The Orthogonal Bet: SimCity, Maxis and the ambitious modeling of everything

The Orthogonal Bet is an ongoing miniseries of the Riskgaming podcast that explores the unconventional ideas and delightful patterns that shape our world hosted by Samuel Arbesman, complexity scientist, author, and Scientist-in-Residence at Lux Capital.

In this episode, Sam speaks with game designer and researcher Chaim Gingold, the author of the fantastic new book Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine.

As is probably clear from the title, this new book is about the creation of SimCity, but it’s also about much more than that: it’s about the deep prehistory and ideas that went into the game — from system dynamics to cellular automata — as well as a broader history of Maxis, the company behind SimCity. Chaim previously worked with SimCity’s creator Will Wright on the game Spore, where he designed the Spore Creature Creator. Because of this, Chaim’s deep knowledge of Maxis, his access to the folks there, and his excitement about SimCity and everything around it makes him the perfect person to have written this book.

In this episode, Sam and Chaim discuss Chaim’s experience at Maxis, the uniqueness of SimCity, early 90’s gaming, the rise and fall of Maxis, Will Wright and his role translating scientific ideas for a general audience, and much more.

Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christopher Gates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Ko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & Suno