Comments on: SimCity E3 Gameplay Trailer

By: Warren Grant

Warren Grant — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 12:18:00 +0000

Just so long as using cheap overseas labour results in lots of unemployed citizens locally, or people upset because all they can get are crap jobs because the union jobs all moved to some third world country :P

By: Aeron

Aeron — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 08:39:00 +0000

You have forever been able to link cities… All they would have to do is take it one step further.

By: mjfgates

mjfgates — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 07:28:00 +0000

Anno 2070, something-or-other XP, and the old Lucasarts title “Afterlife” are pretty much it. Which, yeah, not much considering that they’ve been Sim City-ing for twenty-five years.

By: anharmyenone

anharmyenone — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 04:44:00 +0000

Nice use of tilt-shift.

By: Ernest Valdemar

Ernest Valdemar — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 02:07:00 +0000

Coming in 2017 from Marxis: SimSoyuz — The Game Where You Plan the Economy!

(On reflection, that might work, as a sort of Red Plenty alternate history game.)

By: moz moz

moz moz — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:42:00 +0000

The ending was worrying… stamp skyscraper,
stamp skyscraper,
stamp skyscraper..

By: marukosu

marukosu — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:14:00 +0000

Wait, what? No offline, single player mode? Nope. Not gonna do it, sorry.

By: BarBarSeven

BarBarSeven — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 22:56:00 +0000

Looks interesting. But then when I looked at the GlassBox Engine videos I realized that something is wrong. And I am being 100% non-snarky about this. But the the SIM seems to be hinged on a residential, industrial & commercial set of economic rules… So how exactly does that represent the global reality of overseas manufacturing? I mean, technically speaking, wouldn’t most industrial zones nowadays be artists lofts that lead to non-artist housing that then trends to “luxury” housing.

I’m fairly serious about this, but why not SIM the ability for local manufacturing to use cheaper labor overseas and show in game time what impact that has on a region?

And now that I type that, I wonder if anyone out there has charted the relationship between the economic realities presented in Maxis’ universe over the years versus the economic realities of the real world we live in now.

By: zotlerg

zotlerg — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:25:00 +0000

They’re saying it’s not as fast action and exciting as the video!
Just in case you try to sue them for wrong representation.
Visually, they probably added that focus effect even though it would be easy enough to do in game.

By: Nonentity

Nonentity — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:25:00 +0000

Did they learn anything? They’re citing it as proof nothing will go wrong!

But what of the debacle of the Diablo III launch and the fury of players who couldn’t play a game they wanted to play solo because Blizzard had trouble keeping its servers up and error-free?

“We’ve got experience from Spore and Darkspore,” Katserelis said, citing other recent Maxis games. “EA is an on online company.”

(from http://kotaku.com/5915377/like-diablo-iii-sim-city-will-require-an-online-connection )

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:03:00 +0000

Yes, this.
I’ve been a long-time SimCity fan, but this new version, with its enforced multiplayer and required connection, is a “No-Sale” for me. I absolutely do not want some griefer next door filling his world with coal plants and the smog polluting my world. They absolutely must allow stand-alone single-player play, just as it’s always been.

By: Aeron

Aeron — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Oh please, almighty Maxis, let me import my creatures from SPORE to attack my city with!

By: dragonfrog

dragonfrog — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Hm, a gameplay trailer consisting of footage “not representative of actual gameplay”. That’s… special.

By: joeposts

joeposts — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:38:00 +0000

Looking at new LinCity-NG screenshots, it’s not nearly as rough as I remembered it looking – I stand corrected.

There’s really not too many closed-sourced city-building sims other than SC, come to think of it. Niche audience, I guess.

By: royaltrux

royaltrux — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:22:00 +0000

They didn’t learn anything from the release of Spore?

By: sickboy

sickboy — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:18:00 +0000

Sure the video looks incredible…but what will the gameplay actually look like. Did you notice the disclaimer in the video? “Images not representative of actual gameplay.”

By: Tribune

Tribune — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:16:00 +0000

I wonder if the current Diablo III issues might convince them to allow more options for offline play…. silly me I forgot game designers have decided it is trendy to ignore the player base and force people to play the way they are supposed to play

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:16:00 +0000

Indeed these kind of games require a tremendous amount of work.
Moreover, whereas they are engines providing pretty much all the features needed for developing a FPS or an RPG, there are few to none providing features for RTS or simulations such as SimCity.
That’s why you don’t see much games like that out there. LinCity-NG looks pretty good though: if money was invested, it could become the basis for an actual concurrent of SimCity.

By: Noctilucent Studios

Noctilucent Studios — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:58:00 +0000

Looks incredible. Will we also be able to see the game from the view of one of those people in the crowds? Can we go into those buildings?

By: Dan Hibiki

Dan Hibiki — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:45:00 +0000

online only? Fuuuuu……

By: drukqs

drukqs — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:41:00 +0000

NERD CHILLS

By: AJay Hubbard

AJay Hubbard — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:30:00 +0000

Can’t wait for this one!

By: joeposts

joeposts — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:25:00 +0000

There was LinCity, but it was pretty weak, iirc. Some transportation sims are available.

It’s still expensive to develop complex games like this, so I don’t think open-source programmers can get close, yet.

By: joeposts

joeposts — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:23:00 +0000

haha, yes. It took 8 years after SC4 was released but I managed to find a laptop that could play it reasonably well. I’m looking forward to building a megacity in SC5 (or is this one #6?) by 2020.

By: ahecht

ahecht — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:19:00 +0000

http://code.google.com/p/micropolis/

By: Jerry Murray

Jerry Murray — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:06:00 +0000

It kind of surprises me that no one has every come up with an Open Source version of this game. Seems like it wouldn’t be hard to get people on board for that sort of thing.

By: Jason Baker

Jason Baker — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:06:00 +0000

Well, given how well SimCity4 performed on reasonably-powered computers at the time of release, I’d say your younger self isn’t wrong yet.

By: xzzy

xzzy — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:49:00 +0000

This is the type of game I grew up convinced that computers would never be able to handle.

By: Nonentity

Nonentity — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:40:00 +0000

This does look great. It’s too bad they’re forcing the multiplayer requirement in, so it won’t be possible to play without a constant internet connection.

By: BrotherPower

BrotherPower — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:33:00 +0000

That was amazing, but it stressed me out. I found myself rooting for the monster.

Can we get a SimCamping?