I can’t even estimate how many hours I sunk into some of these Maxis games. SimCity grabbed me harder than any game had ever grabbed me before and I’m sure I spent the equivalent of years of full time work playing it.

This game isn’t covered in the article but SimGolf had such an impact on my sense of humour that decades later I still think “gregiscool.com” would be a great name for a startup.

At a young age SimEarth made a huge impression on me. I think it was the inscrutability and huge manuals that spoke of a wonderful ecological secret, tantalisingly out of reach no matter how many times I tried...