“What differentiates one city from the next?” asks Rod Humble, Vice President of the Sims Studio at EA. For him, this question became increasingly difficult to answer in the SimCity series. When every city ends up looking like Los Angeles, Humble argues, there is a problem.
Producer Rachel Bernstein agrees. “It’s an evolutionary model that forces players along a certain path. Everything becomes high density housing with the problems and priorities of a modern metropolis. Even if you want to build a small town, you really can’t.”
This insight was part of the motivation for SimCity: Societies. Even as the core SimCity series exploded in complexity and community energy, there was a sensation that the game is getting too complicated for newcomers. One of the seminal ‘god games’ had painted itself into a corner.
The answer to Humble’s question was found in “societal values”. By creating a city that emphasizes (or balances) any of six particular values, you will open up new buildings, new citizen types, and new problems. Or at least that’s the plan.
EA has also moved to an “agent based” model of citizens. City residents will go about their business through a day, and success will depend on making sure they can get where they need to go. To make this transition to a new type of SimCity as smooth as possible, they turned to the masters of agent based city-building, Tilted Mill, the developer behind the brilliant Children of the Nile and underappreciated Caesar IV, both which emphasized the dwellers as much as the dwellings.
“There are three types of buildings,” Bernstein explains. “Housing gives you population. Workplaces are your main source of money. This is where your people go during the day. After work, they want to go to Venues. These produce happiness.” And you want happiness. Unhappy people – or people stuck in traffic - don’t go to work which means they won’t make you money.
Some buildings will have special abilities, spawning Specialist citizens like criminals, emergency workers or tycoons. Others raise the likelihood of illness or pollution. You can use these powers to maximize the potential of every building in a surrounding area, as Bernstein demonstrates with a prosperous city center. Banks, courthouses and executive office buildings feed off of each other creating a daily cycle of wealth as corruption is rooted out and tycoons roam from business to business.
Societies’ big theme is accessibility. You don’t draw zones and hope that they flourish; you plop down buildings with assigned roles. Traffic will be limited to two basic road types and simple transit options. There are no power lines to draw and no water pipes to connect. Money flows in daily based on citizens using the structures you build, so there are no tax rates to manage. Long time fans may wonder whether this is a SimCity game at all.
