Moving in to Social City

I swore I was not going to add another social application game. My list of cyber pets and farms was already too long.

Then I checked out Social City and was hooked. Instantly. The graphics are great, though they do take awhile to load. Each home's yard has people mowing, playing, or relaxing. The tennis and basketball courts have animated players. Those courts raise an economic and sociological question for me, though. Why do basketball courts cost 3,000 coins to build and tennis courts 40,000. Is it a class issue? The factories have workers in hard hats loading crates and operating forklifts. When a factory is left idle for any amount of time, these little workers seem to get frustrated. It looks like they are even banging their heads against the wall. Perhaps they are anxious about possible layoffs?

Leisure is a big part of this game, despite the aforementioned restless factory people. Players have to build in lots of leisure opportunities for the town to grow. More people equals opportunity to build more factories to make more coin. Each house and hotel "yields" x number of new people in a given time span. Population growth ceases, however, if you do not have enough leisure. Then you have to add fast food joints, parks, gas stations, coffee shops, etc. There is even a farmers market. Nice touch. Churches, by the way, are costly and come a bit later in the game. Yes, even more costly than the tennis courts. Since I teach religions of the world, I would like my town to have a mosque and a synagogue, perhaps a Buddhist meditation center. Maybe in the next upgrade.

Some of the "leisure" building opportunities do not seem to quite fit. The game lumps municipal services such as police, fire department, and schools in as "leisure." Likewise with office buildings. Oh well. I have made a game of creatively placing my leisure buildings, such as putting a bowling alley right next to an art gallery, just to mix things up classwise. Speaking of class, I put a pub next to the school. Inspiration for that, which would not be allowed in a "real" city, I teach. 'Nuff said. I am also an LOLcat fan so I made sure to place a hot dog stand and a burger joint on either side of the pet shop. That way the "kittehs" and "goggies" can "haz" cheezeburgers and hot dogs whenever they want.

More later. Right now I better go tend to my mayoral duties, such as ensuring the factory workers are kept occupied.