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SimCity Societies... don't call it SimCity 5, bitches (NSF56K)
Arboreal Snowman
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So this looks pretty interesting. I loved SimCity 4, and I'm interested in the possibilities of this venture.
Link to article: http://pc.ign.com/articles/797/797131p1.html
Five pictures is enough, I think. If you want more go here.
http://media.pc.ign.com/media/925/925931/imgs_1.html
So what do you guys think? I think it's an interesting idea and can kick ass if they pull it off.
Link to article: http://pc.ign.com/articles/797/797131p1.html
If you want an uproar, tell SimCity fans that their most cherished series isn't getting the sequel that they expected. When the first details and pictures crept out from Electronic Arts that SimCity would be heading in a new direction and that it would be developed by Tilted Mill and not Maxis, the community's collective head exploded and the Tilted Mill forums were splattered with the angry brain matter. While we were also a bit tempted to join the fracas (we're also fans of the series) we decided to refrain from comment until we'd actually seen the game for ourselves. We were afforded the opportunity yesterday at EA's pre-E3 event held down in their Los Angeles compound. Make sure to check out a quick off-screen video demonstration by Electronic Arts Producer Rachel Bernstein as well.
While most of the information on the games shown at the event is embargoed until E3, they decided not to put restrictions on SimCity in order to get the good word out. To tell you the truth, we're feeling better about the game after seeing it and believe it does have some good framework for a creative environment as well as some interesting challenges. At the same time, this is definitely not the SimCity of old, which still is sad in some respect. While SimCity 4 was a bit too complex for many of us to really dig into, we did love the managerial and planning aspects of the city simulation. SimCity Societies isn't SimCity 5 for a reason. It's a new direction, not the next iteration. At this point, we just want to get our own hands on it and play around with the various gameplay mechanics. It's worth giving it a chance to succeed. The guys at Tilted Mill have been making city building games for a long time in one form or another and having another from them certainly isn't a bad thing.
SimCity Societies is an appropriate title for the newest venture into city building. Instead of the management simulation having to deal with zoning, traffic, pollution, trade and appeasing every section of the population as mayor, Societies deals mainly with the interaction between "societal energies" which are all represented by different structures that either generate or use these energies. These energies include Knowledge, Obedience, Devotion, Wealth, Industry, and Creativity. All of them have certain qualities that you might expect. The Industry energies are all about production and making money whether the people are particularly happy or not while Obedience is all about keeping your citizens in line by throwing anybody too angry or too happy into a re-education center.
You'll be able to construct cities based entirely around one of these energies or mix and match all of them to your heart's content. We have a feeling you'll see much more entertaining results when mixing and matching societal energies that are at natural odds with each other like Creativity and Obedience. If any of the Men in Black generated by the Propaganda Ministry finds a mime trying to entertain the cow-like obedient masses, they'll slap the cuffs on him and enjoy watching him try to get out of a real cage in the Conditioning Theater.
Structures are broken up into three categories for each of the societal energies: homes, workplaces, and venues. Homes are needed for anyone to move into the city. Once placed, they stay the same. They don't upgrade automatically into new types of homes with more wealth or people. Workplaces are the industry that generates money for the city. These will vary pretty widely for the various types of societal energies and some will have effects on other buildings in the area such as the Atomic Test Site's effect of making all future government buildings cheaper. Venues serve as the entertainment for each of the different types of societal energies. Whether they're shops, dive bars, or tennis courts, they're necessary for keeping your citizens in line.
The types of buildings and their effects vary depending on the energy that they're associated with. For instance, the dive bar, one of Industry's venues, is needed to keep the Industrious citizens happy. You definitely want these because Industry apparently is one of the huge money drivers in the game that allows for more structures to be built. Without the workers, industry halts. The problem is -- and there are issues with most every building in the game -- that citizens that head to the dive bar will get sick or even too drunk to drive home which means they're gonna have to walk home or to work which will cost time and productivity. At the same time, if they're not happy, they're not going to go to work anyway.
One of the other issues with the dive bar is that it causes a peak in crime. People who have their stuff stolen (which they've purchased from the various stores you've plopped down in the city) tend to get pretty depressed about it. On the other hand, you could also place a corrupt police station that will actually help you profit off of the suffering of others. With over 300 buildings, some of which are unlocked or buyable upgrades from existing buildings, the effects of mixing and matching these society types could produce some pretty entertaining scenarios.
Because zoning has been done away with, you'll be able to place individual structures wherever you want them to go which should allow a great deal of freedom with city planning. City growth won't be quite as organic as in other SimCity games, but city planners looking to make their cities "just so" will have enough tools to make that happen. One of the cool effects of having certain influences on your city is that you'll start seeing side effects. For instance, you put enough Creativity buildings down and you might see street lights turn into candy cane street lights. Placing tons of Obedience structures in the area will eventually turn those lights into security cameras which help complete the big brother feel.
The game has a much more stylized look than previous SimCity entries, which also has been a point of contention to existing SC fanatics. Buildings in general have more specified color palettes and styles depending on their societal energy skew. Creative folks like to live in gingerbread houses and fairy castles while Industrious citizens will pack into crumbling tenement buildings. The Obedience structures are severe and foreboding while the Devotional society prefers rural farm locations and religious buildings that promote peace and harmony. The Wealthy and Knowledge societies look most like typical SimCity cities probably and might satisfy players looking to create a more realistic view of the world. Either way, there should be a pretty wide variety of options.
What isn't clear right now, mostly because it apparently hasn't been decided yet, is whether you'll be seeing a building editor, which has obviously become a rather gigantic part of the existing SimCity community. We'd be pretty surprised if it wasn't eventually released as a feature, even if released after the retail product hits shelves as a download. Considering the SimCity/Sims ideal of community interaction and creativity, that omission would be surprising. If nothing else, they should allow players to design their own structures and implement them into existing structure rules. Design your own dive bar for instance and plug it into the existing dive bar template just for variety of building design. We'll have to wait and see on this one.
We're still on the fence but the demo helped turn us a bit. We do like some of the ideas -- they look a little more planned out and flexible than last year's City Life -- so we'll just have to wait to get our hands on the game and see how the game's societies interact with each other and what kinds of challenges SimCity Societies will provide. It probably won't be the SimCity that fans were hoping for, but that doesn't mean it won't be its own brand of good.
Five pictures is enough, I think. If you want more go here.
http://media.pc.ign.com/media/925/925931/imgs_1.html
So what do you guys think? I think it's an interesting idea and can kick ass if they pull it off.
Arboreal Snowman on
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I wish they had a different art direction with the game, although from what I read above (as well as implied by the title), it isn't considered a SimCity proper sequel.
Last time there was a thread like this, someone posted pics of SimCity4 concept art. One of those pictures is what I would like to see in SC5.
Hoorah for the one supporter!
The view counts aren't entirely accurate in real time.
Also, count me out for this version of SimCity. The DS one was a let-down too.
Awwwww
You can't judge this one based on a bastardised portable version.
Watch me.
1) Caesar IV was all round a damn good game in a similar genre (city building)
2) It was the most recent in a long running series and the first in the series to "go 3d". Despite this being a near universal recipe for disaster they managed to create something well worth playing and kept all the gameplay of the previous 2d games with some new touches where appropriate.
3) They use managed code!
Oh come on, that's like saying the shitty GBA port of Simcity 2000 somehow makes the games that actually count terrible.
oh haha you're funny you rebel
TBH, I kind of like it, there's some bad screenshots, but there are some good looking ones out there too. Really, I think, when zoomed out, it will look great.
Shit, has asm gone out of style already? Man, I gotta keep up.
I don't usually don't like to bitch about stuff going in 3D and goofy artstyle, but just something just getting a "meh" vibe from these shots. My first reaction was just how boring it all looked, but then I realized I was referring to a friggin' city-building sim. So, maybe not so bad. But I still don't care for the looks, although the shadowing on the second pic looks pretty nice.
Don't know if I like the lack of zoning, though.
The building in front looks like complete ass though.
I never asked for this!
Simcity DS is tied for best DS game along with Puzzle Quest.
It is an excellent Sim City.
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No, no, all the Cool Kids are writing in uh, oh! "Managed Assembler" nowadays. So your skills are still relevant. You just have to learn the new libararies. We're all System.Computer.Logic.cmp(3) and System.Computer.ax = 0xDEADBEEF and such now. (Best hex # ever.)
But yeah, I'm not sure how you achieve a "meh" feel in SimCity visuals, but I feel it too. I mean hell, the SC2 visuals felt more vibrant to me. It's like they decided to go cartooney this time, but stopped halfway.
MWO: Adamski
I have SC3 and 4 but hate playing them since I have to dig the CD out, and am not interested in all the workarounds available.
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is this just for PC or?
Did someone say Tropico?
This mainstreamified Sims crap should be called PlayCity or something, not SimCity.
I think for now just PC; of course it's a sim city game so it will eventually whore itself out to other platforms.
Edit- Also; I don't hate the graphics, does this make me a bad gamer?
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And I'm going to side with the small majority in this thread and say I like the change in direction for SimCity for now. If they had simply released yet another SimCity product, I doubt I'd purchase it. Unless they managed to add a LOT of neat things from SC4, it would just feel like SimCity4.5 in my mind. I'm glad they're changing it up; even if it fails miserably, at least they're not releasing another re-hash. Back in the old days of Maxis, a new SimCity guaranteed a really neat, new, interesting game. Nowadays, it's just as likely to be a rehash of the previous generation. So we'll have to wait and see what happens with Societies. But I'm optimistic.
From what I remember of Sim City 4, if they made SIm City 5 just a truly living city. You know, crimes start happening in more heavily populated run down areas, corrupt officials, the things of dealing with a real city but keeping it all in check to make it a bastion of citi..dom.
Maybe this game will finally pretend it gives a damn about the stuff I worked hard to archive. Maybe it wont.
there was another 3D simcity-ripoff like last year that looked a lot better
and i really like my cities to look pretty
so i'm not sure
eh, Sim Copter was pretty fun when the graphics were still relatively good.
Then I finally got Sim Copter. I hated it.
If I knew there was a person called Will Wright back then, I'd damned his name.