SimCity, now Open-Sourced">SimCity, now Open-Sourced
[This announcement just came off the wire](http://fosswire.com/2008/01/13/simcity-classic-gpled-called-micropolis/) announcing that the venerable simulation classic “SimCity” has now been open-sourced.
> While there are some additional terms applied to the GPL used for Micropolis, these are supposedly to protect EA’s trademarks and don’t allow you to call derivative works SimCity or use any EA property.
This is potentially HUGE for the learning, education and training community because for years, simulation games have been banded about in brainstorming meetings around the world and undoubtedly, you’ve heard these words in one of them: like SimCity…
One of the issues that we all run into is the prohibitive cost of getting into gaming. Second Life’s biggest potential is as a common platform to create custom simulations and gaming environments. But Second Life is NOT open source. But creating a derivative Simulation Game from SimCity NOW is… and that means you apply and modify the logic in SimCity to accomodate a range of lateral and relational problem-solving scenarios.
All you need are a couple of people who are handy with C++ and Python, a talented designer and some idea of what you want the rules to be for the environment you want to create. This can turn a game that would have been a prohibitive $500K to produce down to $100K if you’re savvy, all because the engine and logic are already there (and even QA’d to a degree).
