'SimCity' game rebuilt for age of climate change

Space Daily via AFP: Climate change is coming to SimCity. A new version of the city-building computer game that factors in real-world consequences of energy choices has won endorsements from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and the director of the Academy Award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

"We are updating SimCity with technology of today and introducing it to a new generation of gamers," Maxis studio senior vice president Lucy Bradshaw said at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. "It gets under your skin; exposes you to the idea of cause and effect and that choices you make have repercussions," she said.

Millions of people have played SimCity since the computer game designed by Will Wright was first released in 1989. The original title won a broad, devoted following and led to a successful franchise of "Sims" strategy games in which players manipulate worlds and animated characters in simulations of real life.

...Along with rich 3-D graphics, the game will have a new simulation engine that enhances its realism and extends ramifications of urban design decisions past borders to affect neighboring cities. "In 'SimCity' resources are finite, you struggle with decisions people are struggling with today in the real world and your decisions can have a global impact," Bradshaw said....

Scrambling for a photo, I found this: Sim City, 47-51 Shantung Street, Mong Kok, Kowloon, Hong Kong, shot by Dltl2010, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license