Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug Or a Feature? 393
sarahnaomi writes: SimCity players have discussed a variety of creative strategies for their virtual homelessness problem. They've suggested waiting for natural disasters like tornadoes to blow the vagrants away, bulldozing parks where they congregate, or creating such a woefully insufficient city infrastructure that the homeless would leave on their own.
You can read all of these proposed final solutions in Matteo Bittanti's How to Get Rid of Homelessness, "a 600-page epic split in two volumes documenting the so-called 'homeless scandal' that affected 2013's SimCity." Bittanti collected, selected, and transcribed thousands of these messages exchanged by players on publisher Electronic Arts' official forums, Reddit, and the largest online SimCity community Simtropolis, who experienced and then tried to "eradicate" the phenomenon of homelessness that "plagued" SimCity."
You can read all of these proposed final solutions in Matteo Bittanti's How to Get Rid of Homelessness, "a 600-page epic split in two volumes documenting the so-called 'homeless scandal' that affected 2013's SimCity." Bittanti collected, selected, and transcribed thousands of these messages exchanged by players on publisher Electronic Arts' official forums, Reddit, and the largest online SimCity community Simtropolis, who experienced and then tried to "eradicate" the phenomenon of homelessness that "plagued" SimCity."
SimCity 2000 available for free (Score:5, Informative)
I found this one on a trip down memory lane. Runs in a DOSBox and works great on my Win7 laptop! Yes, it's ENTIRELY LEGAL. you can get the download here [origin.com].
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Is it as enjoyable as the newer versions?
Arguably more so. SC3000 adds additional complexity; but the general consensus is that it didn't really retain the same coherent elegance in doing so. SC4000, in stock form, is a mess, though I'm told that the right collection of mods really helps.
The most recent one? Less of a sequel, more of an atrocity.
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How is Origin malware? What does it do that makes it malware?
It does have DRM but (depending on the game) its not exactly rocket science to either remove the DRM or find an existing no-DRM crack for your purchased game.
Re: SimCity 2000 available for free (Score:4, Informative)
The first versions of EA Downloader, which later became Origin, were essentially indistinguishable from malware, so the confusion is understandable.
Re:SimCity 2000 available for free (Score:5, Informative)
How is Origin malware? What does it do that makes it malware? It does have DRM but (depending on the game) its not exactly rocket science to either remove the DRM or find an existing no-DRM crack for your purchased game.
Origin gathers your personal information, computer information, application usage, software inventory, software usage, and peripheral hardware usage. It reports this data back to EA/Origin. You can Google about it or spend a few minutes and read your origin EULA.
Re:SimCity 2000 available for free (Score:5, Informative)
I just installed the Origin client - it specifically asked for permissions to collect statistics during the install process.
Re:SimCity 2000 available for free (Score:5, Funny)
Facts? Here? How DARE you?
Re:SimCity 2000 available for free (Score:4, Interesting)
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In settings, advanced tab you will find section named Origin Experience Reporting when you can uncheck "Share hardware specification" and "Share system interaction data" to get rid of most of this (or at least the part that is objectionable to most people).
Re: SimCity 2000 available for free (Score:5, Informative)
Steam literally asks you when they want to take a hardware or software profile.
Re:SimCity 2000 available for free (Score:5, Informative)
Origin may be basically a steam-wannabe, but it's without realising that the reason steam doesn't piss people off very much is that they're not arseholes about what they do - the DRM is minimal and mostly unobtrusive, and they ASK people if they want to participate in their surveys rather than just abuse the fact that their software is installed and simply steal the information.
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Origin doesn't "steal" information - you don't lose it.
Oh come on, EA hasn't thought like that for a long time. After all, if you download EA's game from TPB, they will say that you stole a game.
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My only real problems with it are that it pops up an advertising page every time you run it.
You can disable it in advanced settings ("Hide Featured Today..."). The other problem is annoying me too.
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it wastes your time.
and it's named after a company that published good games.
it's extra shit you need to install to play.. same bin as uplay and all the other shit.
Re:SimCity 2000 available for free (Score:5, Insightful)
Software should be free!
Unless I'm producing it. Then you should pay for my time.
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Software doesn't want anything, it just does what it's told.
Your labour though, definitely DOES want to be free, so why are you getting paid for it?
Re:SimCity 2000 available for free (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit, software doesn't want anything - *you* want it to be free so you aren't burdened with the problem of paying someone for it.
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Well, how can it be malware in a DOSbox?
With network sims. Err, shims.
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It cannot possibly be abandoned in any sense of the word if it is still actively supported and sold.
doesn't meaning anything ... right? (Score:5, Insightful)
It sure is a good thing that players' behavior as modeled in games has no effect whatsoever on their offline behavior, or in any way informs us about their attitudes toward the real world. That might be disconcerting.
Re:doesn't meaning anything ... right? (Score:5, Funny)
If it were, I'd be upset at plumbers who think that the way to solve problems with fungi is to stomp on them.
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I enjoy going full murder hobo in several games. Postal and Postal II were my absolute favorites.
Does SimCity allow you to.... (Score:5, Funny)
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oh the humanity (Score:5, Funny)
If this dude is morally outraged by the way people play Sim City I can only hope someone alerts them to the way people play Dwarf Fortress.
Re:oh the humanity (Score:4, Funny)
I think the PC name for that game is Little People's Fortress.
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I think the PC name for that game is Little People's Fortress.
Vertically Challenged People's Fortress, you pusillanimous poltroon.
Fisher-Price (Score:2, Offtopic)
I think the PC name for that game is Little People's Fortress.
Only if it's made by Fisher-Price [fisher-price.com].
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If this dude is morally outraged by the way people play Sim City I can only hope someone alerts them to the way people play Dwarf Fortress.
Are their homeless people in Dwarf Fortress? I think not.
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Nope, but there are lazy Nobles, who do nothing except making demands (between trivial and impossible), which you are obligued to obey or face sanctions.
So people build "immigrant sorters". A gate which remains open when the immigrants arrive, then lines them up allowing only one immigrant at a time to pass, and allow Nazi concentration camp style selection with a toggle of a switch. Left - work. Right - gas chamber. That way they eliminate the nobles before they can become a problem.
Not a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Better to have homeless people on welfare in the streets rather than only drunken frat boys, small criminals and drug addicts. Problem in the US is you don't give them enough welfare (or at all) and no healthcare, hell homeful people at full time min wage employment don't even have healthcare. Nationalise all the evul healthcare companies (this cuts red tape), make the price of medicines drop, make welfare easier to get (less red tape) and redistribute the half a trillion or so you've saved in welfare.
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We tried to fix the healthcare. We have Mitt Romney care and it sucks for everyone.
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Don't worry, eventually we'll get smart enough to blame the parasites leeching off the system to the disadvantage of the rest of us....
By which I mean the Insurance companies, of course, who did YOU think I was talking about?
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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He was trying to learn from their mistakes by trying to pass Single Payer Healthcare, but you assholes wouldn't go with that so we had to compromise------ON ROMNEYCARE.
I'm sorry, but the Affordable Care Act was no compromise. A "compromise" is a meeting of the minds based on negotiation. The Affordable Care Act was forced down the GOP's and the American people's throats. Polls showed that the American people didn't want Obamacare at the time, and that we don't want it today. I predict that tomorrow, we still won't want it.
Even though you claim to detest MassHealth(Romneycare), you refuse to call it Romneycare but have no qualms calling the Affordable Healthcare Act Obamacare as that carries a negative connotation.
For what it's worth, I didn't intend that as a slight. MassHealth is just not as commonly called "Romneycare", so I don't refer to it as such. Indeed, w
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
This simply isn't true. If were simply a question of the amount of resources available, then the U.S. is not much different than any other developed country. San Francisco in particular has a more progressive homeless outreach program than almost any other city in the entire world--if the homeless population hadn't doubled in the past 15 years, we'd have already housed every last homeless person in the city.
The problem with homelessness in America is complex, but it mostly comes down to two things: 1) you have to jump through a ridiculous amount of hoops to get assistance, and 2) the people most vulnerable to falling into homelessness (i.e. those with mental illness or disorders) are the least capable of jumping through those hoops.
We have lots of hoops because of two things: 1.a) our patchwork of federal, state, and municipal programs and 1.b) the American idea of self-help and individualism. The source of 1.a is obvious. 1.b is problematic not because our ideas of self-help and our belief that America is a meritocratic land of opportunity is fundamentally bad. As an American I'm aware of and conscious of my own emphasis on these qualities, and I frankly I like that I'm that way. The problem is that too many Americans don't realize that these ideas are just cultural preferences, and are not connected to reality. They're aspirations rather descriptions of our society. Because people don't realize this, they think that self-help is easier than it is. To admit that self-help isn't very easy is in some sense a denial of the vision of America they hold in their head.
As for #2, since we've dismantled our mental institutions we've abandoned a huge segment of our population in dire need of state assistance. We did that for two reasons, 2.a) money and 2.b) concern with freedom. Regarding 2.a, I think it's fair to say that we're losing more wealth thanks to our failure to address these problems. Regarding 2.b: it's true that the government once abusively used it's power to commit people to mental institutions without them having committed a crime. From the perspective of a society obsessed with individual liberty, that's an abhorrent state of affairs. However, the problem with mental illness and disorders (of all varieties, not simply clinical illness) is that it's fundamentally in conflict with our assumptions about free will, as well as with an economic approach (personal incentives, costs, etc) to the problem. We need to adjust the way we resolve this conflict and become more comfortable with the idea of _forcing_ people into assistance. And we need to realize that the moral of hazard of "handouts" is nowhere near as significant as it would be if we were all perfectly rational actors, _especially_ when we're giving handouts to those people at the very bottom.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
1.a) our patchwork of federal, state, and municipal programs and 1.b) the American idea of self-help and individualism.
And reason c: People are worried someone might abuse the system. For some reason, people like the idea that it is better to let 9 guilty men go than an innocent man go to prison, so promote the idea of a justice system that makes it harder to get convicted (or at least used to...), but think it is better to let 9 people starve so one person can't scam his way into a small amount of money and crappy way of life.
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
1.a) our patchwork of federal, state, and municipal programs and 1.b) the American idea of self-help and individualism.
And reason c: People are worried someone might abuse the system. For some reason, people like the idea that it is better to let 9 guilty men go than an innocent man go to prison, so promote the idea of a justice system that makes it harder to get convicted (or at least used to...), but think it is better to let 9 people starve so one person can't scam his way into a small amount of money and crappy way of life.
People _DO_ abuse the system, in fact show me a country with any form of welfare that is not abused. The problem in the US is that those abuses are on both ends of the spectrum. Like other countries we have people that camp on welfare because it's easier than working. That is the portion of risk we consider to be manageable and expected because the percentage is generally very small. Where the US differs greatly is that our programs are abused at the top as well. People "managing" these services receive extra pay for not doing their job. Performing actions like cancelling programs instead of improving programs. This is a very open corruption that anyone can see, though few dare call it corruption... our media calls it "cost saving". This does not just happen with Welfare either, but VA benefits, and Social Security, and just about everything else.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Informative)
Like other countries we have people that camp on welfare because it's easier than working.
I do agree with the substance of your post, but what do you mean by welfare? The United States doesn't really have any unconditional cash transfer programs, which is what most people think of when they hear the term "welfare." TANF for example is restricted to families with children, has a lifetime limit of 60 months of benefits for any individual and recipients must have a job within 24 months of joining the program. After doing a bunch of research on our means-tested social programs, I just don't see how it would be possible for a single, able-bodied, working-age individual to satisfy all their needs using federal transfers alone.
I also don't think it's far to call social insurance programs "welfare." They're insurance policies operated by government, with mandatory premiums garnished from wages. You have to have paid the premiums to get the benefits.
Where the US differs greatly is that our programs are abused at the top as well.
Agree 100%, though I don't think the US is alone worldwide in this regard, even if it stands out among OECD members.
Re: Not a problem (Score:2)
Actually we have a system where justices are happy to see a not guilty man fry as long as the paper work is in order. Proof of innocence isn't enough, you need to get that paperwork filed in time, and before they throw the switch may not be in time.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the truth is uglier than that. A society committed to "self-help and individualism" would strive to ensure opportunities are available to anyone who cares to take them, no matter where they happen to be, and that one can actually risk failing without also risking homelessness. Such societies exist, and are typically derided as "nanny states" by Americans - because compensating for human frailties and failings is what it takes to actually make it possible for people to follow their own path and seek their dreams.
Someone once said US's problem is that everyone thinks they're a temporarily embarassed millionaire. But that leaves out a key fact: everyone thinks they're a temporarily embarassed millionaire who wants to ensure they can stomp on those below them, once they get to the top, and votes accordingly. Thus the seemingly irrational support from middle class to policies destructive to said middle class. It's a self-made hell.
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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver had a great segment about this exact problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Not really, no. Even a cursory look at example supply and demand charts invariably show that supply and demand almost always meet somewhere lower than maximum supply. The law of diminishing returns gives a hint why. Further, you can pay the worst employees less and less because of their lackluster performance until the point that employees slowly or quic
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"Yes, I'd like to live in a world where anyone who was willing to do an honest days work could easily find a job that paid enough to support a small family simply but comfortably (and safely)."
that criteria is always unfortunately compared to those around you.
so "comfortably" might mean a two bedroom apartment or a 4 bedroom house with garden and everything. it might mean being able to drink 3 nights a week or 1 night a month. ...and if you look at globally, then nordic nanny states are best at providing wh
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since we've dismantled our mental institutions we've abandoned a huge segment of our population in dire need of state assistance. We did that for two reasons, 2.a) money and 2.b) concern with freedom.
I'm pretty sure it was due to the fact that media, particularly Hollywood, loved to portray those institutions in as negative a light as possible. They succeeded so well that instead of trying to encourage improvements, no politician has the political capital to survive should something imperfect happen in them while they're in office. So it's easier to get rid of the institutions than risk some sort of scandal.
Re: Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
There is also an incredible lack of knowledge about other systems. The choice isn't between working people starving on the streets and French style socialism where every job and employer has tons of regulation and tons of worker classifications along with huge welfare payments.
I've come to enjoy the Japanese system. It has a fundamental thread of responsibilitythat resonates with me and a strong sense of EVERYONE pays something, even the guy with 0 income for an extended period. It may not be much (20 bucks a month for health insurance) but you are legally required to get it and pay for it. The state will watch out for you, as long as you always fulfill your own responsibilities to society.
And yeah, if you go cheap and try to save 20 bucks don't get sick because you are expected to show an ability to pay immediately (but you can always get back into the state program by paying all your owed back premiums).
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Informative)
San Francisco in particular has a more progressive homeless outreach program than almost any other city in the entire world
Not really. In the EU shelter is a human right. I haven't travelled to every country, but at least in the UK and France we don't have homeless people any more. Everyone has the right to shelter - it might not be very nice shelter, but the government will put a roof over your head no matter what. It's massively reduced begging too, because no no-one has an excuse for being on the street when they could be helping themselves with government assistance.
Having a fixed address is really important. You can't get a job without a fixed address, and somewhere to shower and shave. Plus, it keeps people off the streets and out of the criminal justice system, so it's a win for everyone.
I'm sure San Fran is doing better than most US cities, but the US is so far behind Europe to start with... You can't really make that claim.
Re: Not a problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering the "productive" people are hoarding up all the work and basically forcing as many people as they can to be unproductive...
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
There's really not a lot of correlation between success and productivity.
Sure there's some, but not as much as you might think.
One sentence answer. (Score:2, Funny)
The homeless people are who lived in all the neighborhoods of players who no longer play the game due to being locked out by intrusive DRM.
Which is stupider, the book or the game? (Score:5, Informative)
A limited run of 99 copies of How to get Rid of Homeless is available from Bittanti's Concrete Press via Amazon. Volume I is $150 and Volume II is $70.
Like anyone's going to pay $220.00 for a collection of reddit posts ...
They lost their way after SimCity 4 + Rush Hour. For aficionados of previous versions of the game, read the reviews first, it'll save you money. As for the "books", you can get the raw posts from reddit and the Simcity site.
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They lost their way after SimCity 4 + Rush Hour.
This. SimCity 4 was in my mind the last SimCity game. The two games that followed it with that 'brand' on it (SimCity Societies and SimCity 2013) are not part of the series. They're just bad ripoffs.
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Only in America, greatest and most compassionate nation on the earth, can you find people greedy enough to take online Reddit posts discussing how to "eradicate homeless game characters, compile it into not one but two books, and sell the whole thing for 200+ dollars.
I think he may be trying to eradicate his own homelessness with those prices. Although with the prices for printing vanity books, he might not be making enough to pay the rent for two months.
Re:Which is stupider, the book or the game? (Score:4, Informative)
No, because some people choose that life and no amount of help will make a difference.
Here in Dallas it was tried over 10 years ago... million of dollars were spent to refurbish several old hotels and make them liveable, rooms were offered free of charge to homeless people to give them a place to get back on their feet, to give them a place to have a hot shower, give them a mailing address so they could look for work (you might find it hard to get work without an address), etc.
After 6 months, most of them were empty, the homeless didn't want them. Probably had something to do with a requirement that in return for a FREE PLACE TO LIVE, they had to actually look for work, or attend job training.
I kid you not, a free place to live, a working bathroom with a toilet and shower, an address to use to get back on their feet and the homeless by and large didn't want it.
Re:Which is stupider, the book or the game? (Score:4, Insightful)
After 6 months, most of them were empty, the homeless didn't want them. Probably had something to do with a requirement that in return for a FREE PLACE TO LIVE, they had to actually look for work, or attend job training.
I kid you not, a free place to live, a working bathroom with a toilet and shower, an address to use to get back on their feet and the homeless by and large didn't want it.
Given that a lot of homeless people have a mental illness and/or are addicted to drugs, that is not surprising.
Treat the mental condition (Score:3)
Given that a lot of homeless people have a mental illness and/or are addicted to drugs, that is not surprising.
Then perhaps the package should have included health care, such as a psychiatric evaluation and warm turkey treatment (first dose 1 minute later each day) for any chemical dependence.
Re:Which is stupider, the book or the game? (Score:5, Informative)
I am not sure of the difference between the two programmes, but what failed in Dallas 10 years ago seems to be working in Salt Lake City now: http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/lntv3q/the-homeless-homed [cc.com]
Yeah, it is not the best source for news, but it is the only way I heard about it.
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It probably has a lot to do with the demographic makeup of the homeless changing in the last decade, especially with the housing and mortgage collapse. I don't think the homeless has ever been one homogenous group, but it is more diverse now than it was 10 years ago. And I would suspect that there is now a large portion of the homeless that don't have mental issues and want to get back into a home of some kind.
The location also makes a difference. SLC is a bad place to try and live outside full time during
How to "solve" the problem of the homeless? (Score:3, Insightful)
Clearly your city needs a better welfare and education system, and perhaps a work incentive scheme.
Does anyone care about SimCity2013? (Score:2)
Re:Does anyone care about SimCity2013? (Score:5, Informative)
Are...are you kidding? Cities XL is barely a game. It has some really nice features that were innovative for its time, like free-drawing roads, but a lot of its implementations are complete and utter BS. Like, you have to zone regions based on social class. Part of the challenge of SimCity is that you can't directly control that. Natural resources are garbage... the supply/demand graphs of different zones have hardly any bounce or buffer zone and your citizens move in with no intelligence at all. If you build twice as much unskilled-labor residential than you need--probably because you're trying to plan your city out early--people will SWARM in, and then whine about how there's not enough jobs. Even the very first SimCity game made people only move in if there were jobs (+/- a fudge factor). This is a really huge problem because you have to micromanage your zoning and build it a little bit at a time, rotating through all different kinds. You can't prebuild or everyone goes ballistic. Oh yeah, and road widths. God damn it, road widths. Hey great, I can upgrade this three-lane to a four-lane!...if I bulldoze everything along it, because the game cares about road width down to the foot, and you aren't allowed to build small roads with extra buffer on the side for future expansion. Dump tons of money now to build the nice roads, or you're hosed later.
All of this leads to extremely formulaic gameplay. There's not much variation in what works, and it feels tedious to do. I spent a lot of hours trying to find the fun, on a couple different versions, and it wasn't there. Went back to SC4.
easy solution (Score:2)
go back to simcity version 1 or 2. homelessness wasn't a problem 22 years ago, right?
Re:easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)
We used to forcibly institutionalize mentally ill people instead of kicking them out on the street en mass to fend for themselves. A significant portion of what we call "homeless" have mental health and substance abuse issues, of course. Is releasing them to life in the streets more compassionate or humanitarian than confining them to an institution where they can actually get some help? I'm not sure there's an easy answer there, to be honest. In my neck of the woods, people are getting robbed and assaulted on the streets by homeless people on a pretty regular basis. It's not a good situation for anyone.
It's a feature -- duh. (Score:4)
Are we now going to say it's incorrect for a city simulator to present the player with problems that currently occur in actual real cities?
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Re:Games versus reality (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as there are people starving and going mad in the streets
Mental health problems are far more likely to be the cause of homelessness than the reverse.
And I encounter someone who is mentally ill on the street, I'm not sure what you think I could do for them that the social workers and the police couldn't.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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There are places where welfare is less generous than others, but where I live homelessness is a lifestyle choice, the way it is for yourself. Now, it's not reasonable to expect the mentally ill to take responsibility for making the best choices for themselves, but again, there's nothing I can do that the professionals can't.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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"Don't let businesses run homeless people off who are trying to get out of the cold"
Damn right. Screw those bourguois minimum wage kids trying to make it through school cleaning vomit and filth out of bathrooms by people who view the coffee shop where they warmed up as the enemy!
Can't reason with crazy.
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Note to self: Avoid Santa Monica. Non-zero probability of encountering strange person trying to make an obscure point while disguised as a homeless person.
Welcome to Earth, third realm from the Sun (Score:2)
Note to self: Avoid Santa Monica. Non-zero probability of encountering strange person trying to make an obscure point while disguised as a homeless person.
For that matter, avoid Earth in general.
You blogged as a doper and thief in Oct/Nov 2014? (Score:3, Informative)
"Personally, I just don't care to contribute to a system/country that I find vomit-inducing and am pretty comfortable sleeping under a bridge."
Yeah, so I read your blog - you were arrested for holding burglary tools and appearing to be high and when you got out the first thing you did was score some weed, got high, then at some point got some schrooms, got high, then complained about the homeless life, etc. You sir, are in my opinion, a bullshit artist and your homeless has nothing to do with solidarity; I
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I know my sig says "hire me", but I have had offers in real-life and turned them down because I didn't agree with the what/how the employer produced.
The guy above suggested forced-hospitalization of mentally-ill people as a way to help them. If he gets his way, you could be 'hospitalized' with that attitude.
Re:Games versus reality (Score:5, Insightful)
I know my sig says "hire me", but I have had offers in real-life and turned them down because I didn't agree with the what/how the employer produced.
I took a two minute glance at your blog. I read your comment here and a little bit of your other writings. You sound like you have a decent level of intelligence. I am gonna go out on a limb and assume that you are young (20 - 30). At some point in your life you are going to realize your wasted potential. When that moment of clarity hits you,... it is going to hit you like a stone to the head.
Part of 'being a man' is doing the work you don't want to do. It is the daily struggle so you can provide for a family; not living under a bridge so your values can remain intact. We are all idealistic at some point in our lives, but, there comes a time to grow up. Don't wait until it is too late.
my $.02
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Re:Games versus reality (Score:5, Interesting)
I write this while homeless in Santa Monica, CA
Yet, you can somehow manage to post on slashdot.
Your priorities are puzzling to say the least.
not just a game (Score:3, Interesting)
the thing that most players don't realise about games like simcity (and other "simulation" games including civilisation and clones, the sims, and many others) is that they're not just simulations, they're also propaganda tools with a particular model of how reality is, or should, be.
for the most part, these games push the theology of "meritocratic" free market laissez-faire capitalism - with the deserving rich being those who worked hard and the undeserving poor being worthless lazy slobs. this simulates american moralising and judgemental opinions fairly well, but not the real world.
SimCity 4... (Score:2)
...was the last actual SimCity. Every subsequent game with that name was a dumbed-down fucking shell, a goddamn disgrace. Had high hopes for this latest iteration before all the BS came to light. SMH.
Hell I still play SC4 now when I get bored. Have an awesome realistic region of 4+ million or so, based on a map made from the Oxnard, CA area (scaled way up). Bah...but enough waxing nostalgic. Fuck fucking EA and what they did to Maxis, smfh.
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I'm with ya there! I was glad the rollout of the new 'wanna-be-SimCity' was a flop cuz I managed to get a refund for it. Terrible game. Wouldn't even pirate it. SC4 was the last true SimCity.
Like Real Life (Score:3)
Feature not Bug (Score:3)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
That game has more problems than just the homeless population.
So does the author:
Bittanti says that it's impossible to distinguish between videogames and America in the same way that Jean Baudrillard thought it was impossible to distinguish between Disneyland and America. The book, he told me, is about simulation and its discontents, the unexpected convergence and collapse between reality and simulation.
"To me video games are the so-called 'real America,'" he said. "The real America operates according to a video game logic, and that game logic is neo-liberalism, and that absolutely manifests in San Francisco, that to me is the epicenter of inequality. In San Francisco you either have a Tesla and you drink a seven dollar cappuccino or you're homeless in the streets."
I think he's been playing games too long. SimCity's reality distortion field claims another victim, which is amazing because it's crap compared to its' predecessors.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
To me video games are the so-called 'real America,'" he said. "The real America operates according to a video game logic, and that game logic is neo-liberalism, and that absolutely manifests in San Francisco, that to me is the epicenter of inequality. In San Francisco you either have a Tesla and you drink a seven dollar cappuccino or you're homeless in the streets."
I think he's been playing games too long. SimCity's reality distortion field claims another victim, which is amazing because it's crap compared to its' predecessors.
Ever lived in San Francisco? Sounds pretty close to reality to me. Not everyone who isn't rich is homeless in the streets, though. Some of them are students with rich parents, but they themselves aren't technically rich yet. They just look rich with their Audi and their expensive clothes and new phone every year. While the rank and file who make the seven dollar cappucinos, flip the burgers and whatnot are stacked up five or six to a house with people living in hallways and closets.
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Ever lived in San Francisco? Sounds pretty close to reality to me.
I can understand why someone who didn't grow up in the Bay and who hasn't spend much time outside of certain districts would have that impression.
About 25% of San Franciscan households have incomes above $100,000 and about 13% are poverty-level or below. For comparison, those numbers for Alameda County are ~17% and ~13%, respectively. Yeah, SF has more inequality, but not to the extremes sometimes imagined.
(Numbers from demographia.com and US census data).
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I can understand why someone who didn't grow up in the Bay and who hasn't spend much time outside of certain districts would have that impression.
I grew up in Santa Cruz, and I've been to SF dozens of times. I lived there for about a year. I know many people who live there. It's you that's ignorant as to how people live in SF.
About 25% of San Franciscan households have incomes above $100,000 and about 13% are poverty-level or below.
How is a "household" defined? If you put five kids making minimum wage into a house, that's a household with income above $100,000, but everyone in that house is still in poverty.
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I think he's been playing games too long.
He certainly hasn't been reading San Francisco demographic information.
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APK, can I solve homelessness in my PC games with a good hosts file??? :-P
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And homeless population - that's a problem that occurs in most cities.
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Nope
signed
northern canada
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Besides, south park already addressed the final solution to the homeless question:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Basically you just entice them to move to another city.
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Basically you just entice them to move to another city.
This technique is a significant contributor to the Bay Area's homelessness problem.