This seems more like a failure in parenting, it was always made clear to me that games and television do not reflect reality and should not be emulated. At what age did you realize Simcity was just a game and that you should not treat it as an actual predication or model of reality?
" it was always made clear to me that games and television do not reflect reality"
And to me it was allways clear that this is just a legal disclaimer.
Of course games and videos reflect reality. Not 100% accurate, no, and some allmost 0% but btw. no scientific model does 100%, even though they are obviously more accurate and I would like more games to be based on scientific models.
But for example angry birds, very succesful, obviously fiction, but the core game mechanic is a physic simulation(Box2D) which works as realistic as a 2d computer can work in a game, so you can learn about kinetics with it.
Parents don't make legal disclaimers, which is what I should have explained, they always reminded me that it's just a game. If I started spouting political opinions and justified them with "but that is what happens in Sims when you have that policy", they would have further reinforced that games mechanics should not influence your life decisions. Your explanation is overly pedantic and not a charitable interpretation. It's not appropriate to base political opinions based on a black box game.
And since you were the one who insulted someone with the assumption that they just realized that SimCity is just a game, it is a bit laughable to accuse me of pedantry, because I told you, that games do have a base in reality.
While this is certainly clear for media like cartoons, action movies, Mortal Kombat, and Doom, SimCity was touted as an educational tool for children and an accurate model of reality throughout the early to mid 1990s. I was in elementary school at the time. Parenting magazines and journals as well as the broader media claimed as much. A friend of mine growing up who absolutely loved SimCity is a real life city planner now. I have fond memories of playing SimCity 2000 with my father.
If you really want to know when I realized that the real world doesn't work like SimCity, it was when I was in college and I started actually paying attention to the news and what was going on in the cities and towns I lived in.
