Welcome to the periodic Microcosm Industries newsletter! I am still figuring out what each issue will consist of and how often I should send these out, so any feedback on what you would like to see is greatly appreciated.

New Additions to Microcosm Industries

Here are some new additions to the Microcosm Industries list:

• Mini Motorways: draw roads and manage traffic.

• Soup of Life: evolve and collect organisms.

• Towers.World: an amazing reverse-engineering project of SimTower. More about it here.

• Survive the Politburo: play Soviet politics and try to survive.

• OpenTDD: Open source version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

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Recommended Reading

A mix of old and new essays and articles that are relevant to the world of simulation toys:

AI Just Ported SimCity in 4 Days Without Reading the Code: “A developer pointed an AI at 37-year-old C code. Today it’s running in your browser. The old rules are dead.”

Why computer modeling should become a popular hobby: A classic paper with perennial application to the world of simulation toys. Strongly recommended.

Infinity Mirror: Simulation and Planetary Intelligence: Magisterial essay on simulation.

ForecastBench-Sim: A Simulated-World Forecasting Benchmark: “a simulated-world forecasting benchmark built on game rollouts from Freeciv, a turn-based strategy game modelled on the Civilization series”

Until next time.