The One Laptop Per Child experiment is a campaign which challenges technologically, culturally and ideologically. Its hotly-debated successes and failures - proclaimed even before the product has been launched - have often overwhelmed the ownership of the future content of the machine which probably will have the most profound effect on its ultimate users. After all, as the gamesblog has discussed previously, no piece of software is developed without a philosophical bent. What kinds of dogmas, then, are being foisted upon the populations who'll be using the computer eventually?
The reason I bring this up on the gamesblog is because EA has announced that it will be donating SimCity to the cause; One Laptops will be loaded with the (capitalist) town planning simulation. Some have argued that this game is archaic, that a more modern piece of gaming software should find its way onto the deck. To be fair, I don't really think entertainment is the point. But I would argue more debate should go into considering the ideologies beneath the objectives of the game.
From Gamasutra:
Steve Seabolt, vice president of global brand development for The Sims Label, commented, "SimCity is entertainment that's unintentionally educational. Players learn to use limited resources to build and customize their cities. There are choices and consequences, but in the end, it's a creativity tool that's only limited by the player's imagination."
He continued: "The game should prove to be an incredibly effective way of making the laptop relevant, engaging, and fun, particularly for first time players. We are thrilled to be making this contribution to OLPC to help meet their goal of educating the children of the world."
First up, note that there's no fun in that statement at all. It's all about educating. And about what?
According to Shawn Miklaucic via Game Research,
...its fundamental function is the cost-benefit equation it represents´so much money to build a park, so much money to maintain it, balanced against the quantifiable increase in aura and productivity it provides.
Productivity, balancing budgets, preserving resources. Arguably part of the contemporary human condition. In urban environments, in particular.
Ted Friedman via First Monday suggests that the game is based upon Marx's Kapital and warns,
...however much "freedom" computer game designers grant players, any simulation will be rooted in a set of baseline assumptions. SimCity has been criticized from both the left and right for its economic model. It assumes that low taxes will encourage growth while high taxes will hasten recessions. It discourages nuclear power, while rewarding investment in mass transit. And most fundamentally, it rests on the empiricist, technophilic fantasy that the complex dynamics of city development can be abstracted, quantified, simulated, and micromanaged.
These are not flaws in the game - they are its founding principles.
While many may dismiss this debate as irrelevant for the entertainment sphere in which games reside, when the software is integrated into a charitable platform, intended to be used as an educational experience for kids in completely different cultures from that in which it was developed, it suddenly develops meaning.
The most powerful and enduring statement made by including SimCity is not whether the machine should offer newer games than this classic, but what including it actually means.
