''SimHealth: The National Health Care Simulation'' is a

management simulation Construction and management simulation (CMS), sometimes also called management sim or building sim, is a subgenre of simulation game in which players build, expand or manage fictional communities or projects with limited resources. Strategy vide ...

video game developed by Thinking Tools and published by

Maxis Maxis is an American video game developer and a division of Electronic Arts (EA). The studio was founded in 1987 by Will Wright and Jeff Braun, and acquired by EA in 1997. Maxis is best known for its simulation games, including '' The Sims ...

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson ...

for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

with assistance from the

Markle Foundation Markle Foundation is a New York-based private foundation established in 1927 by American industrialist / financier John Markle and his wife, Mary. Its focus is technology, health care, and national security. History Formally incorporated on ...

. It is a simulation of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

healthcare system. The game was released during congressional debates on the

Clinton health care plan The Clinton health care plan was a 1993 Health care reform in the United States, healthcare reform package proposed by the administration of President Bill Clinton and closely associated with the chair of the task force devising the plan, First ...

. Due to the complexity of the game, ''SimHealth'' was seen as being very difficult. Armed with none of the

tongue-in-cheek The idiom tongue-in-cheek refers to a humorous or sarcastic statement expressed in a serious manner. History The phrase originally expressed contempt, but by 1842 had acquired its modern meaning. Early users of the phrase include Sir Walter Scot ...

humor that Maxis' prior games were known for, the only real link to the franchise was the ''

SimCity 2000 ''SimCity 2000'' is a city-building simulation video game jointly developed by Will Wright and Fred Haslam of Maxis. It is the successor to '' SimCity Classic'' and was released for Apple Macintosh personal computers in 1993, after which it wa ...

''-inspired

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

. The game was seen as more serious than other Maxis games. Noel Fritzinger, who with Lyman Orton first conceptualized CommunityViz, says that his inspiration came from seeing ''SimHealth'' and wondering if the same concepts could be applied to real-world land-use planning.

Reception

'' Computer Gaming World''s Keith Schlesinger in June 1994 said that "''SimHealth'' is a trailblazer in the simulations genre, but as a game it has problems". Acknowledging that "it wasn't primarily designed as an entertainment product", he criticized the "not well developed" victory conditions, reporting that he got a high score in one game by "sacrific ngnearly all of the big and small business firms in the country to achieve the win! What kind of a victory is that?" Schlesinger found that adopting an extreme libertarian ideology including ending Medicare and many other government services resulted in almost hands-off victory although "the entire private insurance industry goes bankrupt in the first three months". He nonetheless concluded that "''SimHealth'' offers much at a good price, and in a good cause", and recommended it to those "not too fussy about winning and losing", or wanting to be able to alter the model's 152 assumptions. ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cu ...

'' gave the game a C−, writing, "For a vivid demonstration of just how complex — and boring — the health care crisis is, try spending a few hours with SimHealth, which lets you do what Hillary Clinton couldn't: design a successful national health care system."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Simhealth 1994 video games DOS games DOS-only games Business simulation games Medical simulation Maxis Sim games Medical video games North America-exclusive video games Video games set in the United States Humanitarian video games Video games developed in the United States