☞ The Wonders of Maxis
The intersection of gaming and complexity science + Maxis 2.0?
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As longtime readers know, I am a huge fan of SimCity (example one and two). I grew up playing both the original as well as SimCity 2000, which in my opinion, is one of the best pieces of software ever. And I loved these simulation toys.
In my friend Chaim Gingold’s new book Building SimCity, in addition to providing a deep kind of pre-history of SimCity, he also delves into the origins and rise and fall of Maxis, the company that developed SimCity. Maxis was interesting because it didn’t just develop SimCity; it was responsible for SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife, as well as The Sims and Spore (though these last two were published when Maxis had already been acquired by Electronic Arts).
As Chaim lays out in his book, Maxis straddled the space between the sciences, gaming, and popular engagement with complex ideas. You can see aspects of this by looking at the Maxis 1996 Annual Report:
And this:
And I want there to be another Maxis. I would love to see a Maxis 2.0: a sort of studio that runs an import-export business between complexity science and the gaming world, for example. Or perhaps even explores business simulations, but in a sustainable way.
I previously explored this a bit, but to reiterate:
Perhaps this kind of work in the simulation space—both ones that aim for verisimilitude as well as ones that are clearly simplified, or even explicitly games—could only exist in this weird time period in the 1990’s, but I don’t think that’s true. In fact, because of increased processing power and better data, we might be ripe for a golden age of simulation. We finally could begin to create intuitive and interactive simulation tools.
I think there is the possibility for a Maxis 2.0. If you are interested in this or think this is worth building, please reach out to me. ■
The Orthogonal Bet: A New Podcast Series
Over at Lux, I’ve begun a new podcast series titled The Orthogonal Bet: it focuses on the combinatorial weirdness and complexity of the world, where I get to interview interesting people about the things that they are working on or the ideas that they are exploring (it’s found in the main Lux podcast RSS feed).
In the first episode—which is a chat with Matt Webb about vibe shifts in technological innovation—I begin by noting my own personal philosophy:
The world is combinatorially weird and fractally interesting. And therefore, omnivorous curiosity is the only proper response.
The second episode is a conversation with Robin Sloan about his new book Moonbound, world-building, AI, and more (here is a list of some the topics we discuss).
Stay tuned for discussions of SimCity, the future of science, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and much more. And please suggest any topics I should discuss, books I should read, or authors I should interview.
And please check out the first episodes: One and Two.
Tiny Awards
Tiny Awards is “a small prize to celebrate interesting, small, craft-y internet projects and spaces which basically make the web a more fun place to be.”
Check it out! I’m one of the judges.
The Enchanted Systems Roundup
Here are some links worth checking out that touch on the complex systems of our world (both built and natural):
🜸 AI Copilots Are Changing How Coding Is Taught: “Professors are shifting away from syntax and emphasizing higher-level skills”
🝳 How Perfectly Can Reality Be Simulated? “Video-game engines were designed to mimic the mechanics of the real world. They’re now used in movies, architecture, military simulations, and efforts to build the metaverse.”
🝤 Generative AI Is Totally Shameless. I Want to Be It: “The best thing about brain-melting software like ChatGPT? It doesn’t feel remorse.”
🜹 Computer Scientists Invent an Efficient New Way to Count: “By making use of randomness, a team has created a simple algorithm for estimating large numbers of distinct objects in a stream of data.”
🝊 The Wrong Stuff by John Strasbaugh: “A witty, deeply researched history of the surprisingly ramshackle Soviet space program, and how its success was more spin than science.”
🜸 Is it getting harder to make a hit? Evidence from 65 years of US music chart history: “Whereas most songs spend less time on the chart now than songs did in the past, we show that top-1 songs have tripled their chart lifetime since the 1960s, the highest-ranked songs maintain their positions for far longer than previously, and the lowest-ranked songs are replaced more frequently than ever. At the same time, who occupies the chart has also changed over the years: In recent years, fewer new artists make it into the chart and more positions are occupied by established hit makers.”
🝖 City In A Bottle – A 256 Byte Raycasting System: “A tiny raycasting engine and city generator that fits in a standalone 256 byte html file.”
🝊 Predicting solar eclipses with Python
🝳 Don’t forget to include the full moon in your training set: A strange bug emerges in a neural net designed to play a computer game.
🜹 Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers: “The emerging golden age of home-cooked software, barefoot developers, and why the local-first community should help build it”
Until next time.