[SIGCIS-Members] New Book: Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine

[Chaim Gingold]

Dear SIGCIS,
I’m excited to announce the release of my new book, Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine <https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262547482/building-simcity/>, available today, as part of MIT Press’s Game Histories series.
The book delves deeply into SimCity, but ranges widely into the broader history of computer simulation, which is analyzed as a social and cultural practice. This approach to game history has a strong STS bent and is informed by the work of Michael Mahoney and many scholars from within the SIGCIS community.
Building SimCity includes histories of cellular automata and system dynamics (two simulation traditions SimCity liberally borrows from), studying the mechanisms by which simulation practices evolve and spread, and the ways in which simulation makers function as interdisciplinarians, brokering relationships between different communities and worldviews. SimCity, for instance, enabled Maxis to establish ties between the worlds of high science (like the Santa Fe Institute), education, popular culture (like Nintendo), enterprise business, venture capital, and more. As a result, Maxis titles (like SimAnt, SimEarth, and The Sims) refracted vanguard science, bringing esoteric topics such as complexity science, artificial life, and embodied cognition to popular audiences, while simultaneously advancing the agendas of its partners in capital and academia.
For those with US addresses, get a 30% discount today, June 4 (launch day), through Penguin Random House <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/744393/building-simcity-by-chaim-gingold-foreword-by-janet-h-murray/> with the code PUBDAY30. Afterwards, get 20% off with READMIT20.
Cheers,
Chaim

•••
“Much more than a book about SimCity, or even about video games, its large scope includes the invention of interactive computer graphics for simulations of all kinds, including the 'beyond reality' universes of games. Highly recommended!”
	— Alan Kay, winner of the 2003 ACM Turing Award

“I learned more about the history and practice of simulation from this book than I ever knew. While I was usually stuck in the trees when designing SimCity, Gingold rises above to see the entire forest."
	— Will Wright, designer of SimCity and The Sims; co-founder, Maxis

“Building SimCity tells the riveting and timely story of how the very unlikely idea of simulating cities became one of the most successful videogames of all times, tracing its origins back to the history of computing.”
	— Yasmin B. Kafai, Lori and Michael Milken President's Distinguished Professor, The University of Pennsylvania; coauthor of Connected Gaming: What Making Video Games Can Teach Us about Learning and Literacy

•••

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262547482/building-simcity/
Building SimCity
mitpress.mit.edu
•••

Table of Contents
Introduction: SimCity’s Mystique
Part I Simulation’s Grasp
	1  Building Imaginary Cities
	2  Simulation as Analogy
Part II Paving the Road to SimCity
	3  System Dynamics: A Society of Bits
	4  Cellular Automata: Synthesizing the Universe
	5  A Children’s Construction Set
Part III SimCity’s Architects
	6  Designing SimCity
	7  Maxis at the Crossroads
	8  How SimCity Works
	9  Playing SimCity
Conclusion: The World in a Machine

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