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Strategy in SimCity & Cities: Skylines wouldn't survive politics.

Strategy in SimCity & Cities: Skylines wouldn't survive politics. The games greatly reward spending all of your money as quickly as possible, and deficit-spending on services until your city grows into positive income. In other words, spend as much money as quickly as possible building and supporting zones, since they make money; then, even though your budget is negative while you spend on the services to support those zones, you will have not wasted precious dollars on services you can pay for in deficit. This is a really tricky part of the game, and extremely nerve wrecking. If you neglect to spend exactly right, you end up with $0 and no way to fix a mistake once you hit the play button. On the other hand, your city will grow as quickly as it can given your budget. You could say this is a really accurate model of real life. If you have an efficient way to spend money, should you spend all of it? You could say that governments rarely have efficient ways to spend money, but they always have a most-efficient-among-the-options way to spend it. If there's anything to take away from the simulation, it's that cash surpluses don't make sense. Not for governments, not for Apple, not for virtual mayors or StarCraft commanders, not for anyone. A cash surplus is a symptom of playing the game wrong, not a problem with the game. And in our politics of austerity, that's really crazy.

Posted by doctorpangloss on May 9, 2015, 2:13 AM

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Strategy in SimCity & Cities: Skylines wouldn't survive politics.

doctorpanglossMay 9, 2015, 2:13 AM

Strategy in SimCity & Cities: Skylines wouldn't survive politics. The games greatly reward spending all of your money as quickly as possible, and deficit-spending on services until your city grows into positive income. In other words, spend as much money as quickly as possible building and supporting zones, since they make money; then, even though your budget is negative while you spend on the services to support those zones, you will have not wasted precious dollars on services you can pay for in deficit. This is a really tricky part of the game, and extremely nerve wrecking. If you neglect to spend exactly right, you end up with $0 and no way to fix a mistake once you hit the play button. On the other hand, your city will grow as quickly as it can given your budget. You could say this is a really accurate model of real life. If you have an efficient way to spend money, should you spend all of it? You could say that governments rarely have efficient ways to spend money, but they always have a most-efficient-among-the-options way to spend it. If there's anything to take away from the simulation, it's that cash surpluses don't make sense. Not for governments, not for Apple, not for virtual mayors or StarCraft commanders, not for anyone. A cash surplus is a symptom of playing the game wrong, not a problem with the game. And in our politics of austerity, that's really crazy.

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