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Rebuilding ‘Sim City’ Video Game To Account For Climate Change

By Stephen Lacey on Mar 8, 2012 at 4:24 pm

I’ve never been much of a video gamer. But the one game I played endlessly growing up was Sim City, in which you become a city planner and simulate constructing your own community from scratch.

This was where I got my first understanding of zoning, taxes, and traffic control. I also learned about the powerful economic impact of natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes, which could rip apart sections of a city.

And with the new version of SimCity, a new generation of gamers will learn another lesson: how development choices influence the environment. According to the vice president of the studio developing the latest iteration of the game, climate change will now be a factor, reports Physorg:

“We are updating SimCity with technology of today and introducing it to a new generation of gamers,” Maxis studio senior vice president Lucy Bradshaw said at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

“It gets under your skin; exposes you to the idea of cause and effect and that choices you make have repercussions,” she said.

Along with rich 3-D graphics, the game will have a new simulation engine that enhances its realism and extends ramifications of urban design decisions past borders to affect neighboring cities.

“In ‘SimCity’ resources are finite, you struggle with decisions people are struggling with today in the real world and your decisions can have a global impact,” Bradshaw said.

“Be a polluter and you are ultimately going to affect your friends’ cities… Will you have the wealthiest, fittest, greenest city ever or the sludgiest, most yikes-worthy SimCity ever?”

Frankly, I’m surprised that it took so long to get this new element into SimCity. But I’m really happy to hear that users will now have a more realistic experience when playing the game. Actions have consequences; and I learned that very early on when designing my first cities.

More and more game designers are adding climate education themes to their games. Recently,  Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project teamed up with PSFK Consultants to encourage designers to consider climate and environmental themes. Here’s a speech and roundtable discussion featuring Gore talking about this new trend:

Gaming For Good from Piers Fawkes on Vimeo.

 

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-simcity-game-rebuilt-age-climate.html

NEWS FLASH

Pat Robertson Endorses Marijuana Legalization | In a surprising statement from the conservative religious leader, evangelical media mogul Pat Robertson endorsed marijuana legalization. “I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol . . . . I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.” Robertson’s views put him in line with the majority of the country, which also believes that using the drug should not be illegal:

NEWS FLASH

Afghanistan Opens First All-Women Internet Cafe | To call the state of women’s rights in Afghanistan deplorable would be a gross understatement. Systematic discrimination and repression remain forces in the society despite codification of some equal rights following the fall of the Taliban. Today, though, a small step was taken to give at least some women access to the internet in the capital, Kabul, where an all-women internet cafe opened. “We wanted women to not be afraid, to create a safe place for women to use the internet,” a 25-year-old activist who helped open the cafe told Reuters. For about $1 an hour, women can work there. But some women’s rights activists objected to separating the sexes: “If we do things separately then we will have to continue this in future,” said one.

By Ali Gharib on Mar 8, 2012 at 4:20 pm

NEWS FLASH

52 Percent Of Marylanders Would Uphold Same-Sex Marriage Law | Fifty-two percent of respondents to a Maryland poll said they would “probably” or “definitely” vote in favor of the state’s recently-enacted same-sex marriage law should it appear on the ballot in November, while 44 percent of the 600 respondents said they would “probably” or “definintely” vote against it. The poll was commissioned by Marylanders for Marriage Equality and conducted by Public Policy Polling. Polls recently released by Gonzales and The Washington Post have reported the split in votes closer to 50-50. Opponents of the law are currently trying to collect the 56,000 signatures needed to put the law on the November ballot. — Fatima Najiy

By Guest Blogger on Mar 8, 2012 at 4:10 pm

Alyssa

Do We Need a Revolution in Male Characters?

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Mar 8, 2012 at 4:07 pm

Harry Potter is the most popular character of the last 15 years, but is he really unique?

Erik Kain flagged this post from Otaku Kun on Brave, Pixar’s upcoming movie that will be its first with a female protagonist. While I don’t agree with his analysis of Disney’s offerings—yes, the company has a strong princess franchise, but Pixar in particular has become acclaimed in part for its sensitive, creative stories about men—I think it’s worth unpacking what lies behind this sentiment: “I’d just like to see a movie from Disney/Pixar for once where the main character is a young boy, who follows his heart and defies his own society and culture, and achieves something more than just mere personal happiness, but actually makes a difference.”

I have nothing against stories where boys get to grow, and be empowered, and slay the dragon, and get the girl. But I don’t exactly think we’re lacking in those kinds of narratives. Across generations and countries, the most popular literary and cinematic phenomenon of the last decade and a half is a nice kid named Harry Potter who achieves both personal happiness and major societal change. Christopher Paolini got to live out that narrative both in real life and on the page when he went from self-publishing homeschooler to best-selling author with his Inheritance series before he was 20. The most kid-friendly superhero in movies and cartoons is Spider-Man.

But I am generally sympathetic to the idea that just as we need more expansive roles for women in pop culture, we need more flexible roles for boys and men that allow for a broader range of emotions. And so I asked Tamora Pierce last year about whether we needed different kinds of boys to act as heroes and role models for male and female readers alike (she is one of the authors I think does best creating fully-realized boys and men). “The majority of boys have male heroes. Even if the characters are animals, they’re male. Girl heroes are by far the minority in children’s literature, which is absolutely infuriating to me, because this was the status quo when I started, and the numbers have not changed that much,” she said, explaining why, though she’s working on her first series with a male main character, she’s more concerned about providing innovative stories about women. “It’s not that I have anything against boys. I just see a need for girl heroes.”

And I wonder if the rise of authors like Pierce, and of a vigorous conversation about roles for women and girls more generally, even if it hasn’t gotten us to character parity or all the depictions we’d like, is something that guys would like a male equivalent of. There’s no question that there are clear archetypes of male characters, from Bad Boys to Nice Guys, and forums for discussion of them ranging from the Good Men Project to lots of good feminist writers. But are there authors or filmmakers who folks think are doing a uniquely good job of building particularly innovative male characters? Clearly there’s some unfulfilled hunger out there for something new. And I’d be curious as to what the men in the audience are feeling most engaged by.

NEWS FLASH

BREAKING: Republicans Kill Wyden Amendment To Keep Keystone XL US-Friendly | An amendment by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to keep the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline American-made and its oil for American markets was defeated 34-64, on strong Republican opposition. The amendment to the unrelated highway bill was designed to expose the hypocrisy of Keystone XL advocates who have argued that the foreign-owned, foreign-oil pipeline was a patriotic American priority. As Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) admitted before the vote, the passage of this amendment would doom the project — because Keystone XL’s owner, TransCanada, intends to build the pipeline with foreign steel and ship its foreign oil for export to foreign markets. Hoeven’s amendment to obligate approval of the project on TransCanada’s terms follows Wyden’s. Democratic senators who voted against the Wyden amendment included those who have opposed the Keystone XL pipeline on grounds of its climate pollution risk, such as Sens. Sanders and Leahy of Vermont, and Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

By Brad Johnson on Mar 8, 2012 at 4:05 pm

NEWS FLASH

Four More Generals Defect From Syrian Army To Join Rebels | Syrian rebels report that four high-ranking officers have defected from the Syrian armed forces and, over the past three days, fled to a camp for Syrian army deserters in southern Turkey. “We have six brigadier generals who are now in Turkey and another, who has stayed to lead some battalions inside Syria,” a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) told Reuters. “We plan to form an advisory council to absorb these and any other high-ranking defections and this group will plan operations for the FSA.” Announcement of the defections comes hours after Syria’s deputy oil minister announced he was abandoning President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in a video posted online today.

By Eli Clifton on Mar 8, 2012 at 3:54 pm

NEWS FLASH

Poll Finds Americans Reject Republican Assault On Unions | A new Bloomberg News national poll finds that Americans believe, by a wide margin, that public sector workers should have the right to collectively bargain. 64 percent of respondents, including a plurality of Republicans, believe public workers should be able to bargain collectively for their wages, while 63 percent believe that states should not be able to break pension agreements they’ve already made. This, of course, comes after a number of Republican governors used budget woes to justify removing collective bargaining rights from public employees.

Health

GOP Plan To Repeal Cost Savings Board Would Add Billions To The Deficit, Increase Medicare Spending

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Mar 8, 2012 at 3:25 pm

President Obama signs the Affordable Care Act into law.

House Republicans, the loudest proponents of deficit reduction, are pursuing a measure that would greatly increase the deficit: repealing the Affordable Care Act’s Independent Payment Advisory Board. The 15-member cost-cutting commission is tasked with making binding recommendations to Congress for lowering health care spending if costs increase beyond a certain point. But House Republicans claim that IPAB will “ration” care to seniors and have advanced legislation to eliminate it.

Today’s score of that bill from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) finds that repealing the board would increase the national deficit by $3.1 billion” and grow health care expenditures:

CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 452 would not have any budgetary impact in 2012 but would increase direct spending by $3.1 billion over the 2013-2022 period. That estimate is extremely uncertain because it is not clear whether the mechanism for spending reductions under the IPAB authority will be triggered under current law over the next 10 years. However, it is possible that such authority would be triggered in one or more of those years; thus, repealing the IPAB provision of the ACA could result in higher spending for the Medicare program than would occur under current law.

So far, the House Ways and Means and the Energy and Commerce Committees have voted to repeal the board and House GOP leadership hopes to vote on it by late March. In a statement after the Ways and Means Committee approved the bill, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) argued repeal would protect seniors from “waiting lists.”

But many of those in Congress who want to get rid of IPAB now have previously supported an IPAB-on-steroids plan. And the panel would not cut payments for seniors’ Medicare benefits, but would rather encourage providers to adopt best practices and offer care more efficiently.

So despite all the fear-mongering about limiting health care for seniors, repealing IPAB would wildly increase the deficit and health spending — the opposite of what the GOP claims.

NEWS FLASH

Collins Amendment Defending Toxic Industrial Boiler Pollution Fails Narrowly | An amendment to the transportation bill by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) to block air toxic rules for industrial boilers failed to pass, despite gaining several Democratic votes in support of the Republican minority. The lobbyist-designed amendment (SA 1660 to S.1813), which would have killed the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Boiler MACT” rules rules for air toxics from incinerators and industrial power plants, failed to reach the required 60-vote threshold on a 52-46 vote. Democrats supporting this attack on public health included Sens. Bob Casey (D-PA), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).

By Brad Johnson on Mar 8, 2012 at 3:11 pm

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