ROMchip Presents: Building SimCity: A Conversation with Will Wright and Chaim Gingold

Join us Friday, July 19, as ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories hosts a conversation with game development legend Will Wright as he turns the tables and interviews Chaim Gingold, author of the new MIT Press book Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine, a deep dive into the trailblazing simulation game SimCity and its place in the history of games, simulation, and computing. The event will be at 2PM EDT on the ROMchip Twitch channel, https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal. Sign up for our newsletter to never miss an update.

About the Book
“One of the best origin stories ever told and the best account I've seen of how innovation actually occurs in computerdom." - Stewart Brand

Building SimCity explores the history of computer simulation by chronicling one of the most influential simulation games ever made: SimCity. As author Chaim Gingold explains, Will Wright, the visionary designer behind the urban planning game, created SimCity in part to learn about cities, thinking about the world as a complex system and appropriating ideas from traditions in which computers are used for modeling. As such, SimCity is a microcosm of the histories and cultures of computer simulation that engages with questions, themes, and representational techniques that reach back to the earliest computer simulations.

Gingold uses SimCity to explore a web of interrelated topics in the history of technology, software, and simulation, taking us far and wide—from the dawn of programmable computers to miniature cities made of construction paper and role-play. An unprecedented history of Maxis, the company founded to bring SimCity to market, the book reveals Maxis's complex relations with venture capitalists, Nintendo, and the Santa Fe Institute, which shaped the evolution of Will Wright's career; Maxis's failure to back The Sims to completion; and the company's sale to Electronic Arts.

A lavishly visual book, Building SimCity boasts a treasure trove of visual matter to help bring its wide-ranging subjects to life, including painstakingly crafted diagrams that explain SimCity's operation, the Kodachrome photographs taken by Charles Eames of schoolchildren making model cities, and Nintendo's manga-style “Dr. Wright” character design, just to name a few.

About Will Wright and Chaim Gingold
Will Wright is the renowned creative force behind groundbreaking simulation games such as SimCity, The Sims, Spore, SimEarth, and SimAnt. SimCity, released in 1989 by Maxis, the videogame developer-publisher cofounded by Wright, revolutionized the gaming industry and paved the way for The Sims (1999), one of the best-selling videogame series of all time. In 1991, “Dr. Wright” was awarded an honorary doctorate by Nintendo. Wright received a Lifetime Achievement award at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2001 and was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame in 2002. His latest project is Proxi, a game about bringing your subconscious to life.

Chaim Gingold began his career in videogame design apprenticed to Will Wright on Spore, where his chief accomplishment was designing the critically acclaimed Spore Creature Creator. His projects, like Earth: A Primer, a science book made of interactive toys, have been featured by Wired, CNN, and the New York Times. He is the author of Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine, which was recently published by MIT Press.

Praise for Building SimCity
“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

“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

“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

About ROMchip
ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories is a free, online scholarly journal for game history. ROMchip develops, edits, and publishes ad-free, open access game history research for a range of audiences. It supports any discipline of work enlivening the history of games in local and global contexts, and embraces diversity in how game history is studied, documented, collected, preserved, and practiced. ROMchip is a donation-based organization fiscally sponsored by The Hack Foundation (d.b.a. Hack Club), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN: 81-2908499).