Could online gaming help solve the problems of real cities in the future?
'Sand-box' games like 'Minecraft', 'Sim City' and 'Cities: Skylines' are starting to have a major impact on urban design by educating people about how to create sustainable cities.
Architect turned video game creator Jose Sanchez is behind a city-building computer game called Block'hood which features real city data, and encourages players to think ecologically, rather than economically.
In Block'hood, players build cities out of 80 preset block types, and are rewarded for creating diverse cities with ecological balance and community in mind, rather than things such as collecting taxes.
Sanchez and his game are the subject of a documentary which follows three gaming companies navigating the space where urban planning and gaming meet.
He says Minecraft is one of the most well-known examples of the ‘sand-box’ genre.
“What Minecraft did was blow out of proportion in a great way the power of players as creators…
“It really demonstrated that the audience was ready to not just be participants of a game…but rather participate in the creation of content and creating worlds,” he says.
He believes there is a new generation that is very hungry for that approach.
Mr Sanchez, who teaches at the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture in Los Angeles, says he has always had a passion for video games.
He describes his own game, 'Block'hood', as a “neighbourhood simulator”.
“It’s a game very focussed on ecology and notions of sustainability…you are trying to maintain an ecological balance between the different resources that are available to you.”
The game currently has close to 200 blocks, which he hopes will increase.
Sanchez says the game puts a lot of energy into creating what he calls different “urban currencies”.
“So we think of currencies like money, traditionally, like cash, but the game really considers anything like social capital…community points, or culture, to be currencies that could be shared and exchanged between the players.”
That doesn’t mean people have to create utopian neighbourhoods, he says.
“We have an attitude in the game which is not telling you what is right and what’s wrong but rather let you see what the consequences are of what you create,” he says.
Players can create very negative or polluted neighbourhoods but they will also see the impact of that.
One of the most interesting things about the game is that players communicate with each other, going to forums and sharing solutions, and creating a community, he says.
Sanchez says the audience is varied but most players will have some interest in architecture or city-planning.
But could the game be used to model sophisticated solutions to resolve real problems?
Sanchez says that’s the intention and the next step, after creating a community, is to turn the game into an educational tool and bridge the gap between reality and the gaming environment.
Games like Block’hood, Minecraft and Cities: Skylines are incentivising communities to create their own content.
“That’s a beautiful thing,” he says.
“Every time we do a game we are designing a model of how a city should be and we are not just replicating the economic models or the models that we currently have… we are kind of creating an imagination of how we should build cities.”
Gaming in the Real World screens at the Architecture and Design Film Festival in Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Christchurch through to July.
[h] Watch the trailer here:
