''SimRefinery'' is a computer management simulation game designed to simulate Chevron's Richmond refinery operation. It was developed by the Maxis Business Simulations division of

Maxis Maxis is an American video game developer and a Division (business), division of Electronic Arts (EA). The studio was founded in 1987 by Will Wright (game designer), Will Wright and Jeff Braun, and acquired by Electronic Arts in 1997. Maxis is ...

in 1992. John Hiles, who was the head of the Maxis division, was a lead designer on the project.

Development

After the success of '' SimCity'', Maxis received numerous requests from various companies to develop simulations for their industries. After rejecting many requests from other companies, the team eventually agreed to make a prototype of ''SimRefinery'' for Chevron:

Release and rediscovery

As a commissioned business aid, it was not made available to the public. Until 2020, little information about the game had existed, though Maxis had discussed its creation and some screenshots existed. Most of the assets stayed with Maxis Business Simulations, which Maxis eventually divested in 1996. The division rebranded itself as Thinking Tools Inc. and continued to develop similar corporate simulations, but eventually had to shutter itself, and most of its assets were destroyed. In May 2020, librarian Phil Salvador published a long form investigative article about Maxis Business Simulations and ''SimRefinery'' featuring interviews with Hiles and other members of the division. ''Ars Technica'' reported on the article, which led to a commenter on the website uncovering a floppy disc that contains an in-development build of the game. The anonymous commenter then uploaded a digital copy to the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

to work within its

DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source MS-DOS emulator. It supports running programs primarily video games that are otherwise inaccessible since hardware for running a compatible disk operating system (DOS) is obsolete and generally unavailab ...

emulator. This emulated version reveals more details about the "gameplay" of ''SimRefinery''. The game resembles ''SimCity'' with different graphics, disasters, and rules, the former to represent oil tanker ports, petroleum storage and piping systems. The user's role in the simulation was the plant manager of a refinery. One of the things the user learned was about

supply and demand In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a Market (economics), market. It postulates that, Ceteris_paribus#Applications, holding all else equal, the unit price for a particular Good (economics), good ...

and how it affects the financial situation.GVI Security Solutions Inc. (1997). ''Form 10-K 1996''. Retrieved from http://www.secinfo.com/dsVsd.8Ex.htm The game was not defined to be an accurate representation of the chemical processes of a plant, as this would have been considered extremely dangerous. Instead, it was intended to show how disparate systems of a chemical plant may end up interacting at the larger scale, incorporating the financial, production, and logistics related to operating a plant. The game allowed some "disasters" to be created by creating explosive mixtures of components that set off fires, as well as external events that may disrupt the plant. The game was not considered to be a fully finished product based on the version received by the Internet Archive.

References

External links

*
SimRefinery
' on the

{{DEFAULTSORT:Simrefinery 1992 video games Business simulation games Maxis Sim games Video games developed in the United States Rediscovered works Single-player video games