I’ve mentioned before that I came to gaming backwards – discovered it as an adult, then worked my way through gaming history. But there’s one series that’s been with me almost from the beginning of my gaming journey, and honestly, it probably shaped how I think about my day job more than any other game. SimCity hit me different than everything else, you know? Most games I was catching up on, experiencing for the first time as a middle-aged guy. But city builders? Man, they spoke to something I already understood.
See, I’ve been managing construction crews for decades. You’ve got budgets, schedules, resource allocation, making sure the electrical work doesn’t interfere with the plumbing, keeping everyone happy while still getting the job done. When my daughter first showed me SimCity 2000 back in 2011 – she was trying to get me into more games after I’d gotten hooked on Super Metroid – I took one look at that isometric city grid and thought, “This is just project management with better graphics.”
That first session lasted until 3 AM. I kept telling myself I’d stop after I figured out this traffic problem, then after I balanced the budget, then after I dealt with the water shortage… Jennifer found me the next morning still hunched over her laptop, surrounded by empty coffee cups and scratch paper covered with zoning diagrams. “Dad, you know it saves automatically, right?” she said. I didn’t know. Had been playing for eight hours straight without taking a break.
The thing about coming to SimCity without nostalgia is you immediately see it for what it really is – a systems management simulator dressed up as a game. All those little Sims driving around aren’t just cute animations, they’re data points in a complex economic model. Every road placement affects traffic flow. Every zoning decision impacts property values. It’s basically running a small business, except when you screw up, nobody actually gets laid off.
I started with SimCity 2000 because that’s what Jennifer had, but I quickly worked backwards through the series. Found the original on some retro gaming site, played it on an emulator. The SNES version was interesting – Nintendo had added some nice touches, like that Mr. Wright advisor character who’d pop up with suggestions. But honestly? The graphics and interface felt limiting after experiencing the more advanced versions first. It’s like going from power tools back to hand tools – you can still build something, but why would you want to?
SimCity 3000 became my obsession for about six months. Added garbage management, which sounds boring but actually created this whole new layer of long-term planning. You could ship waste to neighboring cities for a fee, but they’d eventually refuse if you were dumping too much. Had to balance landfills (cheap upfront, permanent pollution) against waste-to-energy plants (expensive but cleaner). Reminded me of jobsite waste management, actually – you can cut corners short-term, but it always costs you more eventually.
My first major city in 3000 was called Riverside – I’m terrible at naming things, always go with the obvious choice. Built it along this natural river system, tried to work with the terrain instead of against it. Took forever to develop because I kept stopping to research actual urban planning principles online. Started reading about zoning laws, traffic engineering, municipal budgeting. Jennifer thought I’d lost my mind. “It’s just a game, Dad.” But I was learning things that actually connected to my work, seeing patterns that applied to real-world project management.
The disasters were always my guilty pleasure. You’d spend dozens of hours carefully crafting this perfect city, then… earthquake. Tornado. UFO attack – yeah, SimCity got weird sometimes. First time a tornado ripped through my downtown district, I was genuinely upset. All that work, gone in thirty seconds. But then I started rebuilding, and realized the fun wasn’t just in building – it was in adapting, responding to problems, making things better than they were before. That’s construction work in a nutshell, actually. Something always goes wrong, and your job is to figure out how to fix it.
SimCity 4 was the peak for me. Came out in 2003, but I didn’t play it until 2012 or so. The region system blew my mind – you could build multiple connected cities, each with specialized economies. One focused on manufacturing, another on education, a third as residential suburbs. Just like real metropolitan areas, except you controlled all of them. I spent an entire winter building out this region of six interconnected cities, each with its own character and economic focus.
The traffic simulation in 4 was incredibly detailed. Every Sim had a specific job and commute route. You could follow individual cars as they navigated your road network, see exactly where bottlenecks formed. I became obsessed with highway interchange design, spent hours crafting these elaborate cloverleaf patterns that would make a real traffic engineer proud. My crew at work started joking about it – “Tim’s designing roads in his spare time now, guys. Pretty sure he’s finally lost it.”
But here’s the thing – those traffic management skills actually helped at work. Started thinking about material flow around jobsites differently. Where we placed the concrete truck, how workers moved between tasks, scheduling deliveries to avoid congestion. Same principles, different scale. SimCity was teaching me systems thinking without me realizing it.
The budget management was probably the most realistic part. Never enough money for everything you wanted to build. Had to prioritize, decide whether to invest in schools (long-term economic growth) or transportation (immediate traffic relief). Set tax rates too high, businesses and residents would leave. Too low, couldn’t fund essential services. Sound familiar? It’s exactly like running a construction company, except in SimCity the bank won’t foreclose on your house if you miscalculate.
I made some spectacular failures. Built this massive metropolis called Millfield – again with the obvious names – that was growing beautifully until I decided to save money by cutting fire department funding. “Haven’t had a fire in months,” I reasoned. Three days later, industrial fire spreads to half the city. Lost about 200,000 population and went from budget surplus to massive debt in one disaster. Lesson learned – emergency preparedness isn’t optional, it’s insurance.
The 2013 SimCity reboot was… controversial. Always-online DRM, tiny city sizes, launch problems that made it unplayable for weeks. A lot of longtime fans hated it, but I actually appreciated some of the innovations. The economic specialization was more detailed – you could build a city focused entirely on electronics manufacturing or casino tourism. Each choice created different challenges and opportunities. Plus, the graphics were gorgeous. Watching tiny Sims go about their daily routines never got old.
Cities: Skylines has mostly taken over the city builder throne now, and for good reason. It’s what SimCity should have become – bigger cities, better modding support, more realistic simulation. I’ve put hundreds of hours into it, built some truly massive metropolitan areas. But I still fire up the older SimCity games sometimes, especially 4. They feel like visiting old friends.
What’s funny is how this hobby has affected my perspective on real cities. Can’t drive through Denver anymore without mentally redesigning the highway system. See a traffic jam and think, “They need better highway ramps here.” Notice how residential areas develop around shopping centers, how industrial zones cluster near transportation hubs. SimCity taught me to see cities as systems rather than just collections of buildings.
My crew thinks it’s hilarious that their foreman plays city building games in his spare time. “Don’t you get enough of managing construction projects at work?” Maybe, but there’s something satisfying about building something perfect in SimCity, where weather delays don’t exist and permits get approved instantly. It’s like the idealized version of what I do for a living.
Recently introduced my neighbor’s kid to Cities: Skylines. He’s twelve, same age as my gaming habit, and watching him discover these same principles has been entertaining. Builds roads everywhere with no regard for budget or efficiency, then wonders why his city’s going broke. Reminds me of my early SimCity mistakes – thinking more roads always solve traffic problems, ignoring the relationship between taxation and services. He’ll figure it out.
The thing about city builders that keeps me coming back is the long-term thinking they require. Actions you take early in development don’t show results for hours of gameplay. Build schools and universities, but it takes time for education levels to improve and attract high-tech industry. Invest in parks and culture, property values gradually increase. It’s planning several steps ahead, considering secondary and tertiary effects of decisions.
That’s probably why SimCity clicked for me when other game genres didn’t initially. It matches how I already think about work projects – what needs to happen first, what depends on what, how changes in one area affect everything else. When you’re coordinating multiple trades on a construction site, it’s the same kind of systems thinking, just with different variables.
Still playing city builders regularly, though I’ve branched out beyond SimCity. Anno series for the economic complexity, Tropico for the political elements, even mobile city builders for quick sessions during lunch breaks. But SimCity remains the gold standard – the series that taught me it’s possible for a game to be both entertaining and educational without being boring.
Sometimes I wonder what my relationship with gaming would have been like if I’d discovered these games as a kid instead of at forty. Would I have ended up in urban planning instead of construction? Probably not – growing up in rural Wyoming, city planning wasn’t exactly a visible career option. But it’s interesting to think about alternative timelines, especially when you’re reshaping digital landscapes that exist only in pixels and algorithms.
That’s the beauty of coming to games late, though. You bring different perspectives, see connections that maybe aren’t obvious if you’re just playing for fun. SimCity became more than entertainment for me – it was a lens for understanding systems, budgets, long-term planning. Skills that transferred directly to real-world applications. Not bad for a game about building pretend cities.
Timothy discovered retro gaming at forty and never looked back. A construction foreman by day and collector by night, he writes from a fresh, nostalgia-free angle—exploring classic games with adult curiosity, honest takes, and zero childhood bias.
