The upcoming SimCity title has been well publicized by Maxis and EA, giving fans the opportunity to see several developer diaries of how each part of the game will work. Videos mentioning the SimCity RCI interaction (sort of the economic cycle) as well as the agents and events based simulation model have been interesting views.
This is a simulated image of what a college town may look like in the new title.
However, in a recent blog post on the SimCity website, creative director Ocean Quigley revealed that, “Your cities live on the cloud, and you can play them from any PC you like. If your PC is unplugged, your cities are safe, you can go over to your friend’s laptop and start playing. We don’t care where you install SimCity. Since your cities are on the cloud, we can give you rich online data visualizations, showing you the vitals of your city and how it compares to and relates to other cities in the SimCity world.
“More prosaically, from its inception, we built this SimCity to be online and multiplayer. We’ve built servers to handle the simulation of regions and communication between cities in a region. We built servers to connect cities to global trade and commodity markets. A decent chunk of the simulation happens in the cloud.
“And finally, the relationships between different cities and between different mayors are a big deal, and we think it’s one of the ways that we’re bringing new life to SimCity.”
An industrial complex is an important part of any city, creating jobs for its residents.
This makes this game even more of a draw for some players of the previous titles, especially those who lived in a household where only one player actually played the title. This will give people the opportunity to interact with cities and “mayors” that are not of their own creation, building a living ecosystem of cities with a regional RCI index and interactions.
Curved roads are a welcome addition to the former grid based games of SimCity’s past.
It will certainly be exciting to see where the title goes from here, and even more exciting to try it out.
SimCity is slated for release in February 2013.
SimCity To Include Cloud Storage For Cities, Online Play,
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July 18, 2012
#1
“This makes this game even more of a draw for some players of the previous titles, ”
Haha…keep dreaming!
July 19, 2012
#2
You’re implying noone wants multiplayer SimCity regions?
July 19, 2012
#3
Cancelled my preorder. Casey, you need to read the comments on the SimCity blog. You should check out the forum too.
July 19, 2012
#4
I don’t see the problem with the always-online DRM. I don’t cheat, I download legally, I have an Origin account, I have reliable internet service, and I love the SimCity franchise. I’m not going to boycott EA because they want to make money off a game they made. Who doesn’t? The reason it is in place is the same reason it’s in place on Diablo III: to ensure the people playing it are playing it legally, and to ensure that no funny business is going on with the client (hacks, mods, cheats). If you want to mod and hack your SimCity game, play SimCity 4. It’s a new era for SimCity and they’re moving on, ready or not.
July 19, 2012
#5
No, I’m implying no one wants gameplay options jettisoned to serve an online-only gameplay model that was low on the list of wants for anyone who’s been playing this game over the years. I hope it tanks.
July 20, 2012
#6
Well that seems awfully narrow-minded. Hoping a game fails just because you don’t like its features. I personally hope it’s innovative and fun, and I will be excited to see how the system works.
Companies trying new things is not something to be mad at. It stunts growth and innovation when companies get reamed for not doing the same old thing over and over again.
If you don’t want to play it, don’t play it, but thats no reason to hope a game does poorly to spite it.
July 21, 2012
#7
I don’t want the game to fail, I just want an option. If, for example, I’m in the middle of a field, or if my connection is down, but I want to play Sim City, in this new one I can’t. I’m not saying they should remove the feature or whatever, but just give us an option, not make it mandatory. Maybe today I want to play solo, but tomorrow I might want to try the online experience. It’s about choice, not about narrow-mindedness.
July 24, 2012
#8
Casey, believe me, the huge majority of people that does not want the constant online connection are the ones who buys the game legally. That is why we don’t want the connection. We buy games legally and we had to stop playing these games because shuts down servers after a couple of years and the games become useless. As a gamer, I believe we did not have to explain that to you, right? Read the comments of the fans before trying to look good for EA… Without readers, EA will care about you the same way they care about SimCity fans…
July 21, 2012
#9
Cities XL online version lasted 5 months, eventually bankrupting the company.
Sim City should have learned a lesson there. No one wants to play online city builders.
90% of the community plays city builders, because they want to make their own little worlds. It is in the same vein of those who build model train cities in their basement. To make the perfect cities cheats and mods are used. EA is going to heavily limit this.
July 21, 2012
#10
to most of the fans, the problem is not that EA wants to make money from it or tries to be inventive.
the problem is that many fail to see how this online mode blends in with custom content creation, which is probably the biggest (if not only) reason for the success of sim city 4 and on of the major reasons for the bad endings to creator and societies.
plus the latter 2 made the core community very very sceptical about every new sim city title as they felt – to put it frankly – pranked with these 2 games.
July 21, 2012
#11
Casey,
Why do you write such a biased article, why do you not read the comments on the simcity website, or on simtropolis.com and LEARN what the fans really think about this game!
No one gives a hoot about online, cloud and multiplayer. BECAUSE of these new features several BAD consequences have emerged.
1. empty, unrealistic areas between cities
2. no control of roads and rail bewteen cities in a region
3. city size limited to small tiles
4. cannot build international airport in your own city!!!!!! crazy!!
Casey, my point is why do you not mention all of the negative aspects of these changes? are you getting paid by EA to write this one sides review?
July 21, 2012
#12
None of our writers get paid by companies for a biased article. Casey is passionate about videogames and he is clearly looking forward to the next SimCity.
July 21, 2012
#13
screw multiplayer. cities xl FAILED at it…
July 21, 2012
#14
It is always a risk to try something new. But you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don’t. If a franchise doesn’t take risks by trying new things, the community criticizes them for being lazy. If it does try to take a risk and try to add new elements and gameplay, then the community criticizes them for changing the game too much.
July 21, 2012
#15
Amir, if the only risk they took is multiplayer and they decided to put all their eggs in one basket and make the focus on a that feature. It’s sort of upsetting that EA is claiming that it’s what fans were asking for when fans were actually asking for more realism, diversity in buildings, more transit options, weather, modding ability, bigger regions, ability to name and create neighborhoods, resources (which they did), SANDBOX mode, the list can go on and one. But funny enough multiplayer was not something people were really wanting. Feel free to dig back in the forums of these sim city sites and see where people were fighting for multiplayer? It won’t happen. It’s almost as if EA made up that fans wanted it to back up the notion that the game has to be connected to the internet to play.
There were sooooo many other things that EA could have taken a risk with that would make fans overwhelmingly happy, yet they focused on the one feature that most fans don’t want after Cities XL failed to make it happen and now those cities are gone. And this multiplayer leads to a lack go modding because it has to be the same framework online which means they are signing their own death sentence. The risk you speak of has already failed.
July 21, 2012
#16
the problem is they aren’t adding things! they’re taking them away and they’re doing it because they’re insistent on fitting a square peg single player game into a round online hole! I have no problem with them making a robust multiplayer but don’t make me go online to play single-player and for God’s sake don’t get rid of gameplay that everyone likes in order to do it!
July 22, 2012
#17
I have been playing Simcity since SimCity 2000. I LOVE this series.
The prospect of a new Simcity that is graphically more appealing and has a bunch of cool new features was great news! However I agree with all of the people here who say multi-player and On-line only going to cripple this game.
I didn’t buy CitiesXL because I didn’t want to have people come into my game and play with me, I take hours making a few blocks look absolutely perfect. To me this game isn’t about “gaming” it is about creating a small detailed model in a way I want.
If they don’t allow me the ability to build my region the way I want to or control how a region functions I will likely not buy this game.
I feel that within 2 months of release someone at simtropolis or simcity devotion will have cracked it to be run on a single PC without having it go online, actually I can almost guarantee this within 6 months. Simcity fans love their regions and cities to be “Their Own” and that will be the way it should be. I am not saying that multiplayer is a bad idea, it is just not the direction of this particular genre.
If they wanted to draw more people to play this game here is my list of much needed features:
- Better transit options
- Airport design development tools
- Highway tools with custom interchange tools
- Better path finding (which they have, seems like)
- Curved roads
- Bridges that can be at any angle
- Tunnels to be the same, and at difference entrance exit height
- Water that flows down hills
- Weather
- Same region style as Simcity 4 (slighty more transparent then before)
The advances in the engine are wonderful and I can see a lot of potential to mod this game to an extent not fathomable in SC4.
I hope that Maxis is looking and reading Simtropolis and SC Devotion, and will have enough sense to tell EA hey look at the populous that plays the game (THEY KNOW what THEY want)
My thoughts.
Sincerely,
Simcity Player
July 23, 2012
#18
I have been playing simcity consistently since the first one came out and there are so many different ways to experience the game. Some people like the “model train” experience (like Nevets mentioned earlier), other people are more into the economic experience or the achievements experience (achieving the best city stats not caring how ugly it looks). We all have different reasons why previous simcity games caught our interest but the bottom line is that there is no one type of simcity player. Most people that speak out against the injection of multiplayer make a good case. Many of us remember how ripped off we felt after purchasing Cities XL, which is the only city building multiplayer implementation we know of. To be honest, I’m a little bit terrified with other humans screwing around with my region because I like things to look a certain way. But we don’t know what we don’t know and I’m sure that the developers are aware of their fan’s multiplayer anxiety, so if they are still going all in risk wise with it, maybe they can see a game dynamic that we cannot. I bought Cities XL even after reading the bad reviews and suspecting its going to suck. I desperately wanted to try a new city builder and after the huge dry spell I was ready to buy anything. So I assume that many people like me will buy it no matter how bad it might be. We might play it for 3 hours before we never touch it again and go rant in the blog comments about how bad it was. But maybe if the developers did all the market research and still believe that they got a multiplayer dynamic that works and we will end up adapting to a new, better kind of city builder. I am choosing to give them the benefit of the doubt and hopefully they know what they’re doing.
By the way, I think I read somewhere that there will be a solo region option. Lets hope.
July 25, 2012
#19
All this cloud based stuff is an instant turn off for me regardless of how the game turns out to be. This will probably mean that any individual will not be able to create their own stuff like you can in the previous games. Eventually it will die off from paid subscriptions and turn into a FTP nightmare complete with the grind or pay model.
Frankly, I have lost interest, and sticking to SC4 even if it is old and bugged. At least it is fully moddable, not requiring a constant internet connection and a subscription.
Screw EA.
August 13, 2012
#20
I was initially excited about this game, but after learning more I’ve pretty much lost all enthusiasm. To me it seems like it will be another Cities XL – a decent game, but will probably be uninstalled after a couple weeks. I guess I’ll just continue building my little worlds in Simcity 4 as I have been doing on and off for the past, what, ten years? Wow, it’s been a long time.