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SimCity 5 Passed Off From Maxis
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jun 07, 2007 10:26 AM
from the fly-be-free-little-game dept.
from the fly-be-free-little-game dept.
CVG is reporting that Maxis, makers of the venerable Sim City series, has passed development of Sim City 5 to another company. The new developer, Tilted Mill Entertainment, will be finishing the game. In a departure from the series, it is not going to be a realistic urban simulator. President & Director of Development Chris Beatrice responds to criticism of that choice: "...I do not want to mislead anyone: This SC is not a realistic urban simulation, which I understand, to many, represents the heart of what SC is. No one is blind to that. And if you're just completely turned off, even angered by the mere notion of any game called 'SimCity' that is not a detailed, realistic urban simulator, I absolutely understand that viewpoint, and absolutely respect it. I do want to say, though (with no insult intended to die hard SC fans) that we are absolutely thrilled to be a part of this venerable series, are extremely proud of what we have put together, and make no apologies about what we have managed to create. And while our past experiences (including contributions from many of you) certainly inform all our ongoing efforts, this SC is its own unique creation."
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Action-Heavy Version of Civilization Heading to Consoles 77 comments
GameDaily is reporting that Take-Two will be publishing a new Civilization title in Spring of 2008, with a twist. Instead of the traditional strategy gameplay Civilizations Revolution will be an 'action-packed' console game, streamlining the experience for different generation of gamers. They also mention they'll be aiming this game at handheld gamers. "The title will include 16 civilizations, numerous historical leaders to play as or compete against, online play with integrated video and voice chat, more accessible maps, a streamlined time scale for quicker games, and more ... 'Civilization is one of the world's top selling PC game series with more than 8 million units sold, and continues to be recognized as one of the greatest franchises ever created,' added Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. 'We are excited to have Sid Meier getting back to his roots as the game's Lead Designer to carry on its legacy with Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution.'" This seems somewhat similar to EA's decision to offer up a streamlined version of SimCity in their next iteration of the series.
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One SimCity Per Child 253 comments
SimHacker writes "Electronic Arts has donated the original 'classic' version of Will Wright's popular SimCity game to the One Laptop Per Child project. SimCity is the epitome of constructionist educational games, and has been widely used by educators to unlock and speed-up the transformational skills associated with creative thinking. It's also been used in the Future City Competition by seventh- and eighth-grade students to foster engineering skills and inspire students to explore futuristic concepts and careers in engineering. OLPC SimCity is based on the X11 TCL/Tk version of SimCity for Unix developed and adapted to the OLPC by Don Hopkins, and the GPL open source code will soon be released under the name
"Micropolis", which was
SimCity's original working title. SJ Klein, director of content for the OLPC, called on game developers to create
'frameworks and scripting environments — tools with which children themselves could create their own content.' The long term agenda of the OLPC SimCity project is to convert SimCity into a scriptable Python module, integrate it with the OLPC's Sugar user interface and Cairo rendering library. Eventually they hope to apply
Seymour Papert's and Alan Kay's ideas about constructionist education and teaching kids to program."
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Strange? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought normal decency at least demanded you use a naming convention like Sim City: XXX.
I love the Sim City series and hope that it won't get dragged in the mud now in the newest installment. Caesar IV wasn't a very good game but there's always hope that a developer can improve isn't there?
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
Horrible game, horribly buggy, great music.
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Re:RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
If it's not, I bet a game like that would appeal to the same crowd.
Layne
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Re:RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.1up.com.nyud.net:8080/do/newsStory?cId
I'm getting the impression that this is essentially going to be the game city life, with integration with the sims 2 game.
which actually doesn't sound like a bad game. City Life got boring fast, this might not.
Parent
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)
My vote is for Sim City: Crystalline Power World, with lots of anime-spiky-haired disaffected youths in all of the council seats, and a galaxy police starship floating overhead whenever the yakuza get too organized.
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Re:Strange? (Score:5, Informative)
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Seriously, though, as others have point out, they are changing the name. I've seen a lot of the slightly-renamed spinoffs lately and I don't view them with dis-favor. They are rarely as good as the originals, but they definitely entertain. Mario is a good example, with all the spinoffs from that... Including the major one, Super Mario Bros. (Mario Bros was before that, for those who have forgotten.)
Re:Strange? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Although if you read the reviews Caesar IV wasn't greeted as anywhere close to a game of the year competitor. http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/caesa r4?q=caesar%20IV#critics [metacritic.com]
Fine by me (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see... SimCity was amazing. SimCity 2000 was basically perfect. SimCity 3000 added more complication (especially garbage) and just didn't seem as well balance and put together as 2000. SimCity 4 was OK but dog slow on even the fastest of computers. Frankly, I'd be worried what Maxis would produce for SimCity 5.
We'll see what they do with it. I doubt I'll buy it. I still the think the game reached perfection with 2k. Heck, if I could buy a copy of SC2K for OS X I'd do it right now.
At least they are trying something new instead of just adding more things to manage (like the last two releases).
Re:Fine by me (Score:4, Informative)
http://mac.the-underdogs.info/ [the-underdogs.info]
Great if you have classic emulation installed or don't mind installing it.
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Re:Fine by me (Score:5, Informative)
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I've actually been thinking along the lines of what you wrote here. If there were OS X versions of SC2k and TTDLX (perhaps with some of the OpenTTD [openttd.org] improvements) I would buy them in a heartbeat. And if there were also modernized sets of artwork and other little things like that...
/Mikael
Re:Fine by me (Score:5, Informative)
The main problem with SC4 is that it's horribly unbalanced. You can't keep anyone happy without spending money that you can't recoup. Occasionally, your town will just stop growing. Period. The only way to get it growing again is to tear the holy living crap out of something, get everyone pissed off at you, then put it all back. This somehow elevates you to "awesome mayor" status, since Sims apparently have no long-term memory. The problem is, it also costs money that would've otherwise bought the hospital or police station that you actually need. So then your city starts growing again, but they're mildly pissed, and you're short on cash. Worst case (and unfortunately, also the most likely case), you'll have a population boom you can't afford. That spells imminent doom and decay for your city, and probably another growth stall. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Swinging the balance the other way is the "region" thing. You build a corner of a town with nothing but residential areas. Go to the town next to it and build nothing but industrial areas and power plants. Connect them with roads, and you get a happy, employed residential population with 0 pollution, and a polluted industrial area with 0 population to complain about it. Pump water in the residential area and pipe it to the industrial area and you can almost get a balanced cash flow in both areas (as well as clean water in a polluted area). Almost. The residential area will soon grow to unstable proportions, and the industrial area will soon be swimming in cash you can't transfer to the residential area that needs it. The water payments won't make it possible, either, so you're pretty much screwed at this point. I'd love SC4 if money didn't become such a limiting issue so soon.
And that's only made worse by the way city services shut down (teachers/doctors strike) when they're underfunded or overloaded. If you could just tell the citizens to make do with poor services, that'd be one thing. But if you try, the services shut down completely and everybody gets pissed. Yet another stupid balance issue.
Argh! I wish they'd just fix the old one. I'd even pay for a SimCity 4 v2.0 if they'd just fix it! Don't wow me with graphics or new gimmicks! Just make the already good game better! ARGH!!!
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all your game franchise are belong to us (Score:3, Insightful)
PHB: "Let's take a successful game franchise and change the latest title to not include what the game is best known for, but retain the same name. That way, anyone that doesn't know will still go buy it, and we can market it to a new segment, provided that the old fans dont read the new marketing before they buy."
What are people thinking? This would be like Quake 5 being in 2-d.
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Or a turn based RPG for Quake.
Actually, with the gradual changes they are making for each FF release, I can see the former happening and no one noticing.
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Re:all your game franchise are belong to us (Score:4, Insightful)
I tend to think the last one has to be it... It's going to be a tycoon game, rather than a simulator.
I personally had more fun with the first SC than any of the others. SC2K was a close second, and the others were just too complex to be -fun- for me. I don't enjoy micro-managing every single water line. Taking the game back to the core, and simulating the fun stuff instead of -everything- is what I'd like to see.
I am -very- disappointed that Maxis thought they couldn't handle it, though... and that someone else could do it better. That or 'sell out' is the only way to look at it.
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It doesn't have to be horrible, though (Score:5, Insightful)
Take for example World Of Warcraft: it has nothing to do with the gameplay of Warcraft 1 to 3, and pretty much just uses the same setting and franchise name. Ended up the best MMO by a damn huge margin nevertheless.
Or, you know, take any Mechwarrior game as an example. They took a turn-based tactics game played on a hex-board, and made a real-time FPS out of it. Even the weapons, if you look at the numbers in MW games, have really nothing to do with implementing the Battletech weapons with the same name. Didn't really end up bad games, though, and MW1 is still on my list of the best games of all time.
So it _could_ still be a good game. 'Course, it could also be crap, but let's wait and see.
As to why would they want to do that... maybe because they've done SC to death already. The changes between SC1 and SC4 have been really incremental, and more often in the graphics department than really being a new game. And some were fairly controversial if they made it a better game, or if they change the gameplay that much.
So, basically, you've already bought the same game already. Several times.
If it goes by the same formula again, there's not much obvious stuff which can be added this time, or not without doing more harm than good. (E.g., turning it into a micromanagement nightmare.) I mean, seriously, other than bumping the graphics resolution up some more, what would _you_ add in SC5?
It's not like RPGs, where you can just change the story for the next one, but leave the mechanics the same if they worked well. Here the mechanics _are_ the whole game. It's just a game of placing buildings and applying some formulas to them. And they already had several games to get the buildings and formulas right already. Just tweaking some reltionship to be juuust right in the 5'th decimal... doesn't really a new game make.
So what I'm getting to is: they have a choice between (A) selling a clone of one of their previous games, or (B) trying something new. They went with option B. And, honestly, I'd rather give them some brownie points for even trying, rather than damn them in advance. Sure, it may still end up a bad game, who knows? But, seriously, buying a SC4 clone in higher res doesn't sound too tempting to me.
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Done before (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It doesn't have to be horrible, though (Score:4, Insightful)
In a sense, "best" doesn't even exist in a matter of taste. Some people like sweet wine, some people like dry wine, and some hate both. Is either of the choices "wrong"? Not really, each one just picks the wine he/she likes. Ditto for games, really. Some like The Sims, some like CounterStrike. Some like WoW, some like Everquest. Some like fantasy, some like SF. Neither is deluded into taking the "wrong" choice, each just picked the game that suits his/her individual tastes.
And I'll say that humans are damn good at that. Pretty much invariably when something appeals to only a minority, it failed to appeal to the rest, they didn't fail to pick the "best." They did pick the best... for themselves.
So strictly speaking "best" doesn't even exist in a matter of personally taste.
In another sense, though, I can look at which of them appealed to more people, and use that as a (somewhat warped) measure of "best". Unless one of them was deliberately aiming for a narrow niche (which isn't usually the case, unless they know in advance they can't compete with the big boys), one of them managed to know its potential market better, and to actually make a product that appeals to them more. I can respect that kind of achievement.
In yet another sense, not everything is just subjective taste. There are a few things that are fairly common to most of the population, and are objectively measurable.
E.g., (almost) noone actually wants bugs, so all else being equal it's fairly safe to say, basically, "less bugs == better". (Caveat: almost never is all else equal.) And having played more than half a dozen other MMOs before and after, I can honestly say that WoW was a refreshing change. It wasn't strictly speaking perfect, but it came damn close to that, compared to the previous norm of shoving MMOs out the door when they barely can run... for a while. And it was orders of magnitude better than some of the crappier ones, like AO.
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Re:It doesn't have to be horrible, though (Score:4, Insightful)
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In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
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Certain aspects of Fallout 2 could be construed as a "dating simulator".
Just can't win with some people... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just can't win with some people... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Just can't win with some people... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sounds like that old sim village concept (Score:5, Interesting)
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hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
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Then what is it?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh!? Then what is it? I couldn't find anything on that in the story.
What genius PR is this -- to have the officials tell what it isn't, and not highlight what greatness it is.
OK, then I get an idea how it might look, but I still don't know what kind of game it is...
I checked Wikipedia too and it's supposedly integrating with The Sims, but IIRC, even SC 4 did that, so...?
Theft and lies (Score:2, Insightful)
"...I do not want to mislead anyone: This SC is not a realistic urban simulation... this SC is its own unique creation."
So why the frak call it SimCity? If you want to make a non-urban-simulation game, come up with your own damn franchise, or at the very least steal a franchise that has something to do with your game. Call it "The Sims: Cities" if that's what you're going for, but don't steal an existing franchise that is based on urban simulation for your non-urban-simulation game.
A well needed reboot (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets hope this developer just brings back Simcity 2000, and spiffies up the buildings - definitely the best of the series - and the cities in that actually did feel real (spontaneously appearing churches, more rewards, more realistic disasters, and less repetitive buildings), as opposed to Simcity 3 and 4 - which were less than the sum of their parts
All I want in SCX (Score:4, Insightful)
The ability to create roads exactly the way I want. No more auto-rotating onramps.
A checkbox that gives me unlimited simoleans.
A way to specify what type of store/office/house gets built. I like to build cities/neigborhoods that look how I want them to. I don't care what the sims want.
None of this will affect the way anyone else plays the game, BTW. You could still let the game run itself like it always did.
Maxis no longer exists (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with others that the series has steadily declined since SC2k. Unnecessary complications, and performance issues in the case of SC4, turned the series into a mess. The SimTropolis.com community (basically the hardcore fans) use SimCity 4 as an art tool more than anything, crafting these beautifully detailed cities using custom content. But as an actual city SIMULATOR, SC4 collapses under its own weight; it's simply not fun to play. SC2k's strong point is that it can be as simple or complex as you want to make it, appealing to casual and hardcore players alike. However I fear that SC5 will be outright dumbed down.
Also note that there's a correlation between SimCity's quality and Will Wright's involvement with the series. He was hardly involved with SC4. And with Spore consuming most of his time, I doubt he'll have a hand in SC5.
My biggest concern is with Tilted Mill Entertainment - best known for the mediocre Caesar IV. Will they be good stewards to one of PC gaming's most venerable series? But to TM's credit, they are actively talking to the SimTropolis community and addressing concerns from the playerbase.
I view SimCity Societies (SC5's current name) like The Sims Life Stories: part of the overall "family" of SC games, but not a true and true sequel. EA and Co. says differently, but as a long-time fan I'm not convinced.
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That's just the realism of the game showing up... It's people building arcologies and walking hand in hand into the sunset that's not going to happen :P
Re:I Hate SimCity (Score:5, Funny)
Marion Barry [wikipedia.org] reads Slashdot? Who knew?
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Re:Not a real 'SimCity' (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
SC4 had all kinds of good stuff that SC3 didn't have. Like Regions. Regions are the best idea to hit SimCity in ages. Also good are the technical limitations that came along with Regions, allowing you to create a pollutionless residential area right next to a smog-filled industrial area, yet have neither town complaining about pollution (no pollution in the residential town, no citizens to complain about it in the industrial town).
The micromanagement thing is horrible, though. Why should the mayor have to order fire trucks to the scene of a fire? The school bus coverage thing is child's play by comparison. It's just one more aspect to design your city around, set the setting, then forget. Worse is when schools shut down due to a teachers strike from underfunding. Worse than that is when the same happens because of overcrowding (this essentially un-does any bus coverage settings you made and/or designed your city around). It doesn't scale back the effectiveness of the school... no, it shuts down. That's just stupid.
If they'd just fix SC4's stupid bugs and logic faults (and the micromanagement issues), I'd buy an upgrade. Oh, and throw in seasonal graphics like the SNES version. And if there's time and budget to spare, upgrade the graphics and allow higher resolutions. Release it as SimCity 5. I'd buy it.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Open Source SimCity - the real thing! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm working with EA and the OLPC project, to make the original version of SimCity Classic open source. It's currently going through EA's QA process right now, and the legal department is working on their end of the deal. This sort of stuff always takes a long time to complete, but Will Wright wants it to happen, so I'm optimistic it will.
Once all the QA and legal stuff is done, we're going to release an updated version for the OLPC of the original X11/TCL/Tk version I developed for Unix about 15 years ago, which supports cooperative multi player mode (voting, chat, shared whiteboard, etc), and I've heavily optimized it so it runs really fast. After it's released, then we're going to adapt it to the OLPC's "Sugar" user interface, which is based on GTK and Cairo. SimCity will be scriptable in Python, of course! We'll rewrite the multi player mode on top of Sugar's standard networking libraries, instead of directly opening multiple X11 connections, as it currently does.
Some ideas about SimCity on the OLPC:
SimCity for OLPC (One Laptop Per Child): Applying Papert's Ideas About Constructionist Education and Teaching Kids to Program [donhopkins.com].
I'm already developing some of the software components required to port SimCity to the OLPC, including pie menus and a tile engine:
Pie Menus for OLPC Sugar User Interface, in Python with GTK, Cairo and Pango modules [donhopkins.com].
[OLPC-Games] Efficient general purpose tile engine, and a cellular automata machine [laptop.org].
-Don
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