I spent most of my time in January playing computer games, specifically Simcity, spending anywhere between 10 to 12 hours on the computer each day. One might wonder what I was doing and what was the real cause of this escapism, but lets keep the philosophical issues aside and look at what I managed to build.
Simcity is a computer game that simulates city building. Its a single player game where one starts with an empty piece of land and slowly builds a city (or a town / village) over it. A range of factors, such as unemployment, pollution, transportation, utilities, environmental and trade policies, taxes, industries, health and education, govern how the city will develop – and I must say it is pretty close to real situations. Infact, this game has been used by planners and architects in a number of research projects.
Here are some screenshots from a small rural village housing a population of 3,000 people.
Town center, Mayor’s house, medical center, a mill and a little lake with stream flowing across the village. I like cities that have water bodies. There’s a school and a small library nearby.
Water pumping station, few houses and shops. The road tunnel under the bridge connects to the neighboring city.
Railway station and a blue train on an elevated terrain.
Rural rail with farms on one side and residences on the other.
I like laying out rail tracks, routing them through the village and working on their traction.
Some large farms next to agricultural industries. The tunnel passes under the railway line and takes you to the other side of the village.
More farms, trains and trees.
Assorted farms: Sunflower, apple orchid, wheat, corn etc.
So that was my calm little village, with no air or water pollution, almost zero crime and healthy, educated people. The train connects this village to the city (40 minutes away) and those with higher education go there to work. About 600 people from this village work in the city, while 300 people from the city work in the industries here. Primary revenue sources are industrial and residential taxes, and export of water to the neighboring city.
That concludes visit to my farming village. In the next post, I’ll take you on a tour of an industrial town.
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How is the job search doing?
I used to be addicted to Simcity when I first came here and didn’t work. I spent hours building the perfect place, with all the cool landmarks.
↵Awesome, you know how it goes then!! The game was my companion when I was jobless too.
↵I got hooked on the earlier versions but then found the need to screw things up only to fix them again. Wonder what the psychology of that is. Perhaps SimCity is really a great personality test.
↵OMG
I do something similar since I like watching the animation of buildings being built and buildings being taken down.
↵Export of water!!!!!??
↵I hope your village becomes a city soooon!
Interesting game..will try my hand too! Where r you playing this? I mean, guess this is not a facebook game!
Yeah, Sim City Rush Hour 4 and its powerful regional play lets you export/import utilities like water, power and garbage. Comes handy!
This area was built deliberately as a rural landscape, so the growth was kept controlled. I do have a neighboring large city.
↵I used to be addicted to a game called ‘Caesar’. have resisted the urge to buy Simcity.
↵If you were addicted, don’t buy Simcity…
I used to play another game called Pharaoh and Cleopatra – similar city building game.
↵So you were busy constructing Utopia!?
↵Yeah, sortof. I was spending my unemployment days.
↵Can I be the resident of your town, lol? BTW this is such a old game, lol, I am surprise that it is still around. Excellent work Priyank, and hope you did experience seizures, as it is not that good to sit front of the computer that long. Hope all is well beside building environmental cities. Anna
↵Hi Anna, yeah its a game from the early 90′s, and now they have the latest version ofcourse.
But the essence remains the same.
↵So this is what made your fingers flexible?
↵:I’m trying to find if there is something hidden/implied in your comment… lol
↵I can see you have been busy!
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hehehe, its addictive!
↵Aha! Lol. While I haven’t played the Simcity in particular, I have, however, been a big fan of The Sims. I’ve upgraded my computers just so I can install the latest versions. I remember the good old times when I’d spent the whole night just playing with my character and building his family. Haha.
↵Laine, good to know that you are weird (normal?) too!
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