Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Whatever Happened to In Depth Computer Simulation Games?

I feel like back in the 90s and up until the early '00s, we had games that did their damnedest to elegantly simulate real world behavior. Games like SimLife, SimCity, Civilization, Creatures, etc. True, we've got Spore that came out recently, but I feel that Spore and Sim City Societies and the exceedingly few other similar games that have come out in the last few years are further removed from functioning as realistic simulations and have become more abstracted game play.

This is not to say that the games that came out in the 90s were not abstracted game play, but they hewed closer to attempting to model the real world than games do these days. What is more with the increasing computer power, I would expect to see more and more detailed and accurate simulations.

I want to see a game that is built on top of a detailed accurate simulation of the world. I'd love to have a Civilization game that I could also use to simulate alternate history scenarios, with layers and layers and details that a casual game player would never have to look at if they did not want to.

Is this accurate? Did I just misinterpret the games I played as a kid, or have I just not played enough computer games since going to college? Either way, those are the kinds of games I would like to see; extremely detailed Civilizations, SimLifes, SimCities and the like. Or hell, break out new things we could do these days with the computing power available. SimGovernment or SimEconomy or a game that involves training/building an artificial intelligence. If no one else gets on this, I'm going to have to think about doing this on my own.