"Construction period: 2007-2009"
April 16, 2010 8:01 AM   Subscribe

"In Magnasanti the most advanced construction techniques were employed to achieve a near optimum population density configuration." Remarkable video of Sim City 3000, beaten.
posted by jbickers (80 comments total) 32 users marked this as a favorite
 
Saw this yesterday and it scared. the living. crap. out of me.
posted by pwally at 8:02 AM on April 16, 2010 [12 favorites]


My favorite inadvertently funny scene in A Beautiful Mind is where the wife finally enters the Crazy Shed with all the formula and news clippings and whatnot covering every available surface while the score composer put a heavy rock on the shocking musical cue key and made himself a sandwich. With all the graph paper planning, I picture this guy having something similar in whatever room his computer's in.
posted by Drastic at 8:06 AM on April 16, 2010 [6 favorites]


Carcetti The Imperar for Mayor!
posted by The White Hat at 8:07 AM on April 16, 2010 [1 favorite]


If you're an EA/Sim City developer, surely this video can only be properly viewed with a closed door and possibly a change of pants.
posted by pineapple at 8:09 AM on April 16, 2010 [1 favorite]


I can't watch the video because I'm at work, but does he tell us what the citizens are complaining about?
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 8:15 AM on April 16, 2010


It's quite an accomplishment. But I can't help wondering about its ultimate futility.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Shelley's Ozymandias should have lived in the Youtube era. His Works could have been preserved in time at the height of their greatness, for all eternity.
posted by zarq at 8:16 AM on April 16, 2010 [5 favorites]


I can't watch the video because I'm at work, but does he tell us what the citizens are complaining about?

There's 400 subway stations, so I'm gonna go with "socialism."
posted by contessa at 8:16 AM on April 16, 2010 [30 favorites]


I have Simcity on my iTouch. I will definitely try these weird roadless modules... Thanks for this post. Cool.
posted by ServSci at 8:16 AM on April 16, 2010


Six minutes of masturbation can be avoided by skipping to the interesting part.
posted by anthill at 8:18 AM on April 16, 2010 [2 favorites]


yeah, I wanted to snark pretty hard on the overly-epic soundtrack... but damn. This person claims to have spent several years optimising the hell out of the game. A Leni-Riefenstahl-esque YT video is fine by me.

this person should be the head of all departments of urban planning everywhere. More subways, please.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:22 AM on April 16, 2010


Maybe it's just me but I bet building a perfectly flat, radially-symmetric city would get pretty boring after a while.
posted by contessa at 8:24 AM on April 16, 2010 [3 favorites]


That right there...that's a lot of wankery for a sim city town. I shall give you the tl;dw version:

I AM AWESOME
I MADE THIS CITY VIA MICROMANAGEMENT
I AM AWESOME
AWESOME MEANS AWESOME
I AM WIN.
posted by TomMelee at 8:25 AM on April 16, 2010 [12 favorites]


I think this city is somewhere in Uqbar.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 8:25 AM on April 16, 2010 [11 favorites]


I love SimCity, but I've never understood the urge to build the biggest, most Borg-like city possible. Its like looking at a blank canvas and deciding that your goal, as an artist, is to get as much paint as possible on the canvas.

I've always tried to build with a sort of simulated historical randomness.

-
posted by General Tonic at 8:25 AM on April 16, 2010 [10 favorites]


but is it turing-complete
posted by polymodus at 8:27 AM on April 16, 2010 [4 favorites]


Also, I long for the day when all real cities are planned according to GEOMETRY INSPIRED BY THE WHEEL OF LIFE AND DEATH.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 8:29 AM on April 16, 2010 [26 favorites]


It's Milton Keynes!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:31 AM on April 16, 2010 [12 favorites]


A Thousand Baited Hooks: "Also, I long for the day when all real cities are planned according to GEOMETRY INSPIRED BY THE WHEEL OF LIFE AND DEATH."

Yeah, that was pretty phenomenal.
posted by pineapple at 8:32 AM on April 16, 2010 [1 favorite]


ALL THESE CITIES ARE YOURS EXCEPT MAGNASANTI. ATTEMPT NO FUN THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.
posted by geoff. at 8:32 AM on April 16, 2010 [12 favorites]


This guy has managed to take a game that has always wanted to be a vehicle for celebrating the beauty and charm of chaos and serendipity, and stripped it of everything that makes it fun and personable. I bet he dices his onion into exactly 1/4 inch pieces and seasons with exactly half a tablespoon of salt, too.
posted by Mizu at 8:32 AM on April 16, 2010 [6 favorites]


Worst use of soundtrack ever.

I think that's actually just what he hears in his head all the time...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:33 AM on April 16, 2010 [10 favorites]


STOP TOUCHING YOURSELF AND SHOW US SOME DAMN PICTURES OF YOUR CITY AND WHAT IS WITH THE MUSIC I MEAN IT'S FUCKING SIM CITY JESUS CHRIST

Anyways.

I once made a city in Sim City 3000 that had one road. One long, twisting in a perfect grid, never intersecting with itself road, which served every single part of the city.

Commute times were awful.
posted by gc at 8:33 AM on April 16, 2010 [28 favorites]


stripped it of everything that makes it fun and personable

True, but having 37 neighbouring libraries has really sped up the inter-library loan process.
posted by Adam_S at 8:40 AM on April 16, 2010 [16 favorites]


Am I the only one disturbed by the strange occult-ish imagery throughout this thing?
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 8:42 AM on April 16, 2010


I MADE THIS CITY VIA MICROMANAGEMENT

We built this city
We built this city
On micro-man-agement
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:46 AM on April 16, 2010 [21 favorites]


All this video proves is that spending 3 years mastering SimCity will obviously drive you insane.
posted by jlowen at 8:46 AM on April 16, 2010 [5 favorites]


I like the "PLANNING" animation that was first sloppy and messy, then in a flash was straightened out - but I had to laugh because THE NEW KERNING WAS HORRIBLE.
posted by scrowdid at 8:48 AM on April 16, 2010


It makes sense, really, that the person who is exceptionally weird enough to do this is exceptionally weird in in other ways such as making absurd youtube wankery and digging the occult.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 8:50 AM on April 16, 2010




stripped it of everything that makes it fun and personable

True, but having 37 neighbouring libraries has really sped up the inter-library loan process.


But they still steal the new DVDs.
posted by Splunge at 8:50 AM on April 16, 2010 [2 favorites]


Am I the only one disturbed by the strange occult-ish imagery throughout this thing?

It's a nice place to live. Very organized. But whatever you do, don't tell anyone you're a virgin.
posted by zarq at 8:51 AM on April 16, 2010


I spent some time with SC3k many years ago trying to figure out the perfect little modular designs in order to maximize happiness and land value and whatnot, and if I recall my solution included a lot of parks. As already stated, it really kind of eliminates the fun of the game when you try to "beat" it with the most efficient repetitive Borg designs. I didn't try anything like that when SimCity 4 came out.
posted by palidor at 8:52 AM on April 16, 2010 [1 favorite]


Subliminal Clown thinks this is all a hoax.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 8:53 AM on April 16, 2010 [1 favorite]


Am I the only one disturbed by the strange occult-ish imagery throughout this thing?

I think we've found the Navidson Record.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:55 AM on April 16, 2010 [6 favorites]


You know, when the "perfect" simulated city looks nothing like a "perfect" functional real-life city, that's a pretty good indicator that your simulator is flawed.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 8:59 AM on April 16, 2010 [3 favorites]


Micromanagement for absolute perfection - yawn. This man is playing anti-simcity.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:59 AM on April 16, 2010 [1 favorite]


Man, this is like scientists solving checkers. Why play anymore?

(I had a book about Simcity 2000 when I was a kid, and I replicated a city that was featured in it, which consisted of nine or sixteen sub-sections separated by trees and water that each had a road plan resembling a public school bathroom tile pattern. Kind of the child's play version of the city in the video. It was perfect and everyone was happy. I, usually far too concerned with order to ever summon a disaster upon my cities, destroyed the shit out of that place after not too long.)
posted by invitapriore at 9:01 AM on April 16, 2010 [2 favorites]


You know, when the "perfect" simulated city looks nothing like a "perfect" functional real-life city, that's a pretty good indicator that your simulator is flawed.

Yeah, the subway layout really hit me that way.
posted by invitapriore at 9:01 AM on April 16, 2010


I thought the graph paper drawings were the best part. I would love to have a notebook full of those. So awesome.
posted by adamdschneider at 9:04 AM on April 16, 2010


HEE HAW THIS GUY HAS TOO MUCH FREE TIME AND TOOK ALL THE MAGIC AND WONDER OUT OF IT NOW BACK TO THIS HILARIOUS PARODY OF AN 80S CARTOON
posted by Legomancer at 9:05 AM on April 16, 2010 [7 favorites]


See what you can accomplish when there are no women around to distract you?
posted by Quasimike at 9:05 AM on April 16, 2010 [7 favorites]


Also Master of Orion's simulation is flawed... who ever heard of an entire planet of farmers?
posted by ServSci at 9:06 AM on April 16, 2010


Next time someone asks what it is I really do as a city planner, I'm just going to send them a link to this video.
posted by gordie at 9:13 AM on April 16, 2010 [15 favorites]


Let me get this straight : a lot of you are complaining that he's playing a game, aka enjoying himself, "the wrong way?"

What a bunch of fucking idiots. There is no wrong way to HAVE fun, but there's lots of ways to kill it.
posted by absalom at 9:14 AM on April 16, 2010 [12 favorites]


I was hoping that its predecessor, Armadasanti, was named after Armand Assante. No such luck.
posted by nestor_makhno at 9:17 AM on April 16, 2010 [4 favorites]


I LOVE the SimCity games ... as in, they're really the only videogames I've played in the last 10 years (outside of Guitar Hero). SimCity 4 was awesome, but it was also totally disappointing because just a few *tiny* changes could have made it so much better.

Like, for instance, oh, I dunno ...

A GODDAMN "TRACK DEMAND" OPTION FOR THE MICROSIMULATORS!?!!?

Seriously. Is it supposed to be fun to go around to each and every one of my hospitals, one by one, every few minutes, just to move the damn slider so that supply keeps up with demand? How about a goddamn "track demand" option, so that supply increases (or decreases) along with demand? Oh, I know, this would rob us of the infinite fun and excitement of MOVING FUCKING SLIDERS. What a fucking loss.

Also? Let us turn off fires like we could in the original games. It's the least fun aspect of the entire game. Oooh, go around fighting fires. I DON'T CARE! It's a pain in the ass! I have to stop whatever I'm doing and fight the goddamn fire. NOT FUN.

Also, they really could have done a better job with the economic interplay between the cities. I thought that was such a good idea, being able to make cities that could interact with each other. But ultimately I thought the whole thing was pretty opaque and hard to manage.

Anyway, I guess there's no point in getting upset about it. They basically murdered the franchise with the last game (what was it, SimCity Communities or some shit?) And then moved on to the uber-disappointing Spore. Oh, why. Why oh why oh why can't they keep working on my favorite game?

But seriously, just that ONE change of having a "track demand" option. My god. I've thought of trying to learn Assembler just so I could make a patch that adds that change. What I wouldn't give......
posted by Afroblanco at 9:18 AM on April 16, 2010 [3 favorites]






I love SimCity, but I've never understood the urge to build the biggest, most Borg-like city possible. Its like looking at a blank canvas and deciding that your goal, as an artist, is to get as much paint as possible on the canvas.

I've always tried to build with a sort of simulated historical randomness.


Both me and my BF are huge Sim City 3k fans. I micro-manage by building Jane Jacobian towns and neighborhood, each with some little landmark or feature and make up little narratives for myself about how the college effects downtown and the little farm village on the edge being threatened by big fancy houses...he plays by building complete perfect grids and subway systems and considers himself "finished" when every square is filled and used the most effectively.

It's good we have other things in common.
posted by The Whelk at 9:23 AM on April 16, 2010 [6 favorites]


My favorite thing is that he doesn't seem to know about the concept of root words. I am guessing that either English is not his first language, or that he is home schooled, or he's seriously mentally ill (just based on the overall tone of the video), or all three.

He says armadasanti is a mix of arcosanti and armada-- at that the combination somehow means 'floating fortress city'. Sorry, 'arcosanti' is just the name of a housing development, and neither part of the word means 'city'. 'Arco' is derived from 'architecture' -- I assume Santi has to do with 'saint' or 'holy'

And armada has nothing to do with floating and just means 'fleet', or if you want to go further back 'arms'.

He says that magnasanti is based on 'magnanimous' but doesn't seem to know that magnum = 'great'

And Parasanti is based on 'paragon', but doesn't know that para- means 'besides' or 'abnormal'
posted by empath at 9:25 AM on April 16, 2010 [2 favorites]


He has another equally crazy video, btw.
posted by empath at 9:32 AM on April 16, 2010


Am I the only one disturbed by the strange occult-ish imagery throughout this thing?

Immanentizing the EAschaton, you say?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:36 AM on April 16, 2010 [6 favorites]


Unemployment is 10%, public health is 50%, no citizen survives to 60. Paradise!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:41 AM on April 16, 2010


Unemployment is 10%, public health is 50%, no citizen survives to 60. Paradise!

The 16x16 grid arrangement allows space for equidistant Carrousel ceremony arenas.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:47 AM on April 16, 2010 [14 favorites]


There is no wrong way to HAVE fun, but there's lots of ways to kill it.

Killing fun is my fun. Are you saying it's the wrong way to be having fun?
posted by everichon at 9:58 AM on April 16, 2010 [1 favorite]


End of Discussion Part I
posted by rlk at 10:07 AM on April 16, 2010 [8 favorites]


Discussion Part II
posted by rlk at 10:07 AM on April 16, 2010 [23 favorites]


Actually, now that I think about it, I may just start incorporating these ideas into my day to day professional planning life.

Irate Phonecall: I don't see how one new garage is going to ruin the whole neighborhood. It's my property!

Me: Yes, perhaps. But don't you feel it is a fatal hubris of mortals to presume insight into the grand revolutions of the wheel of life and death? Be gone.

Or maybe just play that apocalyptic music during the comment period of public meetings, and if things get too rowdy dim the lights, turn on Koyaanisqatsi, and quietly leave the room.

Okay. Back to work. This spanish armada inspired subdivision won't zone itself.
posted by gordie at 10:21 AM on April 16, 2010 [13 favorites]


SimCity 3 rules because of how insane you can make your utopias. While I never got quite this far, I did manage to make a city with no roads, consisting entirely of historical gleaming white pleasure palaces connected by subway stations.

But all my cities eventually degenerated into abandonment for no apparent reason. It drove me nuts until SimCity 4 came out.
posted by zvs at 10:32 AM on April 16, 2010


This guy has managed to take a game that has always wanted to be a vehicle for celebrating the beauty and charm of chaos and serendipity, and stripped it of everything that makes it fun and personable.

I am reminded of something I heard about the Sims once. Will Wright apparently wanted it to demonstrate some of the problems of materialism. You buy some stuff to make your Sim happier, but that means he needs a better job, so then he's got to buy more stuff to maintain the same level of happiness, and so on until you were supposed to have this house full of junk and an unhappy Sim who whines and then pees all over himself before collapsing in a huddle amidst golden statues and beautiful swimming pools. The message people got is that you can buy all this stuff for your Sim! In 10 different colors! Now get him a sweet couch! Awesome! Here's an expansion pack with 50 new kinds of chairs to buy!

I don't really know if the total failure of Wright's games to communicate these core messages makes him some sort of crackpot genius or someone whose naive ideas were doomed from the start, but it does make me think about him a little differently.
posted by Copronymus at 10:41 AM on April 16, 2010 [9 favorites]


This reminds me in a roundabout way of formalist art and the more tedious strains of techno and industrial music: impressive in a technical way, but mostly uninteresting and essentially joyless.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:00 AM on April 16, 2010 [1 favorite]


rlk: "Discussion Part II"
DISCUSSION IS DERIVED FROM "DISCUS" - A HURLED HEAVY FRISBEE - AND "ION" - MEANING A CHARGED PARTICLE. THEREFORE DISCUSSION TRANSLATES AS "A HIGHLY CHARGED THROWN SPINNING OBJECT."
posted by Drastic at 11:10 AM on April 16, 2010 [8 favorites]


Copronymus: The message people got is that you can buy all this stuff for your Sim!

The message I got was, as long as I can find a terminal to type "rosebud" into, I'll never have to worry about material want ever again.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 11:24 AM on April 16, 2010 [3 favorites]


METAFILTER: A HIGHLY CHARGED THROWN SPINNING OBJECT
posted by Rory Marinich at 11:36 AM on April 16, 2010


64 comments in and no Time Cube references yet? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 11:39 AM on April 16, 2010


The message people got is that you can buy all this stuff for your Sim! In 10 different colors! Now get him a sweet couch! Awesome! Here's an expansion pack with 50 new kinds of chairs to buy!

I look at The Sims as being nothing much more than a pretty detailed virtual doll house. I don't care about what my Sims want -- the important thing here is I have no throw rug that goes with that sofa!!

Anyway you can get much cooler content online, for free.
posted by contessa at 11:48 AM on April 16, 2010 [2 favorites]


If only real cities followed rational rules...they would be just as sterile and unlivable as Magnasanti.

Don't worry, Planners are working on it right now!
posted by Xoebe at 11:49 AM on April 16, 2010


It's funny how Sims players diverge. I know people who only play to build and furnish homes, people who only play to design clothes, and people who only play to torture and kill the little guys. The Sims 3 added a new group of players only want to create machinimations and upload them to YouTube. I'm the only person I know of who actually plays the game the way it was allegedly "intended."
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 12:31 PM on April 16, 2010 [1 favorite]


The Winsome Parker Lewis: "You know, when the "perfect" simulated city looks nothing like a "perfect" functional real-life city, that's a pretty good indicator that your simulator is flawed."

I've been to a lot of cities, not nearly all of them certainly, but enough to be skeptical that a real-life perfect city exists.

I really enjoy the idea of simulator games like Sim City, but as I play them I realize that I don't enjoy the reality of them quite as much. What I'd like to do one day is use GAs to generate "perfect" cities through automated trial and error. As long as there are enough steps for a human to look at one of the generated cities and go "wow, I really wouldn't want to live there - sorry little GA mongrel, you don't deserve to breed" eventually I assume that they could do a pretty good job.

Yeah so I want to write programs that play SimCity for me. I'm a really fun guy, I promise.
posted by vanar sena at 1:21 PM on April 16, 2010


empath: "And armada has nothing to do with floating and just means 'fleet', or if you want to go further back 'arms'."

Actually "armada" is just the feminine of the Spanish adjective "armado", meaning "armed". Armada is short for "flota armada", which means simply "armed fleet".
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:27 PM on April 16, 2010


Sheesh, I'm still trying to master Simcity for my Super Nintendo.
posted by Kilovolt at 1:37 PM on April 16, 2010


You know, when the "perfect" simulated city looks nothing like a "perfect" functional real-life city, that's a pretty good indicator that your simulator is flawed.

As others have noted, there isn't any perfect, functional, real life city. But there is always some megalomaniac that keeps trying. Le Corbusier wanted to tear down Paris and build a planned community. The parallels between Magnasanti and some of these plans scare me. I think these sorts of cities should be called Megalosanti. That actually seems like a fitting tribute to anything following in the footsteps of Paolo Soleri.
posted by charlie don't surf at 2:02 PM on April 16, 2010 [2 favorites]


Did you guys know that Washington D.C. is modeled after a pentagram? It's true!
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 2:55 PM on April 16, 2010


Did you guys know that Washington D.C. LONDON is modeled after a pentagram? It's true!
posted by shakespeherian at 3:00 PM on April 16, 2010


My favorite part of the Sims was letting time go at normal speed while my Sim was off at work. Maximum relaxation.
posted by invitapriore at 3:07 PM on April 16, 2010


Never played Sim City 3000 because I never had a computer that would run it, and then I just sort of...forgot. But now I have remembered. Only now I see this Sim City 4 nonsense as well. Which is more good?
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:37 PM on April 16, 2010


4 in my opinion, fixes a lot of the annoying problems of 3 and is just ...just tons prettier.
posted by The Whelk at 5:38 PM on April 16, 2010 [3 favorites]


Hummm. Looks like my little laptop just barely scrapes over the "Minimum Specs" line for 4. Hopefully there's some tweakage that can be done. Twenty bucks for a copy of the Deluxe edition from Gametraders though so worth a shot. Thanks. I hope I can find some skins online to make all the little people nude.
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:45 PM on April 16, 2010


SimCity 4: Rush Hour Edition, with the free, fan-made Network Addon Mod is the best you can get. The NAM adds a bunch of extra transportation elements and subtly improves the pathfinding engine.

You can see some beautiful SC4 cities at Simtropolis. Some of the creations are as insanely thought-over as one of those huge model-train sets guys built in their basements.

-
posted by General Tonic at 6:55 PM on April 16, 2010 [4 favorites]


I don't know about you, but I dream daily of having that kind of discipline and follow-through on anything.
posted by Student of Man at 9:51 PM on April 17, 2010


'Magnasanti' is slang for 'Magnanimous Arcological Santi'. Originally designed by the twisted genius of Imperar Omnika, the artist/architect proclaimed it a reactionary response to the earthy, vibrant metropolises of his day. No one really knows what this means, and many city planners are frankly baffled at how the thing stays populated. Inside, the impossibly straight avenues demarcate eerie, identical city blocks that endlessly repeat themselves. There are rumors that a strange sub-species of man inhabits the subways. Magnasanti costs three years of your life and can attract up to six million soulless souls.
posted by Rhaomi at 3:58 AM on April 18, 2010 [1 favorite]




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