Slashdot Mirror
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.
Steam Community thread.
I read the internet for the articles.
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!
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.