MARKLE FORUM on CHILDREN and MEDIA SIMCITY Maxis
Case Presenter: Lucy Bradshaw Maxis General Manager

January 31, 2002

Why SimCity?
SimCity is a game SimCity has been used in classrooms as an educational tool SimCity has a uniquely broad audience since its original version How has its educational appeal aided in the success of SimCity? How have the above factors affected both iterations of SimCity as well as other Maxis games?
SimCity Case Presentation

The SimCity Franchise

Creative and development approach The role of research
The PC Entertainment Market The SimCity Audience Market & Response

The SimCity Franchise

SimCity is a thirteen year phenomenon
SimCity Original, 1989 SimCity 2000, 1993 SimCity 3000 & Unlimited, 1999 & 2000
Lifetime sales of over 9M units Grown from $20M to $122M per title franchise since its first release
Note: this excludes license and compilation units/revenue

The Evolution of SimCity

Origins of the Idea
Will Wright was inspired about building cities, organically, when making another game, Raid on Bungling Bay A lifetime interest in emergent complex behavior from simple systems Topical Research specific inspiration came from Jay Forresters work in modeling cities on computers for social science study purposes

SimCity Description

SimCity gives you they power to build the ultimate urban empire; your city, your way.
The first of a new type of entertainment software now known as God games. A system simulation that provides the player with a set of rules and tools to create and control an urban environment A software toy, a sandbox
Development Creative Goals
Innovate Create engaging systems for familiar or not so familiar topics; cities, people, ants SIM brand values
Open Ended/Blank Canvas Creative/Thinking Challenging/Building
Ease of Entry Open Model customization

www.simcity.com

SimCity inspired titles
SimEarth 1990 SimAnt 1991 A Train 1992 SimHealth 1993 (with Markle Foundation) SimFarm 1994 SimTown 1994 Widget Workshop 1994 SimTower 1995 SimIsle 1995 SimPark 1996 SimTunes 1996 SimCopter 1996 SimGolf 1996 Street of SimCity 1997 SimSafari - 1998

Development: Research

The various phases of development have different research goals

Concept Phase

Test concept appeal Design research
Graduate study program collaborations

Development Phase

Playability/Usability Market Analysis Positioning

Post Release Phase

Customer Profile Analysis Game Data Mining

Research Techniques

Design
Books, personal contacts, internet Local and National data resources for tuning Game Data Mining
Usability/Positioning/Concept
Kleenex Testing Focus Groups Market Analysis
Informal community involvement Participation in conferences, open dialog with Universities

References

City Development
The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States, John W. Reps Barclay Mapworks, Street Guide to Santa Clara County A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings and Construction, Christopher Alexander City Life, Witold Wichenski

Graphic Inspiration

Over the city, aerial photography books A Field Guide to American Houses, Virginia and Lee McAlester A History of Building Types, Nikolaus Pevsner
General Data and influence
GIS: Geographic Information Systems EBMUD PG&E Internet city sites

PC Entertainment Market

North America

PC Data 2001

$1.6B total revenue 73,109,487 total units Highly competitive increasing gap between top ten titles and all others in terms of units and revenue

Europe

UK and Germany dominate the market
Localization of text, audio and sometime graphics Simultaneous ship dates About 1/3 of lifetime total for SimCity

Asia/Japan

Growing PC markets
Online gaming rooms Wireless adoption rate texting Localization, Social and Piracy Issues
N.A. PC Data PC Titles 2001
Title Publisher Ship Date Yr-01 $$ Yr-01 Units The Sims Electronic Arts 2/1/2000 $60,499,079 1,482,182 6/1/2001 $29,275,598 859,743 Diablo 2 Expansion Set: Lord of Destruction Vivendi Universal P Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone Electronic Arts 11/1/200124,697,925 867,481 $ The Sims: House Party Expansion Pack Electronic Arts 2/1/2001 $23,579,970 843,752 The Sims: Livin Large Expansion Pack Electronic Arts 12/1/199922,999,144 818,600 $ MP Roller Coaster Tycoon Infogrames Entertainment 2/1/1999 $21,926,773 953,953 The Sims: Hot Date Expansion Pack Electronic Arts 11/1/200121,313,604 804,254 $ MS Age Of Empires 2: Age of Kings Microsoft 8/1/1999 $19,432,055 478,557 Diablo 2 Vivendi Universal P 3/1/1999 $19,394,075 517,037 Black & White Electronic Arts 9/1/2000 $19,304,905 464,325 Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 Electronic Arts 10/1/200015,096,182 388,893 $ Max Payne Gathering of Developers 6/1/2001 $13,890,593 300,782 MP Civilization 3 Infogrames Entertainment 10/1/200113,521,884 294,789 $ MS Combat Flight Simulator 2.0 Microsoft 11/1/199913,123,798 285,728 $ Return To Castle Wolfenstein Activision 11/1/200113,121,355 253,852 $ Sierra Sports: NASCAR Racing 4 Vivendi Universal P 2/1/2001 $11,963,579 288,543 Myst 3 Exile Ubisoft 5/1/2001 $11,733,968 284,555 Sim City 3000 Unlimited Electronic Arts 1/1/2000 $11,098,325 338,617 MP Roller Coaster Tycoon Loopy LandscapeInfogrames Entertainment 8/1/2000 $10,795,379 450,856 Sim Theme Park Electronic Arts 11/1/1999$9,927,441 514,288 Tribes 2 Vivendi Universal P 3/1/2001$9,703,379 245,069 Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows Of Amn Vivendi Universal P 1/1/2000$9,639,579 225,763 MS Flight Simulator 2002 Pro Microsoft 8/1/2001$9,003,166 130,954 MS Train Simulator 1.0 Microsoft 5/1/2001$8,708,105 191,952

Business Goals

Top five PC entertainment product
1.5M units WW first year of release $60M net revenue first year
Expand the franchise in meaningful, high quality manner Grow first year franchise results by minimally 50% Sustain the franchise through internet, gameplay additions and community
Development Considerations
PC Entertainment Market Considerations
PC entertainment market highly competitive Production values increasing as well as marketing dollars

Technology Advancements

From DOS/286 with bi-annual advances Now, Windows/1.5GHz Pentium, wide ranging graphics capability with 6 month advances but 2-3 year home PC turnover

Product Quality and Cost

SimCity Original (1989) - $600K - $1M approx SimCity 2000 (1993) - $3.5M SimCity 3000 (1999) - $7M approx Current generation PC Games approx $8M - 12M

SimCity Target Audience

Market Target

Primary:

Previous SimCity players Males ages 18 to 35 Early adopters
Secondary: Computer owners 9 to 40
SimCity Current Demographics
Based on electronic registration

75% Male

Predominantly 14 to 25
25% Female Unique in PC entertainment
SimCitys Educational Audience

SimCity in the Classroom

Teachers Guides for SimCity Site Licenses for schools with Scholastic Series of Sim kids products

Special Events

Future Cities Competition with National Engineers Week www.futurecity.org
GIS Conferences Collaboration with North Western University on several fronts

SimCitys Success

A game about city planning?
Initial positioning as a software toy Open model garnered hard core appeal

Attributes of success

Launched on Mac
Press and word of mouth played a key role Open model garnered hard core appeal
Developed educational distribution and value added skus Innovative and Unique Socially Redeeming the feel good game
Great Execution = Brand Value

Market Strategy

Current Strategy
Leverage brand and studio recognition Primary target: SimCity fans, hard core gamers (early adopters) 1st week sales momentum is critical Print, Internet, Press and TV Embrace community build awareness, participation and excitement Sustained marketing and promotional efforts Word of mouth continues to be a key factor

Audience Response

Over 9 million units of SimCity 75% of Sims players owned a version of SimCity Inspiration for 1000s of fan websites

www.sc3000.com

Inspiration for category of derivative games known as God games or Real Time Strategy
Sid Meiers Civilization Tycoon games Age of Empires Cesar

Marketplace History

SimCity Original 1989 1.2M units

#1 selling PC game

SimCity 3.4M units (console incl.),
Top selling PC game of 1994

SimCity 4.6M units

Top grossing PC game of 1999
Maxis had 5 titles in top 20 PC Data N.A. in 2001 Maxis has had the #1 PC game three years running, PC Data

Whats next

Technical Advancements
Graphic Performance 3D cards, video memory Higher performance CPUs
Not more complex More engaging and better feedback Internet a key feature And now for the suspense.

Selective exclusion has its benefits. In a paper titled Does Simulation Need a Reality Check? Swartout and Lindheim (2002) write that military training simulations aim for exact replication (of a cockpit, for example), and that this thorough inclusiveness is actually counterproductive. They argue that the entertainment industrys more selective style of simulation evokes a suspension of disbelief that can enrich the pedagogical value of the experience. Gaps and omissions stimulate engagement. Wright, the creator of SimCity, understands the value of leaving things out. Frasca (2001b:2) has noted that Wrights design of The Sims was influenced by Scott McClouds Understanding Comics, particularly the section when McCloud explains how the reader fills in the gaps of what happens between each panel of the illustrated story.
In SimCity, useful information is sorted, specialised. Data about resources, for example, is available to the player as a set of distinct and reductive maps: maps of aura, of density, crime or property value. Simplification is combined with amplification. The game leaves things out, but it also dramatises the
things that it includes: The models deliberately exaggerate effects to provide feedback to the player; in real life, the effects of many decisions would be imperceptible. (Starr:1994).
In their paper Neuropsychology and Game Design Jussi Holopainen and Stephan Myers (2002) have described the relationship between dramatic closure and predictive closure. Dramatic closure is the satiation of tension courtesy of resolution. Predictive closure is when your brain makes sense of a partial object or phenomena, by joining the dots. They write that these two forms of closure create a feedback loop between them. The expectation of resolution drives the player to perform the actions needed to reach closure (2000:2). The feedback loop they describe seems particularly pertinent to simulation oriented gaming, where simplification, experimentation, omission and outcome foster play plus their comments hint at the pleasures involved in temporal manipulation. The player is cast as the citys mayor, but his or her power and perspective is not limited to that of a character within a scenario, because the player has the power to slow down or to accelerate the systems velocity (to make time in the game world pass faster, for instance). This power suggests that the player watches and manipulates the world primarily from outside.

Distance is also implicated in Ted Friedmans account of identification in SimCity:
We could see playing SimCity, then, as a constant shifting of identifications, depending on whether youre buying land, organizing the police force, paving roads, or whatever. This, I think, is part of whats going on. But this model suggests a level of disjunction jumping back and forth from one role to the next belied by the smooth, almost trance-like state of gameplay. Overarching these functional shifts, I think, is a more general state of identification: with the city as a whole, as a single system. (1999)
During the game, players receive a mix of information delivered by different agents. Petitioners lobby the mayor on issues such as parking fines, smoking in public spaces, and other civil ordinances. They are highly opinionated, but they can be ignored. These Petitioners are described by the game (as fussy, potty or earnest, for instance) and they are themselves descriptive (to the point of rudeness, when disgruntled), but the information that they relay is of relatively low strategic importance. By comparison, the games professional Advisers are less characterised, and more impassive. The player may choose to ignore these advisers, but they offer useful information: We need toreview our zoning priorities, particularly the high density zones warns the games Public Safety Advisor, Maria Montoya. Their manner is less descriptive, and more instructive. The information they offer is plainly of strategic value. Both the professional Advisors and the Petitioners uphold the fiction that the player is the mayor.
Compared to the passionate Petitioners and the professional Advisors, the in-game agent that issues the most non-negotiable information (City needs Power) is unnamed and disembodied. This unnamed agent is aligned with the force that sets off alarms, that halts the game until the player has put out fires or dispersed rioters. Rather than being descriptive or instructive, this voice is imperative: it makes demands. This, the most authoritative of the in-game voices, directs the player using the you of direct, 2nd person address, rather than upholding the pretence of players role as mayorii.

As this brief review of a few of the agents in SimCity should indicate, the status of information (as crucial, strategic, elective, pejorative or decorative) within game-play is linked to the degree of characterisation of the agent who delivers it: the most authoritative agent is neutral, nameless and disembodied. The most emotive and characterised agents deliver information that is relatively trivial. Distance (in this case emotional distance, or apparent neutrality) is associated with clarity and authority. Players can zoom in close to fragments of their city, but the point is that they manage it in its entirety: they move over the city, planning and co-ordinating the whole, rather than entering it to linger at or act within a particular location.
Anarchy Online The cities of Anarchy Online, by contrast, are perceived from street level, from the perspective of the tourist or the inhabitant. Anarchy Online is an MMORPG: players enter a shared world, and shared cities, each with its own geopolitical, historical and aesthetic qualities. Seen through either 3rd or 1st person perspective (behind your avatar, or through your avatars eyes) the vast game world cannot be paused, because it is shared. The player of SimCity floats over their city, whereas in Anarchy Online players have a presence localised within the bounds of their customized, characterised avatar. Each avatar is a simulated character, a set of subsystems, a biography, a representation and a performance.
The first section of the game for a new player is the avatar construction phase. Players select from a set of templates relating to gender, species, physicality, face, profession and alignment (corporate, neutral, or clan) in order to build the avatar that they will use in the game world. As they play, their avatar will level up in experience points and skills. Online RPGs are descended from live action or tabletop RPGs, such as Dungeons and Dragons (TSR, 1974), where characters are similarly developed, and collaborative scenarios are played out in role.

It is clear from the games online fan forums that some players believe that the whole point of Anarchy Online is that it offers a fictional locale as a backdrop to playing in role. These players (who refer to themselves as Role-Players) form clans, chat in character and participate in the group performance of scenarios conducted by a volunteer Game Master. Meanwhile, other players of Anarchy Online are much more interested in utilising the game in a straight action-adventure style. They go on missions, battle player to player or explore the game world while collecting booty and weapons.
The relationship between the different player communities in Anarchy Online is not always harmonious: as posts to player websites such as this indicate: Some people just dont want to RP (Role Play)if theyre not interested, fine by me, I wont force them or be an ass to them, as long as they aint an ass to me, (by) continuously disrupting a RP event though they were told not tothats something I hate (Demenzias contribution to the player forums) iii. A contributor named Halouk submitted a post that reflects similar tensionsiv: I ordered my squadron to march away. And they did. Yet were followed by 2 or 3 people who just kept dancing away and taking the pisswhat has happened to this game? fair enough if your dont want to RP its your choice (but) to go around ruining other peoples RP is just sick. As the Role-Play related concerns expressed here by Demenzia and Halouk make clear, there is more than one way to practice Anarchy Online.
It is not unusual for Role-Players to fill out their avatars biography with histories, traits and quirks. This means that for experienced RPers, the set of templates offered by the game itself during character construction (species, gender, physicality, profession, etc.) are only the starting point for creative extrapolations, as this advice from Vixentrox demonstrates: If you have multiple charactersmake sure they RP as different people. My main character has a stepsister. They trade insults and dont like each other very much. The one is more fun lovingthe other is more serious and stern.v
For Role-Players there is more to Anarchy Online than game mechanics, scores or levelling up. Yet even for the player who prefers to ignore the games RP associations, and who chooses instead to prioritise the empiricist or ludic potentials of the game, there is still a degree of implicit role playing involved their presence will still be dependent on a named character with displayed traits (even if such traits are limited to weapons specialisation, physicality, wardrobe preferences, or profession).
Anarchy Online is set on the planet of Rubi-Ka where (according to a back-story that is delivered by the games developers in regular instalments) a powerful corporation struggles with anarchist rebel collectives over mineral rightsvi. Players position themselves differently in relation to the powers on RubiKa (as corporate assassins, lone-wolf rebels or neutral doctors, for instance) but they dont alter the simulation, as much as they alter their location or alignment within the simulation. Some explore the idea of playing a militaristic, corporate flunky with obvious glee. Others form eco terrorist collectives. Such divisions are functional: they inspire conflict, as well as clannish teaming, which in turn allows for interesting game-play. Multiplicity is part of the game.

The cities on Rubi-Ka are aligned with battling factions, just as the players are. The corporate owned cities are massive and glittering, while neutral cities are plain, monolithic. Players use them as rallying points, or enter bunker style shops to trade-in mission rewards. Loudly dressed and heavily armoured
aliens assemble near portals, waiting for team-mates. It is possible for the player to get an overview of a citys thoroughfares, by zooming up and above (and apart from) the avatar - but that is not really the point, because the players ability to act within the city is epitomised and embodied by his or her avatar.
Looking at SimCity When playing SimCity 3000 the player resides a certain distance from the city they oversee. From this vantage point, the focalised perspectives within the game (petitioners, assorted minions) are accessed, recognised or ignored as the player sees fit. As noted above, clarity through selective exclusion is inherent to simulations. Furthermore the player is not confined to an embodied position within the games space. For these reasons the game recalls Michel de Certaeus essay Walking in the City (1988 pp 91110). In this essay de Certeau describes how from high in a skyscraper a viewer can enjoy the city as concept. At a distance, the city attains an ordered composition or legibility that is reliant on omission. This concept city becomes comprehensible, only once it becomes a representation or even a misrepresentation: it can be read, because much of the actual city has been erased. From on high, the city conforms to a plan. It becomes a picture, whose condition of possibility is an oblivion and a misunderstanding of practices. (1988:93)
The concept city described by de Certeau is the combination of three intentions. Firstly, it seeks to define and produce its own space, and to purge any murky excesses, the pollutions that would compromise it (1988:94). Then, it must generate its own brand of controlled escalation, a system that will consume and convert the various energies and voices of the actual city (stories, traditions, tactics) into the planned, univocal concept-city. Then, various focalisers, subjectivities or multiplicities must be hierarchically incorporated into the universal and anonymous subject which is the city itselfit gradually becomes possible to attribute to itall the functions and predicates that were previously scattered and assigned to many different real subjects (1988:94).

These conditions are present in SimCity. By zoning and rezoning, the player attempts to manage and redistribute various forms of pollution, including garbage, as well as crime, illiteracy, riots, traffic jams and disgruntled citizens. Sets of measures and maps allow for the flattening out of all the data in a plane projection (1988:94). Neglect results in mayhem and waste, whereas control results in measured increase and smooth progression. Various menus organise the games channels of address according to a set of interests (petitioners, financial statements, neighbourhood ruin or property values), each of which is a component of the city as the host subject, or host system. SimCity, as a concept city thus provides a way of conceiving and constructing space on the basis of a finite number of stable, isolatable, and interconnected properties. (1988:94) Clearly, SimCity is not the simulation of a city; it is the simulation of a fiction of a city.
Walking through Anarchy Online In contrast to the concept-city viewed from an isometric vantage point, the practices of the real city, as it is lived, happen at street level. The ordinary practitioners of the city live down below, below the thresholds at which visibility begins (1988:93). These practices, according to de Certeau, are epitomised by wandering and walking. The city, in practice, is a miasma of transient patterns trod by disparate bodies. These practices together form a text that is unknowable to all its varied participants. Each element reflects and responds to every other, and in the process, they compose a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces: in relation to representations, it remains daily and indefinitely other. (1988:93).
This multiplicity and transience is suggestive of online multiplayer gaming. In the shared game world of Anarchy Online, cities are entered or crossed or occupied by avatars, according to the will of their player. Every passing avatar is a compilation of information that is, by degrees, revealed to, or concealed from, other participants. No single avatar (or player) better expresses the game as a whole, than any other. On the contrary, their tumultuous co-existence is a definitive quality of the game. Avatars are functional, strategic components, they are also characters (existents with traits), and they are the mark of a players vicarious presence.

Each avatar, and each avatars act, is the re-presentation of a players actions and will. Each gesture in the game world is a reflection: a viciously armed alien waves at me because somewhere in this world a player has typed emote/wave. My named, personalised martial artist avatar dashes across a town square in a cocktail dress, with a team, on a mission, and our acts join other innumerable and simultaneous actions.
According to de Certeau, the street is remodulated by use. In the wake of wanderers, window shoppers and pedestrians, a second, poetic geography (1988:105) comes into being. de Certeau imagines that floating accumulations of histories and stories drift about the streets to form A strange toponymy that is detached from actual places and flies high over the city like foggy geography of meanings held in suspension, directing the physical deambulations below (1988:104). The notion of alternative signposts and routes that relate only distantly to rules or function, is suggestive of the ways that the various potentials of an MMORPG such as Anarchy Online might be realised by the player population. The invented roles, ephemeral fictionalising and collaborative scenario building of Role-Players, is one variation on possible styles of play, but there are as many variations, as there are players. Every player actualises the game in a particular way. The combination, during play, and in the games cities, of all these potentials, is a constituent of Anarchy Online, and this fog is arguably impossible to divorce from the game itself.
Of walkers, de Certeau writes They are myriad, but do not compose a series. They cannot be counted because each unit has a qualitative characterTheir swarming mass is an innumerable collection of singularities. (1988:97). He writes that these pedestrian movements form one of these real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city. These movements can be transcribed, collated or recorded, but any such data would only refer to the absence of what has passed by. Surveys of routes miss what was: the act itself of passing by. De Certeaus analysis raises questions about documentation and method that are pertinent to computer games studies as a whole.

It is certainly possible to survey the paths taken by pedestrians, and it is possible to record and analyse the paths taken or choices made by individual players, but such documentation, while Itself visible, it has the effect of making invisible the operation that made it possibleThe trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten. (de Certeau 1988:97) Computer game analyst Torill Mortensen makes a related point, when she writes that in order to study games, and
how they are realised into texts or experiences through the activity of playing, I have to study that process from the viewpoint of a player. To study logs from the game as texts afterwards is like studying a description of an event rather than being present at the event. (Mortensen 2002)
I would not, based on this, go on to argue that there are more correct, or incorrect perspectives (or objective positions) from which to analyse a computer game, or the situated actualisation of a computer games through play. I would suggest, instead, that all approaches are partial, reductive and provisional. Hence our analysis will be partial, specific and selective also. This is not in itself a problem, unless it is denied.
Playing SimCity and Anarchy Online In certain ways SimCity is a neat model of de Certeaus concept-city. Similarly, his account of the actual citys unruly and transient practices is reminiscent of the cities of Anarchy Online. But in de Certeaus essay, the city-as-practice is the underside of the concept-city: they do not exist apart and in different places. The relationship between the panoptic concept city and the lived city (between the constructed order, and the transient, fertile multiplicity of lived practice) is mutually informing and unresolved. Practice mushrooms between the cracks and thus the surface of this order is everywhere punched and torn open by ellipses, drifts, and leaks of meaning. (1988:107)
While it is possible to argue that SimCity models the concept city, and Anarchy Online resembles the city as practice, this is only part of the story. SimCity and Anarchy Online both exist on their own terms,
and each has their concept and their practice manifestations. Both games replicate the geometric or geographical space of visual, panoptic, or theoretical constructions (1988:93) of the concept-city. And both games host those practices of space that are characterised by an opaque and blind mobility (1988:93).

The concept-city and the actual city are counterparts. As the concept-city progresses, it is able to consume an increasing amount of the real citys waste products. This consuming fuels the increasing complexity of its regulatory networks. This is the way in which the Concept-city functions; a place of transformations and appropriations, the object of various kinds of interference but also a subject that is constantly enriched by new attributes (1988:95). As the concept-city pursues its totalising agenda, urban life responds with practices that contradict the regulatory model. Beneath the discourses that ideologize the city, the ruses and combinations of powers that have no readable identity proliferate; without points where one can take hold of them, without rational transparency, they are impossible to administer (1988:95).
In Sim City, the player stands outside of the game-world, and takes an isometric view of the goings on within it. In this way the game mirrors de Certeaus description of the concept-city. But the text is played. The players simulated city is mirrored by ghost doubles from previous games and discarded experiments. The simulation is unlikely to play smoothly forwards in time. It is more likely that the player will save, experiment, play on or play over their game, producing impermanent loops and transient events. Just as Role-Players cloud Anarchy Onlines cities with stories, players of SimCity invent their own peculiar goals. In the process, they generate unplanned and inventive parallel trajectories. In this way things extra and other (details and excesses coming from elsewhere) insert themselves into the accepted framework, the imposed order. (1988:107 emphasis in original)
On the forum for SimCity fans at www.simtropolis.com, for instance, there is a running debate about how best to build a realistic city. The term realistic has a contextually specific meaning that has nothing to do with creating a city with a grim set of urban demographics. For some contributors, a realistic city seems to mean a nice city, with a beach perhaps, and not too many skyscrapers. The game itself might not spell out objectives, but players find goals, share goals, and share advice about the best way to realise them:
A couple of suggestions that make things look very realistic; take a bit of time to study a map of one of your favourite cities. Notice the consistencies and irregularities that make it organic lookingwork WITH the terrain and cram dirty industry together in slum areas, but don't overdo it think of a typical drive to the store, then to workWhen you pull out of your street, what do you see ?vii
Also evident is the pleasure that players take in sharing irreverent cheats that will enable the spawning of multiple birds or UFOsviii. The point is that alternative goals are proposed outside of (but inspired by) the game and this suggests that despite the reductive clarity of its modelled processes, SimCity generates lapses, diversions and multiplicity. This in turn suggests that however apparently controlled or linear a game is, the fact that it is played will always mean there is scope for diversity and deviation.

Conversely, Anarchy Online appears to model de Certeaus city of practice, but, on closer consideration, it also accommodates its own version of planned isometry. The game world is larger than can feasibly be explored, it cannot be viewed at once, the games population together form a vast, mobile collage. The game is shared, and so it cannot be fully known. The game space cannot be paused. Yet, for all this, a site of isometric and quantitative legibility is still offered to players.
Going up in de Certeaus skyscraper allowed the viewer to reduce the miasmic practices of the city to a legible ordering. In Anarchy Online, the player can distance themselves from its shared cities by entering the mapped interior of the avatar. Each of the avatars that winds their way through the various cities scattered around the game world is a container for a second (and relatively independent) set of processes. Each player enters the game world via an avatar, and then enters their avatar to allocate and organise various resources (skill points, weaponry, clothing, for example). Each avatar is constituted of empiricist, numerical values, as well as more elusive variables. When the player is examining and redistributing experience points, resources and statistics they have, in effect, attained order through a retreat. They have not climbed up a skyscraper, they have backed into the inner space of their avatar, and structure, plan and clarity are attained with this recoil.
Conclusion SimCity 3000 is a simulation game or toy, where the player manipulates the development and growth of a city from the perspective of overseer. The identification invited by the game is dispersed, general. The player tinkers with variables from outside the game world, and the game responds, modelling outcomes and talking back. The city surges or shrinks, thrives or burns, according to the players actions and the biases built in to the simulation. The simulation relies on simplification and momentum. The perspective is isometric in that the player can hover over the city and direct it from a distance, and isometric in that the player adopts a dispersed and distanced identification. These tendencies recall de Certeaus account of the planned concept-city, where clarity and legibility are attained through distance, exclusion and simplification.
In Anarchy Online, players share cities, whether they prefer to play solo, join temporary teams for the length of a mission, or have their characters swear allegiance to one of the many factions quarrelling for
supremacy on Rubi-Ka. The game world is populated. Players act within the game world through avatars and so the identification or perspective invited by the game is localised. These avatars incorporate characterisation (a profession, a name, a personal history) as well as numerical and strategic variables. The city is a stage, a resource and a backdrop that is entered and crossed by occupants. All the avatars are mobile, and all are the cover for a player who is, to some degree or other, playing a role. The high level of variation and multiplicity, and the fact that players are embodied and at street level, mean that the game is suggestive of de Certeaus city-in-practice.

Posted by Jhipolito, resident and moderator, 6.21.03 from www.simtropolis.com, from a thread on realistic city building , Sim City 4 city-concept forum, accessed 09/03). viii For examples of cheats, visit http://bigcheat.com/pc/simcity3000cheats.htm which includes cheats such as these sent in by Buckeroo02 Yo. I have a cool cheat here. Type in "UFO Swarm" in the cheat menu and then go to disasters. Pick UFO and watch as tons of UFOs fly over. It is alot more than by just clicking on UFO. To see a lot of birds, type "the birds". Many birds will pass over your head.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bal, Mieke (1997) Narratology; Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, Second Edition Toronto, Buffalo, London University of Toronto Press Burn, Andrew and Diane Carr (2003) Signs from a strange planet: role play and social performance in Anarchy Online COSIGN 2003 Conference Proceedings pp 14-21 De Certeau, Michel (1988) The Practice of Everyday Life Berkely and Los Angeles University of California Press Jenkins, Henry (2001) Game Design As Narrative Architecture, online at http://web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/games&narrative.html accessed September 2003. Frasca, Gonzalo (2001a) Simulation 101: Simulation versus Representation. Available online at www.jacaranda.org/frasca/weblog/articles/sim1/simulation101.html accessed September 2003. Frasca, Gonzalo (2001b) The Sims: Grandmothers are cooler than trolls in Game Studies vol 1 issue 1 July 2001 www.gamestudies.org Fuller, Mary and Henry Jenkins (1995) Nintendo and New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue, in Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community ed Steven G.Jones, Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications 1995 pp 57-72 Flynn, Bernadette (2003) Languages of Navigation Within Computer Games, available online at http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Flynn.pdf (accessed September 2003) and presented at the 5th International Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Melbourne 2003. Friedman Ted (1999) Semiotics of SimCity First Monday issue 4 vol 4 www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_4/friedman/ accessed September 2003 T. Friedman, 1998. "Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation, Subjectivity, and Space," In: Greg Smith (editor). Discovering Discs: Transforming Space and Place on CD-ROM. New York: New York University Press. Also online at www.game-research.com accessed September 2003 Holopainen Jussi and Stephen Myers (2000) Neuropsychology and Game Design, paper at Consciousness Reframed III 2000, online at http://www.stephan.com/NeuroBio.html accessed September 2003. Mortensen Torill (2002) Playing with Players; Potential Methodologies for MUDS Games Studies vol 2 issue 1 July 2002 www.gamestudies.org Swartout, William and Richard Lindheim (2002) Does Simulation Need a Reality Check? SimScience Workshop, Scientific Exploration of Simulation Phenomena, at the Simulation and Wargaming Centre, National Defense University, 6-9 June 2002 online at http://www.amso.army.mil/harmon/papers/swartoutpaper.html Accessed September 2003. Starr Paul (1994) Seductions of Sim; Policy as a Simulation Game The American Prospect vol 5 issue 17 March Frasca Gonzalo (2001) Simulation 101: Simulation versus Representation online at www.jacaranda.org accessed September 2003 FAN SITES Anarchy Online www.anarchy-online.com and fan forums: http//forums.anarchy-online.com

Bigcheat (http://bigcheat.com) Simtropolis; Many Cities, One Community (fan site) www.simtropolis.com Accessed September 2003 (other fan sites, mainly for the recently released Sim City4000, are listed at http://simcity.ea.com/community/fansites/fansites.php) LUDOGRAPHY Anarchy Online (2001) dev Funcom, publisher Funcom www.anarchyonline.com Sim City 3000 (2000) dev Software MacKiev, publisher Maxis