The Life and Times of Maxis, Part 2: SimWorld

Would you trust these two men with your investment? Jeff Braun and Will Wright shortly before Maxis’s IPO. This article tells part of the story of Maxis Software. Maxis came into 1994 riding high on the wings of SimCity 2000, the hit of the previous holiday season. They followed up that success with… SimHealth: The National Health Care Simulation. This may sound like satire, but it was all too real. To be clear, SimHealth was not, say, a playful look at the life of a hospital, with eccentric doctors and bizarre made-up diseases. It wasn’t even an earnest simulation of performing surgery. No, this was exactly what it said on the tin, a simulation of healthcare in the most macro sense. It was, to put it another way, literally a simulation of government bureaucracy. If you were getting bored with saving fantasy worlds from evil wizards and fighting the Second World War over and over, said Maxis, you could buy this game and engage with some truly exciting dilemmas. “Who gets health…