Global Warming in Sim City Societies

Oh I am looking forward to Sim City Societies! I miss Sim City, and I never got round to SC4000 because Moose told me it was "boring". Maybe lots of folks thought that, because Societies seems to have plenty of new bits and bobs being added .. including global warming, added in collaboration with BP. Which I think is just plain excellent.

The collaboration brings together world-class game building skills and industry expertise on energy, electricity production and greenhouse gas emissions to highlight the impact of electricity generation on the emissions of carbon dioxide that are linked to climate change.

The low-carbon electricity choices and monitoring of SimCity's carbon emissions provide an entertaining, fully-integrated and accurate look at some of the causes and some of the major solutions available to combat rising levels of carbon and to help address the threat of global warming.

SimCity Societies will be available at retailers across North America and Europe November 15.

Seems Will Wright's love of education and actual-science themes is still pervasive in the Sim City part of the office. Very, very pleasing. November 15. Not far off! My city will crush all of yours! In fact, there's a suggestion for SC Societies 2: base it on the excellent Hungry Cities series, and make it multiplayer, so cities can face off against each other by eating each other.

Good books, those, Foe put me on to them.

Comments

[Melissa Della]

No way, Alice. My city will completely own yours. ;)

[Alice]

O RLY?

[Alex Taldren]

Wright seems to enjoy making games based on things that don't really exist. For example, the theory of evolution with Spore and now global warming with Societies! What's next?

LOL. I can't wait for these games. ;)

[Alice]

Alex.. evolution is proven. Global warming is proven. Evidence against either is merely faith-based.

[Alex Taldren]

I know... that was my obviously poor attempt at being funny. I need to work on my delivery! If only you could have heard me say it.

[nectarine]

I thought Wright had nothing to do with this version?
Development is no longer with Maxis/EA, it was outsourced to Tilted Mill.
Still, the signs seem promising. I'm looking forward to this.

[Alice]

Heheh okay Alex, I was like.. uhoh .. :)

And yeah, nectarine, pretty sure it's gone out of the door, but it's nice to see the ethos go with it.

[Tom P]

Does anyone else think that there's potentially a bit of a problem when companies with vested interests in certain areas (i.e. BP with global warming) are involved in the production of games that are ostensibly educational? Clearly BP are going out of their way at the moment to convince everyone that they're a really great company and they care and everything but I'm not sure I want that impinging on my relaxation time. In game advertising is one thing but when a corporation is involved in designing the fabric of the games reality I feel a little uneasy.

[fartron]

Societies is a complete inversion of the Sim City formula; no longer do you labor to build your city, and watch the results of your nurturing on the city life; now you tweak the nature of your society and watch as this impacts the structure around it.

EA claims to have asked itself, "what is the difference between Paris and Mecca?" and found the answer to be in the very essence of the people. Since the founding of the series, Sim City has served as a tool and game for playing with the ways in which environment effects growth. Now it is being twisted to show how the nature of people, say their "obedience" quotient, effects their growth.

It's not hard to see how a massive oil conglomerate, desperate to shift blame and attention away from its structural failings, would sign on for a project that points the finger at human nature.

[Alice]

WHAT! NO BUILDING?

Well sod that, then.

[Mr Tom]

Am I the only person to actually enjoy building complete shit-holes? High crime rates, poor infrastructure and failing public transport. It was like visiting London without ever leaving my own house.

[Cliffski]

I'm putting Carbon Emissions into the next version of Democracy (http://www.democracygame.com) together with all kinds of related issues, airline fuel taxes, car usage etc. And amazingly I'm doing it without any *help* from an oil company.