SimCity My A**

I would like to take a break from my usual blog entries and discuss a matter of grave importance. Well, maybe not grave importance but a good rant nonetheless. I recently purchased the latest in the SimCity phenomenon called SimCity Societies. In this version, you do have to build roads and the occasional power plant but after that, there is very little essence of SimCity, or at least the game that I fell in love with. I am what I call a Government Junkie. I majored in government, I worked in government in high school, my career is government, my masters will be in government, and I love the government style city planning game. The first SimCity was revolutionary and, back then, considered a hard game to play and master. The second release, called SimCity 2000, brought upon the world the super-duper buildings called… I forget. But they were way cool and could hold tens of thousands of people. Water was first introduced but to a limited scale. The next installment, aptly named SimCity 3000 expanded on the new versions, although the super-duper buildings were lost to time. Trash and neighbor deals were created but really no way to build a region. In comes the best version of SimCity in the confusingly named SimCity 4. This game is just awesome as you not only build a city but a region as well. If you have too many residents in one city, they will find work in the nearby municipalities and the game is intertwined with everything else. This version was actually the basis for several tourism rich cities/nations to calculate where they need to spend money so they can attract more tourists. In these games, the creator built in actual city effects and principles that we study in school. Transference is a big one but nothing compares to the multiplier effect. Cities must grow, to some degree, in order to survive. Although with the modern day set-up in real life, this is more along the lines of counties but the basis is the same.

Multiplier effect:

It works like this. Company A makes 5 widgets a year and Company B buys 2 per year in order to make their product for their customers. They have a great year and the customer (residents) base grows and they must order 5 additional widgets the next year for a total of 7. Company A must now make more widgets to bring their total up to 10 so Company B can have their 7 total. In order to do that, A must hire more staff, buy more supplies and is now producing 10. B has a good year and continues to expand but this time they must order only 3 additional for a total of 5. Now A has capacity to make 10 but is only selling 8. Even though B is still growing, the multiplier effect dictates that A is too big and must downsize, thus reducing the supplies they order and the number of staff, which will snowball out of control. This, of course, is a way simplified version of what actually happens in economics and cities but as you can see, any slowdown can lead to disaster for cities.

Back to the issue at hand:

SimCity Societies is nothing more than a new twist on the Sims. It does not deserve the name of SimCity. I would be fine if it were SimSocieties but no, Sim fucking societies.