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.
Forced to play online. Not enough server support. Too much DLC. Incredibly overpriced DLC.
Goodbye SimCity, you were great long ago.
That is all.
But why is no one talking about the traffic issues in Skylines?
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.
With Steam workshop support?
https://youtu.be/u6u88JeFY9g?t...
Sounds like my daily commute. WORKSFORME WONTFIX.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I've sunk a bunch of time into it and gotten to 7 tiles so far, feels like a big city and a number of highway entrances, subways, trains etc... feels spacious and i don't have to destroy my early area to keep moving forwards...
But yea, there are some annoyances like the traffic backups here and there and finding ways that shouldn't be needed around them, but they aren't EA, they set the price lower and have been open about what they are doing. They've built up goodwill so I cut them a lot of slack. It's a good game and worth the time and money.
Now they start doing stuff like EA has over the years with madden exclusivity, the sim city stuff and everything else, then I won't even look at games they release.
I didn't know they were coming out with a different Europa Universalis, which is a game I enjoyed many years ago and totally forgot about...
If you cared about Maxis as a game studio that made a lot of classic games, they've been gone for a while. EA has long ago assimilated Maxis into the fold.
If you care about the Maxis name, it is still around. They closed a location in Emeryville, not the entire studio.
EA screwed up Simcity when it decided to turn it into the Facebook of city builders. Nobody wants to play a single person strategy game online with all their friends. Nobody wants to have to buy content to fix issues with the game.Nobody wants city sizes smaller than the previous version.
I eventually bought it when they released the offline mode, but I still found it kind of disappointing.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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?
I have a 9-year old and 11-year old, both into Minecraft, and I thought this might be a fun way to spend a few hours a week together.
Opinions?
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.
It's EA. That's what they do. Buy a smaller developer, try to milk what they can out of it while adding in stupid "features" like required online play, DLC, etc, run it into the ground and then close them down. Rinse and repeat.
The DLC actually made the game better. Now you can get the complete civ v with all the DLC packs for like $50 less if its on sale.
Their Linux support since Steam on Linux became more then a fever induced dream I had once has been excellent. As publishers go theyve been amazing. So yeah, Skylines is on Linux, go grab a copy (if you play games on that platform).
1000hrs and counting for PI games on my steam, not sure if I should hate them or love them.
It's a lot of fun and it runs on Linux. For me I've been getting really bad frame rates, particularly when zoomed in. Apparently the developer is working on Linux performance.
A modern version of SimAnt or SimEarth would have been awesome.
The mere existence of DLC - even day-one DLC - does not mean the content would otherwise have appeared in the base game.
This. So many idiots seem to be under the impression that if the concept of DLC did not exist, developers would just create all the same content, but release it for free. In reality, if the concept of DLC didn't exist, they would not create that content at all, and base games would actually probably be smaller, as the promise of future revenue from higher profit margin DLC will often make publishers more inclined to increase the budget on the base game.
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
"DLC = unfinished game from price-gouging publisher"
No, not always. I can think of more than a few games where DLC released after the fact added huge value to an already good game. Speaking in absolutes just makes you sound like an idiot.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
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.
"DLC = unfinished game from price-gouging publisher"
No, not always. I can think of more than a few games where DLC released after the fact added huge value to an already good game. Speaking in absolutes just makes you sound like an idiot.
Rocksmith 2014.
Moar DLC! It made me unreasonably happy when they released Motorhead's Ace of Spades as a DLC a few weeks ago. $2.99 well spent.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Oh bullshit. Some games have ongoing stories that would mean the game is never "finished", which in turn means it would never be released.
LGR has done a review of this. He's an excellent reviewer and should be on "the list" of every slashdotter methinks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Lack of a Day Night Cycle(days just go by too fast).
The 24/7 sunshine also makes it possible for solar to best nuclear as the endgame power source (no, I'm not kidding).
Or if you mention it "too often" on the steam forum they can and will cancel ALL your games.
Oh, and if you have multiple accounts so that some games won't be blocked, that's against their ToS and they can cancel all your accounts to what they think are the same person and you have to prove you're not the one they wanted to ban to get it back.
You can't just afford to click on "I agree" any more, because Steam allows them to enforce any old shit they put in there without bothering with whether it's legally enforceable.
As evidenced by how much better most games were per dollar spent in the floppy and CD offline era.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
hey dummy, if you are going to make a bunch of claims about steam, people may make the assumption that you use it, or have done so in the past.
but no, i guess you are just someone that gets off on hating shit you don't use and have no experience with. my mistake.
No, not always. I can think of more than a few games where DLC released after the fact added huge value to an already good game. Speaking in absolutes just makes you sound like an idiot.
Absolutely. The exception proves the rule, after all. Since some games have DLC which isn't just cut content tacked on after the fact, it stands to reason that all DLC is the same.
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
They still had Expansion Packs in the form of add-on disks before we had the Internet and DLCs. The quality varied a lot.
3000 and 4 were ok. Basically the same thing with better graphics.
Steam's DRM is optional to the publisher. Several older and indie games don't use it and work just fine without being online. In fact for several games you have to copy the install files out of steams directory to install mods, and the publisher will tell you this.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
EA had shitty management even back then. In the Deluxe Paint license they claimed that all works produced with Deluxe Paint were copyrighted to THEM.
Needless to say it was shot down in court.
Horseshit. As has already been pointed out, yes developers did exactly that when they were called "expansion packs". Which were used to boost sales of older games - your friends are playing this neat mod for a 2 year old game, want to join them? Well you're just gonna half to fork out some money for Half-Life/Unreal Tournament.
Especially for "zero day DLC", which by definition must have been in development along the original game, which by definition means it's planned grift by the publisher.
That's got to be the longest time it's ever taken for EA to demolish a beloved studio!
I found Borderlands 2 and Saints Row IV thoroughly enjoyable. Mind you, I don't buy games until they're heavily discounted on Steam and have always found that my enjoyment is moderated by how much I paid for the game.
man did your mom do a number on you :) good stuff.