This morning’s Observer column:
The only computer game I’ve ever played involved no killing, zombies, heavily-armed monsters or quests for hidden keys. It was called SimCity and involved developing a virtual city from a patch of undeveloped land. The game enabled you to determine where to place development zones, infrastructure (like roads and power plants), landmarks and public services such as schools, parks, hospitals and fire stations. You could decide the tax rate, budget and social policy for your city – populated by Sims (for “simulated persons”, I guess) who had to live and work in the three zones you created for them: residential had houses and apartment buildings, commercial had shops and offices and industrial had factories, warehouses, laboratories and (oddly) farms.
SimCity was the brainchild of Will Wright, a software developer who had first made a splash with a shoot-’em-up (well, bomb-’em-flat) video game in which the player controls a helicopter dropping bombs on islands. But he became more fascinated with the islands than with the weaponry and started to wonder what a virtual city would be like – and how it would work. What he came up with was magical for its time: it gave the player a feeling of omnipotence: you decided where Sims should live, whether their electricity should come from nukes, where schools and offices should be located, how much tax they paid…
What you discovered early on, though, was that your decisions had consequences…