For the past several months I've been focused on strategy-based transport sims. While my main interest has been Locomotion, I've also had brief looks at Transport Tycoon (Deluxe and Patched), Railroad Tycoon, Transport Giant, and SimuTrans. My choice of Locomotion is at least in part a result of the excellent demo available for free download from the Atari web site. The demo gives a clear understanding of how the sim works and allows me to use the sim for limited time periods. What I want to say about strategy sims, however, is not limited to Locomotion, so the fact that I've been focusing on Locomotion is of little consequence.
First, let me dispel any idea that I have abandoned MSTS, Trainz, BVE, or any other sim that I have written about. The various sims - even those of similar purpose - are all unique and I love them all. None is truly perfect nor fully capable in all aspects, nor should we expect them to be. Each has its own reason for being and its own strengths and weaknesses. My purpose here is to point out the things that make Locomotion and its brethren interesting to me and why I've been able to zero in on them for so long and still think of them as fun and intriguing - not just something to write about.
In this and upcoming posts I plan to single out particluar aspects of the strategy sim genre that set it apart from other sims. Today, let's have a look at the most obvious thing that sets strategy sims apart from the others: MONEY.
Aside from any feelings or beliefs one might have about how society could or should work, money is a key element and it is here to stay. In a free economic society, free enterprise - success and failure in the market place - determines what gets built or made or created or performed, etc. (with some exceptions, thanks to amateurs and philanthropists). Thus, putting the economic factor at the center of a game is certainly a valid factor, especially for a simulation. It also has an educational component in that it identifies cause and effect.
The degree to which a simulation is valid depends on how realistic and how sophisticated the model is. Fortunately, the models are not overly realistic. If they were, we might find some of our transport systems meeting untimely deaths like the originals. From what I've seen so far - and that's admittedly limited - it has been possible to model systems that operated far more successfully than the originals. Then again, perhaps the simulation is suggesting that real people in real situations may have made the wrong decisions when viewed from a distant vantage point over greater timespans than were available to those real people making decisions based on short term, real factors. I'm thinking here of how successful my Locomotion tram systems are when compared to the reality here in America, where trams died out in all but a few cities only to be rediscovered (at great expense) decades later. (Of course, tram systems in Europe fared much better than those in America or the UK, and the game does not distinguish between countries.)
It does seem that the sims are based on principles more than reality. I'm happy with that, but it does leave open the possibility for creating sims that are historically based with the potential for examining alternative outcomes for alternative decisions. This would require a high degree of sophistication and enormous amounts of input, but it would still be interesting. Meanwhile, perhaps games with well designed principles will play some role in decision making when players find themselves in a position to act on principle.
Al
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