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It's amazing how close this iteration has followed in the path of the original Cities XL. Take for example the Sim City world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

by Danieru 13y ago

It's amazing how close this iteration has followed in the path of the original Cities XL. Take for example the Sim City world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3oFKhftK88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3oFKhftK88 If you didn't play the Cities XL beta nor were around for the first bit of Cities XL there was something called the "Planet Offer". The world map Maxis shows 12 seconds into the trailer looks just like the Planet Offer's globe. Maxis even shows a commodities market at 22 seconds which looks like the Planet Offer's trading. Just like the Planet Offer things did not work out as planned. Core components of the city builder were left undone such as the terrain manipulation or map creation. In part I suspect both were business decisions made to allow a DLC market. From the beginning EA promised DLC. In the case of Cities XL the DLC was less obvious. The way things worked out the developers of Cities XL went bankrupt and the game was bought out by its current publisher. Every Cities XL game since has just been the original edition plus some extra maps and buildings. The real shame is that both Cities XL and Sim City 2013 were beautiful and did not lack anything art wise. Instead they just failed at game play. Part of said problem was crippling the game to open DLC avenues. The other part was horrible balancing. In the case of Cities XL there was no balancing. Every city service cost the exact same with no room to adjust service level like in Sim City 4. Cities XL also made the mistake of tying medium and large density zones plus most services to your city's population. In effect every new city felt the same since you had to bootstrap everything every-time. Of course finances were also dead easy to balance. During Cities XL beta my biggest problem was opening enough inter-city transport capacity to export my over supply of office services. For a while I could just open international airports one after the other but I soon ran out of space. My city got so big I triggered a rare bug where the game replaced my entire city with a hilly field. Since said hilly field had no export routes I couldn't rebuild. This was a shame since the glitch managed to delete everything which was costing me money but leave all the export revenue. Thus despite being a hilly field I must have amassed more money than any other city during beta. Sorry back on topic: just like Cities XL's planet offer Maxis is now stepping back from the online. In theory online would be fantastic but first you need to make a fun city builder. Maybe in the future we'll get one.

sentenza 13y ago
What surprises me is that they didn't realize that SimCity doesn't have the right game mechanics for classic DLC. Instead of going the DLC route, they should have gone the user-gernerated content route. Allowing users to not only share and rank their cities but also to create additional content (3D models, conversions) and to interact with the game mechanics using an in-game scripting language. By that last part I mean things like programming the logic of the in-game traffic lights, train schedules, and so on. Pure, raw, script-based micro-management. Had they managed to implement a game incorporating content-sharing, they might have seen the sales of their core game skyrocket, fueled by the positive marketing feedback of a content-generating community.
- DanBC 13y ago
  Someone needs to write a short essay about the power of user generated content to sell product. Doom was released as shareware. You got the first few levels for free. You paid and got the rest. Doom had a huge amount of user generated content, but the community was careful to make sure it would only work if you had the full paid version of the game. Obviously some people didn't, but you'll always get pirates. That's an early example of the community protecting the ip while helping to boost sales. Minecraft is a more modern example of user generated content driving huge sales of a game. We just need a short easy to read essay to point the accountants and suits at.
  - SimHacker 13y ago
    Absolutely. I believe that's the reason behind the success of The Sims (and the lack of user generated content was the reason behind the failure of The Sims Online). A browser based version of SimCity Classic could use WebGL to render the buildings with digital bricks (i.e. Legos). Then it would be very fun and easy for players to create their own buildings with existing tools (or new browser based tools build into the game), and even construct those buildings in the real world out of Legos. There is an active community of Lego fans and a rich ecosystem of open source digital brick editing tools, and Lego Digital Designer even imports and exports some of the file formats that were developed by the open source community, as well as Lego's own xml file format. http://ldd.lego.com/ http://ldd.lego.com/ In fact there's already an open source JavaScript/WebGL/three.js library for rendering digital bricks: https://bitbucket.org/msx80/brigl https://bitbucket.org/msx80/brigl demos: http://www.lugato.net/brigl/index.html http://www.lugato.net/brigl/index.html Check out the Lego Micropolis Micro City Standard: http://twinlug.com/micropolis-micro-city-standard/ http://twinlug.com/micropolis-micro-city-standard/ and the beautiful stuff people have made: http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/micropolis/Interesting http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/micropolis/Interesting Bad day for Micropolis contest: http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/ http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/ winners: http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/badday.html http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/badday.h... http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/basic.html http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/basic.ht... http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/double.html http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/double.h... http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/doubleplus.html http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/doublepl... Imagine importing that great stuff into SimCity, or rather, the open source version of SimCity, whose name also just happens to be Micropolis: https://code.google.com/p/micropolis/ https://code.google.com/p/micropolis/ I'd write a short essay, but I'm afraid it would end up being a long essay! ;)

by Danieru 13y ago

sentenza 13y ago

What surprises me is that they didn't realize that SimCity doesn't have the right game mechanics for classic DLC. Instead of going the DLC route, they should have gone the user-gernerated content route. Allowing users to not only share and rank their cities but also to create additional content (3D models, conversions) and to interact with the game mechanics using an in-game scripting language. By that last part I mean things like programming the logic of the in-game traffic lights, train schedules, and so on. Pure, raw, script-based micro-management. Had they managed to implement a game incorporating content-sharing, they might have seen the sales of their core game skyrocket, fueled by the positive marketing feedback of a content-generating community.

DanBC 13y ago
Someone needs to write a short essay about the power of user generated content to sell product. Doom was released as shareware. You got the first few levels for free. You paid and got the rest. Doom had a huge amount of user generated content, but the community was careful to make sure it would only work if you had the full paid version of the game. Obviously some people didn't, but you'll always get pirates. That's an early example of the community protecting the ip while helping to boost sales. Minecraft is a more modern example of user generated content driving huge sales of a game. We just need a short easy to read essay to point the accountants and suits at.
- SimHacker 13y ago
  Absolutely. I believe that's the reason behind the success of The Sims (and the lack of user generated content was the reason behind the failure of The Sims Online). A browser based version of SimCity Classic could use WebGL to render the buildings with digital bricks (i.e. Legos). Then it would be very fun and easy for players to create their own buildings with existing tools (or new browser based tools build into the game), and even construct those buildings in the real world out of Legos. There is an active community of Lego fans and a rich ecosystem of open source digital brick editing tools, and Lego Digital Designer even imports and exports some of the file formats that were developed by the open source community, as well as Lego's own xml file format. http://ldd.lego.com/ http://ldd.lego.com/ In fact there's already an open source JavaScript/WebGL/three.js library for rendering digital bricks: https://bitbucket.org/msx80/brigl https://bitbucket.org/msx80/brigl demos: http://www.lugato.net/brigl/index.html http://www.lugato.net/brigl/index.html Check out the Lego Micropolis Micro City Standard: http://twinlug.com/micropolis-micro-city-standard/ http://twinlug.com/micropolis-micro-city-standard/ and the beautiful stuff people have made: http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/micropolis/Interesting http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/micropolis/Interesting Bad day for Micropolis contest: http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/ http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/ winners: http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/badday.html http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/badday.h... http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/basic.html http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/basic.ht... http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/double.html http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/double.h... http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/doubleplus.html http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/doublepl... Imagine importing that great stuff into SimCity, or rather, the open source version of SimCity, whose name also just happens to be Micropolis: https://code.google.com/p/micropolis/ https://code.google.com/p/micropolis/ I'd write a short essay, but I'm afraid it would end up being a long essay! ;)