I think Simcity came around in the same era where everything EA did was online, for no reason. It's like the execs said 'online social games are killing us, we

I think Simcity came around in the same era where everything EA did was online, for no reason. It's like the execs said 'online social games are killing us, we need all of our games to be online and social' and wouldn't sign off on a project without those two check boxes. Need for Speed: Rivals was similar. It was a neat concept, but it revolved entirely around online play that was generally just completely terrible. You get dumped in a map with 1-7 other people, and then you drive around aimlessly hoping that you eventually run into them, which you don't. In the meantime, you're listening to every idiot with a Playstation Camera screaming at their moms for another PB&J, or some jackass swearing the entire time because he thinks he's alone in his room, because there's no way to turn off voice chat in the game whatsoever. Congratulations, your game is both online (but you can't really tell) and social (but it's actually antisocial). Simcity is the same way. What if you could play online against other people? I mean… with other people. You could build neighbouring towns. Except you're actually building neighbourhoods because realistically sized cities would take too much server resources. And then you can interact with other cities! By buying or selling resources like garbage pickup, recycling, and power. Except that the servers didn't work, so online only meant offline always. And the social idea was cool, until some jackass dropped into your region and built a zone that was entirely coal power plants and industrial zones, and polluted the whole region. Or built a city with nothing but power plants, provided power to everyone else in the region, then one day bulldozed everything, pulling the rug out from under everyone else and sending their cities into chaos. I really hope that Cities: Skylines is successful. It already seems like a far more interesting game than any previous Simcity was, and it has a lot more potential as well. I love the idea of being able to ease congestion by 'work from home' incentives, and it would be cool if they (or modders) could implement that.