How a Mobile Game Made Me Better at Work

I was vacationing in Thailand last week, backpacking, going around places whose names I can’t even pronounce, walking at a pace where I lost track of time. Among all the things I had not done and a few I had managed to do, one was the promise of staying off-grid for the duration of the trip. And I managed to do that bloody well, I must say. Then again, those details of the trip are for another time. What I want to share here is the story of a video game I accidentally stumbled upon during the trip; a mobile game app actually.

I returned home to India after just a few days and all I see and hear everywhere I turn is ‘Pokemon Go’- (even business!) newspapers ran articles about it, Google showed stats on how popular the app is, blogs listed incredible numbers on the app downloads and active users. Being a rather lazy skeptic, and not being a huge fan of Pokemon, I thought this was another passing fad. But then Again, there was this other new game that I just got hooked into that was taking up quite a bit of my fascination.

I first saw it when the guy sitting next to me in the Bangkok metro was playing it with a rather severe expression on his face, so much that it was amusing to see such seriousness while playing a game. Come on now, mobile games aren’t such serious sports! Right? Wrong!

I haven’t yet googled the stats on game revenues, gaming parlours driving the economy and all the social ramifications that video games have; those are quite evident and cliched debates. However, this game my Metro Co-passenger was playing caught my attention and I caught its name: Simcity Buildit. Once back home and back on the grid, I downloaded it and gave it a try. Oh boy!

Built by EA games (yaay! those good ol’ NFS guys), the gameplay runs so: you are given a piece of land and some money, you build a city and you run it. That’s it. Apparently, Simple enough.

Then as you go along populating the townships with residential areas, there are resources you can tap into, tiny factories that churn out raw materials, little stores that process these raw materials into higher value goods which can be used to build more residential townships and increase the population further. Of course, the goods are priced differently, cost different amounts of resources and after a while, require a significant thought to plan the production and supply chain. Oh if you connect it to the Internet, there are also trade houses where you can buy and sell goods with other online players- a commodities market, if you may. That is just the beginning.

The Virtual People have needs: amenities such as water, electricity, sanitation etc.- and demands: for recreation, security, clean air and what not, just like we do. And as the mayor of the city, it’s the player’s responsibility to ensure the city lives and thrives, while making sure there’s enough cash for day-to-day operations and capital for expansion plans.

Why am I ranting about a game in so much detail? Here’s why: there’s a city in northern US that’s struggling with whole neighborhoods being abandoned, there is a city in south-east Japan that has excellent infrastructure, yet people are not willing to move in, there’s yet another city in northern Japan which used to be a tourist hub and is now struggling to attract any visitors. All these cities and the mayors there face real problems, with real people and real resources and real constraints. And most times, the local governments (and external consultants) have trouble sorting out questions: what is important to the people? Where should we build first? What makes our cities unique? And resilient? What happens in case of a disaster? The list goes on…

Come to think about it, we are trying to build a 100 smart cities in India. Mint recently ran a series of data plots, analysis reports and editorial pieces on how those efforts are going; saying that things are moving slow would be a euphemism. I won’t blame the government or any of the stakeholders- I know only too well the complexity and scale of organization that goes into these.

My experience playing the game only reaffirmed all the experiences and challenges we had faced while helping cities get smarter. But can it help us run scenarios? Simulate outcomes? Maybe, maybe not. For now, I know we have thought our real solutions to real problems well. And that’s reason enough to sleep a little more peacefully at night…