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The Death of SimCity.

Originally released way back in 1989, when the computer gaming was in its precocious childhood, SimCity began one of the most recognizable franchises in history. Putting players in the position somewhere above a mayor and somewhere below a god, they were given some tools, some space, and told that if they built a city, people would come.

And they did, in droves. SimCity 2000, released five years later, and SimCity 3000, released a decade later, would prove to be brilliant evolutions of this basic game.

However, in 2000, a year after SimCity 3000’s release, The Sims came out. The digital dollhouse game, which, to be honest, is quite wonderful and charming, would prove to be the worst thing to ever happen to Maxis and the SimCity franchise.

The Sims’ enormous popularity (over 150 million copies sold, with innumerable more pirated) pointed Maxis in a direction towards simulating individuals’ behavior ever more precisely, ever more accurately, with the idea that they would be the center of any future games by Maxis.

While an argument can be made that increasing granularity can make for better simulations, their focus on that aspect has come at a frightening, and tragic cost—it’s warped the fundamentals of the SimCity game into something unrecognizable, losing the skyline for one or two buildings. It forgets that in larger cities, accurate models can still be made by observing that people behave in aggregate manners, rather than as isolated, atomized data points.

And so we now have the 2013 reboot of SimCity. Let’s ignore the simple fact that the onerous requirement of having an always on-connection means that any cities built are saved remotely, in the cloud, with no guaranteed permanence (there will be no epic decade-long games for this…). Let’s even ignore the problematic issue of forcing multiplayer on everyone, whether they like or not, and is completely persistent with any mistakes being permanent ones.

Really, when you get down to it, SimCity now isn’t about building a city. It’s about building a small 4km² township that can’t really grow to any size. Sure, it’s pretty. Sure, you can find out what individual residents are feeling and doing.

But gone is the sense that you’re actually building and guiding a city from nothing to populations of millions. Gone is the notion of the sandbox to create and destroy, to raze and rebuild. It’s all about the artificial tiny people, not the great works of the city.

It’s not SimCity anymore. It’s Sims in the City.

On what it means to be Asian-American.

In context: http://www.quora.com/Asian-Americans/What-does-it-mean-to-be-Asian-American

Like all stories about Americans, it’s kinda long. It’s kinda confusedly muddled. It’s kind of wonderful.

It’s a story about loss, about disconnection.
Traditions are the first to go. Born here, raised here, half a world away, your parents try to keep as many as they can, but it’s a losing battle. What holiday is this? 추석? Well, we’re not going over there. Mom’s too tired to make the traditional foods, whatever they are, so let’s just go out to dinner. Maybe call 할머니. Then, later in the year, maybe the next, you fly home, across the Great Flat Ocean, and you visit the shrine of your ancestors. How many 절 do I do? Am I even doing it right? Am I spelling it right? My knees are getting tired. Why prostrate myself to these ancestors I’ve never met, whose gaze of my life is so distant, clouded by time and space, whose memory I can’t even conjure?

The language is the next to go. You have a fight with your mom about going to homecoming. You want to go. You don’t know why, exactly, since you don’t care much for the football team. You’re angry all the time. Angry because they get all the funding. Angry because all the ‘traditions’ that come so naturally to others, you don’t know about. Angry because the white girl you kinda like and want to go with can trace her family back to the first settlers, and you don’t know anything past the hint that your grandfather might have been in the Resistance. Angry because of hormones. Your mom yells at you, demanding you study. That you stay home and spend time with your visiting relatives. She shouts in Korean at you. And instead of shouting back in Korean, you yell back in English. You slam the door to your room, cursing in English. Years later, in a college class you picked because you thought it would be cake, you realize the only Korean you know comes from the few movies you watch, what you learned at home, and how you order at restaurants. You barely pass.

The ties are the last to go. You rarely speak to your relatives unless you visit or call, the distance becoming more than just geographical. You try to keep up with them on Facebook, but you hide parts of your life because you don’t know how they’d react. Even your mom gets in on the gig, saying that it would be best if they didn’t know some things. You dream of living back in your ancestral homeland, but reality reminds you that it would probably only be fun for a little while, before you want to come home, here, in the Americas.

It’s a story about gain, about building.
When your roots are loose, the first thing you do is to put new ones down. You end up in a place you find rather agreeable. You make friends, build your own ‘extended’ family. You let your best friends’ families ‘adopt’ you, and you bring your own to their Thanksgivings, their Christmases, their Seders. You get hurt when these friends move away, but you eventually realize that wherever they settle, you have carte blanche to visit them, to make new roots someplace new.

When your knowledge of your ancestral culture is fractured, the first thing you do is try to create one. You do this by voraciously reading up on your own. You still don’t remember all the details, but you go through the motions, hoping that there’s some meaning there. You read up on others’, and you discover ones that you never knew existed. You fall in with the nerds, the punks, the gays, the outcasts. You pick up their slang, their argot, their mannerisms. You move on, sometimes, after you get bored, but they’re always a part of you, and you make your own.

And when your traditions are hazy and gone, you make new ones. Your Christmases are now spent with your family, watching bad movies like Jingle All the Way. You always block time out at the major holidays to visit your best friends. When you’re sick, you always order out from that same Korean restaurant that makes 짬뽕. Is that what your relatives eat when they’re feeling sick? No? You don’t care. It makes you feel better. Every birthday, you invite your friends out to a Korean restaurant, and put what little Korean you still remember to good use, and on theirs, you learn how to wrap gifts in 風呂敷. It’s Japanese, actually, but you don’t care, and neither do they—it’s elegant, and beautiful.

It’s a story about bridges, about synthesis.
At potlucks, you’re the one everyone’s curious about. You bring dishes that are usually a little bit interesting, outside of the norm. Risotto, but what’s that flavor? You used miso as the broth? Amazing. These dumplings? Chorizo and scallions? Wow. They come to you after hearing about the Korean taco stands, and you go together, to everyone’s enjoyment. You hear about this amazing phở place, or a brand new place that serves fufu and melon seed soup, and you drag your friends along.

Sometimes you answer questions. What exactly is that Gangnam Style he’s singing about? Why is the North so weird? Is the internet there really better? And even though you preface your answers with a little bit of uncertainty, you muddle through. They’re just as interested as you are, maybe more so. But you’re interested in what your Romanian friends’ experiences were when Ceaușescu fell, and you ask. You want to know what your friends from Zimbabwe eat. You want to see this ‘Austin’ that your Texan friends rave about. And everyone understands each other more.

You’ve flitted in and out of various subcultures and groups. Your facility with English is top-notch. You’ve experienced all these new things now, sampled from various plates and listened to all sorts of songs. So you take all these things home with you; you take your mama out all night, and you show her all these things you’ve done, that you’ve learned. You see her eyes open, like Sokath’s, and she understands this place in a new way, a way she never has, as a native, as an American.

It’s a story, like every other story.
When I first sat down to write this, I thought a little bit about writing about the little things that trip one up every day. The assumption that we’re foreigners. The stereotypes and the suspicion that hangs over us whether we pretend to ignore it or not.

But that’s not the story. That’s not what it means to be Asian American. To be Asian American, you start to realize that you put more and more of yourself in the American category, and you view the Asian as a slight spin, like Irish, Newyorican, German. You know that while you could pass in the old country, for a little while, you grew up with a few too many cheeseburgers and cokes, a taste for grits, and a soft spot for Country Pop that you keep deep in the closet, deeper, probably, than the affection you have for really bad action movies like The Expendables. You know you’re too loud, abrasive, and obnoxious to be anything but American, too proud, and maybe even a too little knee-jerk patriotic. You can talk shit about America, because it’s yours. Those people in other countries can’t.

And you know that no matter how others see you, it doesn’t really matter. Your blood might have come from overseas, but your heart started beating here.

You want to be racist, John Derbyshire? Let’s be racist.

John Derbyshire, bigot extraordinaire, recently penned an odious, reprehensible, racist piece over at the conservative Taki Mag. Obviously, I am as stunned and aghast at the fact that a site with conservative leanings has published bigotry, and you should be too, since it’s quite unprecedented. I’m also completely at a loss why conservatives continue to get a poor reputation on race; Derpyshire’s recent article has numerous links to studies that back his points up.

He’s right, though. There is a talk that non-black Americans have with their kids. What he didn’t know, though, is that there’s a talk that non-black non-white Americans of Asian extraction have with their kids. True to form, it’s even more ray-cess than the “white” one, and it throws in classism to boot too, mostly because Asians are fundamentally wired to try and outdo whitey.

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• 1. There are about 15 million of us. 17 million if you include the mudbloods hybrids (it sounds better that way, very eco-friendly). Of course, out of that number, there are only about 2 million* of the right kind, but that doesn’t matter here. They won’t be able to tell the difference.
• 2. If we ever go to war with China, or Korea, or Japan or whatever, tell them you’re from whatever country we’re not at war with. If there’s ever a trade dispute with one of them, tell them you’re from a different one. Not that this will help you, but it might give a few minutes to run away.
• 3. Almost everyone hates you and won’t trust you. While Booker T. Washington wasn’t ours, we’ve been trying to use his ideas for a while now, and it hasn’t stopped them from assuming we’re foreigners bent on destroying America with a rising Chinese economy¤. Just deal. I suggest being polite and avoiding confrontation. That way the surprise in their eyes when the homeland’s boots crush their throats during the inevitable invasion will be that much more delectable.
• 4. Make sure you stay polite, though. If you start acting up, our “model minority” label will be imperiled, and they’ll start up the whole “Yellow Peril” thing again with a vengeance, and we just hoodwinked them into complacency by turning their TVs into tiny little magic boxes they can carry with them. That wasn’t easy.
• 5a. Black people will steal from you. Keep an eye on them, and if you have a store, follow them around.
• 5b. Hispanic people will steal from you. Keep an eye on them, and if you have a store, follow them around.  
• 5c. Other Asians might steal from you. Keep half an eye on them. If they can speak back to you in your language, then they’re fine. The others? Maybe not so much.
• 5d. Keep your eyes on the White Man. They will steal from you, but use incomprehensible laws and loopholes to do it first. Then they’ll resort to trickery, opium, biological warfare, and/or guns. Essentially, whitey will ruthlessly fuck you over (he’s got yellow fever, after all), repeatedly, with any tool at his disposal, say it’s completely fair, and then walk away. At least the other races have the honor and decency to thieve with traditional means.
• 6. As you go through life, however, it’s likely you’ll meet more white people than not. You’ll have to be careful around them. Try not to be too threatening. If you speak with an accent, say as little as possible. If you speak without one, say as little as possible, and thank them when they say you speak so well, almost like a native speaker, which you are. Work hard and don’t make a fuss. We want to keep that “model minority” label. It keeps their attention away from us and on the other non-whites.
• 7. The mean average IQ of whites is lower than that of Asians. The mean for Jews is higher. If you can’t marry an Asian and have to marry out, go for a Jew. You’ll probably have lots of opportunity to meet them, anyway, since you’re going to go to College.
• 8. In the pool of all white people, there are those who are actually not evil, horrible people. They tend to be college-educated, with moderate to liberal political leanings. (I’ll use CEMtLPLW as an ad hoc abbreviation.) You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with CEMtLPWs. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, they’re far less likely to use you as an amulet to hide their bigotry.
• 9. Be aware, however, that there is an issue of an overabundance of supply here. Feel free to replace your CEMtLPLWs as needed based on your circumstances. Are you going to be around possibly bigoted non-college educated blue-collar white people? Surround yourself with CEMtLPLWs who give off the Southern Country vibe, and let them do the talking. Are you going to be near rich white people? Gravitate towards the CEMtLPLWs who you know where in those old money frats or went to B-School, and let them do the talking. What about sports? Take the bro-ier CEMtLPLWs, and drink your beers with them while they yell. It’s a buyer’s market!
• 10. That said, I’m not kidding. Keep your eyes on whitey. Learn from him. And then beat him at his own game. Because he’s trying to do the same thing to you. Just remember. We were inventing paper, movable type, ironclads, rocket launchers when they were still puttering around in the Dark Ages. We got careless and they came at us with cannons and opium, but the Asian Century is coming. So keep your eye on whitey. He’ll do anything to try to keep you down.

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*Replace “2 million” with “4 million” if you’re Chinese, “1 million” if you’re Japanese, and “3 million” if you’re Indian. Do your own research if you want to divvy it up even further between {Hokkien, Cantonese, Han, Sikh, Jain, Hindu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Uyghur, Magyar, etc.} or other Asians I didn’t mention.

¤If you’re South Asian, replace “rising Chinese economy” with “Islamofascist Sharia Law”, whether or not you are Muslim.