Building SimCity traces the full cultural and technical history of computer simulation through the lens of Will Wright's landmark urban planning game — an investigation that reaches from the earliest programmable computers to Maxis's fraught corporate entanglements and ultimate sale to Electronic Arts.
About This Book
SimCity was never just a game. As Chaim Gingold argues, Will Wright built it to think with — to model urban systems, test ideas about complexity, and appropriate the representational techniques of serious computer simulation into a consumer product. Building SimCity uses that premise to construct a sprawling history of simulation culture: how computers came to model the world, how those methods migrated into popular software, and what happened when a small company called Maxis tried to commercialise Wright's vision. For designers, urbanists, and anyone interested in the intellectual history of technology, this is a rare book that treats a video game as a primary historical document.
Key Features
- 486 pages of historical narrative, diagrams, archival photographs, and character design documentation
- Author: Chaim Gingold
- Case studies include Maxis's relations with venture capitalists, Nintendo, and the Santa Fe Institute; the shelving of The Sims; and Nintendo's manga-style Dr. Wright character
- Published by MIT Press
What You'll Discover
- How Will Wright conceived SimCity as a tool for learning about cities through systems thinking, drawing directly from traditions of computer modelling
- The full corporate history of Maxis — its investors, its partnerships, its failures, and the circumstances of its acquisition by Electronic Arts
- The visual lineage of simulation: including Charles Eames's Kodachrome photographs of schoolchildren constructing model cities and Nintendo's original Dr. Wright character design
- How SimCity sits within a much longer history of representational techniques in computer simulation, connecting postwar computing culture to commercial game design
About the Author
Chaim Gingold is the author of Building SimCity, published by MIT Press. His research centres on the history of computer simulation, games, and software culture, with SimCity serving as the organising case study for a much broader investigation into technology history.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 486
- Dimensions: 20 cm x 22 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780262547482
- Publisher: MIT Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and urban designers curious about the intellectual history of city modelling, design educators, historians of technology and software culture, and serious players who want to understand what SimCity was actually thinking.