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Will Wright let you play god with an entire planet, and it was way harder than SimCity.
Maxis' SimEarth let you manage an entire planet's evolution across billions of years, from molten rock to spacefaring civilization. Based on James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, the simulation modeled atmospheric composition, tectonic activity, ocean currents, and biological evolution. You could nudge life toward sentience, trigger ice ages, or watch civilizations rise and fall. It was far more complex and less accessible than SimCity, which meant fewer people played it but those who did found something genuinely unique. The game was essentially an interactive science textbook disguised as a god game, and Will Wright's ambition to simulate everything foreshadowed the everything-simulation philosophy of Spore decades later.
Example
Players discovered they could guide dinosaurs to develop intelligence and build civilization before mammals ever evolved, creating alternate evolutionary timelines. The game's willingness to let reptilian civilizations launch into space made it a playground for speculative biology enthusiasts.
Why it matters
SimEarth represented Will Wright's most ambitious systems-thinking design and showed that simulation games could tackle planetary-scale concepts. While less commercially successful than SimCity, it expanded the boundaries of what simulation games could model and influenced Wright's later work on Spore.
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