Chaim Gingold on Building Sim City & Simulation as Discourse

Aug 20, 2025

Chaim Gingold, a brilliant computer scientist and game designer known for co-creating Spore and authoring 'Building SimCity,' dives into the fascinating world of simulations. He discusses how SimCity transcends mere gaming to reshape societal concepts, highlighting the interplay of creativity and play in technological engagement. The conversation touches on the historical evolution from analog to digital, exploring the impact of simulation on political decision-making and the ethical responsibilities of tech companies. Gingold encourages us to reflect on how simulations can empower or mislead.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Hands-On Origins Of Computing

Early computing culture prized tactile, graphical thinking alongside symbolic math.
That hands-on engineering ethos faded as abstraction and software rose.

ANECDOTE

How Gingold Became A Game Designer

Chaim describes becoming a game designer after studying CS and interning with Will Wright.
He joined the Spore team and found working with Wright formative.

ADVICE

Design For Playful Exploration

Encourage open-ended systems that invite player-driven goals and experimentation.
Design feedback-rich tools rather than strict win/lose mechanics.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Membership | Donations | Spotify | YouTube | Apple Podcasts

We live in simulated worlds of our own making, detecting patterns in the chaos and complexity of raw experience and boiling them down into operable categories and generalizations. Sometimes we do this well, and sometimes…

This week’s guest, computer scientist and game designer Chaim Gingold, wrote what I consider the best book available on the history and sociality of simulations: Building Sim City: How to Put the World in a Machine (MIT Press) takes readers from the prehistory of modern computing through the post-war development of cybernetics and systems thinking and into the entangled relationship of video games, military info-tech, civil engineering, software-based education, and complexity science that forms today’s “invisible environment.”

Sim City is more than a legendary video game. It is case study in how the digital revolution reshaped the ways we think, teach, design, and govern…and how what simulation as a mode of discourse can hide and reveal, oppress and empower us. In this dialogue we explore the the tensions between games and play, the analog and digital, abstraction and tactility, and mysticism and colonialism in simulation-induced experiences. We investigate the rise and fall of Sim City game developer MAXIS, weave threads through the history of computing and software development, systems science, and the philosophy of technology, and ask:

What makes some abstractions better than others?

If you enjoy this conversation, join the Wisdom x Technology Discord server and consider becoming a member for access to the complete archives, study groups, and community calls.

Founding members also get access to the entire twenty hours of lecture and discussion from my recent course, How to Live in the Future at Weirdosphere.

Show Links

• Explore the interactive knowledge garden grown from over 250 episodes• Dig into nine years of mind-expanding podcasts• Explore the Humans On The Loop dialogue and essay archives• Browse the books we discuss on the show at Bookshop.org• Hire me for speaking or consulting

Mentions

Will WrightJohn Conway’s Game of LifeVannevar BushAlan Kay & Xerox PARCEd Catmull - Creativity, Inc.James Clerk MaxwellEthan MollickBrian Sutton-SmithGottfried LiebnizLarry OwensJay ForresterLauren F. KleinEdgar MitchellRusty SchweickertJulian of NorwichChris LangtonKen ForbisMark ZuckerbergElon MuskSam AltmanSam Arbesman - The Magic of CodeTimothy MortonDonna HarawayNick BostromJoshua DiCaglio - Scale TheoryStanislaw Lem - The CyberiadKevin Kelly - Out of ControlStewart Brand & The Whole Earth CatalogFred Turner - F rom Counterculture to CybercultureDe Kai - Raising AI

And in case you missed it:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe