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SimCity's Empire Has Fallen and Skylines Is Picking Up the Pieces

Posted by Soulskill on from the enough-missteps-eventually-lead-to-a-fall dept.

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.

38 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. EA got too greedy (as usual) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Forced to play online. Not enough server support. Too much DLC. Incredibly overpriced DLC.

    Goodbye SimCity, you were great long ago.

    1. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by TrippTDF · · Score: 5, Insightful

      EA is a terrible company- it would rather run an amazing franchise into the ground rather than give customers what they really want. I'm glad to see that other companies are picking up what Maxis could no longer do.

    2. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by NotDrWho · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.
    3. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It didn't help that even the parts EA wasn't squeezing for cash(at least not visibly) were also pretty unexciting:

      Teeny-tiny cities, 'agent-based' simulations that purpoted to simulate realistic people and then delivered inchoate little ants that stumbled around randomly filling dwellings and jobs as they bumped into them, cryptic and at times deeply inscrutable simulation behavior.

      A pure cash grab would actually have been better: Take a mixture of SC2000 and SC4000, implement in any reasonably contemporary 3d engine, sit back and dribble out new art assets, building types, and assorted other flavor as DLC. That would have been overt creative bankruptcy; but it would have been a basically sound game.

    4. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by Iamthecheese · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's not the point. Requiring steam is requiring a separate application that must be let online, that tracks your usage and purchases, and that is everything evil about "always online" except the relatively minor inconvenience of actually being required to connect.

      --
      If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    5. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    6. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Steam is certainly not without its drawbacks.

      However, as a gamer, and even as someone who is profoundly wary of DRM schemes, I find that Steam at least offers some advantages to me, the user. Once I purchase a game, I can download it to any machine I like, so if I get a new computer, or my old hard drive crashes, I still have all my games. I can even delete games I'm not playing to save disk space, and reload them later if I so feel like it. I can get updates and fixes quickly and seamlessly. It may be relatively minor, but it's something that the service offers me. It's also very easy to find and buy new games, new expansions for ones I have, etc.

      In turn, I'm tied to the service for those games, but the restrictions have not proven intrusive to me in my regular playing. I can play offline, and really haven't had any problems with that. About the only thing I've found I can't do is play two online games at once on two computers side by side - but I can play one offline while the other is online.

      Now, you may find the tradeoff isn't worth it for you, and that's certainly fair - but at least Steam offers something to the user, where most DRM schemes are solely hassles to the customer for the benefit of the company (Ubisoft, EA, etc).

    7. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by Sowelu · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's a Paradox thing. The games they publish (well, make, really) are well known for having a ton of optional, aesthetic DLCs. These landmarks are a lot pricier than normal, but it sure as hell is optional! I'm hoping that this game will follow the Paradox business model in the future.

      Example for Europa Universalis: New units for your conquistadors? Do they change the gameplay? No, not at all, they just make it so if you're Spanish-ish, and fussing around in New World colonies, your unit art is different. Um... great? It's $2.50. Not worth it. Crusader Kings, new character portraits that are more realistic for certain cultures? $2.50...nahhh. Another hour of music that goes into the rotation when playing as certain religions? Also $2.50. Not worth it at all for new players, but if you've already dumped two hundred hours and don't use your own soundtrack, yes it is...and unlike little art or code changes, you know they had to pay some composer a nontrivial amount of money to commission it, so it's all cool. They also like to add expansions for $10, $15 or so that add major new mechanics, but they're always optional--never prerequisites for future DLCs--and they come with free patches that tweak bugs and existing mechanics. I think I own all of the music mods, none of the art mods, and 75% of the gameplay mods for EU4 and CK2, and I'm pretty happy with their a la carte system. Just remember they're supposed to be optional.

      Also remember that this game IS NOT CONNECTED to the (terrible) Cities XL series. Different creators, different publishers. I have no idea how they didn't get taken to court for the name because there is massive marketplace confusion here, but they aren't related.

    8. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by Halo1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You can connect once, buy the game, put Steam in offline mode and never connect again.

      At least if you never ever want to buy a game on Steam again. Otherwise, as soon as you connect again, it will automatically upload to Steam statistics regarding how much you've played the game, what "achievements" you've unlocked etc (even if you disable SteamPlay/auto-synchronisation).

      And if you have bad luck, Steam will have blocked your account in the mean time because you haven't logged in for over a year and when the Steam application detects that, it will block all games you have locally because it no longer has valid cached credentials (you can't got back to offline mode). And then you can't play anymore until you've contacted support to have them unblock/reset your account. And yes, that happened to me.

      It's true, you don't have to be online all the time. But you better be online either regularly or never again at all.

      --
      Donate free food here
    9. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by rainmaestro · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you're that paranoid, run separate instances. One that you use online for purchases and downloads only, then copy the Steamapps subfolder for your game over to your offline-gaming instance. No achievements, no gameplay tracking, etc. An inconvenience, sure, but a fairly minor one.

      I do this to keeps games sync'ed between my gaming PC and my laptop for traveling, but IIRC there's nothing that'll prevent you from having two copies of Steam installed on one PC.

    10. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by eulernet · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    11. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    12. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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 remember EA back in the Apple ][ days. They made some awesome games of clearly higher quality than everyone else. I remember reading how they set up to achieve that, because they were dissatisfied with the products they were seeing.

      Something changed pretty radically.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    13. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Funny

      The original Sim City
      was ahead of its time
      not another platform shooter
      it was so new and so fine

      SimCity 2k
      added isometric view,
      a larger land area
      I bought it too

      SimCity 3k
      had its own little quirks
      with landfills and stuff
      but I liked how it works

      SimCity 4
      16 times the size
      and graphics so sweet
      you won't believe your eyes

      Then came SimCity 5
      like a zombie in heat
      Screwed everything in sight
      It was Maxis defeat

      The moral is plain
      for all to see
      give people more, not less
      and they'll pay the fee

      But get greedy and gouge
      for something smaller? goodbye!
      Please shove your DLC
      up your a** and die.

      R.I.P. the REAL SimCities
      they were lost long ago,
      Grieve for what could have been,
      Curse EAs lack of soul!

      Burma Shave

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    14. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by nwf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Something changed pretty radically.

      I'll bet that something has an M a B and an A in it somewhere. Trying to turn an unpredictable creative process into a factory that produces widgets.

      --
      I don't know, but it works for me.
    15. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Then harden up and just play them.

      Steam is the only digital distributor I'd actually use (and aside from the occasional GoG purchase, I haven't bought from anywhere else in the last 5 years). They're not obnoxious (Uplay, Live Games, Origin), it's a nice lightweight client, they keep everything up-to-date, upload only game-related stats and it's in Valve's best interest to keep the source data to themselves.

      I'm not overly concerned with game developers knowing that X people have played Y or more hours of their game and Z have earned such-and-such achievement. That seems like a great idea.

    16. Re:EA got too greedy (as usual) by DocHoncho · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Jim Sterling ranted about this. Basically, at some point the creative types who started a studio start to feel overwhelmed by the managerial aspects of running a company. So they bring in "professional management," many of whom from come industries entirely unlike the games industry. So some CEO who previously ran a shoe manufacturer gets brought on into a game studio and proceeds to enact policies that would, were making games anything like manufacturing, make things more efficient. Instead, these policies completely destroy the creativity of the team, and eventually the people who were making the great games move on to greener (money ain't the only green!) pastures, leaving a desiccated husk of a studio which continues to churn out garbage hoping desperately to move units based solely on the whatever brand recognition remains intact.

      Whether or not you consider games to be art, creating games is undeniably a creative endeavor. When the bean counters move in with their metrics and demands for predictable results... well, shit like SimCity 2013 happens. If the new management is lucky enough to have a highly regarded franchise, expect them to churn out yearly increments of whatever they think works. You only have to look at the endless Battlefield and Call of Duty releases to see that reliable sales figures is more important than creating new and interesting games. Like OP said, a factory that produces widgets. Formulaic crap is the order of the day, and despite the fact that we all know it sucks, people still eat it up.

      --
      Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
  2. Good. Fuck EA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That is all.

  3. Believe the hype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It really is the SimCity everyone wanted. Shame on EA and Maxis for fooling us with their shoddy game.

  4. Mini-review by Sowelu · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Mini-review by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Question: Are you German, or not German? If you're German, I'll translate your rating of "adequate" into American as "CLEARLY GAME OF THE YEAR 5* A+++".

    2. Re:Mini-review by Luckyo · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think this has come from real life examples. Specifically the company that made the game is in my home city of Tampere, and we had a couple of cases about a year ago where a dead person was discovered in their apartment because of the smell coming from their apartment.

      Their head designer said that quite a few of their various features were inspired by events in their home city.

  5. Re:I know we don't like EA... by weszz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can work around em, but yea... when my trains all get piled up it is a problem...

    and cars going to the right lane miles before their exit causing a backup with cars merging on is a problem too...

  6. Realistic Simulation! by Qzukk · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  7. Small things forgiven... by weszz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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...

  8. Maxis closing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. Simcity screwed themselves by tompaulco · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  10. Re:I know we don't like EA... by jandrese · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  11. Yep! by Greyfox · · Score: 3, Informative
    EA fucked up SimCity. Because they're EA, I'd guess. You know how everything King Midas touched turned to gold? Everything EA touches turns to shit. I'm still holding a grudge about them turning UO into a WoW-style grindfest, and that was nearly a couple decades ago. It's kind of nice that they put "EA" at the front of a lot of their video game commercials so I know to just stop looking then.

    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?

  12. Re:I know we don't like EA... by jandrese · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One thing to be aware of: Cities: Skylines mod support includes a full C# compiler and does not run in a sandbox. It has the potential to install malware on your machine.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  13. Re:I know we don't like EA... by jandrese · · Score: 5, Informative

    Steam Community thread.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  14. Thank you for Linux support! by orange_account · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!

  15. Skylines got right what Simcity got wrong by medv4380 · · Score: 3, Informative
    What Simcity got right was all the window dressing. Asteroids, Alien Invasions, Zombie Apocalypse were all decent. However, the basics were utterly flawed. The restrictive play size was a huge issue, and then end game goals being set so that there was no feasible way to accomplish them. It was impossible to get the max population needed for all the unlockables, and have a functioning city. Most of that could be tracked back to the over restrictive play field that forced you to build way too close to make functional traffic. When a real city has to do that they have other tools to make it work that were missing. One way streets would have made a big dent in how things function. You can't make a functional interchange without one way roads. It's not possible. You'll just create a traffic jam if you do. The most annoying bug in Simcity was how much a failure the bus system was. I had perfectly functioning cities that went to mass unemployment after adding a bus system. The buses failed to get people to work on time so consistently that they'd lose their job, then their home, and then I'm swimming in homeless. Remove the bus system and the problem slowly fixed itself. How does a real city address this problem? Buses have routes that go from A to B. Hit a central Hub so the rider can go from B to C. Skyline has bus routes, and though I'm still fiddling with it to figure out how to make it work well it's head and shoulders above dropping down bus stops in hopes that the busses don't pick people up and go in a loop around the block 5 times because 1 person wen't to the previous bus stop so it has to turn around and pick them up. They missed the bus, and can get the next one unless you have no routing system, and you're going with the closest bus stop with people algorithm.

    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.

  16. Re:Civ V is awesome by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well yeah, they finally finished writing the game.

  17. Re:I know we don't like EA... by medv4380 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Because most of the traffic problems are a result of poor planning, like a real city, and not a result of heavy restrictions like SimCity. Sure it takes a while to create a proper interchange with all the correct on, and off ramps. Well a while until you figure out that all interchanges are a variation of a round about with some pieces removed and an over pass. Too much traffic is a good indication of not enough Interchanges, or connectors. Each industrial area requires its own interchange, or you're looking at an actual traffic nightmare. Just think about the city you live in, and how many highway connectors you have, and what each connector gets you to. Many cities have a highway connector just for their major mall. Don't make huge industrial areas because a single connector wont be able to service them all.

  18. native Linux support by drkstr1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  19. Skylines is doing what simcity hasn't done in year by kuzb · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  20. Re:I know we don't like EA... by Theaetetus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can work around em, but yea... when my trains all get piled up it is a problem...

    and cars going to the right lane miles before their exit causing a backup with cars merging on is a problem too...

    As others have noted, this is realistic. There's also a real-world solution for it - exits should occur before merges. That way, there's an empty lane for cars to merge into. By having a merge before the exit, as highway throughput increases, you experience jams.