I like my video games to say something. Depending on the type of game this takes different forms. A linear or mostly linear game tells a narrative. Strategy games and city builders say things through their mechanics. All of the cause and effect loops are designed by the developer and good games design their systems in such a way that the mechanics say something about how the world is, was or ought to be.
I recently read Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs. Jacobs describes cities as the basis of economies and cities grow by replacing imports. The import replacing process is slow but over time builds up a city's economy.
A city starts by importing a widget. Over time the widget degrades and widget sub-components need to be replaced. The city starts making the sub-widgets to meet the repair demand because it is easier or cheaper that importing sub-widgets. As more and more sub-components are made in the city eventually the building blocks of manufacturing the widget itself are there to start widget production.
The cities widgets are consumed locally thus replacing the imported widgets. The new widget supply chain in the city is economic activity that didn't exist before but the local infrastructure had to be built up gradually. The city needed to have a basis for how to manufacture the sub-components before building the widget itself.
Surviving Mars present the idea of the city's economic power through import replacing in a way I have not seen in any other city builder. At the beginning of the game every resource has to be imported. Terra is the only place to get machine parts and electronics. Drones and rovers, necessary for the colonies survival, are also imported from Terra and are large and expensive to ship.
Over time however the building blocks are formed. Local metal is transformed into machine parts, rare metals are transformed into electronics and local water is transformed into fuel and polymers. With all of these imports replaced the colony can afford to build its own drones and rovers. Between the cost of the resources themselves and the cost of shipping the resources to Mars it isn't economically viable to build drones and rovers on Mars with imported electronics. The electronics industry replaces electronics imports and acts as the building block to replace the import of drones and rovers.
Through this entire import replacing process economic activity is being built locally. Where before there were no jobs at all (due to the nature of colonizing a barren world) at the end of the chain their are hundreds of jobs in producing power, mining metal and rare metals, creating local electronics and finally building the complex products of drones and rovers.
Bravo Haemimont for using the mechanics of Surviving Mars to say something about the development of economic wealth in cities!
I recently read Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs. Jacobs describes cities as the basis of economies and cities grow by replacing imports. The import replacing process is slow but over time builds up a city's economy.
A city starts by importing a widget. Over time the widget degrades and widget sub-components need to be replaced. The city starts making the sub-widgets to meet the repair demand because it is easier or cheaper that importing sub-widgets. As more and more sub-components are made in the city eventually the building blocks of manufacturing the widget itself are there to start widget production.
The cities widgets are consumed locally thus replacing the imported widgets. The new widget supply chain in the city is economic activity that didn't exist before but the local infrastructure had to be built up gradually. The city needed to have a basis for how to manufacture the sub-components before building the widget itself.
Surviving Mars present the idea of the city's economic power through import replacing in a way I have not seen in any other city builder. At the beginning of the game every resource has to be imported. Terra is the only place to get machine parts and electronics. Drones and rovers, necessary for the colonies survival, are also imported from Terra and are large and expensive to ship.
Over time however the building blocks are formed. Local metal is transformed into machine parts, rare metals are transformed into electronics and local water is transformed into fuel and polymers. With all of these imports replaced the colony can afford to build its own drones and rovers. Between the cost of the resources themselves and the cost of shipping the resources to Mars it isn't economically viable to build drones and rovers on Mars with imported electronics. The electronics industry replaces electronics imports and acts as the building block to replace the import of drones and rovers.
Through this entire import replacing process economic activity is being built locally. Where before there were no jobs at all (due to the nature of colonizing a barren world) at the end of the chain their are hundreds of jobs in producing power, mining metal and rare metals, creating local electronics and finally building the complex products of drones and rovers.
Bravo Haemimont for using the mechanics of Surviving Mars to say something about the development of economic wealth in cities!