Sims, Or Something Like It.

Welcome back to the beginning of a new week and I'm here to talk to you all about sims.  No, I am not referring to The Sims, but to certain aspects and qualities of simulators and hoo-boy are there a lot of them (on Steam); I specifically refer to Steam as it's my gateway to AAA and indie PC gaming although I know (I'm sure there are; there have to be) other outlets for video gaming out there.  Right?

Last week when I was listening to The Patch (#75 I think), Gus Sorola brought up indie game developer Lucas Pope (Papers, Please) and how he frequently gets requests to make other "Gate-Sims" like Papers, Please but in different departments and how he has absolutely no desire to do another gate-simulator.  This led the cast to come up with other ridiculous gate-sims with Mr. Sorola finalizing that a Drive Through Sim would be great because of how complicated and specific an order could get, which then lead to Ms. Turney stating that there are people who are paid (horribly) for actually taking orders at a drive through.  Would they feel that the game trivializes the kinds of shit they have to put up with from customers?

Which brings me to video game simulators, or at least some games that are sims and one other in particular.

Now, I have a couple of sim-type-style games at my disposal: Papers, Please; The Sims 2 & 3; Civ. 5; Ace Combat X, Joint Assault, Assault Horizon Legacy and Assault Horizon Enhanced Edition; Day-Z; Reus; Goat Simulator. . . you get the idea.  Then there are a slough of games with "Simulator" in the title that I do not own nor have I played: Farming Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator, Ship Simulator Extremes, Digital Combat Simulator World (DCS World), Construction Truck Simulator, Surgeon Simulator. . . more ideas you are getting behind, yes?

Which then brings me to This War of Mine.  It's a game that came out last month (November 14th) that I first thought that I would really like to play.  To put this game into context, in This War of Mine, you play as normal everyday citizens in a war torn fictional country.  You are not playing as a super soldier armed with 184 lbs of guns, equipment and additional rounds of ammunition, but as people attempting to survive everything else around them.

Then I thought of the real life This War of Mine.  In Palestine. In Sarajevo.  In Baghdad.  In every city, town and country that has had some form of major military conflict take place within its borders.  People live their lives surrounded by what this game is apparently trying to represent.

A part of me thinks that I would and should feel guilty about playing a game about people who are living a life where they are afraid to go out at anytime, for any reason, because they could be attacked by either military force or by fellow citizens.  The simplist things in life become a hardship such as finding sufficient food to feed your family or find clean drinking water.  But the real question is why did 11 bit studios create this game?  Was it to glamorize the suffering of people who regularly live in such war-torn communities?  Somehow I doubt that those were their intentions.  

In an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, senior writer for 11 bit studios Pawel Miechowski said that This War of Mine "is not a simulator of atrocities, it’s a take on how people struggle and what are their emotional challenges" and that "We want to raise awareness about how civilians suffer when war is breaking out. We want to show the other side."  If this game had come from, say, Sledgehammer Games (Call of Duty) or EA Digital Illusions (Battlefield), I might question their motives.

When I started this short article (seven paragraphs ago), I was on the fence about buying/playing this game.  Now, I feel that I need to not only play this game, but to experience.  This War of Mine was obviously created with a lot of thought and care to convey the right imagery, tone and sense of weight as opposed to another war simulator.  It's quite a powerful trailer too that 11 bit studios released a while back.

It's settled then.  I talked myself back into it.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
And When Jesus Comes He'll March On With The Winning Side

Sim City IV and emerging storylines

The above video is an hour-long lecture by Jonathan Blow.  I think he's the guy that wrote Braid.  Yup, the guy who wrote Braid.  Braid is an award winning indie game, a puzzle platformer.  Braid effectively weaves, or "braids" if you will, great graphics/sound, game play and story.  Recommended for everybody.  If you have the time, go ahead and listen to that lecture.  Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't.    I enjoyed it.  I like seeing all this college-level theory stuff as applied to games.

In the lecture, he talks about the concept of an emerging storyline in games.  The idea is that there isn't a written storyline, or what storyline there is is minimal, and the story comes out through play of the game.  I think this is a pretty cool idea.  And I think I 'get it.' I think that my previous experience playing MineCraft had an emerging storyline.  Today I want to talk about Sim City IV, a game I've been playing lately, and another example of an emerging storyline.


I should let you know that Sim City is a city simulator.  If that wasn't yet clear from the title.  In Sim City, you play the role of an all-powerful 'mayor,' with complete control over the cities budget, zoning choices, and even the ability to cause natural disasters.  (But let's leave that last one alone for now.)  The gist of the game is: If you build it, they will come.  People will populate your city as long as you provide the basic needs of modern industrial society:  residential, commercial, industrial zones and infrastructure such as roads, power and running water. After setting up shop in your city, the residents will immediately begin approving or disapproving of your job as mayor, and this is the driving force behind my own emerging storyline.

I play this game with the overarching goal of winning approval of the residents.  I have sub-goals of increasing population, of using clean energy and public transportation.  I've got the first goal down, but the following goals are proving to be a lot trickier.  Twenty four hours and five cities deep, My story has gone from the need for approval, to a near-obsessive desire to build an ideal city according to my own design.

I realized that emergent storylines make games like Sim City IV more like a toy than a game, as my esteemed colleague Conklederp put it in her post about the Sims series of games.  Playing Sim City is not unlike playing with Legos or blocks, with the specific theme of city building and a near infinite number of resources.  Watch the video below for an example of an emergent storyline using more traditional toys:

I don't imagine that the Gene Simmons doll featured in the above video was originally intended to be used to crush matchbox cars. But through the emerging storyline, Al was able to find a new role for Gene to play.  

The key difference between toys and video games is that, with video games, there is a computer program providing feedback.  This is a role that used to be occupied by the imagination of the individual player, or the cooperating imaginations of a group of players.  I'm not quite sure how I feel about this.  What is it about computer controlled feedback that is so alluring?

Perhaps it is easier and more relaxing to allow a computer to run the simulator, rather than using my imagination to fill in all the gaps?  I certainly know I'm tired most days after work, and if I were to engage in imaginative play as Al did above, all my toys might just talk about how tired they are.  

There is also, for me, a challenge in figuring out the dynamics of the computer feedback.  Similar to figuring out an opponent in a multi-player game, I am trying to learn how to balance the programmed needs of my Sim-citizens, with my own, changing concept of my perfect city.  And I must admit, while I sometimes want to invite Gene Simmons to come visit my failures, I don't have the heart to destroy them.  Fortunately for me, the cities remain in stasis when I'm not playing them.  It would certainly add another dimension of challenge if they did not.

Sim City IV was released in 2003, and there has been a long drought of Sim City titles since.  However, there are plans to release another in the series, simply titled Sim City. This game is slated for March of this year, 2013.  There is talk of online, co-operative play and for these features, I am excited.  

I would love a chance to build neighboring cities with a friend, and perhaps work together to help one another with our particular mayoral shortcomings.  Sim City IV has the ability to cooperate with neighboring towns, but it is only a one player game, so I am only able to cooperate with myself.  I'm pretty good at playing with myself... ... ... but the possibilities of emerging storylines increase greatly when more than one mind is at play.

Sim City is a game which is a great abstraction.  The player views the action from above, removed from the concerns of the individuals in the town, which can number in the thousands.  This makes it a good candidate to talk about emerging storylines and also a bad one, because the abstraction may interfere with the players ability to relate.  

However, it is a game that has its hooks in me now.  I will continue to meditate on the subject of emergent gameplay, and I will try to see if I can find it in other games as I play them.