Culture Concepts for City Builder Game
One of the issues brought up in One Thousand Villages was that of cultural formation, drift, and separation, and of different communities (and different individuals) having different preferences and needs. This brought up the possibility of the nerds all moving to one community within a city, which brought up the possibility of zoning wars between jocks, otakus, and hipsters.
I’d like to have potential cultural strife as a mechanic in the city builder game, so that the cultural drift effects of some of my Thousand Villages posts can be modeled, and also as another layer of interest (and political complications) for the game and a choice in player values.
However, choosing any existing ethnicities is waaaaay too fraught with issues.
In regular play, the citizens would be represented as moving, color-coded blocks about 2m tall, in statistical frequency when you zoom in on roads, walkways, bus stations, etc. Very simple.
From time to time, however, dialogues might come up, or there might be a simulation of a city council, and so we might want the citizens to have an appearance.
The idea here is that the citizens of our city are grey non-humans that define their attachment to their culture through clothing options, with the cultures representing real subcultures and fake cultures rather than real major cultures from real life.
Each would have a handful of unique buildings (built in areas dense with their influence), and specialty shops and homes might be built to cater to them, but in general, they’d be more or less identical mechanically. It’s then up to the player how to manage some inter-cultural strife, assimilation or non-assimilation, and so on. The Singaporean method of making each housing division statistically representative could be an option, while letting nature take its course in the name of freedom, or trying to convert the entire city to one kind of resident, would also be options.
And, of course, differing governance structures might be used, resulting in ‘zoning wars’ as a cultural majority attempts to change the zoning laws to suit themselves.
- Greys aren’t strongly attached to any one culture, and can potentially adopt one of the cultures, or stay the same. Grey buildings are moderately satisfying to residents of all cultures, but not maximally satisfying to any of them. It’s possible to pass a law mandating all new buildings be grey.
- Most J-Core have never been to the foreign island country whose pop culture they celebrate excitedly.
- The Olympians believe in the importance of personal physical development for all people.
- Called “Fixters” due to their interest in riding fixed-gear bikes, these residents value authenticity and artisanal connection.
- Greasers are known for their motorcycles and tendency to break into song and dance numbers.
- Dieselwave is a bit of an eclectic mishmash of anachronistic styles, mixed with nostalgia for a past that never existed, but its adherents call it “dashing.”
- Lawpunks are, counter-intuitively, neither more nor less likely to engage in criminal activity than other groups of citizens, despite remixing and exaggerating uniform elements and other symbols of state power.
- Rumors continue to fly over whether some of the residents really have long hair, or if all hair on greys is just limited to wigs, much like their strange obsession with hats.
- Rumors that the Bayeux are trying to bring back fencing as a national sport are well-grounded in reality. The so-called photos of the “great baguette war”, however, are nothing more than photo manipulations.
- Medallionites insist that their order is not a cult, but no one else believes them.