May 24, 2020
The creators of SimCity had a division that made Sim games for corporations. They were never released to the public. For the first time ever, this is the story of Maxis Business Simulations.
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The creators of SimCity had a division that made Sim games for corporations. They were never released to the public. For the first time ever, this is the story of Maxis Business Simulations.
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Decided to commemorate an interesting moment in my life. Still not over it.
Never say never! Thanks to a reader on Ars Technica and an anonymous chemical engineer, a working copy of SimRefinery has been successfully recovered.
Two weeks ago, I published my long-in-the-works article about Maxis Business Simulations, a division of SimCity developer Maxis that made simulation games for businesses. It was the culmination of four years of research, and I’m very proud to share their story.
One of the games they produced was SimRefinery, an oil refinery simulation for Chevron. Very little was widely known about the game until now, and the article kicked off a wave of interest in SimRefinery that seems to have reached beyond gaming circles. Shortly after the article was published, it was picked up by the tech news site Ars Technica, where one reader, postbebop, reported that they knew a retired chemical engineer who worked at Chevron, who confirmed that he owned a copy of the game. postbebop walked the engineer through the process of reading the data from the original floppy disk, and he was able to create a digital copy.
They’ve uploaded the game to the Internet Archive; you can download and play it here. Huge thanks to postbebop for making this happen.
I haven’t had a chance to play SimRefinery in-depth yet besides grabbing the screenshots, but I genuinely did not expect anyone would still have a copy of this game. I’ll write a post with a close-up look at SimRefinery soon.
It’s so exciting to finally be able to play SimRefinery, and it’s worth remembering that this is one piece of a larger historical picture. It’s a big piece, for sure, but it means so much more when we have the historical context around it. Gaming history is more than just a collection of games; it’s about what they meant to the people who made them and played them. To learn more about Maxis Business Simulations and the people behind the company, please check out the full article!
With that said, this is cause for celebration. I am incredibly grateful and humbled that folks enjoyed the article enough that it gained enough traction for this to happen. Thank you to everyone who has supported me and The Obscuritory over the years and made this possible.
“https://t.co/26Gytxt6WE”
OMG.
SOMEONE FOUND A COPY OF SIMREFINERY. IT'S GOING ON ARCHIVE.ORG. IT'S REAL. IT'S HAPPENING.
OMG.
The creators of SimCity had a division that made Sim games for corporations. They were never released to the public. For the first time ever, this is the story of Maxis Business Simulations.
Woah. This is fascinating and awesome. I want to play SimRefinery.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
What would you like to find in your dig of older games? Like, what would be your golden goose?
The big answer to this is SimRefinery, a simulation game that Chevron commissioned from Maxis in 1992, but that’s gone. I’m not quite at the point where I’m ready to write up my final research, but I don’t believe there’s any surviving copies. But there’s stories to share about the developer.
But more generally, I’m always so excited to find an older game with strong social themes, especially when it engages with topics like race, history, and gender. It’s rewarding to know that there have always been games that deal with those topics, and it’s exciting to share them.
Here's a fun tangent of research I ended up on. I've mentioned John Hiles, the head of Maxis's business simulation division who took inspiration from SimCity and developed SimRefinery and SimHealth.
After Maxis, John Hiles advised and inspired a program called the Quasi-Understandable Ecosystem Scenario Tool, a sustainable urban living simulation by researchers at the University of British Columbia. QUEST eventually evolved into MetroQuest, a platform for building public engagement about city planning.
So, in a long, complicated way, this is an example of SimCity inspiring real-life work on city planning!
It’s up! This is a video of my @magfest panel, SimEverything: Lessons in Curious Game Design from Maxis. Over the course of an hour of frantic rambling, I cover the history of Maxis, their game design philosophy, and a whole bunch of their stranger titles like Gift Maker and SimRefinery.
I’m really proud of how this panel came together!
(Don’t mind me during the intro. My friend Meg was still talking. Had to go off-the-rails for a second.)