{"id":7505,"date":"2020-06-10T18:21:22","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T18:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7505"},"modified":"2020-06-10T18:21:22","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T18:21:22","slug":"simrefinery-and-maxis-business-simulations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7505","title":{"rendered":"SimRefinery and Maxis Business Simulations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"512\" height=\"382\" src=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/simrefineryScreenShot.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7506\" srcset=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/simrefineryScreenShot.png 512w, https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/simrefineryScreenShot-300x224.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><figcaption>SimRefinery Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/SimRefinery\">SimRefinery<\/a> was the first simulation developed by a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Maxis\">Maxis<\/a> spin-off company called Maxis Business Simulations (MBS). The simulation was for Chevron and was developed using the development tools Maxis had developed for their games like SimCity. Phil Salvador tells a wonderful story about MBS and SimRefinery in a thoroughly research essay <a href=\"https:\/\/obscuritory.com\/sim\/when-simcity-got-serious\/\">When SimCity got serious: the story of Maxis Business Simulations and SimRefinery<\/a>. Take some time out and read it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of what is interesting in the essay is how Salvador documents the different views about what such simulations were good for. SimRefinery was not a accurate simulation that would cover the complexity of the chemical engineering of a refinery; so what was it good for. Chevron apparently wanted something to help the staff who weren&#8217;t engineers to understand some of the connectiveness of a refinery &#8211; how problems in one area could impact others. Will Wright, the genius behind Maxis, didn&#8217;t think serious simulations were possible or something they wanted to do. He saw SimCity as a caricature that was fun. At best it might give people a &#8220;mental model&#8221; of the issues around city management. It was for that reason that MBS was a spin-off designed to contract with businesses that felt serious simulations were feasible and useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I learned about the Salvador article from a Ars Technica story about SimRefinery and how <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2020\/06\/a-lost-maxis-sim-game-has-been-discovered-by-an-ars-reader-uploaded-for-all\/\">A lost Maxis \u201cSim\u201d game has been discovered by an Ars reader [Updated]<\/a>. The story talks about how someone found and uploaded to the Internet Archive a prototype of SimRefinery only to later take in back down so it is no longer available. In the meantime Phil Salvador recorded a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.twitch.tv\/obscuritory\">Twitch stream of checking out the game<\/a> so you can get a sense of how it worked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SimRefinery was the first simulation developed by a Maxis spin-off company called Maxis Business Simulations (MBS). The simulation was for Chevron and was developed using the development tools Maxis had developed for their games like SimCity. Phil Salvador tells a wonderful story about MBS and SimRefinery in a thoroughly research essay When SimCity got serious: &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7505\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">SimRefinery and Maxis Business Simulations<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,71,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-games","category-digital-archives","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7507,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505\/revisions\/7507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}