Similarly, if we make maximizing profits as the absolute objective, we fail to take into consideration the social and environmental consequences.” “It shows that by only focusing on one objective, one may end up neglecting, or resorting to sacrificing, other important elements. I could have enacted several health ordinances which would have increased the life expectancy, but I decided not to for practical reasons,” Ocasla explained to VICE. “Health of the sims was not a priority, relative to the main objective. It contains no public resources like schools or hospitals. To achieve his goal, Ocasla created a world that, on closer inspection, is a living nightmare for its citizens. “But it wouldn't be the same as doing it in the game, because I wanted to magnify the unbelievably sick ambitions of egotistical political dictators, ruling elites and downright insane architects, urban planners, and social engineers.” “I could probably have done something similar - depicting the awesome regimentation and brutality of our society - with a series of paintings on a canvas, or through hideous architectural models,” he told VICE in 2009. Ocasla was clear from the onset about his intentions. To be clear, this isn’t pretentious retcon projecting on my part. It’s a dense and brutal world, perfectly efficient and optimized, with no considerations for the human lives within it. Magnasanti takes this goal to its natural, hellish conclusion. To build that futuristic biodome bubble in the sky, you’re gonna need money, pal. While the player is encouraged to do whatever they want, unless cheats are deployed, the growth-based objective always lingers unavoidably in the background. One of the implicit goals of SimCity is perpetual growth - of populations, of building zones, of profitability. Rather, it’s a brilliant work of digital art that is critical of the pursuit of relentless growth. Similarly, Magnasanti isn’t just a weird novelty created by an obsessive video game nerd, though it’s often misinterpreted as such. The Sims was ultimately intended to be a subtle “parody of consumerism.” As Wright explained to The New Yorker, “if you sit there and build a big mansion that’s all full of stuff, without cheating, you realize that all these objects end up sucking up all your time, when they had been promising to save you time.” Imagine if someone clone-stamped Manhattan’s drably foreboding multi-block Stuy Town development, and pasted it across the entire Tri-State area, crushing all trees, animals, and joy in its path. There’s a circle in the center of the map, inspired by the Buddhist bhavacakra. From above, enormous towers fill the entire screen, blending together in repeating patterns like a concrete magic eye puzzle. Magnasanti is stunning to look at, its scale troubling. He called his creation Magnasanti, derived from the word “magnitude.” Design and construction of the final version of his masterwork was completed in 2009. He created a number of different experiment cities in-game, to work out his master theories. He began planning his supercity in 2006 in his spare time, drawing mandala-esque shapes on graph paper, surrounded them with dense calculations. It was beautiful and horrifying.Įspecially so, because “beating” SimCity 3000 is an impossible feat: The open-ended game, free of any clear-cut, top-down goals, can’t technically be beaten. He painstakingly designed, without the aid of cheats, a city so complex and densely populated that it rendered all future attempts at SimCity pointless. What happened was a 22-year-old architecture student in the Philippines named Vincent Ocasla achieved gaming perfection. At least, that’s how articles on the internet described it at the time. In 2010, some random guy on the internet beat SimCity 3000.
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