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Wow, I wish they had something like this for the more modern SimCities. I was playing SimCity 3 or 4 and built a road going to a beach and to this day haven't

Wow, I wish they had something like this for the more modern SimCities. I was playing SimCity 3 or 4 and built a road going to a beach and to this day haven't figured out why no-one drove on it. It's hard to play a game that approximates reality enough that instruction manuals aren't provided, but differs just slightly enough to foil expectations.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
> It's hard to play a game that approximates reality enough that instruction manuals aren't provided, but differs just slightly enough to foil expectations. Agreed. For instance, it takes a while to find out that the "right" way to build a successful city in SimCity (and not necessarily in reality) is to never build a single tile of roadway, and instead construct an exclusively rail-based grid. On the other hand, some of its city planning lessons work very well: for instance, interleave residential and commercial every other 9x9 block (3x3 set of 3x3 zones, with a non-RCI zone in the middle), rather than separating residential and commercial, to avoid creating huge commutes. (Meanwhile, keep industrial far away from everything so it doesn't bother anyone.)
- danharaj 11y ago
  Ideas of "right" in open-ended games where the goal is merely to keep going are always weird to me. I know exactly what you meant by putting it in quotes.
  - hguant 11y ago
    "Right" as in "more optimal", not "only correct solution".
    - JoshTriplett 11y ago
      More optimal only in the context of the game's engine and ruleset, which is what danharaj was saying deserved the quotes around "right".
      - danharaj 11y ago
        Actually, I meant "right" in a weirder sense: The only goal of Sim City and many other games is to endure and persist. Any strategy that survives is a strategy that 'wins' Sim City. In what sense are some strategies more optimal than others? Usually they maximize some other measure of fitness, like land usage or average commute time. That's cool. I think it's perfectly reasonable to call efficient strategies 'right'. But calling something right means you know something is wrong, and the 'wrong' that comes with this 'right' includes strategies that survive. Clearly, there's room for more than one right.
Tiktaalik 11y ago
It would be great if future versions of SimCity and Cities:Skylines would embed more direct urban planning lessons in their games. This way players would learn what makes a city work properly. A problem is that most peoples' only knowledge of urban planning comes from looking around at their own town, and unfortunately most towns in North America are incredibly poorly designed. A SimCity player that bases their city on a typical North American one will often wind up with a dysfunctional and gridlocked town, just like real life.
- DiabloD3 11y ago
  Cities: Skylines is an absolutely amazing game, but yeah, I wish there was more lessons. I keep discovering new things that I can do with it that, honestly, should have been taught to me early on.
unexistance 11y ago
reading the article, actually made me think of SimCity 4 & the game seems to be still following whatever the article / guide says... So I'm guessing the simulation just got better from time to time (except for that SimCity 2013) to reflect the real world, in which some gamers complain SimCity 4 is a bit too hard
- Tiktaalik 11y ago
  SimCity and Cities: Skylines are still half stuck in 1950s era car oriented urban planning so they're not totally representative of the real world and modern urban planning. In these games public transportation options are limited, walkable public spaces such as pedestrian only streets and squares are not possible, and bike lanes do not exist. Additionally zoning is either residential, commercial or industrial, so there's no concept of mixed-use zoning (ie. commercial on the bottom of a building, residential on top) which you see everywhere. I'd love to see a smaller scale game that really focuses on these details. SimCity 4 and other games went in the other direction, building systems around how a metropolitan region of multiple cities would interact.
  - douche 11y ago
    SimTower sort of did this, within the context of a single skyscraper. I'm not sure if it is on GOG or anywhere else legitimate these days - odds are it might not be a simple matter to run on modern Windows, unless you want to spin up an XP VM. I spent way too many hours playing SimTower as a kid. It was pretty fun, especially if you took advantage of the infinite money cheat involving building a specific type of room in one certain place on the bottom of the level... Not bad for a game that was built around an elevator simulator http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130563/the_designers_notebook_the_.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130563/the_designers_n...
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - mosheroperandi 11y ago

JoshTriplett 11y ago

> It's hard to play a game that approximates reality enough that instruction manuals aren't provided, but differs just slightly enough to foil expectations. Agreed. For instance, it takes a while to find out that the "right" way to build a successful city in SimCity (and not necessarily in reality) is to never build a single tile of roadway, and instead construct an exclusively rail-based grid. On the other hand, some of its city planning lessons work very well: for instance, interleave residential and commercial every other 9x9 block (3x3 set of 3x3 zones, with a non-RCI zone in the middle), rather than separating residential and commercial, to avoid creating huge commutes. (Meanwhile, keep industrial far away from everything so it doesn't bother anyone.)

danharaj 11y ago
Ideas of "right" in open-ended games where the goal is merely to keep going are always weird to me. I know exactly what you meant by putting it in quotes.
- hguant 11y ago
  "Right" as in "more optimal", not "only correct solution".
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    More optimal only in the context of the game's engine and ruleset, which is what danharaj was saying deserved the quotes around "right".
    - danharaj 11y ago
      Actually, I meant "right" in a weirder sense: The only goal of Sim City and many other games is to endure and persist. Any strategy that survives is a strategy that 'wins' Sim City. In what sense are some strategies more optimal than others? Usually they maximize some other measure of fitness, like land usage or average commute time. That's cool. I think it's perfectly reasonable to call efficient strategies 'right'. But calling something right means you know something is wrong, and the 'wrong' that comes with this 'right' includes strategies that survive. Clearly, there's room for more than one right.

Tiktaalik 11y ago

It would be great if future versions of SimCity and Cities:Skylines would embed more direct urban planning lessons in their games. This way players would learn what makes a city work properly. A problem is that most peoples' only knowledge of urban planning comes from looking around at their own town, and unfortunately most towns in North America are incredibly poorly designed. A SimCity player that bases their city on a typical North American one will often wind up with a dysfunctional and gridlocked town, just like real life.

DiabloD3 11y ago
Cities: Skylines is an absolutely amazing game, but yeah, I wish there was more lessons. I keep discovering new things that I can do with it that, honestly, should have been taught to me early on.

unexistance 11y ago

reading the article, actually made me think of SimCity 4 & the game seems to be still following whatever the article / guide says... So I'm guessing the simulation just got better from time to time (except for that SimCity 2013) to reflect the real world, in which some gamers complain SimCity 4 is a bit too hard

Tiktaalik 11y ago
SimCity and Cities: Skylines are still half stuck in 1950s era car oriented urban planning so they're not totally representative of the real world and modern urban planning. In these games public transportation options are limited, walkable public spaces such as pedestrian only streets and squares are not possible, and bike lanes do not exist. Additionally zoning is either residential, commercial or industrial, so there's no concept of mixed-use zoning (ie. commercial on the bottom of a building, residential on top) which you see everywhere. I'd love to see a smaller scale game that really focuses on these details. SimCity 4 and other games went in the other direction, building systems around how a metropolitan region of multiple cities would interact.
- douche 11y ago
  SimTower sort of did this, within the context of a single skyscraper. I'm not sure if it is on GOG or anywhere else legitimate these days - odds are it might not be a simple matter to run on modern Windows, unless you want to spin up an XP VM. I spent way too many hours playing SimTower as a kid. It was pretty fun, especially if you took advantage of the infinite money cheat involving building a specific type of room in one certain place on the bottom of the level... Not bad for a game that was built around an elevator simulator http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130563/the_designers_notebook_the_.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130563/the_designers_n...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - mosheroperandi 11y ago