Why SimCity died — and how an indie developer saved the city-building genre
City-building games have been part of the gaming landscape for decades. The genre was dominated by Maxis’ SimCity until the disastrous launch of the series’ 2013 instalment, and the subsequent rise of Cities: Skylines, a game developed by the indie studio Colossal Order. But how exactly did a small studio manage to beat one of the game industry’s most successful developers, backed by perhaps the biggest publisher in the game, EA?
SimCity’s problems started long before the release date. As explained by SimCity’s creative director Ocean Quigley, the game suffered from a clash in vision between the game developers at Maxis and publisher EA — Maxis wanted to create a first full-3D SimCity focusing on graphical improvements, while EA wanted the game to be an ever-developing platform with a strong focus on multiplayer gameplay. Quigley envisioned a beautiful SimCity experience with free-flowing camera movements allowing players to immerse themselves in their own created world. In EA’s vision, players would collaborate in building an ever-changing region of connected cities instead of being limited to “just” their own plot of land. An always-online approach also had technical benefits: some simulation work could potentially be offloaded to the game servers, therefore enabling larger cities than what a single computer could simulate. The system could also solve the problem of piracy, as unauthorised copies wouldn’t be able to access the servers.
In the end, neither EA nor the developers chose to yield on their vision, which resulted in compromise that, really, was the worst of both worlds. The game would still contain a full-fledged 3D engine, but the world would consist of a few small plots in a region with only loose collaboration between them. And above all, the game would require a connection to the backend servers — it was not going to work offline. The result was one of the most disastrous launches in history. As hundreds of thousands of players attempted to play, the servers couldn’t keep up resulting in players being locked out of the game they so eagerly wanted to try. While EA was eventually able to relieve the load on the servers, the flaws of the game itself began to dawn. The multiplayer elements ended up shallow at best, as city collaborating was limited to sharing certain services and utilities, and downright hostile at worst as most cities in public regions were quickly abandoned, leaving active players with a minority of space in their own regions. Perhaps worst of all, the negative PR impact of the launch poured cold water on all hopes of building the game into an ever-developing platform. The plans for improving the game were scrapped, meaning that aspects such as city sizes and improved multiplayer features would not be worked on. In the end, SimCity was never able to achieve the vision EA planned for it.
After the failure of SimCity, the now-vacant genre’s top spot was won by Cities: Skylines, a game developed by the indie studio Colossal Order and published by an industry veteran Paradox. As said by Skylines’ lead developer Karoliina Korppoo, the developers wanted to make a game like the old SimCities, and had Maxis done that, Skylines probably wouldn’t exist. As an indie developer, Colossal Order did an especially good job at picking their battles: they didn’t try to compete with graphics or multiplayer but focused on a simulation engine that can support large cities, realistic transportation, and most important of all, modding. While EA and Maxis mostly ignored or even discouraged modders in the game, Colossal Order welcomed them with open arms. Korppoo understood the importance of modding in creative games: players who create cities would likely want to create their own buildings or parks for their city as well. To facilitate modding Korppoo assigned one game developer to only focus on building tools for modders — an activity many lead developers would consider a waste of time. However, her risk paid off as Skylines succeeded where SimCity failed. The abundance of player-created content has made Skylines more than a game: it has become a platform for city builders that’s kept players interested far beyond the base game’s shelf life.
The fall of SimCity should also be taken as a warning to another one of Maxis’ prime titles — The Sims has long been the only viable game in the life simulation genre. However, a weak launch for the game’s future titles could leave it vulnerable to disruption by smaller, more innovative companies just as SimCity was. This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about, and might choose to explore it further in a future article.
SimCity never achieved its vision of a seamless, collaborative city-building platform. However, as technology improves, multiplayer games with a heavy server-side focus are becoming more and more prevalent. Battle Royale games like Fortnite are mostly processed server-side, while Minecraft has shown how successful games that allow collaborative world-building can be. Based on games like these, EA’s vision for SimCity suddenly starts to make sense. I believe that over the next decade we will see city-building games move server-side and allow players to create larger, shared cities like what SimCity dreamed of achieving. I hope Skylines’ flavour of modding and abundance user-generated content will be a part of it as well.
