kentris
@kentris

I was recently watching the LGR retrospective on Sim City 3000 (see below) and something that really struck me was how much emphasis, through writing and petition mechanics, was given to the various people who live in your city and have stakes in the city's government. Like, it's not just your advisors who have their own pet projects/departments, and its not even just petitioners like the sleazy capitalist guy telling you why you really need a defense contractor/federal prison/etc. in your city. But for every choice that can be made, there is a detractor. Environmental cleanup laws and tax subsidies are mocked by your fiscally conservative budget manage, passing a parking law gets complaints from the guys who get ticketed, and so on. Sim City 3000's vision of a City is a place where its residents have different visions of what the City should be. It presents you with all sorts of characters who you could see making a scene at a city council meeting.

On the other hand, more Modern games like Cities Skylines try to get all of this through a more powerful simulation engine. Skylines tracks every single citizen in your city, where they live, where they work, and so on. But watching LGR gush about SC3K makes me feel like we've gone backwards, in a way. The cities of City Skylines have people in them, but they don't have People in them.


pontifus
@pontifus

Reminds me of something City Planner Plays said in a recent video, that part of why he does so much narrativizing now is because C:S doesn't bother to. Of course there's a way to design your simulation such that story can emerge from it, but you have to account for people as bundles of personality. Occasionally someone has to want something.


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in reply to @kentris's post:

That's a really interesting point, yeah! SC3 did have a ton of personality like that. This is also part of why Suzerain is such a great game, because it does the same thing but for countries, where they're full of People who all have different visions for what the country should be.