Startling revelation about myself while playing Sim City 4.

[Beware the Beast Man]

I'M A CONSERVATIVE!!! :cry:

- I favor large corporations over smaller businesses.
- I give tax breaks to my wealthiest citizens.
- My environmental record is horrid.
- I've run the city treasury into the red.

Mind you, I funnel big money into education and health care, and I have passed clean air acts, smoke detector ordinances, public reading campaigns, and after-school sports programs, but I feel so dirty...

[Mutley]

1. I love Sim City!

I can't find the CD to my Sim City3000 or whatever it is. :cry: The last city I built was huge, and I had almost $2mil in the treasury, then one of my nuclear power plants blew up and almost everyone moved out. :cry: I've been meaning to get Sim City 4. How is it?

[Beware the Beast Man]

3. It's great.

Bisaically, you don't have preset neighbors like you did in the old SC games, you have to create a region with several communities. You can also "play God" and terraform your region before you establish a city. The Deluxe Edition comes with the Rush Hour expansion pack, which lets you do driving missions throughout your city. It's kind of harsh on resources, so if you have an older computer, it may not run well. Here's a link:

http://simcity.ea.com/

[Deja Q]

2. The game is so incredibly biased toward one paradigm...

You can use oil for 20,000 years and never run out.

Just try to make an eco-friendly city and it will not work.

Make it an inclusive, participatory society and it won't work.

Don't bother about birth control.

Oddly, if you use the cheat codes and give yourself tons of money, you'll survive 30,000+ years.

Of course, the game is based on expansion and not a stable balance. You HAVE to expand in order to keep the $ flowing. It is inevitable that things will crash.

Maybe the game's ultimate point is that our paradigm is wrong.

[Reverend_Smitty]

4. wow that's a pretty deep assessment

I never really thought about that.

[Beware the Beast Man]

5. That's the irony of the game.

Same with the Sims- the more wealth your sims accrue, the more trouble they have balancing their lives.

[Fenris]

6. And you can wall them up in their own homes and watch them die

I think that's symbolic of the hazard of the American dream. Or else I just like watching them die. Either way.

[Beware the Beast Man]

7. I love when the kids "accidentally" light toy rockets inside the house.

or the swimming pool ladders that mysteriously vanish... :evilgrin:

[Fenris]

9. Oh yeah, the ladder trick.

One of my earliest experience with Sim Death was having one catch fire while cooking (with no cooking skills, of course). I wasn't sure what to do, so I just let him burn to death. Then I used his urn to decorate the house with. :D

[ghostsofgiants]

11. Wait...so you can basically act as evil overlord in this game?

[Deja Q]

8. Yeah, nuking the little fritters has its enjoyment too.

:evilgrin:

[ghostsofgiants]

10. Mo' money, mo' problems