Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine

by Chaim Gingold

A deep dive into the trailblazing simulation game SimCity, situating it in the history of games, simulation, and computing.

Building SimCity explores the history of computer simulation by chronicling one of the most influential simulation games ever SimCity. As author Chaim Gingold explains, Will Wright, the visionary designer behind the urban planning game, created SimCity in part to learn about cities, appropriating ideas from traditions in which computers are used as tools for modeling and thinking about the world as a complex system. As such, SimCity is a microcosm of the histories and cultures of computer simulation that engages with questions, themes, and representational techniques that reach back to the earliest computer simulations.

Gingold uses SimCity to explore a web of interrelated topics in the history of technology, software, and simulation, taking us far and wide—from the dawn of programmable computers to miniature cities made of construction paper and role-play. An unprecedented history of Maxis, the company founded to bring SimCity to market, the book reveals Maxis’s complex relations with venture capitalists, Nintendo, and the Santa Fe Institute, which shaped the evolution of Will Wright’s career; Maxis’s failure to back The Sims to completion; and the company’s sale to Electronic Arts.

A lavishly visual book, Building SimCity boasts a treasure trove of visual matter to help bring its wide-ranging subjects to life, including painstakingly crafted diagrams that explain SimCity’s operation, the Kodachrome photographs taken by Charles Eames of schoolchildren making model cities, and Nintendo’s manga-style “Dr. Wright” character design, just to name a few.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Technology, Gaming, Games, Science, Engineering

486 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 4, 2024

Reviews

[Bob Mackey]

I suspect Building SimCity is going to be very polarizing, as it's the only SimCity book currently in print (or possibly ever), and one not written for a mass market audience. This is a purely academic book from an academic press, and if you're not familiar with the purpose and style of this kind of writing, you may be a little confused. (Source: I spent nine years in academia.) That's not to say Gingold's writing is unclear; despite the density of the subject matter, I was able to easily follow along. But I'm going to guess readers unfamiliar with this type of publication might be confused why this book so often shows its work (one-third of it consists of citations) and spends so many pages justifying its own existence. These qualities are just part of the format, not downsides—but again, they could throw off anyone not used to academic publications.

I've been co-hosting a video game history podcast for nearly 15 years, so I'd be lying if I pretended I didn't want Building SimCity to simply exist as a complete chronicle of Maxis. The sole section on Will Wright and his company was by far my favorite, though I'm happy this book took me out of my comfort zone with its accessible look at the history of simulations leading up to SimCity. There's an incredible amount of research packed in here that will definitely be valuable to future scholarship on the subject, and Gingold should be commended for tying a thorough history of simulations to SimCity in a way that really works.

Note: Chaim was just on my podcast to talk about SimCity, so I feel a little conflicted giving this any kind of score. Though I will say I recommend Building SimCity—as long as you know what you're getting into.

[Rauno Villberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a bit disappointed, due to my own expectations. As a developer (occasionally of games, even) I was awaiting a deep dive into the code and development process of SimCity, and while there is some of that, the bulk of the book is instead a - quite academic - history of simulation hardware and software and such. Which is interesting too! But not as interesting to me, unfortunately.

[Johnathan Lansing · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was not aware this was a purely academic publication and it explains a lot of the confusion/frustration I had while reading the book. I read on Kindle and found myself using the dictionary look up much more frequently than usual for words I had never come across. This has been great for my vocabulary, but it also got in the way of understanding the author’s clearly well researched text.

I enjoyed the deep dive on cellular automata and the history of simulations. I have fond memories of building cellular automata while studying computer science and this book brings a lot of missing context and cultural importance to these curiosities. The history of simulations is equally fascinating, and would likely be good prior reading for studying any number of other game series.

The long and sometimes meandering background sections do feel out of place when reading this as a “video game book” - but they provide crucial context and background for understanding the later chapters that cover the inner workings of SimCity, all the way down to the code which is where the book really shines.

If you are used to reading personal, first-person accounts of game development like Spelunky or The Making of Prince of Persia, this book will be challenging to get through, but for fans of SimCity (and The Sims!) there is a lot of good stuff to absorb.

When someone gets around to writing a more consumer friendly narrative around Maxis, SimCity and Will Wright, this book will be cited heavily. Thanks to the author for getting this out into the world!

[Jay Laird · Rating 3 out of 5]

25% SimCity, 15% cultural context, 10% academic pretension, 40% notes and citations, 100% ADHD

I picked up this book hoping for a technical and creative history of SimCity, but in skimming it at the MIT Press Bookstore, I realized that it was also about the cultural and technical forces that influenced SimCity's creation, and this excited me even more. Despite having worked with Will Wright himself, the author seems to have only leveraged this experience into a stepping stone for credibility in writing an overly-academic, long-winded and disorganized tome that spends very little time on the title subject matter ("Building SimCity") .

I would have still given this book four stars because I learned a lot of interesting trivia from it. I generally love books that teach me about new things that I'd never have considered researching, and the author's explorations of classroom models of city planning and of differential analyzers as simlators were fascinating.... at first. But these chapters dragged on far too long, and while I'm normally not one to skip a page of non-fiction for fear of missing some juicy morsel of knowledge, I found myself flipping ahead MANY pages when I grew impatient with the author getting to the point!

Because I know the Kindle version is not in the author's control, I did not deduct a further star for the poor image quality, but I will say, if you still feel that you need this book in your collection and you're at all interested in how SimCity was made, buy the print version. At least then you'll get better-quality versions of the author's "reverse diagrams" of how SimCity's systems interact!

Ultimately, despite telling me about some interesting topics tangential to SimCity, this book was a big disappointment. The author spends as much time talking about "The Sims" as Will Wright's "real" passion project as he does about SimCity, but there's no exploration of WHY SimCity fell short of the vision of "The Sims", nor how "The Sims" built on SimCity's concepts. This is where I say the author has some severe ADHD (and as someone with severe ADHD, I can say that!): He could have written more about the history of Maxis and EA and the business decisions that led from SimCity to "The Sims", or he could have focused on the ideas and algorithms that bridged the macro-scale game to the micro, but instead he jumps around and ultimately fails to tell either story in a satisfactory manner.

The book smacks of academic pretension throughout -- there are much simpler ways of saying the same things that he takes pages and five-syllable words to say -- but the penultimate chapter is the worst. It is merely a rehashing of the "argument" that the author has been making throughout the book... and why did this need to be an argument for anything? But to make thngs worse, it reads like a chapter-long version of the "five-paragraph essay" that we all cut our teeth on writing in sixth grade. Yes, yes, you said this already. Why not wrap up with something new?

The appendix was the ultimate disappointment, though I will take part of the blame for this in my decision to buy this book. I read the first page and saw that it was about the author's technique for developing "reverse diagrams" to understand SimCity's systems. Seeing that I was only about 60% of the way through the book at this point, I assumed that much of the remainder would be these diagrams, which would be great for understanding SimCity from a systems design perspective. Instead, this part is just the author yet again talking about his methodologies and telliing us what he's already told us. There's nothing new except a bit more trivia about other academics (which I already knew, but which others might find interesting).

Do I hate this book? No. In fact, if given the chance, I would rewrite this book for the author, providing a much slimmer volume with a different title that would deliver on its promise. There's enough research and insight in here that you might find it worth the slog. This author clearly knows a lot of things about a lot of things, and he's clearly eager to share them. If he could just get out of his own way and tell a good story instead of worrying about showing everyone how much thought and research he's put into the work, he'd have a book woth recommending wholeheartedly.

In short, if you're looking for a book about how to write a good simulation or about the culture of Maxis and EA or about the challenges of retro-computing developement, this is NOT the book for you. If you're looking for a book full of interesting facts and concepts that might drive you to do your own research and experimentation and that will give you lots to talk about at cocktail parties with academics, then you might find plenty here to appreciate.

[Noah Tye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did you know that Maxis (creators of SimCity) sold investors on a vision a world where "simulation" was a common use-case for computers, and Maxis was the company at the center of simulation software?

This was the first of many fascinating revelations this book brought me. Reading it, I found myself getting caught up in their grand vision.

The first part of _Building SimCity_ is a deep dive into the game's historical antecedents: from tabletop city simulations and Vannevar Bush's analogue computers, to systems thinking and cellular automata. This part explores many ideas that I have briefly encountered before and wondered "why hasn't anyone taken these wonderful ideas and produced something great with them?" The book answers: "Will Wright did, you just didn't notice." More specifically, _Building SimCity_ argues that SimCity the game is a synthesis and application of many great ideas, which are mostly hidden to the player. This book gives us a look behind the curtain.

The second part of the book spends chapters on the design of SimCity, the history of Maxis, and the experience of playing SimCity. The implementation chapter has no code listings — as a programmer, reading it feels like reading an exceptionally clear design document, explaining the real-time (UI) clock and the simulation clock, the 16-bit representation of map tile state, the main simulation loop, and the map scan algorithm for information propogation across tiles. This chapter is accompanied by exceptionally well-designed diagrams, which I find quite valuable on their own.

To set expectations: this is an academic work. It contains war stories and technical details, but it also goes to great lengths to situate SimCity in its historical context, connecting it to previous ideas, and providing full citations. But though the prose has an academic bent, I find it very engaging and readable.

The only negative thing I can say about this book is that the printed edition has a chemical smell, which I assume is due to the full-color printing and will presumeably fade with time.

[Disclaimer: I haven't finished this book yet, I've read the first few chapters about the history of simulation and also skipped ahead to the chapter about SimCity's implementation details. I'm posting this here because it's what I've written out in emails to friends about the book; I'll update my review when I finish reading it.]

[Kevin Kohler · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first part of this book feels out of place. It moves slowly and is largely unrelated to the main theme of the book -- discussing simulation games, and in particular SimCity. The core of the chapters are interesting, but they often feel like a list of things that happened rather than thoughts on simulation and how those simulations might influence something like Sim City. The first chapter is about a teacher who popularized using role-play around building a town -- which seems like it could be a fascinating topic. Sadly, instead of focusing on the actual simulations, it is a list of times she worked with other people and she was covered by TV. I left understanding she was important but missing the key piece -- How exactly did the simulation role playing game she played with kids really work? How could it be applicable to a simulation like sim-city?

The second part of the book is a bit better, since you can see where the historical tales somewhat influence Sim City, though still the information is stretched thin and much of it is irrelevant. Large sections on the atomic bomb and Turing machines and the theory of computation are covered, They seem disconnected from the thesis of the book. Its possible others will find those sections interesting, but I have had both covered in more depth elsewhere, so though they were a nice cursory level refresher they mostly seemed like an excuse to stretch the length of the book.

Things are better in the third section, but overall this book is a slog. Chaim's writing is good, though occasionally overindulgent. I feel bad writing a slightly negative review of a book with some real gems buried in it, and that obviously took a lot of work to craft, but overall it fell flat for me, spending far too little time on the interesting questions around how to have machines produce interesting simulations similar to sim city -- how to put the world in a machine -- and far too much time on unrelated history.

[Brendan Mulligan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chaim did an amazing job building a narrative across generations of curious minds. What stands out to me is how well he articulates the relationship between the human need for play and the human need to understand our role in the world around us. That not only do these arise from the same place within us, but that they can be solved together.

In the introduction he makes reference to the success of Maxis ultimately being rooted in its “mess” of intersecting curiosities. I can’t help but read that in the same tone as on page 130 when he quotes Conway as saying that it took two years of “experimentation at coffee time… (that) lasts all day” before getting the rules right for Life. We see the same approach to creativity in Nelson/Gehry’s “license to play” on page 18.

It seems this gets taken to a more concrete point in the need for children to “play” with objects to develop understanding (Piaget, Vygotsky pg 44) which he frames perfectly with the Kepler line re: analogy with which he opens the chapter. He paints a picture of scientists as grown children who’ve maintained their curiosity and their drive for play and who excel when those traits are applied to a diverse, interconnected toy chest of models and analogies.

Will Wright fits perfectly into that tradition. Ultimately that attitude reaches its final expression in SimCity, a Life-like toy that manages to help explicate our role in the world while simultaneously entertaining. And it answers that special curiosity highlighted on pg23 with Nelson’s inability to escape the city, the one system that holds the answer to that most fundamental question.

[Yotam G · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating history that covers the dawn (and pre-dawn) of computing through to the end of Maxis as an independent company.

The book digs deeply into the history of SimCity. So deeply that it digs several layers deeper than SimCity itself or any of the people who worked on it. The first 184 pages of the book illuminate how digital computers came to be used to run simulations (Part II) and how such simulations were performed prior to their invention (Part I). I found this intellectual history illuminating.

If you are only interested in the direct origin story of SimCity, start on page 185. You will be rewarded with a book that covers the making of SimCity, the impact of SimCity's success on Maxis, a copiously-illustrated explanation of SimCity's simulation, and the many ways of approaching SimCity.

In summary, this book is more than a popular history of SimCity and explanation of its inner workings. It is also a deeply researched history of its antecedents.

[Eugene ghaiklor Obrezkov · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't remember why I bought this book in the first place, but I do remember that my expectations was more about technical perspective of simulations and SimCity specifically.

However, in reality, this is the book mostly about history. I would say, all the book is about history and only the last chapter is slightly about design of the SimCity from the technical perspective.

While reading the book you will read lots of history about people and ideas back in 1950+. How cellular automata was invented and by whom. Or, how people got themselves in the idea of simulating everything on the computer. Stuff like that.

So yeah, the book is more like a history book that is mostly like a prelude to the few last chapters where SimCity history is finally appearing.

To summarize, it is an OK history book for people who is interested in this stuff. But my expectations were wrong about it and so 2/5.

[Anna Hawes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this with a book club and we had the opportunity to chat with the author. He mentioned this was a passion project that he worked on for years and it definitely shows. The depth of the research is impressive, especially since it covers a much wider spectrum than just the SimCity game or designer. In fact, the first 2/3 of the book details everything from early computers to educational pretend play done with children to talk about what simulations in general entail. The language is very academic and I was a little disappointed in the lack of detail about the game design for SimCity itself but it was certainly an interesting read to discuss with others and consider what makes simulations useful, what makes games fun, and how SimCity sits at an interesting junction of the two.

[laurent · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow. one of the best books i've ever read. software criticism as a field needs to come up. i hope to write something like this one day.

i loved the part where he explained the code omg i would love to see more books doing that! also nice that he acknowledged that he can only explain technical details of the code and not their sociocultural implications, i think there's something for me there cuz i'm technically trained but care much more about analysing sociocultural implications! added to the fictional PhD literature review (i have no plans to PhD)

[Ryan Banfi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gingold's book is expertly written and incredibly well researched. Even if readers are not necessarily interested in SimCity as a game they will still learn about the history of games and computer simulation. BUILDING SIMCITY is an interesting approach to game studies as it gives us a perspective from a master game designer and a well trained academic. The inclusion of photos is also astonishing. 10/10. Must read!

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent work that contextualizes SimCity with a fascinating approach. By delving into the history of simulations and modeling that served as inspirations to Will Wright, Gingold really fleshes out what makes SimCity tick in a way I hadn't really seen before. The game itself gets an extensive dive, of course, and there is a broader history of Maxis leading up to the Sims, but for me that early history was the most intriguing part of the book.

[Konstantinos · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhaustively researched, and brilliantly narrated origin story of a truly monumental game. A joy to read, a treasure trove of information, and a really good looking book too.

[Matthew Kindzerske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such nostalgia, in depth research, and wow fulfilling to read how SimCity came to be. Computing+math+play.

[Michiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Framed as the history of SimCity, the predecessor of the Sims, this book delves much deeper into the history of simulation, from paper classroom maquettes to Game of Life to the revolutionary work of Seymour Papert to use computers to teach children. I learned a lot about it, and I recommend it to those who are interested in the background of simulation games.