How Cities: Skylines Beat SimCity At Its Own Game

An anonymous reader writes: Maxis, the studio behind SimCity, was shuttered earlier this year. Fortunately, another studio has taken up its mantle. The small team at Colossal Order has already won acclaim for city-builder game Cities: Skylines (and sold millions), earning a great reputation with the modding community by avoiding all the mistakes the last SimCity release made, such as enforced online/multiplayer. A new behind the scenes feature looks at how the game came about — it was not a response to SimCity, surprisingly — as well as what's next from the studio.

"We are planning to start another game project sometime soon," says Colossal CEO Mariina Hallikainen. "We definitely want to focus on old-school simulator games and definitely PC. PC, Mac and Linux, those are our 'thing.' But I think we're maybe going to do something a little bit different."

Comments

Linux Support Was Why I Bought Skylines

[Maltheus]

If they keep up the linux support, I'll definitely check out their new games. Skylines could have used a bit more content, but it was worth it for the price.

Re:EA

[phantomfive]

Is there actually a way for US businesses to prevent themselves from hostile takeover?

Yes, the only reason hostile takeovers work is when the management doesn't own the company because they've sold the company through public stock. Then someone can buy all the stock (or, a controlling share) and they own the company.

In the case of Paradox Entertainment, the stock is not publicly traded, and the CEO owns a controlling share (of the private stock).

How to prevent hostile takeover...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there is a system called Poison Pill, also known as "Shareholder Rights Plan".

It's simple

[kuzb]

Skylines did so well because it focused specifically on player experience and fun rather than methods to maximize how much they can siphon out of your wallet. If you don't own it yet, but like city builders, you're missing out.