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Trigger Happy
66
Heaven in here
Oh yes, the computer can make us divine. Should you
want to build a city from scratch, construct a
substructure of water pipes, sewers, power lines and
underground trains, populate it with citizens, determine
tax levels, build museums, parks, houses and office
blocks, and then destroy the whole imaginary
metropolis by calling an earthquake on their heads—
sure, you can do that. It’s called SimCity. Or perhaps
you want to operate on a larger scale: create a neolithic
tribe and over the course of thousands of years send
them out to colonize the land, discover ironwork,
sailing and electricity. Play Civilization. Compete
against other gods in a polytheistic mythology?
Populous. There are similar “God games” for the fields
of global industry, railroad building and even
amusement parks.
There are two basic attractions of games like
SimCity. The first is that the virtual city itself, with its
apparently autonomous population, functions as a pet.
If neglected, it will pine and eventually die; if nurtured,
it will flourish. A player might form some sort of
emotional attachment to the gameworld. This is the
principle abstracted and miniaturized with such
extraordinary success by the Japanese company