
The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces - DiabloD3
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/maxis-is-dead-but-this-game-is-better-than-simcity
======
icehawk219
Skylines is hands down my favorite game right now and is directly responsible
for my highly unproductive, but fun, weekend. But it's not without faults. For
me one of the telling things will be how they handle a very similar problem
that EA had with the latest Sim City. Traffic. Once your city becomes a
certain size the game goes from City Builder to Traffic Management Simulator.
Which itself wouldn't be a problem if not for issues with the simulation.

For example if you have a 6-lane, one-way, road with intersections cars will
get into the right/left lanes as soon as they get on the road, even if that's
on the other side of the map from where they're turning. Causing the middle
lanes to become useless and the others to be backed up (admittedly this isn't
totally unrealistic though). I remember Sim City had similar problems and I'm
sure it's a tough one to solve. Especially on a big game world with hundreds,
or thousands, of intersections and tens of thousands of cars being simulated
at once. Even if they don't solve it I'll still be burning my weekends on this
game for a long time.

~~~
rexignis
There's another city sim in the works called Citybound and the dev is
seemingly obsessed with getting roads and traffic right.

[http://blog.cityboundsim.com/](http://blog.cityboundsim.com/)

~~~
notatoad
I absolutely _love_ the citybound dev blog, it's such a great exploration of
problems that i would never think about otherwise.

However, I have no faith that the game itself will ever be finished. It's the
epitome of "perfect is the enemy of good", they spend so much time getting
little things absolutely perfect. At least it makes for an interesting blog.

------
zzleeper
I think we are all playing into EA's strategy by calling it Maxis instead of
just EA.

Simcity 2013 was a failure of EA, but by mentioning Maxis 11 times and EA only
once (and in passing), it's as they give EA a carte blanche to fail without
the lowered reputation for future games (which means many people will
preorder, and so on)

~~~
toxican
Honestly I think Maxis deserves a ton of blame as well. They operate semi-
autonomously for how long and they routinely churned out terrible games. On
reddit, I see far more people blame EA than I do Maxis. And while I'm all for
EA getting a ton of bad press, I think it's bs that nobody points a finger at
Maxis because they're just as guilty, imo. Nostalgia for 90s and early 00s
Maxis is blinding people from the reality that Maxis turned into a shit dev

~~~
ffn
This is the classic symptom of changing oneself to fit the mainstream once one
hits the mainstream. Whether it's EA's fault of Maxis's fault is just
fruitless finger pointing (it's EA's, these guys are literally the cancer
that's killing the video game industry), but the real mistake is updating your
game to fit "mainstream standards" of connectivity, social, high quality 3d
graphics, etc. Some management official or engineer probably sold these ideas
as completely required innovations if Simcity wanted to stay competitive with
things like facebook or MMOs (i.e. other time-consumers), and everyone just
jumped on board.

And it's that very idea of "we need to stay competitive" that really killed
Simcity. Here in capitalist societies, we're sold on the idea competition is
great, but it's not, it assumes the fact the rules stay the same and focuses
attention on what our "enemies" are doing. We become obsessed with not doing
what we do best, but with doing what we think will beat the others. In
Simcity's case, it was adopting online connectivity and social interaction
despite the fact Simcity is inherently a creative game and not a social one
(in fact, unless you're a trash-tier mayor, you've spent time researching city
layouts, reading through strategies, and possibly even simulating various
algorithms and geometries in matlab or whatnot... whereas in a social game,
you'd be spending your time name-calling the other players). Strategies and
ideas that emerge from competition focus on trying to capture customers from
an adversary, and completely ignores the fact people are complicated, don't
like change, and that a company can capture them by just being incrementally
"better" in some engineering metric.

Today, it's too late for simcity, but to a new rising city game like skylines,
I hope they ignore what "the competition" are doing and just focus on making
their fun city building game more fun (e.g. instead of worrying about online,
social, or the 2018 version of online-social which will probably be 3d
holograms or something, spend time introducing new mechanics like strategic
resources, "work from home" algorithms, flying cars, racism / gentrification,
etc.)

~~~
danudey
I think Simcity came around in the same era where everything EA did was
online, for no reason. It's like the execs said 'online social games are
killing us, we need all of our games to be online and social' and wouldn't
sign off on a project without those two check boxes.

Need for Speed: Rivals was similar. It was a neat concept, but it revolved
entirely around online play that was generally just completely terrible. You
get dumped in a map with 1-7 other people, and then you drive around aimlessly
hoping that you eventually run into them, which you don't. In the meantime,
you're listening to every idiot with a Playstation Camera screaming at their
moms for another PB&J, or some jackass swearing the entire time because he
thinks he's alone in his room, because there's no way to turn off voice chat
in the game whatsoever.

Congratulations, your game is both online (but you can't really tell) and
social (but it's actually antisocial).

Simcity is the same way. What if you could play online against other people? I
mean… _with_ other people. You could build neighbouring towns. Except you're
actually building neighbourhoods because realistically sized cities would take
too much server resources. And then you can interact with other cities! By
buying or selling resources like garbage pickup, recycling, and power.

Except that the servers didn't work, so online only meant offline always. And
the social idea was cool, until some jackass dropped into your region and
built a zone that was entirely coal power plants and industrial zones, and
polluted the whole region. Or built a city with nothing but power plants,
provided power to everyone else in the region, then one day bulldozed
everything, pulling the rug out from under everyone else and sending their
cities into chaos.

I really hope that Cities: Skylines is successful. It already seems like a
_far_ more interesting game than any previous Simcity was, and it has a lot
more potential as well. I love the idea of being able to ease congestion by
'work from home' incentives, and it would be cool if they (or modders) could
implement that.

------
intull
The Colossal Order team, in my opinion was very lucky! There were three games
- 1\. SimCity 4 with the statistical simulation model, big maps (region-wise)
and plenty of features. 2\. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model
(it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a
new way of creating games in this genre. And, 3\. Cities XL having a HUGE map,
few unique features like bus routing, etc and amazing graphics!

All these games had flaws in their respective models but worked well
nonetheless. SimCity 5 is a success IMO; for venturing into a much realistic
simulation that you could connect with. Though we all love to complain about
the map size.

Cities: Skylines had the advantage of picking up the good pieces of each of
these games! On the other hand, the last good game was SimCity 4 in 2003, more
than a decade! We badly needed Cities: Skylines.

It's also very elating to see the support the team is giving to us! The Map
Editor, the Asset Editor, the water dynamics, a mixture of agent and other
simulation models (as they call it - "complex"). Though this game has its own
share of flaws, they're quite tiny; except for the traffic (which is being
fixed)!

~~~
creshal
> 2\. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though,
> especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating
> games in this genre.

It irks me how SimCity 5 is praised for that. The Caesar series had pure
agent-based simulations in the 1990s, and _somehow_ had none of the agent
routing bugs SimCity 5 had. How can being worse than your competition 20 years
ago be considered an accomplishment?

~~~
intull
Ah but the level of detail and graphics?

I could see the contrusction workers actually working, moving vans with
families, kids boarding coming out of the house, boarding the school bus
(actually walking/climbing), going to the school, playing on the swings, the
sand, the slides, people actually walking in the park, a car actually owned by
a sim being parked at work, etc. SC5 is praised for this level of detail in
its model.

~~~
jdmichal
Except that workers did not go to the same job every day, nor did they return
to the same house when they were done. No sim has a history; every move was to
the first available location that an invisible "seeker" agent found. So, by
not having history, more agents had to be used in order to find available
locations. Not to mention that water and electricity were basically
implemented as "wandering" agents that just randomly walked the grid and
"deposited" at every location they passed until depleted. Which, in turn,
meant even more agents, because they had to be populous enough that the random
walking would ensure visiting the entire grid.

TL;DR: There were a lot of decisions SimCity made that directly increased the
number of agents required. This in turn directly impacted the #1 issue about
the game: City size.

------
interpol_p
I'm probably in the minority here, but for me the biggest appeal of the
SimCity series was the aesthetic and music. The music in particular.

I absolutely love what I have seen of Skylines so far, but it seems to be
missing the SimCity charm — that urban soundtrack, the way the buildings light
up at night, the unique architecture and art style. I'm hoping mods will fill
in all these areas.

~~~
GhotiFish
yup, I think you're in the minority here, I can't imagin anyone appreciating
simcity for the music.

It had some pretty graphics, for sure, but I think most people view that as
fluff.

You should hear me gush about factorio, and it looks like this:
[https://www.google.ca/search?q=factorio&tbm=isch&gws_rd=cr,s...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=factorio&tbm=isch&gws_rd=cr,ssl&ei=zaYJVYN1y_SgBI3ugZgD)

edit: ok, apparently not. apparently people really really really care that
their games look pretty, color me surprised.

~~~
michael_h
I really like the jazz tracks from SimCity 3000 (the ones that play when
things are _going well_ ). They tickle my brain in just the right way.

~~~
bduerst
They're on Google Play Music! Listened to it this morning.

------
KhalilK
Not to mention the fact that it's the first decent city building game that
runs on Linux!

~~~
GhotiFish
wait... what?!

HOLY SH*^%

~~~
vpeters25
Confirming it works fine on ubuntu 14.04. Bought it on steam yesterday, been
playing it since.

~~~
GhotiFish
I'm actually having some issues starting games on it. Some kind of permissions
issue I think.

[http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?845038-de...](http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?845038-detailed-
tech.-Info-New-Game-Button-greyed-out-on-Linux)

------
orf
I brought Skylines a few days ago and I absolutely love it. Its got amazing
detail and it's pretty much everything I hoped a modern sim city would be. I
never thought I would find building a traffic system so fun, and the twitter
feed it uses to show you your citizens opinions is a fantastic idea as well.

The one downside is it gets a bit boring after you have made your city. On Sim
City you could at least trigger some disasters to destroy your city in
interesting ways, I find myself missing that feature sometimes.

~~~
bstar77
I feel just the opposite. I think they pace the game really well. You are
constrained at first, but the early game is pretty easy. Once you get a bit
larger traffic becomes a problem and you need to make adjustments quickly.

When you get further along you can create districts and set policies that
affect the evolution of your city. I think the late game is way more
interesting as there's an endless amount of things you can tweak.

I'm really looking forward to seeing more mods that affect how districts work,
I'd love to create a china town or little italy with specialized assets. I
think these things are all possible and will make fully realized cities much
more fun to tinker with.

------
joshfinnie
Cities: Skyline is a great game. It really fills in the gaps that I had from
Sim City 5, but it's iterative; it's definitely "picking up the pieces"...

I am hoping that with some future updates this game gets to the point that it
replaces the Sim City franchise completely for me, but it's off to a great
start.

~~~
Kiro
> but it's iterative; it's definitely "picking up the pieces"

Do you mind elaborating?

~~~
jxcl
Paradox Interactive also published Crusader Kings 2, which came out in 2012,
and its latest free update was Feb. 16. They support their games for a long
time.

~~~
mattmanser
CK2 is made by a totally different developer.

~~~
oblio
Nope, Paradox. They also make Europa Universalis 4, another major time sink.

Edit: You're right, Paradox is only the publisher in this case, not the
developer as well.

~~~
vacri
Wikipedia says it's Paradox Development Studio, which is the design studio,
where Paradox Interactive is the publisher, and both are under the same parent
company. As far as I am aware, the 'clausewitz engine' used by these games
isn't available to other developers.

Who are you seeing as the 'not-Paradox' developer for CK2?

~~~
oblio
Cities: Skylines. Wikipedia says it's made by Colossal Order, a Finnish
company:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities:_Skylines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities:_Skylines)

EU4 and CK2 are made by PDS, part of Paradox Interactive, a Swedish company.

The confusion was because the thread is actually about Cities: Skylines.
That's the game that's only distributed by Paradox, not also made by them, and
the one I was confused about.

~~~
vacri
Sorry, I misread what the thread was about. Thanks for the clarification.

------
hashberry
It's amazing what a small team with a great vision can do. They had the
expertise and delivered what customers wanted.

It's also sad how a large company can lose track of what made its previous
products so great. EA tried to "innovate" SimCity 5, except they were
"innovating" the game for themselves (e.g. get users online to make it easier
to buy upgrades), not the end-user. Gamers did not want a multiplayer-based
city simulation with limited scale and broken mechanics.

~~~
petercooper
_It 's amazing what a small team with a great vision can do._

And even more amazing, for me, is they did it in Unity as well!

------
hobs
I don't know if it is just my incompetence, but I wanted to mention is that it
can be unclear what the citizens want unless you cycle through all the
available overlays and check things out.

I feel like they could definitely summarize important counters for you so you
don't always have to click 10 times to get all the information on your city.
This is especially true early game when your city is expanding by leaps and
bounds and you keep hitting electricity/water supply issues.

~~~
robwilliams
My side project is creating a mod that displays city vitals just like you
want. Hopefully I can get it done in the next couple days.

~~~
burger_moon
That would be great. It is a little annoying having to click around to make
changes and click back to check it again after say adjusting your power
budget. If it was semi transparent when not in focus and solid when in focus
that could be a good way to make non intrusive. anyways I will keep an eye out
for it.

~~~
robwilliams
Here's the mod:
[http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=410151...](http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=410151616)

Transparency and minimize/maximize buttons coming in an update tonight.

~~~
hobs
Looks like you are already at 700 subscribers, nice! Thank you for making
this, this is exactly what I wanted.

------
zrail
This looks awesome! Does anyone know if it plays acceptably on a new Macbook
Pro 13"? The spec sheets for the game say it doesn't support Intel integrated
graphics, but maybe that means it just can't run full resolution?

~~~
_mtr
I've put about 12 hours in on my late 2013 13" mbp. For a decently sized-city
(10k+), there aren't noticeable performance issues at full-screen and mostly
'medium' display options. Your fans will get a workout and you get about 30
minutes of battery life off the charger, though.

~~~
TylerE
10k is barely scratching the surface. 50k is where it gets interesting.

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Goronmon
Skylines is a great game, with great mod support...

...that retails for $30 (can get it for less on sites like
greenmangaming.com). That part blows my mind.

~~~
tricolon
Do you think $30 is cheap or expensive? I, for one, think it's exactly the
right price.

~~~
mikeash
I'd say it's a bit cheap. I'd expect something like this to start out at
$50-60 at initial release.

EA is still selling Sim City 4 for $20, despite it being old enough to be in
middle school by now.

------
nitinag
Opensource OpenTTD [1] (based on Transportation Tycoon Deluxe) is still around
and in active development it seems. It was a great Simcity replacement in the
past for me. Obviously graphics are dated, but gameplay was great.

[1] [https://www.openttd.org/](https://www.openttd.org/)

------
mosburger
I adore Cities: Skyline, and I haven't even looked at the mod scene at all
yet. I was always a fan of SimCity but it's been literally years since I've
even played a computer game. Skyline brought me back. :)

~~~
icehawk219
The mod scene is great so far. Auto-bulldoze and changing the direction of
one-way roads are fantastic things to have that I really hope they bring into
the game as actual features. From what I've heard they haven't opened up too
much of the API to modders yet though but do seem to be receptive to feedback
and working with the community.

~~~
robwilliams
The code is not obfuscated so you can inspect Assembly-CSharp.dll through
ILSpy to get a feel for the game logic.

There are no restrictions on what your mod can do - modders just have to
figure out how to do it.

------
PanMan
Interesting: My startup (which did something totally unrelated) was called
Skylines, and I have been wondering what to do with the Skylines.io domain..
:)

~~~
EC1
Mod community for sure.

------
maskedinvader
I absolutely love this game, been playing this for a week now and cannot get
enough of this game. My city is now really big (population of 175k).I have not
played the latest city sim games, but have played the old games back in the
day (like pharoah , pharoah2 ,sim city4 etc). Its amazing that this runs on
Unity, supported to run on Windows, Mac OS AND Linux ! Not to mention its very
reasonably priced at $30. Having the ability to start of with unlimted money
(one of the mods available at release) makes this game really have a very low
barrier to entry. You still have to unlock the unique buildings and monuments
however. Speaking of unique buildings, to unlock some of them , you need to
intentionally cause damage to your city (like cause 50% unemployment or have
avg garbage pile up increase). I found myself trying to have throwaway
districts intentionally built to be discarded once the unique building is
unlocked. unlimited money after all :) all in all, great game, absolutely
recommend this, however be prepared to lose a lot of productivity for a while
! you are warned.

------
allochthon
This looks like a fantastic game. Two thoughts:

1\. I bet hobbyists could come up with some garden city plans that would be
genuinely pleasant places for real people to live, and perhaps city planners
might take inspiration from them.

2\. I wonder whether a game like this could produce a file format that could
be used as input for a racing game or a game like Grand Theft Auto.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Ooh, I used to love flying around my SimCity 2000 cities in SimCopter, good
call!

------
dharma1
Another gaming success from Finland. Big up guys!

------
gautamnarula
Skylines looks promising, but I'm still reserving judgement. It's a shame that
EA completely botched the new Sim City.

I wish EA would port Sim City 4 to Windows 7/8/10\. I would pay good money for
that. As it is, I can't get Sim City 4 to work on Windows 7 without frequent
freezes and crashes.

~~~
mbel
There is a steam version that at least for me works flawlessly.

~~~
johnward
Even the steam version required hacks for me on Windows 7 and still crashes.
Skylines is good enough to replace SC4 for me though.

------
sandworm
"I feel so bad about Maxis closing down," Hallikainen said. "The older
SimCitys were really the inspiration for us to even consider making a city
builder."

That is a brave statement these days. No doubt they have to tread carefully
lest someone accuse them of infringing the SimCity IP.

------
leetrout
I'm WAY out of the loop- but I thought this might have been Civitas coming to
fruition... [http://videogamesuncovered.com/what-happened-to-civitas-
and-...](http://videogamesuncovered.com/what-happened-to-civitas-and-who-is-
their-secret-backer)

------
brownbat
It'd be nice if we could isolate how much of the failure is linked to the
"uninterrupted connection required" approach to DRM for single player games.

------
protomyth
How big can the city be?

~~~
CSDude
1 million population

~~~
johnward
The population in skylines actually represents the agents. In sim city it
wasn't a representation of the agents it was inflated. Sim City's numbers seem
more accurate to city size. For example I have a city that would probably be
300-400k people in SimCity/Real life but the reported population is 75k in
C:S.

