SimCity 5 Passed Off From Maxis

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."

Fine by me

[MBCook]

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).

Well...

[Paktu]

IMHO, Simcity 3000 was the high point of the series. Simcity 4 introduced a lot of pointless features (U-Drive-It, anyone?) and micromanagement- if school coverage misses even a single home, the game nags you about it continuously, and there's no way to turn this off. With that said, I'm not particularly excited about this upcoming game either. Simcity Societies seems to imply a greater focus on individual citizens. Isn't that what we had the Sims, the Sims 2, and countless Sims expansions for? I am a bit saddened by these developments, as they threaten to destroy one of the most important franchises in the history of PC gaming.

Sounds like that old sim village concept

[majortom1981]

This could actually be a cool game. Combine the best aspects of The Sims and Sim City and you could have a huge game. Things like building your city also effects your sim. Say you build a garbage dump next to your sims house. Then the house value goes down and your sim itself starts changing. You decide to nock down a school, your sims kids grades start going down because of class overcrowding. This can be a huge game, Basic city building with basic sim management but heavy interaction between the two. Open yourself up to a new idea and you will see the potential in this.

Then what is it??

[Jugalator]

This SC is not a realistic urban simulation, which I understand, to many, represents the heart of what SC is,

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.

First looks at the game in US Games for Windows mag show a fully 3D world, with a colourful environment and a Theme Park-style fairground bustling in the foreground.

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...?

A well needed reboot

[dtolman]

The move away from pretend "realism", is only a good thing. Simcity 3 and 4 replaced all the charm of Simcity and Simcity 2000, and just stuffed them with larger sandboxes and more things to micromanage.

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

Re:Not a real 'SimCity'

[Babbster]

Hey there, Sparky. Maybe if George Lucas had turned his "vision" over to someone with talent today as opposed to talent 30 years ago, we wouldn't have ended up with JJB and company.

Re:Strange?

[Zironic]

My favorite game in the Caesar series is probably Caesar 2, could just be nostalgic memories of the joy I felt the first time my city didn't go bankrupt. Caesar IV just wasn't as fun as Caesar 3, this is 100% opinion though, not some kind of truth.

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]

Maxis no longer exists

[RichPowers]

In 2004, Maxis was fully absorbed into EA. So to say that SimCity is being passed from Maxis isn't completely correct.

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.

Done before

[Moraelin]

It's been done before too. The first I know of was Tropico, which is just that: all those hundreds of people have friends, needs, a personality, political opinions, etc, and they go about their daily lives trying to satisfy those needs. There have been a few other such games since, too.

Re:RTFA

[Speare]

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.

Re:Well...

[SilentTristero]

well, my 8-year-old thinks U-drive-it is the highlight of the whole game! He spends about 50% of his time driving, the other 50% managing the city. Yup, he goes bankrupt a lot :-).

Re:Open Source SimCity - the real thing!

[SimHacker]

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

Wha.....?

[IHC Navistar]

If SimCity 5 is NOT an urban simulator, then why in the hell are they calling it SimCity and giving it a sequel number of 5, hence the title, SIMCITY 5?!

"Oh no sir, it's not a Cadillac. It's actually a Yugo, but were calling it a Cadillac, and the newest version at that. Want to buy it?"

Anyways, I'm almost certain that there will be a severe backlash once people plunk down the $$ and find out that what they bought is ANYTHING but SimCity. This is a horrible idea, and I can't believe that Maxis would make such a bad decision.

And what on Earth could make them choose Tilted Mill for the task of creating a new sequel to the SimCity series?! It's like tasking Afghanistan with engineering first the Mission To Mars.

Blaspheming sacrilegious assclowns. May their flagrant desecration of the almighty SimCity be punished with poor sales, scathing reviews, and a thunderstorm of backlash.

SimCity: The Naruto Chronicles

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it's just me, but SimCity: The Naruto Chronicles could be a lot of fun. You could choose one of several different locations for your hidden village. You then would be tasked with all the standard SimCity problems. Except once in a while you're attacked by hoards of enemy ninja and their giant monster pets, so you have to also create your own ninja training schools and teams of ninja. To earn more money you would send your teams on missions comissioned by other towns, or you could just be nasty and use your ninja forces to intimidate weaker towns into paying you protection fees. Every so often you would also have to host competitions where your ninja would measure themselves against the ninja of other villages.