SimCity - PC

Building On Unstable Ground

Joe Juba — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:30:00 GMT

When people go on vacation, they occasionally become so attached to their exotic destinations that they want to stay forever. The unfamiliar streets and strange customs promise exciting new experiences far more attractive than the day-to-day drudgery back home. However, popular vacation destinations aren’t inherently better – people just don’t stay long enough to see the problems. This holds just as true for the digital destination of SimCity as any sunny Caribbean beach.

The first few hours of SimCity are wonderful. The basic premise is the same as ever: As a new mayor, you are charged with creating a thriving town from nothing. You still place residential, commercial, and industrial zones while hoping to hit population milestones, but that isn’t your only goal. The big innovation in this reboot is diversity. Players can specialize in different areas, like oil drilling, gambling, or manufacturing, and each path has a different set of goals and rewards. I love how each specialization uses the same city-building fundamentals, but forces players to dive into new mechanics and take alternate paths to success.

As a fan of the series since the original, I am amazed by all of the conveniences and details Maxis worked into the experience. Automatically routing all power, water, and sewage through the roadways is brilliant, since it minimizes the time you spend monkeying with each utility. As my cities grow, I love diving into the data maps to see how various factors respond. These maps show you things like land value, happiness, ground pollution, and they are all clearly (and stylishly) represented. I used to happily stare at the graphics and charts in the previous installments, but the data maps are a much more informative and elegant way to convey information.

I saw all of this as I played a review build of the game on EA’s test servers. When I continued to play after the official launch, cracks in the foundation started appearing. Everything that I initially liked about the game is still intact, but like placing a coal power plant in the middle of a residential block, dark clouds spread and pollute previously pristine areas.

The bigger your city grows, the harder it is to manage. Traffic congests roads during rush hour due to poor AI. No matter how many high-capacity roads you build, cars sit bumper-to-bumper instead of pursuing alternate routes. Critical vehicles like fire trucks and police cars also get caught in the traffic jams, in addition to responding inefficiently to emergencies in general (like sending every fire truck to a single blaze, even if multiple buildings are on fire). These AI and pathing problems also prevent other major features, like casinos and mass transit, from functioning properly. Even though the simulation is responsible for these failings, the alert messages players receive imply that they’re the ones doing something wrong.

Given those issues, it may be a blessing that your population is held back by the fact that you don’t have a lot of space to work with. Compared to previous installments, the smaller plot size in SimCity is apparently aimed at encouraging players to make multiple cities instead of a single sprawling megalopolis. However, I was cramped for space even when trying to build a city around a single specialization. To make matters worse, the inability to terraform means that you are stuck with the map exactly as it appears. If you just need a little extra space to expand your power plant or place a port, you’re out of luck. Individually, these shortcomings might seem like minor details – but in a simulation, the details are everything.

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Prior to release, much of the discussion about SimCity revolved around the fact that it has no offline mode; it must remain connected to EA’s servers. I’m not going to use SimCity as a weapon to attack the larger concept of always-online gaming. Regardless of your feelings on that issue, SimCity undoubtedly benefits and suffers in many ways from the constant connectivity.

In its ideal state, SimCity fosters cooperation between players by encouraging cooperation within a region. Pooling resources and sharing services is the surest route to success, and collaborating with your friends is fun. This experience is what the always-online requirement facilitates – in theory. In reality, the first week of launch demonstrated the worst-case scenario: SimCity was effectively unplayable for several days. Maxis disabled certain features to ease the burden, most importantly the “cheetah speed” setting. Without it, your city’s growth and income is severely restricted by the slow pace the simulation is forced to maintain. As of this writing, cheetah speed is still not restored.

Even though the servers run better now, I still experience delays ranging from 5 to 45 minutes when trying to share services or gifts with other cities in my region, leading to confusion as to whether or not a problem has actually been resolved. Creating a new city is also a problem in some cases; if you don’t already have an Origin friends list populated by people playing the game, your chances of finding a decent region are low. You can’t search for available slots by any useful criteria (like types of specialization needed), so any casual player has to wade through a sea of garbage regions.

Given time, Maxis could clear up the problems with SimCity. The studio could deliver consistent server performance, restore cheetah speed, patch the AI, and give players larger cities. But games can’t be reviewed based on the product they might become; Electronic Arts and Maxis are charging gamers for this experience right now. At this point in time, it just isn’t worth your money.

For a closer look at the more positive elements of SimCity, check out our Test Chamber made prior to the game's release.

SimCity Digital Edition's Exclusive Landmarks

Matthew Kato — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:34:00 GMT

SimCity is all about building the kind of city you want, and now that can include famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower in the Origin-exclusive Digital Deluxe Edition of the game.

The Digital Deluxe Edition of the game comes with the Paris, German, and British city sets which include the Eiffel Tower, Brandenburg Gate, and Big Ben landmarks, among other goodies. Set these down in your city, and you not only spruce up your skyline, the surrounding buildings conform to their distinctive style. This includes double-decker buses and other unique buildings, as well as an increase in tourist foot traffic.

For more info on the game's Digital Deluxe Edition, take a look at the official Origin Page, and for more gameplay details check out Joe's recent in-depth preview.

Note: SimCity comes out in North America on March 5. Disregard the March 8 date on the trailer. That is for Europe.

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What You Need To Know About The Latest From Maxis

Joe Juba — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:01:00 GMT

SimCity releases on March 5, which means that the game is in the final stages of development at the Maxis offices in Emeryville, California. In fact, it's so close to release that we got to sit down and play it for five hours straight. This extended hands-on time gave us a better sense of SimCity than ever before, and these are some of the biggest take-away points about the game and what it offers.

It's Not About One City
The original SimCity had one primary goal: Increase your population. A lot has changed over the years, and the number of people in your town isn't the only (or the most important) objective. Now, you're aiming for a more collaborative success, even if you're playing single-player. Because all of the cities in a region can share services, it's wise to divide your efforts. Dividing unsavory services like sewage management and garbage disposal can dampen the negative effects on a single city, while maximizing the positive effects for multiple cities. If you aren't playing with other people, you can build multiple cities by yourself in a single region to share the burden.

Have It All If You're Small
Even though SimCity has an emphasis on cooperative efforts, you can still create a single, self-sufficient town that covers all of its own bases. "You can certainly have a small town that does it all. That has its own power generation, its own police force," says creative director Ocean Quigley. "But that starts to break down when your city is large. When your city needs a lot of water. When your city is generating a lot of garbage. When you have a lot of injured people who need hospitals. If you're making small-town America, you can fit all that stuff into a single city. But as your city becomes more and more dense and has a higher population, you'll find that it makes much more sense to put things in adjacent boxes, and let them be handled outside the city."

Sandbox Mode
In the standard mode, SimCity offers a variety of challenges for your and your region-mates. On the other hand, those wouldn't be fair if some players were allowed to cheat and others weren't. To solve this, Maxis has included a Sandbox mode. “Sandbox mode is where you’re saying ‘I’m not interested in leaderboards. I just want to have access to a whole bunch of cheats. I want to play with the simulation as a toy,’” says Quigley. “So, we give you a bunch of money cheats, and a whole bunch of other cheats for you to do stuff with. Everything is unlocked.” This means that even with the emphasis on connected play and working together, players who just want to explore the simulation without restrictions are free to play however they please.

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Looking Good
One of the coolest features of SimCity is buried a bit in the options menus, but you can select the visual style of your city from a pull-down menu. This doesn't change any of the actual buildings, but it does alter the color. Some filters give your city a hipster-style Instagram vibe, while others just accentuate cool or warm colors. My personal favorite was a black-and-red filter that gives everything a Sin City look. Even better, some filters are geared toward colorblind players. They may not look great to those with normal vision, but they are engineered to accentuate the differences between colors that otherwise would not seem distinct to those with colorblindness.

Different Goals
Multiple specializations are available for mayors who want to take their cities down certain lucrative paths. Maybe you want to focus on drawing in tourists. Maybe you want your city to become a mining juggernaut. Whatever you choose, you will find that SimCity guides you toward your goal without putting pressure on you. "We want to provide just enough structure so that if you’re not entirely self-directed – if you’re not doing SimCity as creative play but you’re doing it as a gamer and want a game experience – that you have a clear goal that you can move to. And you get feedback as to how well you’re doing and what the stages you need to do are," Quigley says. "We’ve had to put in a bunch of stuff like that, because otherwise, it is more toy than game. And it has to have aspects of both."'

The Online Thing
Every time we post anything on this site about SimCity, we see comments from outraged fans regarding the game’s controversial always-online feature. People don’t like sacrificing control over products they purchase – especially in a series that has such a long single-player tradition. "There are a lot of people who want us to be making a 1990s-era game. A lot people who want us to make SimCity4++. It's not the '90s anymore. The world has moved on," says Quigley. "We're building a new game in this new environment. The Internet is a thing now." From my time with SimCity, this goal of constant connectedness serves the game well. Yes, you need to be online to play, even in single-player. Yes, it doubles as a form of copy protection, but it doesn't impact the quality of the game mechanics. As someone who was skeptical of the decision early on, my time with the game has convinced me that it has benefits. It contributes to the sense of collaboration and cooperation, which (like it or not) are critical components of this game. Yes, it is still annoying that you can't play offline single-player. Part of me misses the idea of creating one massive city that does it all, but another part is looking forward to the possibilities with this new incarnation of SimCity.

That's it for my initial impressions, but we'll have a full review closer to SimCity's release. The exclusive screens below were taken during my time with the game at Maxis, and include shots that highlight the black-and-red filter, the building upgrade process, and a pipe spitting sewage into the open air. When you're doing looking at those screens, check out Ocean Quigley’s blog for more (and read his answers to many questions in the comments).

Reinvention And Renovation

Joe Juba — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:00:00 GMT

The SimCity name inspires fond memories for many gamers, regardless of which of the four main installments they have played the most. Wherever your SimLoyalty lies (personally, I’m a fan of SimCity 2000), the latest SimCity combines elements of your favorite entry with new features to ensure your urban planning experience feels both familiar and modern.

With a few months to go before the game’s February release, I played two hours of an early SimCity build at Maxis. The first lesson I learned is that smart city planning begins with building a road that connects your patch of land to the regional highway. This is how you open the lines of communications and trade with other cities in your region. These cities might be controlled by your friends playing simultaneously, or they could be your own carefully constructed communities running automatically. Your interaction with these nearby towns plays a central role in your own planning – but more on that later.

Connecting to the regional highway is crucial because it allows you to start building your own roads. Almost all of the infrastructure revolves around them now. Roads automatically carry electricity and water to adjacent structures (no more manually building pipes and power lines), and you are unable to build structures or zones without an accompanying road. SimCity is much more flexible with road-building than previous titles, letting players sculpt winding paths instead of straight lines.

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After laying down a basic grid, I started one of the most beloved activities in the franchise: zoning. Fans are familiar with the basic industrial, commercial, and residential zones, but these options seem less dependent on each other now. This is where the regional structure and depending on your neighboring cities comes into play again. One city can make up for deficiencies in another; if you build a bedroom community full of residential zones, your citizens can drive to other towns for work. If you run a manufacturing powerhouse, you are better off focusing on industrial zones instead of convincing sims to move into your pollution-clogged neighborhoods. Maintaining a balance within your region is necessary to make sure that every city has its needs met.

How you build your city is guided by which specialization you choose. Selecting education (like I did) means that you need to focus on building schools, bus stops, universities, etc. Placing these structures isn’t just a question of having the money; you need to reach certain milestones before they are available. For example, the community college isn’t an option until your town hall is upgraded to a city hall – a separate feat that hinges on meeting a population requirement. Specializations help you keep your eyes on an immediate goal, adding direction to the larger process of building a thriving city.

My only major complaint from what I played is the emphasis on interconnectedness. Allowing players to trade and interact with other cities is one thing, but requiring it is another. City specializations are a cool way to focus players’ efforts, but they discourage building a diverse city that covers all of the bases. This increases reliance on your neighbors; you may have to turn to other cities for certain necessities, including power, housing, or jobs, instead of providing it for yourself. As a player who likes to build a single sprawling metropolis, I didn’t get the sense that my favorite way to play is encouraged. You’re supposed to build multiple specialized cities in the same region to work together to achieve the same goal.

Civilizations can only succeed through cooperation in real life, so seeing it manifested in SimCity isn’t a surprise. The regional structure drives home the importance of working with your friends, and is aimed at providing a different kind of simulation than the series’ classic entries. The SimCity fans have grown to love isn’t gone, though. The humor, customization, and pure fun involved in building a bustling city is intact, and I can’t wait to see how these aspects evolve beyond the introductory hours.

Interview: A New Multiplayer Focus

Bryan Vore — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:45:00 GMT

We recently spoke with SimCity lead producer Kip Katsarelis about the new multiplayer components headed to the series and much more.

Want to create a college town? Maybe an industrial wasteland? The new SimCity encompasses these archetypes and many more. They all serve an important purpose in the new multiplayer system in which towns work together to share resources and build "great works" together. Read on for more details in this promising SimCity reboot. (Interview conducted by Joe Juba.)

Can you give us a general overview of what the multiplayer component of SimCity is and your goals for it?
Multiplayer is a key focus of SimCity, and players are part of the SimCity world. Everything you do at your city level and your region level bubbles up, and you’re all connected through leaderboards, through global markets, and through challenges that you can compete in.

Cities in a region work together on what we call “great works.” For E3, we had a great work – the international airport – that we showed off. There are three cities in that region, and in SimCity, cities can specialize. So there’s going to be several archetypes of cities you can build. There’s the tourist city, which is going to be really focused on bringing tourists into your city. And there are leaderboards tied to each one of these city archetypes.

Are these archetypes something you select at the outset, or do they arise out of the way that you play your city?
We’re definitely going to surface those city types to player up front. You’re going to be able to pick your path as you play along. Some of it is determined by your starting city. The other city is really focused on harvesting coal and resource gain. That city’s going to look different, play different – they’re actually playing this resource-management game where they’re building coal mines, and they’re either going to sell that coal on the global market, trade it with other players, or turn it into manufactured goods. They’ll be able to smelt it into metals or use it in their coal plants.

And these different city types can work together to build larger works?
Yeah, we have great works within a region. The cities are all situated in a region, so think of it as a map, and there’s going to be some number of cities within a map. We’ll have some that are small, two- or three-city maps with a single great works site where players can choose which great work to build. They’ll have leaderboards, so the coal player has their own leaderboards, missions, and achievements. Playing alone, you’re only going to get to a certain level. Your coal business and your city are only going to be so successful. Working on these great works together, that’s going to put you into the upper echelon of those cities and boost you. An international airport, for example, will allow the coal player to ship goods into and out of their city. For the tourist cities, without it, you can only get so many tourists into your region. Even though you’ve got your sports stadium all set up, your public transportation networks set up to funnel the tourists in, but you’re going to need that international airport to really pull in the tourists. That’s going to help you out on your own quest for success in the tourist game.

When the airport is completed, does it exist physically in the city?
In this case, you’ll see the local airport. You can have local airports in your cities, but there’s an international airport that exists outside your city. It exists in the region, and everyone connected to it can benefit from it. There’s a whole game there of just building. You’re crafting your city, you’re shaping your region, you’re collaborating with your friends building this great work. There’s a ton of gameplay just building it, and you’re going to see who is contributing to the great work. Who’s contributing workers to it? Who’s contributing materials to it? Who’s doing the most? Whoever achieves the most at the end is actually going to earn an extra achievement for their contribution. Once it’s completed, then there’s going to be gameplay afterwards and benefits from those great works, and you’ll have different types of great works to choose from.

These great works cannot be built if you’re trying to play a single-player game?
Our single-player is still considered multiplayer, because everything you do, you’re still part of that SimCity world. You could play by yourself in a region, but play multiple cities. So it’s really about the number of cities that it takes to achieve something like that. And, of course, playing with other players, there’s going to be some social reward mechanics there the more players you have. And it’s going to be quicker to get things done.

So it is technically possible to play single-player if you don’t want any outside interaction?
Yeah. We’re definitely catering to different playstyles. We know that there are quite a few SimCity players who do want to play alone. When you create your region, you could just set it to private and play any one of those cities by yourself. You’re jumping around between the cities and playing that way. And later on, if you want to invite a friend, you can invite a friend to your game if you’d like. We’re going to have a matchmaking system, so you can just hit play and we’ll put you in a region with other players, and you can play that way as well.

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Players have the matchmaking option available, but they can also choose specific people to play with also?
Definitely.

What other kinds of city-to-city interactions are available?
Trading is definitely important, especially given how unique the cities are. For the coal city, that player is really crafting the city around the coal industry. It’s the economic center, the heart of that city. That game is about zoning lots of industrial and commercial. You could go residential too, but why not have another city that requires lots of residential? They could build a city that’s all residents, and their residents could come to your city and work there. Both players benefit.

There might be some cities that don’t have any water resources, so they’re going to need to get water from someplace. You might have another city that’s full of water, and they can contribute water to their neighbors. Services are another thing. You could supply fire coverage, police coverage – because crime is going to a problem for some players, as well.

There’s also going to be negative impacts, too. There could be some cities that are producing lots of pollution, and that pollution is going to spread out from that city and impact the region. Crime is going to spill out, also.

Is it possible to jump into other player-controlled cities to check it out and see how a different kind of city operates?
Yeah, you can check it out. We call it spectator mode. You can hop over there, load it up, and see it. That’s their city – you won’t be able to build anything – but you can definitely view it.

Was there a point in development where you considered a simultaneous multiplayer, like two people building the same city at once?
We talked about it, but that’s not the core experience we felt players were after. We’ve done some research on that, it’s come up, but that didn’t seem like the primary motivator for players.

Is there any definition to the space between the cities? Is the region something with landmarks you can see?
It’s a map, and we create the maps. Every city is placed. You’ll have an area, a playspace, that you’ll be able to build up, but you won’t be able to build into the region. The region is visualized; you can pop out to the region view, and you’ll see your city alive, and highways connecting the cities, and traffic flowing back and forth, so the region feels like an extension of your city. You’re going to look out from your city into the region and see other cities off in the distance. You’ll be able to see a great work if it’s close to your city. You’ll see your sims traveling to work. You’ll see airplanes landing at the airport.

Is there any discussion about connectivity between the SimCity series and The Sims series?
There’s always talk about that. We’ve done that in the past. In SimCity 4, we had an “import your sim.” We’re not planning anything like that at the moment.

Since SimCity is bringing several players together, how does that affect cheat codes? Entering a code for extra money previously only changed your own experience.
Cheat codes are a big part of Maxis games. We’re still kicking around ideas on how to integrate those and the best way. When you’re talking about online, be it collaborative or competitive, you want to make sure people are on an even playing field. We want to satisfy that casual sandbox play, but also that competitive online play as well. So there’s still some work there we’re discussing on our end.

What else can you tell us about the reward systems for players?
We have several levels. We have a mission structure, so you’ll be able to complete missions within your city. Very simple, “put out 10 fires with your fire station” style missions. We have larger, collaborative missions where players are going to work together at the region level. The international airport is an example of one of those. Then we have challenges, which we call global challenges, and there are two types. We want to release those on a weekly cadence, where we’re providing new challenges, and you’ll opt into them automatically. There will be ones that you compete in at an individual level. “Pollution in the SimCity world is at an all-time high.” We want the players to be aware of that, and we’ll try to reduce the global pollution by 10 percent, let’s say. You’ll have a week to do that, and there’ll be an achievement for completing that. And then we have regional challenges, where we might want 10,000 airplanes to launch this week. You’re going to work together on a regional level and be judged as a region, and there’ll be unlocks and achievements around the regional and individual missions. We’ll have your basic achievements, and we’ll also have in-game unlocks.

Is there an element of user-created content and sharing in city customization?
We’re not committing to any of that at this time, but we know that is part of Maxis. In SimCity 4, a lot of those tools were released pretty much a year after launch. So, definitely on our minds, but I can’t promise that we’re delivering on any of that right now.

SimCity requires an always-on online connection. How does that work if players just want to play solo?
We are building a multiplayer experience. That is our goal. We want players to play together. We’re making the missions, adding leaderboards, things like that. This is a collaborative online experience. We’re going to be delivering content like challenges as the game is live. That’s the experience we’re after. If you want to play solo, we’re going to give you those opportunities, but you’re still part of that SimCity world. We want players to feel like that they are part of that, and that their actions at the city level ripple up and that world is being broadcast back down into your city and your experience.

We have a ton of data. We know what the pollution levels are. We know how much garbage is being produced. We know our education level, our crime levels. We want to surface that.

A Behind Closed Doors Look At Maxis' City Builder

Bryan Vore — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 17:04:00 GMT

SimCity has been out of the limelight for awhile, but now it's poised to return with many enticing features.

The first thing called out in the demo is the fact that the cities all have people and vehicles zipping about all with real places to go and things to do. The devs exhibited this by laying down a new (curvy!) road and plopped several houses along it. Almost instantly little construction trucks drove up and workers built the structure quickly. A "for sale" sign appeared and before long moving trucks pulled up with excited families inside.

For some reason, these people had no problem buying a place with no electricity. Instead of building a plant in the city, Maxis pulled out to regional view, which shows all of your online friends' cities. One friend had made an industrial-focused town with plenty of power to spare. Now it was only a matter of running power lines to the edge of the hometown and the city became fully juiced up. Once it became nighttime, citizens went home and all if the little lights flickered on one-by-one. With impressive dynamic lighting on display, the effect looks fantastic.

Back out to the regional view again, we see that another friend has a tourism-focused city. It's filled with hotels and shops, but it needs a centerpiece to really bring in the business. Maxis plopped a pro sports stadium right in the middle of town and traffic immediately spiked. Light rail stations were placed strategically around town to relieve congestion and handy glowing lines help guide optimal placement -- scaling from green to yellow to red to indicate if your network is stretched too far apart.

What could really help your friend's tourist town now that he has a stadium is an international airport. This will provide more people and resources for everyone in your friends' network as well so everyone can work together to contribute and get it built. One of the key ingredients is raw materials and that falls to the industrial town. It's was already filled with coal mines, but it needed a smelter. They put one in and showed off the new module system that allows players to add on little parts that enhance stats in certain areas.

Even though the industrial city provides an important service to the area, conditions are rough. Pollution is making people sick and crime runs rampant as evidenced by graffiti tags all over the place. For more specific readings, players can switch to a different viewing mode that turns everything white and highlights certain elements in color. This place is loaded with bright red buildings indicating heavy crime. If things go on like this for much longer, criminal activity can leak out to friends' cities. In fact, we head back to the original town and a bright red convertible is cruising down the street with a dangerous rock music blaring out of its speakers. It pulls up to a bank and tiny robbers get out to nab a payday.

Despite these problems, progress on the airport is complete and the demo ends with jets and passenger flights taking off and landing to celebratory fireworks. So far, things look simple enough for a wide audience, yet plenty deep for veterans. And I'm especially pumped for more on this community-style multiplayer system.

For more on SimCity, don't forget to check out the new screens and trailer!

Maxis Shows Off New SimCity Screens

Joe Juba — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:15:00 GMT

Update: The latest SimCity trailer has been added, so you can see the game in action – including a glimpse of the ever-popular monster disaster.

Original story: Though EA's press conference for E3 didn't contain much in the way of mind-blowing SimCity information, these new screens should keep fans happy.

The images below showcase some of the standout features in the SimCity reboot, including disasters, curvy roads, and city specialization. After you're finished browsing through the screens, you can read our Q&A about the game while you're waiting for more details to emerge from the E3 show floor.

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SimCity Interview: Building On Classic Foundations

Joe Juba — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:21:00 GMT

At the mere mention of SimCity, many gamers get nostalgic gleams in their eyes as they recall the hours spent building virtual metropolises. Considering how long the series has been dormant, some people thought that SimCity would remain relegated to the realm of nostalgia, but EA and Maxis revealed a new installment at this year's Game Developers Conference. We talked to lead producer Kip Katsarelis about this reboot of one of gaming's classic PC series.

This interview originally appeared in issue #229 of the magazine. We now present this extended version for the first time outside of Game Informer Digital.

It’s been nearly a decade since the last numbered SimCity title came out. Why resurrect the franchise now? What are the factors that make you feel the time is right?
Has it been that long? I feel old! There are two reasons that come to mind. First, the team that worked on SimCity 4 was busy making a little game called Spore. We had our hands full with that one. During that time, we kicked around many ideas for what the next installment of SimCity should be. This leads us to the second point, city builders are complex and require some serious hardware to run a game of this magnitude. The next SimCity had to deliver on the graphics and a deep simulation. GlassBox is the simulation engine that is powering this SimCity and will allow us to create a city simulation that is deep and responsive. It scales to simulate entire cities, regions of cities, and allows us to connect cities through global data that we push to all of our players. It allows us to track every Sim in your city, follow them to work, to school, to play. We want to make sure our graphics tell the story of the simulation, so that art serves the simulation. If a Sim is sick, you’ll see it. If your water is dirty, you’ll see it. What You See Is What You Sim.

Our fans have been speaking out with every press release for every Maxis game that has come out. The most common reply to news around a Maxis game is, “When is the next SimCity coming out?” The time is now for the next SimCity. Top men are on it.

Currently, the game is just called SimCity. Why not SimCity 5?
When we set out to create this version of SimCity we had numerous debates about calling it 5 or not. Our goal from the beginning was to introduce the brand to an entirely new generation of gamers, while satisfying our core fans desire for a deep city simulation experience. We wanted to move away from some of the complexities of SimCity 4 and bring back the charm and magic of SimCity 2000. We looked at reinventing every feature from a tactile interface to presenting data in a more visual manner. It’s very much a reboot of the franchise.

How is the new SimCity different from previous installments?
We wanted to preserve what was great about the gameplay of previous SimCitys and still improve and innovate as much as possible. The gardening aspect of SimCity through zoning is one of the hallmark experiences of SimCity. It’s very much part of this SimCity as well. In this version, players will have only one zone type for Residential, Commercial, and Industrial. Density will be driven by the types of roads and general traffic around these zones.

Apart from zoning, will players have any ability to customize the look of their cities?
Of course, this is Maxis after all! Customization has always been a huge part of SimCity. We’ve taken the city creation tools to a whole new level with the addition of curvy roads and the modular nature of our ploppable buildings. We’ve taken some of the learnings from Spore and the editors and brought that into SimCity. All of our ploppables will come with loads of additional unlocks for you to create lots of interesting combinations and layouts for your Police Stations, Schools, Health Centers, and more.

Does the simulation focus mainly on the city and resources? What role do the citizens play?
Players will be faced with many of the challenges real cities face on a daily basis – things like crime, education, budgets, public health, traffic, and more. We’ve introduced depletable resources to the simulation, which will fuel big business and help drive and influence the economic centers of player’s cities. We felt that resources are an important component of the economic loop for real cities, that it was an obvious and important addition to SimCity. These resources include water, coal, oil, and ore. Sims are directly impacted by these resources by the jobs these industries produce, the products they make, and the impacts to the environment. Players will have the ability to decide which resources to use to help shape their cities and how to manage their city when those resources are no longer available.

Previous SimCity titles had depth for the players that wanted it while remaining accessible to less hardcore players. Is that the goal with the new title also? If so, how do approach striking that balance?
Accessibility has been a key focus for us. It has been a balancing act since we want a simulation that is deep and one that our hardcore fans will embrace. Maxis has traditionally excelled in this area and we think we’ve nailed it on this one. A few examples of this are with how we’re visualizing data. We do not want to overload players with spreadsheets and numbers. We’ve been inspired by what’s going on in the info-graphic space. You can still communicate complex concepts with simple to read visuals.

We plan to introduce players to the tools slowly through a mission based tutorial so they understand the simulation and the tools at their disposal. This mission extends beyond the tutorial and is part of the core gameplay loop, offering rewards for completing missions.

What concepts from previous SimCity titles are you interested in exploring further in the new game?
As much as we love city building, we love destroying our cities even more. Disasters will continue to be a big part of SimCity and with this SimCity being truly 3D with a real physics engine. Disasters are going to be more epic than ever.

Can you explain the game’s multiplayer component? How will your choices impact other players?
Multiplayer is the big new feature of this SimCity. Cities are now part of something bigger; they are part of a region, which consists of other cities and Great Works. Cities influence one another and work together to build Great Works, compete on leaderboards, and connect with one another to trade. One example of a Great Work could be a solar farm. Players will want a Solar Farm in their region because it’s an excellent source of clean power and jobs. In order to build the Solar Farm, you’ll need several cities contributing to the project to provide materials, workers, and funds. The Solar Farm is just one example of how the region that your city is part of adds additional pressures and decisions to your city planning.

The game was revealed with a focus on environmentalism. Are you trying to avoid being seen as a game with “an agenda,” or is that a label you wouldn’t mind being applied to SimCity?
SimCity is a game first and foremost, but has always influenced the way people look at the real world. Players are faced with the same issues that real politicians are faced with and will have to deal with those issues in the virtual world they create. Maxis isn’t trying to push an agenda. Sure, we have opinions and infuse our own sense of humor into the simulation, but it’s up to the players to make their own decisions, good or bad. We just want to make sure we capture the topics that are of interest today and are relevant to our fans.

The game is currently only announced for PC. Do you think this title (or the SimCity franchise in general) has a future on console also?
Anything is possible. We’re focused on making the best SimCity ever on PC. Console gamers and PC gamers are overlapping more so than they had in the past. Both are looking for a more structured experience, both want to achieve something in a shorter period of time, both want something they can pick up and play easily, but takes time to master. We’ve incorporated many of these elements into SimCity.

Introducing SimCity's Powerful Glassbox Simulation Engine

Phil Kollar — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 01:10:00 GMT

A long-rumored new SimCity game was finally announced by EA at GDC, but details were light. Now developer Maxis is starting the hype machine, but instead of focusing on impressive graphics or approachable gameplay, the first video is all about the game's new complex simulation engine.

Watch the two-minute video below to get your first glimpse of the Glassbox engine. You'll see examples of how the buildings you set up will have an impact on the environment and natural resources and vice versa. Just keep in mind that the graphics on display in the video are placeholder and nowhere near final, so the actual game will presumably look a lot nicer.

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