EA donates SimCity to OLPC | Tech news blog – CNET News.com
According to a weekend report on Ars Technica, leading game maker Electronic Arts has decided to give their pioneering game SimCity to the One Laptop per Child project for installation on every machine distributed to children in developing nations).
You probably played SimCity as a kid. Remember laying out your own city, making decisions about geography, building roads, residences, and commercial areas? You got to watch how your choices play out over months, years, and decades.
The game also reveals the importance of city planning and civic policy-making to ordinary citizens, making it likely that at least some children in developing countries could be inspired to begin a career in that field. Placement of homes, schools, hospitals, water supply, and shipping docks, for example, is a central part of the game and may shed light on children’s own civic situation, as it has for students and users in “developed” countries.
SimCity is the only computer I’ve played with regularity over the years. I played the first version on the 9″ B&W screen of a Mac SE and I have the last version on my current desktop. It’s a great game – you learn alot and for those of us who don’t need to shoot people or blow up stuff, it’s fun.
Kudos to EA for making it available for free for kids in developing countries. Now, why don’t they make the lastest game, SimCity Societies, available for Macs? SimCity started as a Mac only games and it’s slowly left the Mac platform behind supporting PCs and Nintendo more. That sucks.
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Tags: SimCity, OLPC, computers, CNet
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