Cost of making misstakes in games is low you can play again experiment and learn new behaviors with lower cost.
Cow Clicker + Fart Simulator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker
https://store.steampowered.com/app/719080/Fart_Simulator_201...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/samlemonick/2017/09/29/scientis...
Combined you're just converting methane into CO2 and H2O as if you burnt it? Is it actually the case that this ends up needing less hydrocarbons than other routes for some reason?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron
I think[1] typical plants steam reform natural gas to CO and H2 and use that to reduce iron ore below the melting temperature of iron. Which makes it energy efficient.
[1] I think == don't quote me
More generally, Systems Dynamics folks call these kinds of simulation "management flight simulators". The underlying simulation approach is distinct from agent-base modelling but still useful for constructing mental models.
See: Monopoly
Including SimCity and Cities Skylines. See:
"...through a survey of gameplay features and online discussions, I argue that CBGs present a biased urban imaginary whose underlying rules and assumptions often run contrary to contemporary best practices in urban planning and policy. Working within these constraints however, players wield considerable power to sculpt their own unique urban visions, which come to embody the ideologies of both player and developer."
In particular around automobile-centricity:
"The illusion that additional capacity solves all transit ills is compounded by the fact that no CBG to date has accurately portrayed the resultant demand for parking spaces. In C: S, vehicles may park parallel along streets and in surface parking lots adjacent to buildings. These surface parking lots are unrealistically small, however, with 10+ story buildings often having no more than a half-dozen (and often no) parking spaces. While it isn’t uncommon for dense urban environments to feature subsurface parking garages, it takes a substantial leap of faith to assume that every building in the game is equipped in this way. So what if a CBG dared to adopt a more realistic parking model? Steve Librande, a lead designer on SimCity 2013, is said to have remarked, “so much of the screen would be dedicated to asphalt that it’d be too boring to play”"
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00221341.2015.10...
I mean, it's also not uncommon to have surface parking garages. You can have 15 times the parking in the same land area that way, and that's what people do even in very thinly populated cities. Or suburban malls. It's not a choice between "all of the parking is underground" and "all of the parking is on the ground".
Parking is just taken for granted as plentiful and invisible, which is why SimCity and C:S let you make a city that looks like NYC or Barcelona, but functions under the hood like San Jose.
This is problematic because non-car tranportation modes have enough trouble competing in the real world where these costs _are_ paid. How much harder is it in a fantasy where they aren't?
I'm still baffled this hasn't been re-issued in a modern form or at least copied by someone else or inspiring another game.
Would love to make my trichordates sentient again!
Of course (see above comments about modern project bloat) the art team for a modern version would probably exceed the count of everyone involved in the original, there'd probably be 3-5x as many developers even if the gameplay and physics and such weren't more complicated, and so on. The credits roll would take up more disk space than the original game did.
It is very hard! As it should be?
This reminded me of the book "Business Engineering with Object Technology" by David A Taylor. In one chapter he goes about identifying "objects" in a manufacturing business and goes down to the level of modeling employees and the machines that they'd be using on the production line. I've never found the need to model things that granular, but it's definitely an interesting concept of "reifying" _everything_.
[Keith Schlesinger] criticized the "not well developed" victory conditions, reporting that he got a high score in one game by "sacrific[ing] nearly all of the big and small business firms in the country to achieve the win! What kind of a victory is that?" Schlesinger found that adopting an extreme libertarian ideology including ending Medicare and many other government services resulted in almost hands-off victory although "the entire private insurance industry goes bankrupt in the first three months.