Pitch a game to 1980s executives with no boss fights, no high scores, no end state, and no way to win or lose, and you sound like you are trying to bankrupt a studio. Yet that pitch created a genre and shaped how a generation of politicians, planners, and architects see cities. This episode unpacks the history, mathematical controversies, and corporate downfall of SimCity, beginning in 1985 when Will Wright found the map editor for his helicopter game Raid on Bungeling Bay more fun than the combat. Inspired by Stanislaw Lem's story The Seventh Sally, he prototyped Micropolis for the Commodore 64, was rejected by publishers who called it a software toy, and formed Maxis with Jeff Braun before Broderbund finally released it in 1989.

The hosts break down the residential, commercial, and industrial zoning loop, the tax equilibrium, the purpose  ...