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SimCity's Empire Has Fallen and Skylines Is Picking Up the Pieces
sarahnaomi writes: Colossal Order's SimCity-like game, Cities: Skylines, sold more than half a million copies in its first week. The first 250,000 of those were sold in the first 24 hours, making it the fastest-selling game its publisher, Paradox Interactive, has ever released. Only a week before Skylines was released, game publisher Electronic Arts announced that it was shutting down SimCity developer Maxis' studio in Emeryville, which it acquired in 1997.
"I feel so bad about Maxis closing down," Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen said. "The older SimCitys were really the inspiration for us to even consider making a city builder." At the same time, Hallikainen admits SimCity's mistakes were Colossal Order's opportunity. "If SimCity was a huge success, which is what we expected, I don't know if Skylines would have ever happened," she said, explaining that it would have been a harder pitch to sell to Paradox if the new SimCity dominated the market.
"I feel so bad about Maxis closing down," Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen said. "The older SimCitys were really the inspiration for us to even consider making a city builder." At the same time, Hallikainen admits SimCity's mistakes were Colossal Order's opportunity. "If SimCity was a huge success, which is what we expected, I don't know if Skylines would have ever happened," she said, explaining that it would have been a harder pitch to sell to Paradox if the new SimCity dominated the market.
It really is the SimCity everyone wanted. Shame on EA and Maxis for fooling us with their shoddy game.
Got Cities Skylines a couple nights ago, sinking tons of time into it. It seems...adequate I guess? First one that's been even adequate in well over a decade though. Transportation is a little more like the (confusingly, unrelated) Cities XL series...in that roads actually have lanes that actually matter. Not a perfect implementation, there's quirks like a lack of a way to merge two one-way streets directly onto a two-way street without allowing a u-turn at the intersection, but it's a heck of a lot better than the nightmare that was SimCity 4's road pathing. Also, unlike Cities XL, the city building part is actually a game instead of a micromanagement chore.
Game balance is a little meh, but again--better than any other city builder since SC2k. I'd say it's worth it, especially since it isn't sold for AAA-game price. Of course, people who played SimCity 2000 probably don't have the time to blow on city builders these days. It's published by Paradox (Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis) and it shows...none of their games aren't huge enormous time sinks.
Also, if you don't build graveyards after a certain point, people start complaining about the dead bodies stinking up their houses, and that's hilarious.
So, basically, it's no closer to "forced to play online" than any other game, seeing as how Steam games can be played offline without an Internet connection.
There is a lot of talk about this on the various gaming boards. People go to insane lengths to work around the traffic model in the game. Apparently the devs are looking into it and may have a patch that helps things, but don't bet your life on it.
The big lesson is that when a car spawns in Skylines it chooses a path at that very instant and absolutely will not deviate from the path. So all cars will all merge into the same lane because that's the lane that goes to your industrial district if that's how you have your roads laid out. Modders may be able to fix this as well.
One piece of advice is not to use the built-in traffic circles (roundabouts), because they suck. Instead, build your own out of interstate road segments (the kind that don't have buildings next to them) and exit ramps. The reason is that interstates don't have stoplights on every corner so the traffic will flow through them smoothly. Also, don't be afraid to use the big 6 lane roads. Final tip: the "traffic view" in the statistics only measures road use, not congestion. Simply being heavily trafficked will turn it red, even if there is no appreciable congestion.
I read the internet for the articles.
So yeah, someone came along and did SimCity better than EA. Big surprise. Look for EA to acquire the company and turn it into shit within a couple of years.
By the way, if you work for EA and want the company to get back in my good graces, all they have to do is prove that they understand what makes a game "fun" and actually make one that is. I don't think they're capable, though. That would require "risk", and there are plenty of suckers out there who will gladly drop $60 on a "Madden" rehash. More and more people have been burned by AAA titles are are starting to buy indy games, though. I've sunk more time into a single sub-$20 indy game than I have the last three AAA titles combined. And if I drop $5 or $10 on an indy game, I don't have super high expectations for it and can only be happily surprised.
The big publishers talk about how piracy is destroying the industry, but there are plenty of people willing to pay for good games. The big publishers are just incapable of recognizing what makes a game good and expect consumers to just buy into every $60 turd they drop. It's not pirates killing the AAA industry, it's the publishers. And I for one will be happy to see them go.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
EA's management will just have to console themselves by sleeping on huge piles of money with many beautiful women.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Steam Community thread.
I read the internet for the articles.
You can connect once, buy the game, put Steam in offline mode and never connect again. It won't stop you from playing.
What's evil about "always online" is that any connection issue or server problem on the vendor's side renders your game unplayable. That is not the case with Steam. It is the case with certain games that are sold over Steam, but that's down to the games' developers, not Steam itself.
Requiring steam is requiring a separate application that must be let online,
Only once when purchasing.
that tracks your usage and purchases,
And that's different to any other place you'd buy from, how?
and that is everything evil about "always online" except the relatively minor inconvenience of actually being required to connect.
Yes, only required to connect once. Then you can play offline to your hearts content.
I had not heard of this game, but went to read about it on Steam, expecting Windows-only. I was happily surprised to see it runs in Linux. Thanks Colossal Order!
For having a vastly inferior collection of window dressing. (I kinda miss the zombie attacks). Lack of a Day Night Cycle(days just go by too fast). The base game of Skylines is rock solid. I'm sure the modders will put some of the stuff I miss back in. In the mean time I'm just having fun making a functional Highway network.
I do miss some of the research unlockables too. Getting unlockables by simply having a large enough population seems unforfilling. I liked having to research the advanced tech at the university.
Once upon a time, I worked for EA.
The managers from EA were obsessed with the milestones.
What was important was not the game, but the progress towards its completion, so we had a fixed schedule, and we had to deliver the game at these schedules.
If you screwed your schedule, you were dead, since they paid when a milestone was reached.
It was pretty arbitrary.
The game was cancelled before its end, once they realized that it was not even amusing and probably also because they killed games that had no commercial potential.
I doubt they changed much since this time.
I got steam when HL2 came out. I played it for a few years and then graduated and lost my free time. Six years later, I boot steam up and everything worked fine. My anecdote cancels out yours.
And yes, you sound like one of those crazy people that stands on the sidewalk with 500 words written in sharpie on a repurposed pizza box trying to tell everyone how Obama's chemtrails are making your teeth liberal.
And with native Linux support! No need for winetricks. Nice. Just bought the deluxe edition. Cheers Colossal!
~A long time Sim City fan
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
Skylines is fun. It's approachable. It's easy to pick up, and difficult to master. It has a mod engine that allows players to modify it in many subtle and extreme ways. It would have done well regardless of whether or not Simcity was successful because Skylines places emphasis on fun and not tedium or publisher profit margins.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.