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."

Comments

Strange?

[Zironic]

Isn't it somehow deceiving to take an established franchise, just increase the number counter and then completely change the very core of the franchise?

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?

Re:Strange?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you RTFA, you'll notice it is NOT being called SimCity 5, but "SimCity Societies" because since it is such a radical departure they did not want to increment the number by 1, but rather give it a completely different name.

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

Re:Strange?

[Blob Pet]

Sim City: XXX = Sin City? ;-)

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).

Re:Fine by me

[Anonymous Coward]

SimCity 2k and 2kSE are currently available for OS9 as abandonware at the macintosh garden.

http://mac.the-underdogs.info/

Great if you have classic emulation installed or don't mind installing it.

Re:Fine by me

[Oopsz]

SC2k runs great in dosbox. and I've run the mac classic version under sheepshaver without any major trouble (enabling sound makes it dog slow).

Re:Fine by me

[Mattintosh]

I've had no problem with SC4 performance on my PC. It's an Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton) on an A7N8X Deluxe, 1GB DDR333, with Radeon 9600XT (8xAGP), running Win2k. It's not top of the line, but it was when SC4 came out.

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!!!

In other news...

[InfinityWpi]

Apparently, Doom 4 will be a turn-based strategy game, and Fallout 3 will be a dating simulator. ..... SERIOUSLY, WTF?????

RTFA

[Shihar]

They are not going to call it SimCity 5. They are currently searching for a new name BECAUSE it will be so unlike the other SimCity games. The name they are working for SimCity Societies. What the hell the game is going to be about if it isn't a quasi-realistic city simulator is beyond me, but it looks like they are not going to just notch the counter up one. Think Fallout Tactics instead of Fallout 3. Though, comparing anything to Fallout Tactics is probably not a good way to reassure a fan of the original game.

Re:RTFA

[SQLGuru]

It sounds like it could be a multi-city management simulator with leanings towards things like Sim Theme Park (or even, for that matter, Civilization) where you have to keep the townspeople happy. Instead of doing the "micro"-management, you do it on a more macro scale. You provide the town the proper resources and the right zonings to build the town.......

If it's not, I bet a game like that would appeal to the same crowd.

Layne

Re:RTFA

[paganizer]

I found another review, that includes a screenshot.
http://www.1up.com.nyud.net:8080/do/newsStory?cId= 3160086
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.

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:RTFA

[MarkGriz]

Where's the drama posts with an informative headline like that?

Re:RTFA

[strstrep]

Remember Streets of Simcity?

Horrible game, horribly buggy, great music.

Re:all your game franchise are belong to us

[Aladrin]

I have a hard time imagining WHAT the game will be, if not a 'realistic urban simulation'... FPS? RPG? 'unrealistic urban simulation'?

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.

Just can't win with some people...

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Gaming is constantly being dogged by how unoriginal it is and how most major games are just slightly prettier rehashes of older ones, and how evrything these days is a formulaic sequel. So Maxis have changed that. They've actually decided to try something new with an established series, even using new developers to do so, and what do they get? "Waaah! It's not a REAL SimCity", "Maxis have ruined my childhood memories". Boo-fucking-hoo. They've tried something new. So what. Everything from Simcity 2000 has been basically the same game anyway, so if you're really that intent on playing the same old thing you've already got three games to choose from. For everyone with an open mind, well maybe they'll find something fresh and slightly original thanks to a developer going out and doing something different with an established franchise for a change. If it sucks and the new concept tanks then you be damn sure Simcity 6 will be back to the old formula again, so it's worth the risk isn't it?

Re:Just can't win with some people...

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Nobody's complaining that they're "trying something new". The complaint is that they are taking an established name (SimCity), and increasing the version number (4 -> 5), which would imply that it is substantially the same game with some improvements From TFA:

According to an unamed EA exec, the reason behind the Societies name is that it's "completely different from SimCity 4, so they're trying to come up with something different than just calling it SimCity 5." As you can see they're not just calling it "SimCity 5", they're going out of their way to give it a variation on the name, which is line with the variation on the theme (after all, it's still going to be essentially a community-building simulation of sorts). There's no evil conspiracy here.

Re:Just can't win with some people...

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

The point would be that franchises should stay mostly the same and you should innovate with new franchises. That way if the innovations fail it won't reflect poorly upon the franchise. I disagree. By your logic any existing franchise will only ever implement features that have been seen before in other games. In my opinion the worst thing that can ever happen to a game series is for it to become stale and unadventurous. After all, it's the innovation and originality that creates all good series' in the first place. To lose that quality out of fear of hurting the franchise is just crazy. If trying something new means that every once in a while a franchise gets a black mark on it's name, well that's fine by me. That's the cost of creating something great.

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.

hmmm

[nomadic]

Judging by the state of the game industry, the new one will somehow be a WW2 FPS.

Re:hmmm

[lexarius]

I can see it now. Imagine a lifelike city full of sims that have their own constantly changing and evolving lives. Imagine that you are one of them, exploring the city, interacting with its people, making friends and enemies, having a job, maybe making a little romance. What is this city? Paris. Occupied by the Germans. And you are a brave member of the resistance. Can you take down the occupiers by night while keeping your business and home life in shape? Keep your bank books in the black while keeping your radio equipment and firearms well stocked and hidden? Explore this and other simulated occupied historical cities in Sim City 5, coming soon!

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.

It doesn't have to be horrible, though

[Moraelin]

Just using a franchise for free mindshare doesn't guarantee a dud or "like Quake 5 being in 2-d", though.

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.

Re:It doesn't have to be horrible, though

[Moraelin]

Actually I'll go ahead and say just that: that people are damn good at picking what's good for _them_. It may not satisfy _your_ tastes, or _your_ criteria, but it doesn't make their choice wrong either.

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.

Re:It doesn't have to be horrible, though

[crossmr]

No they're not. Some people are good at picking whats good for them. A lot of people are good with going along with the crowd and just taking what is popular. That doesn't make the product superior or great, it makes it popular. You implied with your statement that WoW was the "best" as in a better product than any other MMO out there. History is rife with examples of inferior products becoming popular due to marketing, backroom deals, etc. While the superior products fade in to obscurity. If people were really good at picking the "best" product as a group, this type of thing wouldn't happen. They're easily swayed by marketing and popular opinion, neither of which make something the "best".

All I want in SCX

[El_Smack]

A really good terrain editor with *fine* control.
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

[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.

Re:Well...

[Mattintosh]

U-Drive-It was part of the expansion pack.

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.

Re:I Hate SimCity

[T.E.D.]

My stupid cities always eventually went bankrupt.

Marion Barry reads Slashdot? Who knew?

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.

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.
[OLPC-Games] Efficient general purpose tile engine, and a cellular automata machine.

-Don