While the later games did well enough, neither Maxis nor its imitators were quite able to bring about the kind of huge-scale genre-defining success of SimCity until Maxis brought the social element into the equation with its blockbuster success The Sims. Other games explored different domains in the same style: Roller Coaster Tycoon had the player develop an amusement park, balancing thrills with the chance to kill patrons in spectacular roller coaster derailments Afterlife had the player build a heaven and hell suited to the needs of the incoming departed. Maxis also produced a number of other concepts within the franchise: SimEarth placed the player in charge of the development of an entire planet SimLife narrowed the focus, with the player guiding the specific evolution of a species SimAnt placed the player in charge of an ant colony. SimCity 2000, SimCity 3000, SimCity 4, and Streets of SimCity all expanded on the original. SimCity was enormously popular, spawning a number of clones and sequels. Among the Mayoral duties were zoning areas for commercial, residential or industrial use, building public utilities, and rebuilding after Godzilla attacks. In this game, the player took the role of mayor, and was in charge of building a city. "Digital pet" keychain devices, such as Tamagotchi, descended from this line.īut the game which really brought the modern Simulation Game into its own was Maxis's SimCity. More complicated simulations started appearing in the early 1980s, such as the Commodore 64 game Little Computer People, where the player was responsible for the care and feeding of a virtual person. Variations appeared for years on various platforms, even surviving into the 1990s as their requirements were so low that ports could even run on programmable calculators. Probably the first game in this tradition is Lemonade Stand, written by Bob Jamison sometime between 19: The player, based on the daily weather report, decided what supplies to buy and how much to charge customers at their virtual lemonade stand. The player generally has no direct control over individual agents inside the game world - thus their role, depending on the scope of the game, tends to be labelled something ranging from "business owner" or "mayor" to "president" or even "god". Traditionally, a simulation game places the player in a managerial role over some set of resources, with which they are charged to build or do something - the game might set some criteria for a "win" state, but this is far from compulsory the player can generally build/do whatever they want and measure their own success by whatever metrics seem best to them (so long as he doesn't trigger a "lose" state through long-term mismanagement, whether accidental or deliberate).
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