← New Books Network
New Books Network
Chaim Gingold, "Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine" (MIT Press, 2024)
00:20:31
Loading summary
Transcript25 lines
- [00:01]
Indeed Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to move your business forward, but first you need to find the right team. Start your search with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It can help you reach qualified candidates fast, ensuring your listing is the first one they see. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs are 90% more likely to report a hire than non sponsored Jobs. See the results for yourself. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply.
- [00:31]
Uncrustables Sponsor
Good morning Crust. It's a great day to be a bread brother. Mornings are not my jam or jelly. Oh come on, stop loafing around. I just woke up feeling hollow inside. Just grab one of the new Morning Uncrustable sandwiches like Bright eyed berry or up and apple filled with 12 grams of protein and tons of deliciousness crust.
- [00:52]
Indeed Sponsor
What are you eating?
- [00:54]
Uncrustables Sponsor
It's is just granola, not even yogurt.
- [00:57]
Rudolf Inderst
No crust, no fuss.
- [00:59]
Chaim Gingold
Uncrust your mornings.
- [01:00]
Joe from Vanta
Hi, this is Joe from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly and earning customer trust has never mattered more. Vanta helps companies get compliant fast and stay secure with the most advanced AI, automation and continuous monitoring out there. So whether you're a startup going for your first SoC2 or ISO 27001 or a growing enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta makes it quick, easy and scalable. And I'm not just saying that because I work here. Get started@vanta.com welcome to the new Books.
- [01:31]
Chaim Gingold
Network.
- [01:34]
Rudolf Inderst
Hi everyone and welcome back to New Books in Game Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. On this channel we explore how scholarship that unpacks what games mean, how they are designed, how they are played, and how they resonate far beyond the screen. I'm your host, Rudolf Industrial Game Studies at the University of Applied Sciences, Neue Ulm in Germany. Before we get started, if you enjoy the show, please consider leaving us a five star review on Apple Podcasts or whichever platform you prefer. It really helps others discover us. And of course, please feel free to share this episode with your community or gaming group of choice. And now let's dive into today's conversation. I'm delighted to welcome Chaim Gingold, who's here today to talk about his book Building Sim how to Put the World in a Machine, and this gem is published by MIT Press. Welcome to the show.
- [02:36]
Chaim Gingold
Hi, thanks for having me, Rudolph.
- [02:39]
Rudolf Inderst
So to start us off, could you briefly introduce yourself and tell our readers or listeners what brought us to this project? What inspired you to write a book that chronicles the history of SimCity and situates it with within the broader origins of computer simulation.
- [02:57]
Chaim Gingold
Yeah, so that's a. Yeah. Why would somebody spend over 10 years working on a book that's like a really. I don't really know how I got into that.
- [03:05]
Rudolf Inderst
10 years?
- [03:06]
Chaim Gingold
More than 10. Yeah, yeah. I think. Yeah, yeah. What should you not do so you don't end up doing this yourself? That's the question. So I think that one starting point might be like. So when I was in my early, early 20s, I was doing a master's program at Georgia Tech with Janet Murray. And there was a required internship between the tiers of the program. And I ended up getting an internship with Will Wright. It was very sort of lucky, like all the stars aligned. At that time he was working on this new project called Spore. He had three developers, it was a secret project. And I spent the summer there, came out, went, you know, went out to California, worked at ea. And as part of that I was doing prototyping as Will. Will Wright has this big practice of prototyping when he does his next projects because they're very experimental how he works. And he started showing me. He got, at one point he went to his closet and he got out this old Macintosh from the, from the mid-90s. And on there was. Was like Dusty. You know, we dusted it off, plugged it in and on there was all these old Maxis games from the 90s and also all the source code, all these games like Sim Ant and SimCity, plus all of these prototypes for projects like the Sims that were like just the motives or just some other system and all these prototypes or other projects that didn't ever saw the light of day. Like there was a people simulator where people. It was like a simulating the evolution of culture. It was just like this totally creative weird stuff and a lot of it didn't see the light of day. And I think that it was very exciting for me to see that. And I think. And I just started wondering like what happened to all these weird prototypes. And I know that Will, I think was trying to teach me, like this is how we prototype to get to. Here's the junk that leads to the Sims, all this random stuff. Here's the genetic algorithm building generator for SimCity, these weird experiments. And then he was trying to show me the process wise. This is what we're trying to do actually. I remember he showed me the code for SimEarth that rendered the 3D planet. He was this giant block of assembly code with no branching statement. So it's very performant. And he was very proud of that still. He was like, I wrote a program to generate this program, to generate this program. So I think that was probably the beginning, probably one important source. All those questions that arose in my head that sort of held onto and came back to years later, I think. And I'll say one other motivation was having worked on Spore like a big experimental project for many years and sort of seeing the, like the drama in a sense of it, the drama of production. And then it was like afterwards I was talking to Bart Simon at Concordia and he turned me onto Latour, Bruno Latour's work. I think he was like sort of the Aramis book and he was like, I think trying to give me like, he was like, give me like another perspective for thinking about that experience from. So in some sense I think I was also sort of processing my own experience.
- [06:06]
Rudolf Inderst
Now your book makes a compelling case that SimCity is not only a seminal game, but also a microcosm of the histories and cultures of computer simulation. And you also show how Will Wright drew from urban planning, systems thinking and traditions of computational modeling. Maybe you could talk about why SimCity sits at this crossroads and what it reveals about how we've historically used computers to model our very world.
- [06:35]
Chaim Gingold
Yeah, I think of SimCity and what will Wright was doing here. So what's one of the things that's characteristic of Will's design approach is that he's like a bricalure, you know, he's like mixing a lot of different materials very creatively to recombine them. And so you see that throughout his career he's really good at making use of materials at hand to get what he wants done. So with SimCity he really goes deep on the subjects he's interested in. So in there he really was drawing upon Sutter automata systems dynamics at the time, cutting edge graphical user interfaces and he was putting these things together. He found a really creative way to combine for instance a sub automata simulation, which is a bottom up spatial simulation like Conway's Game of Life being the classic example, with this Jay Forster system dynamics model which is like a spreadsheet. And he found a very creative way to couple those together. And even looking at the Source code to SimCity you can see this very ingenious coupling. That's part of what gives SimCity its flavor. And that's just a few examples there. So I think that my argument is that that's part of what made SimCity appealing to many audiences was how Will took these different approaches and combined them. So you get these very serious simulation practices combined with these very, you could say, popular ones like video games. And it makes. It makes these esoteric simulation practices legible to a broad audience. And by doing that, he's also. And I guess the argument then is that he's sort of letting us into these different histories of simulation. He's letting anyone play with solar automata, system dynamics, in a sense, or a version of them, which is what you look at early reviews of SimCity. For instance, Stephen Levy, the very famous technology journalist, when he's reviewing SimCity for MapWorld, he's writing about it. He's very excited about how SimCity lets him get in touch with Southern Automata. And the mysteries are sort of. And it's. For him, at the time, flocking simulations were a new thing. Craig Randall's flocking work and Stephen Levy's using it to ask these philosophical questions about computing in simulation. Are boids a representation of flocking or are they actually flocking? There's like an ontological question for him that he's wrestling with. So SimCity was like a conversation piece for that sort of thing.
- [08:55]
Rudolf Inderst
Now, when I read your book, I found that one of the Strengths of building SimCity is how wide its historical arc really is, because you take readers really from the earliest programmable computers to paper model cities in classrooms, to Maxi's experience, to the Santa Fe Faye Institute. So I wonder, what did you discover when tracing all these diverse threats and showing how they helped shape the very game's design and also its legacy?
- [09:25]
Chaim Gingold
Yeah, I think for me, the most surprising, I mean, like, I went really, you know, part of why it took so long is I went really deep. I just kept. Every time, everywhere I left, I kept finding more. And a lot of time was spent editing the manuscript down to something that was hopefully coherent narrative. I think the most surprising thing for me was understanding SimCity's reception. So I spoke earlier about the design influences, but I think just as important as understanding why at that moment, culturally, the world was very receptive to SimCity. So, for instance, SimCity is released and then like a month or two later, Nintendo, at the behest of Shigeru Miyamoto, is reaching out. Worldwide's co founder is in a meeting with the CEO of Nintendo of America to sign a deal to license SimCity. So they're very interested right away. And almost immediately the Santa Fe Institute is very interested and develops. These really brings Willwright in, into the fold, into their workshops. And the venture capitalists who get interested in Maxis are all similarly, they're coming from a place of all of a sudden software is a new industry, right? And they want to make us this. Investors want to make a softer play. And the particular investor who seeks out Maxis has a PhD in economics from Cambridge and he is, has had in the 1970s, an experience working with Jay Forrester's group at MIT. So he already is predisposed to sort of thinking, understanding, simulation as a tool for, for thought experimentation and for learning. So he's our. He sees, so he. So like everyone, sort of because of how Maxis simcity will write, broad influences in, at that particular cultural moment. All these different communities see in SimCity in a sense what they want or so you see something exciting to them. And that my argument is part of what also drove SimCity's reception. And that was a lot of what I sort of wrestled with in the book was trying to understand these crossroads that Maxis was at because it really profoundly affected the evolution of Will Wright's career, his creative works and also Maxis the company.
- [11:39]
Rudolf Inderst
Right, well your answer now is the perfect bridge to my next question then, because your book also devotes attention to Maxis itself, as you just mentioned, and its founding, its struggles with venture capital, its collaboration with Nintendo, as you just have mentioned, and even its complicated relationship with the Sims. Now, could you highlight one moment or one specific, specific moment in Maxis history that for you encapsulates the tensions between creative experimentation, commercial pressures and the evolving identity of the company itself?
- [12:10]
Chaim Gingold
Yeah, probably the most dramatic moment would be Maxis IPO because they go. Maxis Goes has a public offering in 1995 and it's like at the hottest moment of the technology, what we later know is that.com bubble and it's the same time that Netscape goes public and Netscape I think has a billion, some billion dollar valuation. They have zero revenue. And then the investors really push Jeff Braun to take Maxis public in that moment. And Maxis does not have its legs under it financially, but it's the right moment for it to do it. And so all the different actors have different agendas. The investors need to get their money back. They want to get their money back. And I'll hopefully make some. Jeff Braun, the business, Maxis CEO, Jeff's co founder, sorry, Will. Will's co founder, Jeff Braun, he wants to have a software publishing business and, and Will Wright wants to keep making his creative games. And once they take on the initial investment in 1992, there's less space for Will Wright to experiment and they And Will can't build the support for the Sims. The Sims, he starts building in the early 1990s and it's not released until almost 10 years later. But he sort of, it sort of limps along for so years because you can't get the support with the Maxis to do it. So there's this tension between the commercial pressure, the sort of commercial and the creative, the investment. And then also at the same time, the game industry in the 1990s is changing. I mean, the game industry is one that, I mean, I got really interested in the business history of games writing this book. I just really didn't appreciate it and just realizing just how important it is. The game industry is always. It's like the game industry in a sense, like with the technology changes, the business models change, the whole industry gets just like, it's like almost like a table gets flipped. You know, you shift from, you know, arcade games to home console games to PC games to online to 3D. You know, it's like every time this happens, it's like every mobile phones, the whole thing changes. You know, I came at this originally from a designer perspective. Like the design is what drives, you know, success. And it's like, no, it's distribution, it's technology, it's, you know, it's, everything goes, has to go together. So where was I going with that with Maxis? So the Maxis was really at a time, in a sense they were able to take advantage of the changing, of the changes in the moment rise. But the game industry was changing so fast. 3D, the Internet at the time that they were in the mid-90s and they just really struggled to keep up. But also very capital intensive to keep up too, because all of a sudden you have to go to Node, how to do 3D programming from 2D. And this is before the graphics cards and everything. It's like, you know, it's hard.
- [14:56]
Rudolf Inderst
Now, before we continue, a quick note to our listeners. If you're involved in running an academic program in game studies or game design, game development, this podcast might be the perfect place to share your vision. Our listeners include engaged scholars, educators, students and professionals across the field. Consider placing a short promotional segment to connect with with this thoughtful international audience passionate about games and research. And now back to the show. Another element I found fascinating in the or is the, is a visual richness. And oh my God, when I, when I say richness, this is richness. This book is really, it's. I have it next to my, in my, it's right in my Bedroom. And every Evening I had 20 to 30 pages the last month or since I got it. And it's such a great book. It looks so great. You know, it just. You open up and it's like on every page there's something new to be found. It's really fascinating. So you got diagrams explaining how SimCity actually works to Charles and Ray's IMI's, Kodachrome, photographs of children building miniature cities, all the way to Nintendo's manga style. Dr. Right. So I wonder, was there a particular visual artifact or design element that surprised you or reshaped how you understood the game's development?
- [16:22]
Chaim Gingold
Well, first. First, thanks for your. I really brings me a lot of joy to hear your appreciation of the visual element because it was very important to me to include all this visual matter throughout the book because I just thought that it was so important for understanding the appeal of these different systems, you know, and so. And I just. That's part of what drew me into it is the visual. So I wanted to sort of Hasselm log and also. Oh, my God, it was so much work to get all that stuff licensed and all that stuff with mit. It was brutal. But I thought it was very validating to hear this. Was there any particular thing that helped me to see Sim understand SimCity? I mean, the diagrams that I made of SimCity's operation were invaluable for me as I tried to understand SimCity's operation. What they began as my own sort of working notes of sort of trying to understand what was happening. And over time, they kept evolving, I kept evolving and iterating them, and then they became this hopefully concise description of the architecture of SimCity. But the most surprising thing was probably was those photographs you mentioned that the Eames Office took of Dorian Gary Nelson's work. And that was sort of, you know, those photographs are not in the public anywhere. And I found them, you know, I'm in caught. I've been touched with Dorian Nelson, and I went to her archive at UCLA and I excavated some of these pictures. I actually emailed the Eames Office. I was like, hey, I want to license these photographs that you took. And they were like, we don't know what you're talking about. So the archivist there went and searched the Library of Congress, which has the Eames Office materials. And she's like, oh, yeah, here's all this stuff at ice. And then the Library of Congress ref. Library emailed me some of these pictures. And my jaw just dropped. Like I knew some of what was in there, but I just could not believe it. And there's thousands and thousands and thousands of these photos and that's a whole story that we can get into some other time. But I went to UCLA and got some of these photos and included as many as I could in the book. And I'm actually starting to work on a new project specifically on those photos and that work. But yeah, it's just. So this is work by. This is the first chapter. This is work by the architect Frank Gehry, who just passed away this last week ago, not even a week ago. This was his only sibling, Dorian Nelson. Dorian Gary Nelson spent her career doing the city simulation work with children. And actually Frank, Gary was also involved with it. And anyhow, the Eames office, there's this incredible collaboration and I was just so, to me, it's just such an important counterpoint to SimCity. She's a collaborator of Max's, she wrote some of the teacher guides, but just sort of. It's like we just take the computer, a computer simulation for granted and there's just, it's like we just live in a digital, such a digital world. And I just thought that this just really, that contrast just really helped highlight the philosophical assumptions behind the commonalities, the differences behind computer and non computer simulation.
- [19:17]
Rudolf Inderst
So we're now at, have arrived finally at the end of this game. But you know, there's always a replay, always a next. Continue. So thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing building SimCity. Thank you very much.
- [19:33]
Chaim Gingold
Thanks. My pleasure.
- [19:35]
Rudolf Inderst
So, dear listeners, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you're an author or editor working in game studies or game design and would like to discuss your latest work, feel free to reach out@rudolf.inderstooglemail.com you can also find me on LinkedIn at bluesky under gamestudies. And one last reminder, if you want to support the show, please head over to gamestudiesmerch.de and check out your game study hoodie. Thanks. And always keep it playful.