When it comes to the pop-culture representation of various professions, doctors, lawyers and the police have traditionally been the most heavily represented on television. Yet urban planners can claim a disproportionate prominence in the area of computer games: since 1989, one of the most persistent game genres has been city-builder games, most famously epitomised by the SimCity series. It’s possible that SimCity has done more than any other single source to disseminate information about what urban planners do, especially amongst younger sections of the population. But what do SimCity and other city-builder games say – and teach – about our profession?