Kyle Mulvany

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ABSTRACT

In the game Sim City, the player interacts in a city building experience. The player becomes the “mayor” of an unoccupied landscape and builds up their city while simultaneously keeping the citizens happiness at a high level and managing the city budget. The player typically must balance the city by only building certain types of buildings, businesses, etc. in the appropriate zones. New buildings and such are typically unlocked as you grow your city and earn more taxes as well. The game is basically a never ending simulation game of creating a city that is ever changing.

TITLE

The article Seeing Like Sim City, acknowledges the inaccuracies of the history of Sim City and other colonization games. The points were made in response to an article that was written stating that Sim City would come preloaded on computers for students at certain schools to be used as an educational experience to teach history, development, or other aspects that the games provide. They argue that the games provide a false sense of history because players can dictate their own history based on what the code for the game allows them to do. While the title of the game reflected that the article would be based on the game Sim City, it seemed as though most of the argument of the article was geared towards other games that involved war and colonization, such as Game of War, Clash of Clans, World of Warcraft, etc. In those games, players interact in warlike actions to overthrow other civilizations and build their own empires. Those games are loosely based on historical events, but much of the events that occur in those games are completely up to the players actions based on what the coding of the game allows them to do, and ends up being only distantly related to actual historical events. Rob MacDougall, the author of the article focuses mainly on the social and cultural importance of games like Sim City. He bases his arguments off the ideas of others that have written similar articles on the game. They believe that the article provides a false sense of history for the players and therefore shouldn’t be used as an educational device, but strictly as an entertainment option. A previous author believes that these games don’t provide accurate historical information and instead lead players that are using the games in school to believe that historical events were as ruthless as the games can be. MacDougall goes on to argue that the games only provide evidence of historical events that they are coded for, and therefore don’t provide a wide enough education for related historical events. He then suggests that players or others could go in and write their own code for the games to provide alternative actions in the games to create them more accurately to actual historic events. Basically, the MacDougall and the others that he mentions believe that the games take one historic event and falsely radicalize the it for entertainment purposes. This article did create quite a buzz. There were 15 comments on the article with many having links to the comments as well. They dove into the opinion of the author quite a bit, with a wide variety of comments to the article. Some comments agreed with statements that MacDougall made regarding the topic of the games, while others argued that MacDougall’s thoughts were stretching the idea of the games for the purpose of discussion. After reading the article and the comments of others I have created an opinion of my own. I have also played the game Sim City, and others like it as well. I believe that MacDougall’s thoughts on the educational incentives of these games are accurate. However, it depends on what you want out of the games. I do agree that these games may not accurately reflect historical events, and therefore wouldn’t be a great tool for educational purposes on historical events. But I do believe that the game Sim City does provide more than entertainment. The game allows players to learn how to manage budgets, and make plans, and build upon envisions that the players have. While I think that many people typically just play these games for entertainment purposes, I think they do provide a little bit of educational value because of the envisioning and developing that is involved in the process of the games.


Works Cited:

MacDougall, R. (2011, January 26). Seeing Like SimCity. Retrieved June 10, 2015, from http://www.playthepast.org/?p=645