[NikolaNovak]

Thanks! If you don't mind some more detail

- how much does it go into people and personalities of the team and stakeholders, besides the technical design of the game?

- it sounds like first part of the book is historical and talks about various games, second focuses strictly on simcity?

- does it only cover first simcity? What about latter generations and competitors, or maxis follow ups like simearth etc?

Thx muchly!:)

[chaimgingold]

Hi! The focus is SimCity, but once the book gets into Maxis I get into SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife, and The Sims. They aren't treated in as much detail, but they are here because they are crucial for understanding the overall arc of Maxis, SimCity's consequences, and Will Wright's career.

You can't understand Maxis without understanding the relationship they had with the world beyond videogames. Consider SimEarth. Stewart Brand (should need no intro; Kevin Kelly introduced them—he and Wright bonded over their love of social insects) introduced Wright to James Lovelock (co-inventor of Gaia hypothesis), who happily collaborated, and Maxis donated money to Lovelock's nonprofit. And Brand's GBN consultancy was interested in using SimEarth for their work. There's more context to all this I get into, but that's the super short version.

I'm still stunned by how much Brand thinks I got all this right (and how much he loves the book): "Of course I checked the few moments where I intersected with the events in the story. They are tone-perfect, detail-perfect, and context-perfect. More so than I've ever seen before." See his review on X:

https://x.com/stewartbrand/status/1800941614287946003

[chaimgingold]

I forgot to answer your first two questions:

> - how much does it go into people and personalities of the team and stakeholders, besides the technical design of the game?

A lot; it all goes together.

> - it sounds like first part of the book is historical and talks about various games, second focuses strictly on simcity?

Yes. And not just games, but computer history and simulation practices (like system dynamics, cellular automata, artificial life) that influenced SimCity and shaped its reception.

[chaimgingold]

Building SimCity only talks about pre-EA SimCity. So there's SimCity, SimCity 2000, and SimCity for SNES, but not much else—aside from how SimCity 3000 was a train wreck that helped destroy Maxis.

[chaimgingold]

PC Gamer just ran a piece on some of the Nintendo history in there. Includes a fun old pic of Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Jeff Braun.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/in-1989-a-nintendo-bigwig-...

[michaelt]

> SimCity 3000 was a train wreck that helped destroy Maxis.

Wikipedia makes SimCity 3000 sound fairly well received [1] - I thought it was the 2013 online-only SimCity that was the train wreck that destroyed Maxis?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_3000#Reception

[rifty]

I suppose the idea is that while the SimCity Maxis studio met its true end later after SimCity(2013) [1], Maxis the company was destroyed earlier. They had originally tried and failed to make SimCity 3000 be a full 3D game. It was only designed into its successful form after the acquisition by EA.

LGR did a retrospective on the game and it provides some context for the state pre-EA Maxis was in when they started SimCity 3000.[2]

1. The Sims is again branded as developed by Maxis.

2. https://youtu.be/MngTH_mh_Is?si=ERGNYzGHeDkPXOO2