Let’s build! SimCity Games: Obsessed with sprawl and “technocracy”?

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In order to allow the game to “go smoothly” and enjoy the fun of management and construction, the “Sim City” series allows players to play the role of free and powerful builders or so-called mayors, eliminating all kinds of difficulties and difficulties encountered by municipal councils in the real world. fold punch. Under such an operation logic, players can control the city as they like, and through the promotion of game goals, the city scale is continuously expanded. A bureaucracy of experts.And these similar concepts, as early as the early 20th century“Garden City” TheoryIt can be seen in the book that a hundred years later, human beings will realize the utopian city in their hearts through computer simulation calculations.

The corner game podcast series in this episode, starting from the “Sim City” type game, explores the urbanism thinking behind the game, as well as the sandbox game experience (Sandbox) game experience, and the immersive design of the system operation from the perspective of God. In the world of “Sim City”, players experience the fun of controlling the city. After careful construction bit by bit, it seems to have touched the spiritual realm of the “creator” to some extent.

This unit is a new series broadcasted by Corner International podcast. The current editor-in-chief of Corner International #Editor No. 7 and the columnist #黄宗汉 in charge of German issues, use the player’s selfish desire to expand discussions on various issues of the game—— Talk about video games, games, and the social context and life memories behind the games.

(Please click to listen to the full content Corner International Podcast: #角角游戏器）

▌Program keywords:

SimCity:Released in 1989 by Maxis, USA. Players build and manage their own cities from scratch. Players can divide regions in the virtual city to manage different aspects of game life. From the beginning of the game, they must choose maps, build power plants, water towers, build traffic roads, and build waste factories. and other facilities. What players build is not just an isolated city, but can be integrated with the surrounding area. As the city continues to develop, more high-tech equipment and buildings will be unlocked one by one. This series of games has a huge community support, and players can even share creative resources (MOD, which represents the modification of game content or game code in the game) to develop the city into a different look.

Cities Skylines:Debuting in 2015, it can be called a classic of the Simcity genre. The difference from “Sim City” is that the later “Metropolis: Skyrim” can create larger and more detailed cities, and also provide more terrain and landscape customization, allowing players to define parks or adjust terrain. In addition, the game has a more active MOD player community, adding many additional functions and tools to the game experience; it has also been used by the Swedish government to jointly design blueprints and urban planning teaching tools with citizens.

Garden Cities:British urbanistHoward(Ebenezer Howard, 1850-1928) put forward the theory of urban planning, classifying the areas where people live and enclosing them in rural landscapes, and clearly dividing areas with different attributes such as residential, commercial, and industrial, which have been radially and concentrically The circular layout creates a neat, balanced, harmonious, and “logical” utopian city.

▌Embracing urban development?

The sim city game genre is a form of entertainment that brings a lot of fun and challenges, and behind the construction of beautiful cities in the game, there is a “technocratic” issue hidden. Real-world problems like slums, aging cities, etc. are difficult to solve in reality, but in the game, they seem to be solved with just a click of the mouse, leveling or building buildings.

Can the seemingly utopian planning truly reflect the logic of the world’s operations? Simplify each area into a fixed function. In real life, large-scale township projects may create ghost towns, but there are exceptions: Singapore built a smart city in the 1990s, aiming to build futuristic road designs and traffic that are in line with human nature. needs, improving the efficiency, sustainability and quality of life of cities. But the plan’s ability to be implemented in Singapore has to take into account the administrative style of the central government and the size of the population.

The ultimate goal of the sim city genre is for players to build a city that is self-sufficient and economically prosperous. Through the establishment of urban infrastructure, the development of industries and commerce, and the provision of a good living and transportation environment for citizens, the city will eventually realize its own operation and growth.

It is advocated that urban design should be an idealized community. If it is moved to the real world, it may lead to difficult social problems. For example, parks in commercial districts may become crime centers because there are no people around at night.In contrast, American urban planning theoristsJane Jacob(Jane Jacobs) focuses more on how cities actually work and how communities live. She believes that a city should be an organic system, which needs to have characteristics such as diversity, mixed use, and density in order to maintain the vitality and creativity of the city. (Extended reading: “Gaze at Jane Jacob: The American Post-war Urban Defense Battle against the Grandfather of Du Geng”)

Letter cooperation / Lin Fanchi