As I read Mattern’s descriptions of dashboard governing, I realize that I’ve already seen this as an eight-year-old binging Zoo Tycoon, even as recently as two months ago in The Sims 3. The system of offering “ a big-picture view of what is happening in real time, along with information on historical trends, so that users can divine the how and why and redirect future action” is almost a textbook definition of the management simulator — a genre of games that arose in the 2000s with the rise of games like Cities: Skylines, Rollercoaster Tycoon, and my childhood favorites, Zoo Tycoon and The Sims series.
This comparison, while apt and fun, is pretty disturbing considering how the cozy premise of the management simulator is abused in diabolical and admittedly hilarious ways. There are many, many, horrible ways to kill your Sims in any of the Sims games. Even as an eight-year-old, creating a no-barriers “safari zoo” was an entertaining experiment, even if I preferred playing the game “properly” on principle. But the most disturbing part of this comparison is not how the system is abused; it’s how the system is supposed to work.
Management simulators appeal to the perfectionist in us. You are given a list of resources and a goal, and when you achieve small accomplishments, the game rewards you with a small dopamine rush in the form of a high percentage or a green smiley face. It’s when these small rushes fade that players become inventive and push the premise of the game to its limits. I worry that this dashboard-ization of the government that Mattern refers to promotes exactly that — the gamification and subsequent dehumanization of the governed. The thumbs-up, thumbs-down system of the mentioned Open Michigan Mi Dashboard eerily resembles the happy faces and frowny faces in Zoo Tycoon’s satisfaction mechanic.
What also intrigues me with this comparison is how each game tries to define what is socially acceptable as a feature. The Sims 3, for example, will not allow a child to be the biological offspring of an elder. Same-sex marriage wasn’t available until The Sims 3. At the same time, ghost Sims can have ghost babies or flirt with the grim reaper. Sims can be engineered to dwell in a basement, indefinitely producing paintings to be sold off for the benefit of the family living a floor above. It will be interesting to see what governments will limit and define, and interesting to see the unintentional consequences of these likely tone-deaf presumptions.
Ultimately, I am reminded of the Hunger Games and its literal gamification of human lives. One can argue that in reality, human agency cannot be engineered out of a system, as much as people will try. David Cameron can’t randomly delete a fence from a lion exhibit without experiencing repercussions from the people. But loss of agency happens in gradual steps, and I can’t help but to view these dashboards as another step toward the trivialization of resources and human lives.