My suspicion is San Francisco would love a Beijing-style hukou system. That lets it lock housing (and thus the built character of the city) and control immigration which in turn should result in stable housing prices provided units don't go out of use or residents don't have too many children.
Reminds me of that Factorio joke mod which adds bureaucracy-processing as a recipe tree. Assemblers start to shut down if you don't process paperwork fast enough. IIRC, it had biters following the player around in queues to give them complaint forms.
> Every rule, vote count and case in this game is drawn from the public record. Sources are in docs/research/ in the project folder. Neighborhood politics scores and the economics are simplified for play.
Nice, I'm happy to hear that, Claude. This kind of silly game is supposed to help you understand a complex issue in a fun way. But this is missing the plot entirely. Why is this so overwhelmingly complex? Why would I spend time learning this ugly, convoluted and verbose UI? Who is this for??
This runs into the reality that the game maker knows who his target audience is, but you don't. If he wants to make a spreadsheet simulator or something targeted at people who like complex interfaces he can do that. I point at ASCII-UI Dwarf Fortress, one of the great games of this century, as evidence that a game does not need to be accessible to be true art.
It is frustrating to be excluded when a game developer builds a game that looks interesting but targets a niche you don't fit in.
Also those https://research.wmz.ninja/projects/phd/index.html style games are a bit vapid. At any moment a person has more than a handful of choices and the simplification abstracts away the important ones, like ranking what ideas are important or changing strategies for idea generation in this one.
These people should, instead of posting the game, just post a video of them playing through the game, as most people have no interest in playing other’s slop but may just be curious to watch someone play and provide comedic value.
...I enjoyed playing it. It's silly. But it's in a similar category as "Papers, Please." It's not like it's stressful, there is just a bunch of random diabolus ex nihilo crap flying at you, which isn't particularly unusual in a game.
You've completely missed what my comment was trying to convey. If it's throwaway, why is it so damn complex to play? I've seen AAA games with less features.
For equal feature sets, sure. But what I'm saying, and what you also missed, is that this game should have never been this complex in the first place. This complexity is doing a huge disservice to the message it's trying to convey.
There's no reason a "housing crisis" game couldn't have been done like that, with simple choices and immediate reactions. A game that respects the player's time, is easy to pick up and makes the point effectively.
Any simplification hides real problems and takes away from the point. Even your desire for simple choices and immediate reactions elides the fact that not every policy decision has visible short term effects. Some are only visibly beneficial or harmful in the long run, and may not end up that way depending on other decisions.
That game is more of an idle / clicker game, and while I quite enjoyed the one from a few months ago about being a SWE in SF, the shtick wears thin quickly especially if you’re not in the niche that identifies with all the in-jokes.
Eh, your example is a different kind of game. Not into linear choose-your-own-adventure games myself. I think the UI of this one accurately models the many moving parts and forces in the process it's simulating, and I didn't have a problem picking it up though I skipped the tutorial. It has a sense of humor (read the speaker comments at meetings, and the news articles), and hits you with the real world outcome each development is based on. Made an impact on me.
I imagined something more like a sim city clone where every time you try to put down a building or zone, it’s refused with a pop up message saying why. Let me prompt that out brb
Some context, because it is definitely an insider joke.
Davis had a long and contentious civic debate on whether or not Target should be allowed to build a store in Davis, eventually Davis held a city wide vote on the matter, which did pass [1].
Davis voters reject Measure V, spiking plans to build Village Farms housing [2].
Just a couple of examples where growth that most cities would approve without thought became a city wide civic issue that the community actually voted on.
Something definitely changed around the dot com crash. The channels I slummed around in of EFNet went from excited hacker archetypes to the same people doing jobs I was am in retrospect surprised about [0]
[0] - Im general, emulator devs working for bigger corporations. But most specifically one that wound up doing stuff around customs intrediction tech, major shift from their pre emulation work.
I play games like Civilization and we get these tech trees and policy trees and such. And I can never help but wonder what it would be like to play these when the people of the territory act like Americans. You try to incentivize future technology and they push back. You try and prioritize education and they push back. There is always division and infighting.
Regardless, I don't think it would actually make the game more fun.
I mean that's kinda how Civ works already. Some civs get bonuses for education & research, others in combat, etc, and focusing on the things incompatible with your civ will "punish" you.
It sounds like you just don't agree with how they've implemented America lol.
What would prioritizing education mean in Civilization? The game's model is fairly simple:
1. There are three resources: food, industrial production, and commercial activity;
2. As the player, you can divide commercial activity between three categories: research, state revenue, and local "luxuries", which in this context just means tax relief;
3. Scientific progress occurs when you've produced enough research to learn a new technology;
4. The only appearance of "education" anywhere in the game is that there is an expensive building called a "university" that increases local production of research. (The predecessor building with the same effect at a lower cost is the "library".)
On the other hand, "there is always division and infighting" is one of the most important and fundamental mechanics in the game; if your city grows beyond a quite small population cap, new citizens are automatically unhappy and will shut down the whole city unless pacified somehow.
On one hand, we have opposition to industrialization and the green revolution.
On the other hand, we have Greenwich Village pushing back on being razed for a highway.
Defining "progress" is fundamentally a value judgement. In one era, undeveloped land was opportunity for progress. Today, turning developed land into parks can be seen the same way.
You know, if an old city with a natural boundary doesn’t think you should build a bunch of profitable crap in it, maybe you could take the hint and stop acting like you’re bringing Jesus to them. San Francisco’s seen the conquistadors. In fact, many of the streets in the Sunset are named after them.
Locked supply. Affordable housing. Growing standards of living (or population). Pick two.
If you lock supply and want taxes and wages to grow, you're choosing unaffordable housing. That's San Francisco's current policy choice. Over decades, it filters the poor to San Francisco's "outer boroughs" or onto its streets.
For what it's worth, my friends who lived in San Francisco "took the hint" and moved out when they chose to have kids. They didn't sell their place, however, since the above policy mix together with California's property-tax system strongly disincentivizes that.
I haven't played OP's game but hopefully it accurately models the plummetting quality of life and rampant homelessness created by doing what you describe in the real world.
I remember before COVID I was debating with a friend of mine whether or not private property is justifiable and it's ironic that the discussion was made obsolete by nobody being able to afford private property anymore
I mean, stopping housing construction hasn’t stopped the new money from pushing out the old soul. Given the US enshrines the free movement of people in the Constitution, it’s make room or have someone outbid you for yours.
It is possible to grow in a pleasant way without mallification, seems like a lot of projecting. And it’s not like the current approach is preventing that; insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I started something similar as a meme game, but I'm just too busy to keep working on it: Data centre slumlord - https://binary-mirror.itch.io/data-centre-slumlord
> Every rule, vote count and case in this game is drawn from the public record. Sources are in docs/research/ in the project folder. Neighborhood politics scores and the economics are simplified for play.
Nice, I'm happy to hear that, Claude. This kind of silly game is supposed to help you understand a complex issue in a fun way. But this is missing the plot entirely. Why is this so overwhelmingly complex? Why would I spend time learning this ugly, convoluted and verbose UI? Who is this for??
EDIT: I'll link to an example of what I think this game should have been: https://research.wmz.ninja/projects/phd/index.html
A game made with intent, that is easy to pick up, respects its player's time, and makes its point effectively.
My guess is that's the point - now you understand how San Francisco property developers feel.
It is frustrating to be excluded when a game developer builds a game that looks interesting but targets a niche you don't fit in.
Also those https://research.wmz.ninja/projects/phd/index.html style games are a bit vapid. At any moment a person has more than a handful of choices and the simplification abstracts away the important ones, like ranking what ideas are important or changing strategies for idea generation in this one.
Like most vibe coded projects, it is for the person who created it. And usually only them.
There's no reason a "housing crisis" game couldn't have been done like that, with simple choices and immediate reactions. A game that respects the player's time, is easy to pick up and makes the point effectively.
Tell me you never played the old TUI dwarf fortress without telling me.
Davis had a long and contentious civic debate on whether or not Target should be allowed to build a store in Davis, eventually Davis held a city wide vote on the matter, which did pass [1].
Davis voters reject Measure V, spiking plans to build Village Farms housing [2].
Just a couple of examples where growth that most cities would approve without thought became a city wide civic issue that the community actually voted on.
[1] https://localwiki.org/davis/Target/History [2] https://www.abridged.org/news/davis-measure-v-election-updat...
Something definitely changed around the dot com crash. The channels I slummed around in of EFNet went from excited hacker archetypes to the same people doing jobs I was am in retrospect surprised about [0]
[0] - Im general, emulator devs working for bigger corporations. But most specifically one that wound up doing stuff around customs intrediction tech, major shift from their pre emulation work.
Regardless, I don't think it would actually make the game more fun.
It sounds like you just don't agree with how they've implemented America lol.
1. There are three resources: food, industrial production, and commercial activity;
2. As the player, you can divide commercial activity between three categories: research, state revenue, and local "luxuries", which in this context just means tax relief;
3. Scientific progress occurs when you've produced enough research to learn a new technology;
4. The only appearance of "education" anywhere in the game is that there is an expensive building called a "university" that increases local production of research. (The predecessor building with the same effect at a lower cost is the "library".)
On the other hand, "there is always division and infighting" is one of the most important and fundamental mechanics in the game; if your city grows beyond a quite small population cap, new citizens are automatically unhappy and will shut down the whole city unless pacified somehow.
Why call out Americans like that? Do you think America is some homogenous entity?
On one hand, we have opposition to industrialization and the green revolution.
On the other hand, we have Greenwich Village pushing back on being razed for a highway.
Defining "progress" is fundamentally a value judgement. In one era, undeveloped land was opportunity for progress. Today, turning developed land into parks can be seen the same way.
Locked supply. Affordable housing. Growing standards of living (or population). Pick two.
If you lock supply and want taxes and wages to grow, you're choosing unaffordable housing. That's San Francisco's current policy choice. Over decades, it filters the poor to San Francisco's "outer boroughs" or onto its streets.
For what it's worth, my friends who lived in San Francisco "took the hint" and moved out when they chose to have kids. They didn't sell their place, however, since the above policy mix together with California's property-tax system strongly disincentivizes that.
I haven't played OP's game but hopefully it accurately models the plummetting quality of life and rampant homelessness created by doing what you describe in the real world.