Arcacia: The Real Story

Conception
It all started in 1993. Me and a friend were in nearby Parramatta Park, exploring the river bank when we came across some exposed rocks. It didn't take long for our imaginations to run wild and before we knew it, we had divided the rocks up into territories.

I'd go there just about every weekend. It became somewhere I could just be. I'd sit there, in the middle of the river, secluded from the real world. It made a nice escape from the stresses of high school. In Australia, high school starts in grade 7. I was now in grade 8.


34° 48' 15.55" S
150° 59' 57.60" E

SimCity
It was not long after that that I got a computer and of course, the first game I bought was SimCity. I had been playing a bit on the school's computers during lunch, but now I had my own copy. I was totally obsessed and it was an obsession that, much to my surprise, has lasted until now and shows no signs of slowing.

I designed city after city after city, but mapping and plotting was difficult. I had no sense of scale and SimCity's limitations meant that I had to use my imagination for most of it. The internet was unheard of in Australia at the time - it would be a few more years before I was connected.

Sadly, nothing from then survived. None of the maps, not even the program works anymore. The computer it ran on has long since died.

Simcity 2000
When I found out about the new version of the game that had occupied more of my time than school, I was thrilled beyond belief to get a copy. Suddenly, I was able to build diagonal roads and railway lines. There were new features and city building became easier.

I immediately re-created all the old cities I had done in the original version. But, there were still limitations and custom content was still a long way off. Again, nothing from that era survives.

Simcity 3000 Unlimited
The new version was a revelation. The best feature was the Urban Renewal Kit which essentially allowed me to build entire cities for free. I was able to download buildings for the first time and really get cities looking the way I wanted them to with very little fuss. I didn't think it could get any better. I was wrong. Nothing survives from then, either. The computer is long gone and I don't even have a copy of the game.

SimCity 4
To tell you the truth, I didn't really know where to start. The concept of having the entire country nicely connected through the use of regions was something that, although I had always hoped for, was so much of a paradigm shift that it required starting from scratch.

Arcacia went through about three different incarnations before finally becoming similar to what you see today. There were still some limitations, but all in all it was the best version of the game I had ever seen, Until...

SimCity 4 Deluxe
A few months ago, I ordered a copy on eBay and when it arrived, I was completely blown away. Not only were the cars suddenly driving on the left, like we do in Australia (the fact that they had been driving on the right until now had always bugged me), but the trains were running! There was a treasure trove of downloadable material. Addons, mods and just about anything you can imagine. Nothing short of a complete overhaul was in order and it is still going on. Every week I find something that I just have to have and in the space of a few months, the population doubled, cities finally had decent skylines and the vision I had when I first got SimCity came to fruition.

The Future
Arcacia is a part of my life. It's a part of my identity and the idea of stopping is, well, laughable. It will continue to grow and develop and there will never be a day where I say "Okay, I'm done with this." It has been a part of my life for 16 years.

So, if you're just starting out and you have a part of you thinking that you'll grow out of it, let me tell you from personal experience that there is no growing out of it. There may be periods of time where you put it to one side and focus on other things, but you will always come back to it. The cities and countries you create become more than just pixels on a screen - they become destinations. Real places where you can go to escape. Never let it go. It's far too precious.