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

Heh

[Greyfox]

They could just work their way through the EA game archive making each one not suck in exactly the way that EA made each one of them suck. Five years later, one of the two companies would still be alive...

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Satan for ya.

Re:Heh

[Greyfox]

They usually just buy the up-and-coming company and turn it into shit with their Midas poo-touch.

Re:Heh

[Darinbob]

I think a major flaw with Maxis is that they thought they had a must-buy title. As in Too Big To Fail. If a company thinks they can do anything, then they'll do things to screw with customers without them leaving. Ie, start to "monetize" things more. Horse armor, no one can bitch about that can they?

Thing is, it sort of works for awhile. There is a class of game buyers who just don't care. If the game is new they will buy it. Three months later they're on to something else and don't care about how they got screwed, and the price doesn't matter since they probably snuck the card of of mom's purse. Or they're the idiot on the forums who says "dude, lighten up, it's only the cost of 4 family size pizzas".

EA

[phantomfive]

Sounds like EA has a new buyout target.

In fact 'EA' is the only thing that really needs to be said here, that's why Sim City failed.

Re:EA

[master_kaos]

There was an AMA (ask my anything) on reddit a couple days ago from the devs of city skylines, and someone asked this very question

  "What would you do if EA tried to buy you?"
They responded with "Something like this".

Re:EA

[TWX]

Heh. I guess it's been a long time since I played SimCity titles regularly. I kind of gave up when The Sims came out and went in a completely different direction than the city-building games had gone. Thought about playing Streets of SimCity, but between the original overhead-view Grand Theft Auto and the first-person Carmageddon II and Monster Truck Madness on the PC plus Twisted Metal on the Playstation I didn't really feel a need to get into even more games. I didn't even know that EA bought-out Maxis.

Was there really any improvement in the SimCity titles after SimCity 2000? That was probably the last one I played regularly. It seemed, at the time, to be perfect. One could control the terrain, within reason, the under-terrain infrastructure, the water table, and obviously the roads and zoning. What else did a city simulator need?

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).

Re:EA

[Mashiki]

Paradox Entertainment is the publisher for the game. Colossal Order is the owner of the title, and the one who developed it. Colossal Order is also a private company, but the rest of your point stands.

Re:EA

[schnell]

Is there actually a way for US businesses to prevent themselves from hostile takeover? Like, can they be "private limited companies" and just refuse to merge?

Oh yes indeed - it all depends on what type of company it is. I am oversimplifying here, but there are (at least in the US four (and a half) types of companies based on ownership structure:

• Sole proprietorship : There is a dude named Bob Smith (BS) who owns Bob Smith Plumbing (BSP). BS and BSP are separate entities for tax purposes, but BS can do whatever the f**k he wants to with BSP - sell it, keep it, use its finances to expense hookers. The downside to Bob is that if BSP goes bankrupt, there is no barrier for creditors not to go after Bob personally.
• Partnership or Limited Liability Partnership: There is a group of people who own Bob Smith Plumbing, which may include Bob Smith, a rich uncle who gave him the money to finance his startup costs, whatever. The partners who own shares in it control 100% of what the company does, and nobody can force them to do anything they don't want to. But if things go tits-up the partners who aren't involved in day-to-day operation of the business (e.g. Bob's uncle) may be shielded from some bankruptcy or lawsuit claims while those who ran the business daily (e.g. Bob) are not.
• Corporation (private) : Here it gets interesting. Bob Smith Plumbing, Inc. is now legally separate from Bob or any of the owners - i.e., if BSP Inc. goes bankrupt, creditors can't come after Bob or the other owners. (In return for this legal separate personhood of the company, BSP Inc. must have independent board members, file quarterly reports and go through other legal oversight to prove that Bob isn't treating the corporation like a personal asset; if the books show that, creditors can "pierce the corporate veil" and hold Bob or the other shareholders personally liable.) Still, the owners are the owners and nobody can make them sell, not sell, or do anything else they don't want to. However, a large private corporation usually has a LOT of owners - founders, Venture Capitalists, etc. - and they all get to make big decisions based on the % of shares they own. If you get a buyout offer from $MEGACORP and the founders and employees (who own 49% of the shares) don't want to but the VCs (who own 51% of the shares) do, then you get bought out.
• Corporation (public): Same as above, but you are no longer owned just by founders, employees, VCs, etc.; you have started selling your shares to anyone who wants to buy (ranging from jackasses like you or me with E*Trade accounts to hedge funds and institutional investors). Going public is a goal for most companies because it converts your shares of the company into actual, you know, money (think turning potential energy into kinetic energy). But going public means that (as above) not only does your company have to follow the will of the Board (as elected by shareholders based on their % of shares held) but you also are subject to lawsuits from those shareholders (or criminal prosecution by the FTC) if you run the company in a way (e.g. turn down a lucrative buyout offer) that is deliberately against the monetary interest of shareholders. On a side note, public corporations can create ways to avoid hostile takeovers like Poison Pill plans, too... but if more than 50% of shareholders don't like your way of running the company, you are out.

I say "four and a half" (despite there being other business entity forms) because the last "half" is a company that's in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Long story short, once you file, the previous owners of the company don't own s**t. The US go

Re:EA

[afidel]

Public companies can also have a mechanism to halt a hostile takeover, it's called a poison pill. Generally it involves some kind of massive payoff to the current staff, but it can also be the automatic issuance of new stock which dilutes the holdings of the company attempting to do the acquisition. The first known use of the latter technique that I'm aware of was the Westinghouse corporation which issued massive amounts of stock when JP Morgan tried to take them over, ultimately providing them with enough money to complete the Niagara power station project.

modern gameplay renaissance?

[Anonymous Coward]

We had the Great Gaming Dark Ages from the early 2000's until recently, during which games mostly turned to shit, delivering little more than reskinned dumbed down pulp for the masses.

But now, it seems like there's a renaissance of good games trying to bring back actual gameplay. Will this succeed in the face of the studio execs who want to dumb everything down for the masses? I don't know, but it sure is nice to see some smaller studios trying. I'm sick of the handholdy pulp that's been coming out of the AAA studios.

Re:modern gameplay renaissance?

[Travis Mansbridge]

It's not necessarily a dark age, you just have to look below the surface for the really interesting games. What we experienced in the PS2+ era were giant game studios failing to learn the lesson that adding more money and more people to a project doesn't make it better (unless you know how to scale a game properly like Rockstar or Bethesda), a lesson EA still hasn't figured out.

Re:modern gameplay renaissance?

[TWX]

You know, as much as I liked titles that came out in the later video-acceleration era with advanced music and sound effects, there's still nothing quite like that first level of DOS-based DOOM with the overdriven guitar coming out of an FM-synth midi chip on a Soundblaster 16, with the monsters roaring and the lights flickering.

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.

How to prevent hostile takeover...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Let's not forget Cities XXL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Different Company. That was Monte Cristo, not Colossal Order.

EA never understood the SimCity Market...

[NicBenjamin]

I loved SimCity. I have never played a multiplayer game in my life unless forced to do so by the game's design.

What I want in a City sim (or almost any other game) is a detailed simulated single-player game. Note "game." I do not want a campaign, objectives (my least favorite thing about Railroad Tycoon II and 3 was that it took me a good 20-30 minutes to figure out how to just play the damn game without any fucking objectives), or even scoring. This is my simulated world Mr. game-runner, I want to pick a somewhat ridiculous objective and achieve it without the pressure of being told I suck because you idiots didn't figure out a way to score my ridiculous ambition.

I do not want a real challenge, because if it was a real fucking challenge I'd be too busy fighting to survive to achieve my ridiculous objective. I do not want to need to be online, because the time I will most want to play your game is when my internet goes out. Since half the point of having my own fucking world is that I don't have to deal with everyone else, I really truly hate the idea of mandatory multiplayer in principle.

Thus the games I have actually enjoyed in the past decade are so are all either a) Paradox games because Paradox still does this kind of thing (note: Paradox is the publisher of Cities), b) sequels to very old series which still keep to the model (ie: I loved Tropico, Civ, Railroad Tycoon, and Simcity 4), or c) extremely unusual Indy games. The last game I really got into was Dwarf Fortress.

Re:EA never understood the SimCity Market...

[NicBenjamin]

If I may point out Rimworld, it's pretty much DF, but with nicer graphics

Seems less detailed.

One of the charms of Dwarf Fortress is that it's clearly written by someone who is clearly an Aspie, and is thus ridiculously detailed. For example, your dwarfs have to wear socks. Each sock is tracked by the game. Each sock wears out. They replace them as needed with the most expensive sock available, and there are multiple ways to make a sock more valuable (ie: more expensive cloth, dying, decorations, better weaving, etc.). So if you get besieged by goblins who like red socks, you'd better make sure all the doors are locked before you start letting the militia shoot the siege, because if Urist McSuicidal realizes there's a red sock on the map whose owner is dead he'll sprint into the middle of the siege in an attempt to claim it first.

Another of it's charms is actually the ASCII graphics.

Re:EA never understood the SimCity Market...

[drinkypoo]

I do not want a real challenge, because if it was a real fucking challenge I'd be too busy fighting to survive to achieve my ridiculous objective.

I love this sentence so much, I want to slap every hardcore gamer across the face with it from now until eternity. Perhaps I could print it upon a trout.

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.

Played for a few hours and got bored

[chad_r]

I played Cities: Skylines for a while. Some parts are cool, like setting transit routes, setting different policies for neighborhoods, or controlling downstream pollution. But it wasn't fun in the long-term, because:

1. 1) It's not challenging. Once you make it past about 10,000 people you rake in more money than you know what to do with
2. 2) City development isn't realistic. Real cities of 20,000 people don't have a network of subways and high-rise neighborhoods. Unlike real cities, sprawling cul-de-sacs are low-value because they tend to be farther from police and fire service.
3. 3) Grade schools and high schools aren't optional in real life. In Skylines, Putting in a grade school and high school raises the education level of citizens, which means they are too overqualified for industrial work. So industry basically only desires employees who didn't graduate from grade school??
4. 4) People are dumb with respect to jobs. A group of university graduates will travel to the next town to do uneducated farm labor, and it makes the farm sad but apparently the employees are fine with it

I'm glad there is competition and innovation in the simulation realm, but I didn't have the free time to play Skylines a lot.

Re:Played for a few hours and got bored

[BenJeremy]

Well, you can always grab some of the 40,000 mods they have for the game to make it more difficult or more fun.

It's a sandbox game with tons of mods. At this point, you can make the game pretty much any experience you want, by either using other people's mods (as simple as clicking a button in Steam) or creating your own.

That's kind of the point of the article.

Re:Played for a few hours and got bored

[NicBenjamin]

1) You might be surprised. IRL if you're a growing region it's very hard for a city to go bankrupt. IRL Detroit has been in a bad region, dominated by a shrinking industry, and overseen by a state which would rather it went away, since roughly 1970. And we managed to not go bankrupt until very recently.

2) IRL it's very complex to value sprawling cul de sacs of suburban development. When first built they're great because the people who live there are the kind of people who almost never need the government, and have a fairly good income. If they weren't both they wouldn't be able to afford to buy into a suburb. This means a miniscule tax rate is enough to run the city. Then life happens, and 50 years later you've got houses designed to standards nobody wants, owned by people who were too poor to move out, which means that a) they need lots of government services, and b) they can't pay for those services with the miniscule tax rate, leading to c) the City Manager scrambling around to save the city while the long-time residents are convinced that it's still an upper-income enclave. Quite a few very smart people have pointed out that it's much easier to build new suburbs then build a new Brooklyn because of the way the Feds give out grants..

But in a world where you don't have the Feds actively subsidizing suburban growth, and region is growing (aka: a world where the game is fun), then having a core of apartment buildings surrounded by no development makes sense because it cost as lot less per unit to build/maintain a small apartment building then a suburban neighborhood.

3) This is a game. IRL in the US most cities have no control over their schools whatsoever because those are run by an independent school board. That would be no fun. So is forcing the player to plan an expensive education system from the beginning. Which is why no version of SimCity would require you get the entire City within the radius of a High School zone before you could build industrial zones.

4) Again, this is a game. It's no fun if you can't get started building pretty quickly, which means that educated migrants are necessary.

Now if you want a more realistic (ie: much harder) game you can mod it. But unless you mod in some pretty nasty ethnic dynamics you;re never going to make it as hard as real life is for cities like Detroit.

Re:Played for a few hours and got bored

[NicBenjamin]

No.

Re:Is this 2 guys in their moms basement?

[BenJeremy]

I'm guessing AC has never even glanced at this game, or is basing it on his experiences with Cities XL, an entirely different franchise by an entirely different company that has absolutely no connection with Skylines?

Cities:Skylines is a successor to Cities In Motion, though the developers seem to have listened to users and greatly improved everything they could. Right now, it's rated at 96% thumbs up, with over 10,000 positive reviews.

I don't think anybody in their right mind could say Cities:Skylines "sucks"

Cities XXL, on the other hand, the latest chapter of Cities XL that just came out in February, doesn't seem to be getting a very receptive review (though it still might be better than EA/Maxis' Sim City)