Sim City Hellscape Scares Us
Posted by Sean_Yeaton on Monday, May 10, 2010
Mike Sterry at Viceland recently conducted an interview with Vincent Ocasla, a 22-year-old architecture student living in the Philippines who designed a Sim City hellscape called Magnasanti.
It’s got us locked into one of those contemplative moods, stroking our chins and mumbling about the Society of the Spectacle.
Why did it take a year-and-a-half just to complete the theory behind Magnasanti?
During the planning stage of the city I was also busy constructing other large-scale cities, which laid out much of the theory for Magnasanti. New ways of doing things were not yet developed until experiments were done within the game to verify ideas, and notes had to be taken down in conjunction with each new experiment, as well as devising new experiments to find out if there were better ways of solving the problem. Building cities and doing in-game experiments to obtain the results desired takes time. Additionally, I had other things to do, and only worked on it in my spare time, so it was a gradual development, not something I was working on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.You say Magnasanti’s design is based on the Bhavacakra, the wheel of life and death in Buddhism. Are you a practicing Buddhist?
Former Buddhist. The Wheel of Life, also known as the Wheel of Time or the Wheel of History, can be found in many religions, philosophies, and cultures which regarded cyclical notions of time consisting of ages that essentially repeat themselves. I’m particularly fascinated with sacred geometry. The city symmetry uses a modified version of the symbol to represent the sinister intent of enslaving all of its citizens for all eternity. But with regards to what I believe, today I simply consider myself to be a freethinker.
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About the author
Sean Yeaton is a writer based out of Brooklyn, Reach him at sean@motherboard.tv
