Case in point. What if the "extra" placed here represents, in a somehow visually visceral way, the underlying excess of infrastructure that must support a consumptive model, that has to brand itself, throughout, as always larger than life; because the fantasies that must be played upon to induce new electrified consumption demands it; because that is precisely what the ever more, full time requirement to be consuming, the everything that Capitalism is commoditizing, is, even as I write this.
The underlying excess of infrastructure that isn't there, in any one sub component of its entirety, but is, nonetheless there for the planet to bear as a whole. That is there for our species to bear as a whole, and not only because of so much, of what it is in place to provide benefit, benefits too few of all of us. But also because not only do the few bear a lot they don't realize, that is killing them, inside and out, the rest of the world suffers from that, and the more old school deprivations that marginalizing too many will often do because they would be a cost factor only otherwise; and because even within great deprivation do the electrons and photons of the infosphere permeate. Permeating with all of the things everyone is made to want, but not enabled to possess,
Visualized, imaginative excess isn't new to folks like us Simulation game geeks of course. Games like the whole Civilization 1-6 series, SimCity, Cities Skyline, Factorio, the Age of Empires series, etc, are just a few of the genre.
And one of the things that stands out when you play them is just how much either conflict, destruction, and the difficulties of how inherent waste, in the various technologies you can use, is modeled, is the biggest part of what makes them challenging to play.
The underlying assumptions, of course, guarantee this; as in expansion is almost always a must. Taxes always makes people unhappy. Most anything the other players gain is something you have lost. Cooperation can be beneficial, but seldom to any game's full conclusion. And even the "clean tech" presented usually has at least noise pollution to deal with, and you hardly ever get beyond needing sewers, or stupid electrical transmission wires (we are working on poop processing systems for spaceships after all, why couldn't every home have its own on earth, and why can't every home have its own fuel cell). Anymore than you get to have hydrogen as a fuel, and much in the way of fuel cells, or super battery banks for a neighborhood, or a city, for backup.
Interestingly enough, in this context, is the fact that one of the things I'm dealing with now in Cities Skyline, as I try to make my city grow, is the incredible way dead bodies build up, and how that really urinates off great swaths of your population. You can build crematoriums, and graveyards galore, but the traffic problems your city inevitably creates for you, make getting the hearses around to pick them up a real problem.
No doubt this is simply a game balancing issue that games always go through as they are developed, ongoing with their fan based support; something you get quite used to when doing games through Steam especially as it facilitates fan help in getting games up and running.
Then again, the metaphor man inside me can't help but wonder. Is this too a not so subtle "juxtaposition, for a similar metaphoric connection?" Something just as visually visceral to remind us of all the actual bodies that are piling up all over the world because Capitalism itself has many of these same "underlying assumptions?"
Just some more things to contemplate as you play your own life simulation game. You might as well call it that because in the greater game the powerful few have taken over control of who decides which underlying assumptions we will get to play with. So either way. You put your money down and you have to play by the rules of who owns the game because this aint Steam, and you are now in the process where you are getting to have less and less to say, of any real meaning, about anything they don't want to be off brand message, in this bigger game. And the main brand now is just outsell everybody else, no matter how you have to do it, so that you can be in full control.
Visualizing our world’s ever-growing urban infrastructure
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