



Is this the world's most dangerous video game?


Ed Cumming

Pollution ... industry has mixed consequences in SimCity.

Pollution ... industry has mixed consequences in SimCity.

Parents worry about Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty. They don't want their darlings playing video games in which they pretend to steal cars or murder civilians in airports.

Ridiculous. If I was a father, I'd let them shoot, punch and steal to their little hearts' content. True gamers know that the really frightening programs are those that take something far more precious than innocence: time. And the most dangerous of all are often those that seem simplest. Mowing down virtual soldiers didn't make me more likely to murder anyone for real. Losing days and days to strategy games, however, quite possibly cost me more than one exam.

Protest ... citizens take to the streets.

Protest ... citizens take to the streets.

For me, the original time-sucker was SimCity 2000. I was introduced to it on a school touch-typing course, when we were allowed to play games during breaks. The only one available was SimCity, presumably because the teachers thought that "town planning" was such an unappealing prospect that we'd rush out to play football instead.

How wrong they were. Aged 10, I discovered a world much more complex and enthralling than any brainless shoot-'em-up. For those who haven't had the pleasure, SimCity makes you the godlike mayor of a new town. Mine were usually called Edville, but sometimes Cummingdale, Edianopolis, or Little Edding-upon-Ed.


Emergency ... when town planning becomes  a matter of life and death.


I realise that none of this sounds very glamorous, but I was hooked. As with a good novel or film, little details helped you feel you were part of a wholly formed universe. If your city had a problem - crime, say - a newspaper report would pop up announcing the fact in tabloidese, along with other humorous and unrelated stories. A note at the top of the screen told you what the weather was like. There were little running jokes throughout, such as an obsession with llamas. As long as you could balance your town's books, it went on. I could play it all night. Once or twice, I did.



"I wanted to have a SimCity that was like a model train-set, except where everything was alive and present," says Ocean Quigley, the game's creative director. "One of the reasons for the series' success is that the games are about things that people actually understand and experience. None of us have ever been a space marine, but most of us live in cities or towns, and have a connection to them. People play them as a hobby as much as a game."

This ruminative quality - not to mention the long hours of focus - means you pay attention to the surroundings. I might have spent weeks (cumulatively) playing SimCity, but the time wasn't entirely wasted. I could remember details from the game long after the information about oxbow lakes and irregular verbs had flown from my head. I wouldn't argue for replacing the traditional curriculum entirely, but SimCity taught me more than Doom (or Monopoly, or rugby, or Harry Potter, for that matter).


It wasn't the only instructive game from my childhood. Caesar taught me more about ancient Rome than any number of tedious lectures. From Sid Meier's Civilisation, I learnt more about the intricacies of history and international diplomacy than from newspapers I was forced to read for Current Affairs. As with all the best lessons, you learn most if you don't know you're learning.

Even franchises as venerable as SimCity, however, can't help but remind us how young games are. The industry still has an appealing optimism, compared to the gloom in other media. "I studied fine art," Quigley says, "but to pay my way I worked in computer graphics. Oil painting is a fantastic medium, but I had the sense that its golden age was in the 17th century. Computer games were poised to be the most important medium of the next century, and I wanted to be a part of it. Imagine what we'll be able to do with computers a thousand or a million times more powerful."

Imagining the quality of the games, still gently instructing players about municipal infrastructure, is one thing. Imagining the amount of time which they'll suck from young hands and eyes is quite another.

Telegraph, London

Featured advertisers