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DISTINGUISHING FEATURES City building games differ from other computer and video game genre titles in that:
Players must fulfill the needs and wants of the citizens by initiating structures for food, water, shelter, employment, health, security, spiritual care and economic growth. Success is achieved when the city budget makes a growing profit and citizens experience an upgraded lifestyle (basic and luxury needs met; appealing environment achieved, including low pollution and high aesthetics). While military development is often included, the emphasis is on economic strength. ESTABLISHMENT AND EVOLUTION AS A GENRE The city building game genre was established in 1989 with '' SimCity '', which emphasized continuous building versus competing to win and "blowing stuff up". Players followed personal preferences in design and growth. Indicators of success were maintaining positive budget balance and citizen satisfaction. Subsequent ''SimCity'' titles soon followed when high sales of the game demonstrated its popularity. The first sim game, Utopia (1982) covered many of these same elements, but the primitive screen resolutions of its era meant that it displayed two islands because the detail necessary to show cities was not possible. Unlike the thousands of individual spaces possible a few years later in ''SimCity'', each island held approximately 16 "buildable" spaces for schools, factories, etc. The players' score was based on the well-being of their people. A second boost in genre popularity came in 1993 with the publishing of '' Caesar '', which modeled cities in Ancient Rome , replacing electricity and mass transit with aqueducts and roads. Subsequent titles in the '' City Building Series '' followed, all modeling cities in past civilizations. Also in 1993 the '' Dungeons & Dragons '' PC game Stronghold appeared, which was advertised as "''SimCity'' meets ''D&D'' in 3D." The title was in fact a ''Dungeons & Dragons'' licensed city-building game and met the criteria described above in this article. Elves, humans and dwarves each built neighborhoods with unique architecture within the player's town. The title also had elements of Real-time Strategy games when enemies attacked the city, and the line between city-building and RTS games has often been blurred with this kind of hybrid title. True 3D graphics were not yet possible in 1993, and the advertised 3D was actually a clever use of 2D graphics with mathematically-generated terrain and overlaid Bitmaps and Sprites . WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM CITY-BUILDING GAMES ''SimCity'' has been used as a teaching tool in urban studies classes. The assumptions within its economic model have been much discussed (e.g., effect of low vs. high taxes). Many historical games teach aspects of past cultures in an engaging and entertaining manner (e.g., Chinese culture). While the games are not economically or historically 100% accurate, because of their engaging nature they may stir interest in learning the theory and history behind the simulations. POPULAR CITY-BUILDING GAMES Popular city-building games include:
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