

The new SimCity - anigbrowl
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/03/simcity_review_the_new_version_of_the_classic_game_is_totally_addictive.html?wpisrc=most_viral

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mindstab
<http://i.imgur.com/u4DVg94.png>

Always on DRM overloaded. Please come back in half an hour to play your single
player game?

As my friend pointed out: "see if you can spot who got paid off by EA"
<http://imgur.com/E9Nkgyo>

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obiefernandez
Isn't it a matter of time before someone release a crack/patch that eliminates
the online DRM requirement? The bitter complaints seem a little pissant to me.
(Then again my experience with the game is limited to one 20 minute session on
friend's PC during the first beta period.

I'm annoyed that they didn't release concurrently for Mac. Also a bit relieved
since I can't afford to spend a lot of time playing right now.

~~~
duaneb
Well if the game logic/state is all server side (à la Diablo 2) then you would
have to reimplement the game client side to get around DRM. However, not all
games are like this.

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andrewmunsell
IIRC, there _is_ logic that is done server side, but it is more of a basic
simulation of the cities in the same region you are currently in, but are not
currently managing.

For obvious reasons, the entire simulation couldn't be done server side. I've
gotten numerous "trying to reconnect" messages and the game happily continues
until it does reconnect to their servers.

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throwaway420
It's hard to take a review seriously that doesn't even mention the always on
DRM issue.

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vbl
Or the insanely small limitations on city size.

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Fargren
Or the large amount of bugs. Or the lack of a save & load feature. Or the
impossibility of customizing the starting terrain. Or the severe lack of
information the game gives you (seriously, were are all the graphs?).

It's a step back on many many ways.

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Shad0w59
I think the Giant Bomb quick look here highlights a lot of the games strengths
and problems better than this hyperbolic statement of "seriously addictive":

[http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-
simcity/2300-7103...](http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-
simcity/2300-7103/)

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jamesaguilar
It looks really nice. I played for about an hour but it started crashing so
I'll have to wait for them to patch it before I can really dive in.

They've done a great job improving a lot of the UI issues of earlier games. In
fact, the entire UI is really nice. I'm not too bothered by the small city
size. It seems like by the time I'm done filling up an entire city's land
area, I'll have pretty much dealt with whatever growth issues there are and
any further increases will simply be more of the same. I don't really care
about the DRM because, for all intents and purposes, I am always online.

I'm curious about the ongoing plans for the game, though. I have to admit I'd
be surprised if they don't eventually increase the limits on city size.

~~~
TillE
> I don't really care about the DRM because, for all intents and purposes, I
> am always online.

Sure, but what do you do when you want to play the game again in 10 years? 20
years? The servers will be long gone. DRM is going to steal away vast swathes
of videogame history, which is a bit tragic.

It's teaching us all to treat videogames as a disposable commodity rather than
something to be treasured. How much poorer would pop culture be if The
Godfather or Lord of the Rings disappeared shortly after their creation, never
to be seen again?

SimCity 2000 is nearly twenty years old, and it's still a great game. It's
still important and worth remembering for all its innovations.

~~~
jamesaguilar
I don't have enough time to play all the good games that come out. I don't
think I'll be broken-hearted. But I admit you have a point that it would be
better if it was DRM free. It is still not a super big problem to me.

~~~
tl
If you view DRM as a negative and you believe that there are more good games
than you can play, you can subtract every game with DRM from your list, and
still have enough good games!

~~~
jamesaguilar
It certainly doesn't annoy me enough to skip a game that would otherwise be at
the top of my list.

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ryangripp
No Subways

Small City Size

No Thanks

~~~
squidsoup
Give it a month or two and I sadly suspect you'll be able to purchase all the
features you'd like with micro-transactions.

 _"We're building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along
the way."_ [1]

This kind of thinking from the games industry concerns me. If I've paid full
price for a game, I don't think I should be nickel and dimed for more content.

[1]
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/187421/EA_details_microtr...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/187421/EA_details_microtransactionfilled_future.php)

~~~
saraid216
I don't think that microtransactions are wrong, per se, but I do generally
find it to be in bad taste. But that's an art versus entertainment question
and the vast majority of the industry (and its customer base) have landed very
firmly on "entertainment" which leads fairly inevitably to caring about
nothing except profit.

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dhugiaskmak
The first impressions article from Ars was a lot more useful to me:

[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-
we...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-we-waited-
ten-years-for-this/)

That article gives me the impression that it's more of a Sims game with Sim
City bolted on than a real Sim City game.

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jpwright
That's absolutely false -- there are some obvious flaws with the game, but the
complexity of simulation and macro-level focus is not one of them. I beta-
tested, aka I actually got to play the game since all the servers are down.

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DigitalSea
The new Simcity seems to be immensely detailed and specific, every action has
a reaction and so on. Could this be used for city planning, I wonder just how
specific you can get to a real life environment based on land mass,
population, placement, climate, etc? I can't wait to play it, but am
definitely not a fan of the always on DRM that ships with the game as it just
deters and annoys actual purchasers of the game.

This didn't feel like a game review, rather just an excited guy gushing over
the nostalgia of the original games but it was still an entertaining read and
got me excited for the game even if details about DRM and features weren't
mentioned.

So many great games coming out this year, games are getting extremely
intelligent and advanced. Watch Dogs (the open world hacking game coming at
the end of 2013) looks great as does GTA 5 and of course Starcraft 2: Heart of
The Swarm.

~~~
chair6
> Could this be used for city planning...

Yes, yes it could:

[http://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/453186-simcity-vs-
suburban...](http://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/453186-simcity-vs-suburban-
sprawl/)

[http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MikeRose/20130219/186896/Usin...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MikeRose/20130219/186896/Using_SimCity_to_diagnose_my_home_towns_traffic_problem.php)

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adventured
Except for that whole online DRM fun. The notion that you can't play the game
if their servers are overloaded is outrageous. So now I can't just put it on
my laptop and play it when and where I like, I need to be always connected to
their servers.

Oh and no save/load feature. How stupid is that?

It's a seriously flawed game.

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rkroondotnet
Sounds a lot like a graphical version of Dwarf Fortress, without a lot of the
complexity.

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GuiA
Whoever makes Dwarf Fortress with a Minecraft-like renderer will be rich :)

~~~
rurounijones
Or even a user interface which is not totally alien to anyone under 30 :)

[EDIT] Before anyone jumps in, I do know about towns etc. but in terms of
gameplay depth they are all DF Lite.

[EDIT #2] Totally alien to _most_ people under 30 :)

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TillE
It makes me sad that all the Dwarf Fortress imitators are not only quite
shallow (they're management/building games rather than full-on sims), they
also have fairly terrible interfaces. Towns' UI is poor, Gnomoria's is
godawful.

I don't really know what they're thinking. Sure they have graphics, but that's
about it.

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NuZZ
My thoughts exactly. Additionally, their obsession with remaining 2D is
probably one of the biggest apparent design flaws. The whole point of a GUI to
a DF-like game would surely be to render it in a more information dense,
immersive way - not seeing that at all when we're dealing with isometric 2D.

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dragontamer
Discrete simulation of every agent has been done before in 1996: Roller
Coaster Tycoon. Each visitor would visit the park with a set amount of money,
and would only spend their money if a ride interested them enough. Rides were
modeled on intensity (among other factors). If a ride was too intense, some
visitors wouldn't be happy. While if a ride was not intense enough, visitors
would complain. All the while, your staff is out mowing the lawns, policing
vandals, cleaning up vomit, and dealing with discrete interactions between
every agent. It was a marvel in the 90s.

Other titles that model individual behavior are Tropico, Caesar 3, Pharaoh,
and Dwarf Fortress (which has already created its own sub-comment thread).

I admit though, Sim City has always taken on a much larger scale. While Roller
Coaster tycoon would scale to thousands of visitors, Sim City needs to scale
to hundreds of thousands of citizens or even millions, on a much larger area
than just a single amusement park.

I'll have to try it out, and see how it compares to the other simulators.

EDIT: For those curious, Tropico, Caesar 3, Pharaoh, and Roller Coaster Tycoon
are all available DRM free download at "Good Ol Games" for ~$5 to $10. Dwarf
Fortress is an ASCII-art free game with a niche following, but definitely
deserves a mention in this category of "discrete agents".

~~~
Negitivefrags
Sim City usually needs to scale that far, but this version has a much smaller
scale. The "cities" are only something like 2km by 2km squares. It's really
more "Sim Suburb"

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interpol_p
You can still have populations of over 200,000 in your city. Which is
impressive given that all agents are simulated individually.

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Camillo
I like how this article lies from the very first word (of the title). City
size limits are tiny compared to earlier versions of SimCity, so it's the
exact opposite of "bigger".

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gte910h
I'm pretty sure the DRM aspect of this entire thing is very secondary to the
"significant server side work being done"

Yeah, servers are overloaded. Join the club of every other MMO ever. They
won't be in a few days.

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ne0codex
So it's like Minecraft?

