Alyssa Jurcak-Anderson

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SimCity Recap

Developed in California by Will Wright and published in 1989 by Maxis, SimCity became a very popular video game. The purpose behind this game is maintaining happiness among the citizens of your city while inside your given budget. Zones are created within this city and this allows for different types of development to only occur within them. Zones are not created directly by the player but when certain criteria is met you are given this ability. The zone colors are set up with green being residential, blue being commercial and yellow industrial. The Mayor, also known as the person playing the game will have frustrating encounters but they need to handle these well for their city to stay united. SimCity when first developed was only a one player game but over the years with new adaptions has become a multiplayer game and created new criteria for each version. Maxis a small game distributor runs under what we today know as EA (electronic arts) a huge game distributor that owns rights to many games.


Article Summary

The article, "Seeing Like SimCity" written by Rob MacDougall has some very strong viewpoints and arguments. These arguments come from wether or not viewers and analyst see this game as educational. One major computer scientist MacDpugall quotes in his article is Alan Kay, who explains that despite the awards this game has won it isn't beneficial towards education. Alan Kay believes that because we assume that games like SimCity are educational- they become the opposite of that and all educational material within the game goes unseen to the younger ages playing it. Rob MacDougall argues with that of Alan Kay by saying he believes youth should be taught how to go steps further; they should be able to test these simulation games and hack them in a way that these simulation games are than educational and not just a game.

SimCity Importance

The importance of SimCity can be taken in different ways. Rob MacDougall would point out that this type of game could educate the players personally and socially. SimCity was the creator of what many "Sims" games offer to youth today. We can break down the game and see that it does have some educational points. Socially, we as the player of this game known as the "Mayor" need to control a city that doesn't consist of ourself. We indeed need to think about the being of others and acknowledge that we are in control of what happens to tons of people. Financially, we are taught a lesson in sticking within budget to up keep an entire city and build into something larger than we could imagine. Personally, we could learn from things like this depending on how each player sees the game, wether its another source of pleasure for them or a lesson to be learned. It has become culturally acceptable to be a "gammer", and wether you take that as an advantage or disadvantage is all up to the person playing the game. Often times video games are created based on history or society at that point, so SimCity is just using what a Mayor and budget entails to show a lesson to the young people sitting and enjoying the screens with these games on them. Rob MacDougall and the point about perception is why this game can be very important educationally to youth.

Debate

Reading this article I enjoyed the debates that Rob MacDougall argued. Simulation games can be educational to the youth if we play them that way. The comments section under this article did have me thinking a lot about the games I played growing up. I didn't quite understand fully the lessons that were being taught to me until reading this article and thinking back on my time as a young player. One thing that stuck out was a comment about " It only being a game", when I play games today with family or friends I get very competitive and angry when losing. These may only be sports games but they still are lessons to be learned even about you as a person. One last argument you could make from all of this is that games are based off the past, present and future so how we understand these games educationally when playing them is a big understanding of oneself as a gammer. There is always a way to learn from something it's just how you perceive that something that gets you somewhere and that is what Rob MacDougall is saying.

Work Cited

"SimCity" Wikipedia Web. 12 June 2015.

MacDougall, Rob. "Seeing Like SimCity." Play the Past. N.p., 26 Jan 2011. Web. 12 June 2015.