I think you are taking this too seriously. Star Trek inspired people to go work for NASA. I'm not hearing reports that NASA has gone to hell because everyone is commited to making Warp Drive a reality so we can make contact with the Klingons.
Early iterations of SimCity would bring an alien invasion down on your head. I eventually concluded it was triggered by inadequate fire coverage.
I have yet to hear a single city planner talk about needing more fire departments as a magical talisman to ward off alien invasions.
I began playing SimCity because I was wondering if I might want to become an urban planner. It caused me to decide to get a Certificate in GIS because, good God, city planning would be so much better if we could handily look up the kind of data that is available on SimCity for making informed decisions if you take the time to look at it.
I have serious health problems. Life got in the way. So far, I haven't worked professionally in this field.
I did spend a lot of time on an urban planning forum for some years and founded a small subforum and was a low level moderator with limited moderating powers. So I've talked to actual professional planners, been to an urban planning conference, etc.
Lots of city planners play(ed) SimCity. Every one of them I've spoken to seems well aware of its limitations and that the real world doesn't actually work that way.
You're right in general, except there are outliers. (Or outliars ;)
Unfortunately SimCity has actually inspired some weak minded, incompetent, deeply ignorant, anti-intellectual politicians. "We need a leader, not a reader."
>“We encourage politicians to continue to look to innovative games like SimCity for inspiration for social and economic change,” said Katsarelis. “While we at Maxis and Electronic Arts do not endorse any political candidates or their platforms, it’s interesting to see GOP candidate Herman Cain propose a simplified tax system like one we designed for the video game SimCity 4.” -Kip Katsarelis, a senior producer for Maxis
>How well did the 9-9-9 plan work in SimCity?
"Running SimCity 4 on its default tax setting was a disaster waiting to happen," says Bridgette P. LaVictoire in Lez Get Real. Unless you used a cheat code, "you ran out of money pretty fast, in fact, and had to go deep into debt." But even if it had worked, there's a pretty huge difference between running a fake city and the most powerful nation on earth. Also, notes TIME's Newman, "Sim City 4 features meteors, UFOs, and robot attacks, which would probably mess up most attempts at realistic modeling."
>According to the Republican presidential candidate's revolutionary plan, corporate income taxes, personal income taxes, and national sales tax rates would each be 9%. Seems smart and original, right? Wrong. Reporters have unearthed an astonishing similarity between Cain's 9-9-9 Plan and SimCity 4's default tax scheme.
>So while most have likened Cain's 9-9-9 plan to a pizza commercial promotion, they now have a new origin story. And as DealBook's Will Alden (formerly of HuffPost), tweets, "If you're gonna rip a tax plan from a video game you could definitely do worse than SimCity."
>The Cain camp remains resolute however responding to the SimCity comparisons by saying “everyone likes 9-9-9.” While that might be true for some, unfortunately there aren’t any cheat codes to make the math work in real life.
>Trump summoned Cain to the meeting, and then told the military brass that they needed to come up with a “9-9-9” plan for the border. The joke fell flat.
I don't think you can actually hold SimCity responsible for what politicians choose to do, even if they want to justify it with "I played a game once on the topic!"
If it weren't SimCity, they would draw lazy solutions from somewhere else. Politicians and city planners are mostly different classes of people.
In the US, we have minimal requirements for "qualifying" to run for office. The system was intentionally designed that way. It certainly has its downsides.
I don't currently have the time or bandwidth to read through everything you have posted. I have bookmarked your other comment already and look forward to digging into it at some point.
I had never heard of Doreen Nelson. Doreen is an uncommon name. I initially thought you were talking about me and was glad to see you weren't.
He probably isn't intellectually curious enough to have ever played SimCity. My theory is that he thought the "9-9-9" Tax Plan would appeal to the base, because it sounds like you're saying "no" to taxes in German.
Yes, Doreen's not a common name, so seeing your name in the thread reminded me of other Doreen's work, and inspired me to post about it.
Did you know that Wolfram Alpha can try to guess your age by your name (it doesn't actually guess since it's not artificially intelligent yet, but it does tell you the most common year for any name):
Early iterations of SimCity would bring an alien invasion down on your head. I eventually concluded it was triggered by inadequate fire coverage.
I have yet to hear a single city planner talk about needing more fire departments as a magical talisman to ward off alien invasions.
I began playing SimCity because I was wondering if I might want to become an urban planner. It caused me to decide to get a Certificate in GIS because, good God, city planning would be so much better if we could handily look up the kind of data that is available on SimCity for making informed decisions if you take the time to look at it.
I have serious health problems. Life got in the way. So far, I haven't worked professionally in this field.
I did spend a lot of time on an urban planning forum for some years and founded a small subforum and was a low level moderator with limited moderating powers. So I've talked to actual professional planners, been to an urban planning conference, etc.
Lots of city planners play(ed) SimCity. Every one of them I've spoken to seems well aware of its limitations and that the real world doesn't actually work that way.