Or rather, that in order to turn it into an enjoyable gaming experience, you'd have to water the scientific connections down into meaninglessness. There is also the fact that SimEarth is simply not a game. Will Wright pushed simulation toys that educated modern devs largely water down Will's ideas into simulation games that entertain. And there's nothing wrong with that - it is a business at the end of the day - but it leaves us in a sort of stagnation. Features are added, and the simulation made more complex, only insofar as it makes the playing experience more enjoyable. Unfortunately in modern game development, people approach these things from a "Gameplay First" perspective. Will Wright took his simulation models very seriously. For SimEarth, it was bringing on James Lovelock, the scientist who originally developed the Gaia Hypothesis on which the game is based. For SimAnt, it was Holldobler and Wilson's The Ants. Having just read through World Dynamics (one of the books, along with Urban Dynamics and Industrial Dynamics, that Wright used to structure his Sim City mechanics), I can say that Wright used a unique "Simulation first and gameplay second" approach back in the 80's and 90's. First and foremost, Will Wright is a damned genius.
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