Notes on a History of Video Games
“Guns, Germs, and Steel. They also read criticisms of both authors.14 In order to illustrate further the economic/environmental theme, I show students the games Railroad Tycoon II and CivCity: Rome. In the former, players build railroad empires across nineteenth-century America, Europe, and Africa. They must locate stations near resources, build mines and farms, and trade commodities to where they are most needed, all while trying to minimize maintenance costs of running rolling stock and servicing track. This game is more obviously economic in focus than the Civilization series. In fact, it can get quite complex with the selling and buying of shares. Nevertheless, since Sid Meier originally designed both titles, the similarity in game mechanics is clear, and encourages students to reflect on the underlying economic nature of almost all decisions in Civilization IV. During this unit, we discuss the popularity, from Karl Marx onward, of treating economics as the main driving force in history, and the tendency of computers, which are basically calculating machines, to encourage thi” (Wainwright, 2014, p. 584)
The previous paragraph is about this and that…
(Wainwright, 2014, p. 585)
Also works with grapfics (although, Obsidian can’t import them)