another.intheuniverse

You know, I just crossed my paths with a video that… kinda scared me. The video showed how to build a city that –according to game rules– was the perfect city. Of course, there were some problems.

Here is the video.

Awesome? Magnificent? Creative, at least? I don’t know. Maybe. But regardless, there is a great caveat in all this.

Yes, he achieved the perfect city by the game boundaries. But if we took this city to, let’s say, a real scenario… Quoting the creator itself:

There are a lot of other problems in the city hidden under the illusion of order and greatness: Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle – this is the price that these Sims pay for living in the city with the highest population. It’s a sick and twisted goal to strive towards. The ironic thing about it is the Sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don’t rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time.

Scary stuff.

We could lose all day talking about what he did, but let me stress the following:

• Achieving perfection through limiting itself to the rules, it’s clearly not the best way to achieve it.
• I’m also wondering if this could be a first try to build a feasible robot-populated city
• He is 22 years old as of date. He is not autistic.

Wonderful and quite scary at the same time.

Sources: [1], [2]