Fascinating given Will's usual attempts (Then again he did work in Bullfrog AND Maxis)
So the starting point was that he created an unexpectedly fun thing
Dang, I really did imply that didn't I?
and any educational value came out of the process of turning that into a game where you are a dictator building a miniature city
Like many of his "Sim" games they are built off of processes and mechanics that exist in real life so to speak. Though I guess he could have put them in as time goes on.
So some of the mechanics in the game were part of real life mechanics.
---
Though ultimately my bad.
A lot of classic games had the impression that simulating things is fun for the gameplay.
One is Policenauts (Police Quest stupid! not Policenauts) and GOODNESS is that game a mixed bag. They eventually got the right balance... but... Let me take you back to the first game
One of the puzzles required you to... Check all your tires and I believe your mirrors before going out... Which you had to do individually.
Now I THINK, given future Police Quest does this, that it is in the manual... This is kind of tedius.
Yet I have a fondness for the later games basically making you go through police procedure... It is something that they would basically never EVER do today... and that is kind of a shame. Not that I want all games to be bogged down by little details (Heck I hate all games that have a "Drive the speed limit" section... can we skip that please?)... But I felt more like a cop playing Police Quest then I did in all of L.A. Noir... THAT and because the game relies on you following procedure it means that most situations are solved through doing the intelligent thing over the dramatic Hollywood thing.
Mind you it CAN get a bit silly... With the game outright punishing you for not following police procedure by having you immediately killed (I don't mind getting fired... Not properly cataloging evidence is a pretty bad thing for a cop to do) even if doing the proper procedure would reveal nothing is wrong (The game is very Karmic... Didn't check all the tires? Well one of them pops and you get in an accident. Checked them all? Well none of them were faulty anyway).
I guess it is to say I have a lot of respect for the standpoint that having a strong theme IS fun... or at least more fun then taking the "Fun route out".
"Yeah we COULD have someone else collect the evidence and tell you so you can go on a car chase against the enemy blasting away with your gun while going off ramps... But wouldn't it be EVEN BETTER if you could check the crime scene meticulously and highlight every single piece of evidence with a piece of chalk, using cloves and tongs to pick up stuff, and find witness testimony AND not all of this stuff will actually be nessisary for the case but is important to catalog anyway?"