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.

Comments

EA got too greedy (as usual)

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Goodbye SimCity, you were great long ago.

Re:EA got too greedy (as usual)

[TrippTDF]

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.

Re:EA got too greedy (as usual)

[Fire_Wraith]

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).

Re:EA got too greedy (as usual)

[Sowelu]

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.

Re:EA got too greedy (as usual)

[Halo1]

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.

Re:EA got too greedy (as usual)

[eulernet]

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.

Re:EA got too greedy (as usual)

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:EA got too greedy (as usual)

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

Re:EA got too greedy (as usual)

[BarbaraHudson]

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

Re:EA got too greedy (as usual)

[nwf]

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.

Re:EA got too greedy (as usual)

[DocHoncho]

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.

Good. Fuck EA.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is all.

Believe the hype

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Mini-review

[Sowelu]

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.

Re:I know we don't like EA...

[weszz]

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...

Realistic Simulation!

[Qzukk]

Sounds like my daily commute. WORKSFORME WONTFIX.

Maxis closing?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Simcity screwed themselves

[tompaulco]

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.

Re:I know we don't like EA...

[jandrese]

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.

Re:I know we don't like EA...

[jandrese]

Steam Community thread.

Thank you for Linux support!

[orange_account]

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!

Re:Civ V is awesome

[sjames]

Well yeah, they finally finished writing the game.