SimCity

The popular game SimCity was originally released in 1989 and with it brought the creation of a whole new game genre commonly known as; city building simulation. In this game you are given the task of designing and maintaining a virtual city.

During the design and development of your city, balance must be maintained in order to avoid creating a chaotic urban disaster. Many more things than just the construction buildings, roads and bridges are to be considered in order for your city to be successful.

In SimCity you will face challenges such as population growth, environmental issues, the city’s economy, crime and overall infrastructure not limited to transportation.

As you develop your new metropolis in SimCity, you will assume the roll of mayor, city council and urban planner just to name a few prestigious positions. An important task that you will be responsible for is the growth and sustainability of your city for a period of decades or even centuries.

There are always trade-offs with the development of any society, for instance, if you decide to add more parks to your city it will be more appealing to both inhabitants and visitors alike. The down side is, when you choose to make improvements like these, there is always a monetary budget consideration that often times leads to a higher tax burden for the citizens of the city.

Should you decide to rezone a residential area to accommodate an industrial park, there is a risk the existing residential property value will fall and as a result the crime rate will rise. With this there is always pressure to raise taxes, reduce green space resulting in the residents move from the area causing further problems.

Games like SimCity can teach students the value of logical decision making in a community planning setting, as well as urban geography, both of these things can be used in many general social studies course.

SimCity and other games like it to appear to have educational value and allow the players of these games to consider how complex systems like cities function, however this is not a direct replacement for traditional education due to the game’s limitations.

In many ways it not possible for a computer game like SimCity to simulate the complexity of what the development of an actual city is like, since the growth of a real city takes place over a long period of time, perhaps decades or even centuries. With the computer game SimCity you will have made great strides to overall development in a matter of hours.

Due to the fact that environmental and social changes happen gradually over time, a distorted view of how a city will actually develop may occur when playing these types of games. The way in which city planners and local government officials may deal with issues over an genuine real-time scenario is likely to be a quite different than how it would most likely be dealt with in SimCity.

While playing SimCity, it is much too easy to find yourself in a position of wielding ultimate power and acting more like a self appointed virtual dictator than a mayor or city planner. Your actions will be unaccounted for, since there are no political constituents or interest groups to answer to.

Since there is ultimate power to control and influence all aspects of the environment affecting the virtual inhabitants of the game, these types of games are often referred to as a God Game.

I would recommend to buy SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition

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