Chapter 14. Construction and Management Simulations

Construction and management simulations are games about processes. The player's goal is not to defeat an enemy, but to build something within the context of an ongoing process. The better the player understands and controls the process, the more success he will have at building.

The first really successful computerized construction and management simulation (which we refer to as a CMS from now on) was Sim City. We'll look at it in some detail later in the chapter. Sim City proved that computer games don't need high-speed action or violence to be a success; it succeeded in part because it didn't have those things and appealed to a broad audience.

At the end of this chapter, we also have a section called "Pure Business Simulations," devoted to games in which the player doesn't really "construct" anything, and another section called "Hybrid Games," about games that are a hybrid of CMS and war games, such as Age of Empires. Military strategy is addressed in Chapter 10, "Strategy Games," but some of these hybrid games include interesting economic elements as well; we'll refer to them throughout this chapter, where appropriate.