WorldSims: E3 2007 - SimCity Goes Social

WorldSims: E3 2007 - SimCity Goes Social

E3 2007: SimCity Goes Social
WorldSims takes a look at SimCity Societies at E3 2007


The first E3 Media and Business Summit has drawn to an end. The parties are raging. The emotions are running high. The excitement and buzz is in the air. Its rather contagious.

Emotions are still running high on the recent buzz that SimCity was returning. Celebrations and cheers were soon replaced by dismay when people learned that Maxis was no longer behind the wheel of SimCity, and to the SimCity Community, a virtual unknown named Tilted Mill was behind the driving force of the new SimCity Sequel entitled SimCity Societies. The SimCity fan base cried foul as the first screenshots of SimCity Societies surfaced, leaving PR a nightmare on their hands as they attempt to do damage control.

Ill be the first one to admit that Im probably one of the hardest people to sell or convince me about anything. I ask the questions. And usually they are the hard ones. Having read all the SimCity Societies previews, I was rather reluctant about SimCity Societies. There were many concerns, and even more unanswered questions. Probably even more to the point was wondering how these new social dynamics come into play and how it would affect my beloved SimCity.

I was fortunate to meet up with Jeff Fiske of Tilted Mill at E3 who gave me the scoop on SimCity Societies. After having an extended session with him and bombarding him with hundreds of questions, I feel Tilted Mill has something here. Their challenge was to capture the essence of SimCity and I believe theyve done it quite well.

So let me try to clear up SimCity Societies and put things into better perspective and give a different view on things as a whole. Perhaps it would enlighten everyone and allow us all to see what SimCity Societies has to offer.

In SimCity Societies, there are three basic types of buildings that provide key functions: Homes for residents, Workplaces to provide revenue, and Venues to provide entertainment and motivation for our residents in our city to keep coming back to work. Each of these buildings brings a societal value or energy to the town, which contributes to unlocking additional buildings. Some rewards you might receive by putting certain types of buildings are potentially making a certain type of building free, or heavily discounted. In turn, placing these buildings alters the atmosphere of your city either motivating your residents to work, or slack off. Overtime, if a particular set of buildings are placed within the map of a city, it will aesthetically evolve to represent the type of city you were trying to accomplish, like a fun city, an industrialized city, and so forth. It isn't necessarily guaranteed to happen. You could even possibly have a very heavily industrialized city, but thats very green and it wouldnt change aesthetically. I believe this is where the fun and challenge comes in, where you try to organize a city combining one or more dynamics to strike a balance of your choice.

The rules can be broken. Jeff showed me a Market Research Center, a specialized retail venue, that produces revenue for a certain number of residents who enters the building. Normally its the workplaces that bring the revenue.

Classic SimCity games were merely about building a city. It was just about the city. But placing certain types of buildings, like our reward buildings, had minimal effect on the population. Sure it boosted property value, but they were all tangible forms. What about the intangible? I think thats what the Tilted Mill wanted to bring to us: the more intangible aspects of a City and bring it life. I believe it was their hopes to bring back the fun of the game instead of spending countless hours trying to learn how to play.

We also bid farewell to the famous RCI and zoning system in SimCity Societies. Previous SimCities saw zoning with buildings being torn down and built up. Zoning may annoy some of us, and some of us love it to death. But for the most part, zoning isnt part of this SimCity.

Its more evolved into a building classification, where buildings fall under fun or industrial, or type of classification. There were several classifications if I recalled correctly. But I do see why Tilted Mill felt a fixed building is needed. I believe Jeff hit it on the head when he told me that No longer, can anyone tell you that this building doesnt belong here. They all belong here because it serves a purpose. This open feeling could be a breath of fresh air needed, as some of us would love to achieve these buildings immediately instead of a hit and miss approach in hoping a particular building will appear at one point or another.

It was Tilted Mills purpose and objective to restore creativity in this classic legacy, to make a city no longer appear and feel similar. Just like in the classic SimCity, it was all purely about creativity to make your city thrive. It is the same case here to creatively reach a balance of your city between the various elements, or potentially push your city to extremes like making it the slums, or extremely prosperous. In theory, no two cities would ever be alike since social dynamics would completely be different, creating a completely different atmosphere in each city.

SimCity Societies has left a lot of room for being open and allowing people to interact, and develop a town, a village, or city of choice. No longer are we constrained to the one themed type city, as we can explore various possibilities and extremes. The depth is amazing and Tilted Mill has a very firm grasp onto the more intangible dynamics of a city.

The list of things to come and things we havent seen are pretty interesting. There are indeed different types of transportation, such as busses and subways. In fact, the human and vehicle traffic do play a value in the game, and not merely for aesthetics. It truly represents the full amount of congestion and it simply wont vanish like previous SimCities. Disasters are something in the works. Maybe fire. Maybe earthquakes. Who knows. Jeff hinted they are toying around in the labs with global warming and its effects. The only finished disasters were disasters beyond your imagination; something I believe the average city builder would not appreciate.

One interesting community tidbit; custom content will be supported right off the bat, pardon the pun. When SimCity Societies is released this holiday season, Tilted Mill hopes to bring forth several tools that will allow a wide variety of modifications, from modifying building stats to creating brand new ones all together. Its their hope and intention at this point in time to open up SimCity Societies as much as possible to allow members of the community to do things limited to their imagination.

My verdict. Im convinced Tilted Mill has done the right thing. My fears that this is a Sim Societies game were ill-conceived, but rather the social elements of the game play an integral part of the dynamics and culture of a city. It isnt the center of the game, but rather, a key element in opening up the door to a challenging new era of city building. I definitely look forward to seeing what Tilted Mill has for us in future iterations of SimCity Societies.

Thank you to Chris Beatrice of Tilted Mill for helping us see SimCity Societies, and Jeff Fiske of Tilted Mill for demoing SimCity Societies to us.