-building simulators worth mentioning, please let me know.

It's not city building but Factorio (factory building). Be VERY careful as it's an extremely addicting game. It pushes ALL the right buttons for me and I highly recommend it. The mod community really takes a great game and makes it amazing (but play at least some Vanilla before you go modding like I did).

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#30

Post by FascistDonut »

nkrisc wrote: post #23
InitialLastName wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem with both SimCity and City:Skylines (its spiritual successor) is that neither allows mixed-use zoning, forcing you to rely heavily on either cars or dense (expensive) transit networks. It's like they can't break the mold of the US suburban mindset.

In the latter, while you can't build a building zoned for multiple uses, you can certainly very much blend zoning very thoroughly, alternating commercial and residential buildings as you go down the street. Of course, the simulation likely isn't sophisticated enough to make full use of that (people will travel across the entire map to go shopping). I can also understand from a gameplay perspective why this is the cas…

Maybe the shops in that part of town have better stuff.
Post reply on HN