The next city-building game

The tsunami of drama involving the reboot of the SimCity franchise by Electronic Arts back in March was probably one of the most saddening events of the entire year. For those of you who don’t know the story, EA built up enormous hype for the entire year preceding the game’s launch, showcasing new features that were supposed to completely change the dynamics of the simulation. However, warning signs were prevalent – internet access was required to play, and city sizes were a measly 2km by 2km (the size of a suburb in any real major city). The release turned into a public relations nightmare, with none of the servers running properly, rendering the game unplayable. And once those were fixed, the very fundamentals of the simulation itself revealed themselves to be ridden with glitches, bugs and anomalies.

Considering the nearly 10 years between SimCity 4 and the new SimCity, and the subsequent disaster, I highly doubt EA will be returning to the series at all. Its visionary creator, Will Wright, left the franchise after SimCity 3000 in the late 1990s. Other city-building games, like Cities XL, have tried to capture the market, but to no avail. Ultimately, the fanbase is still relying on heavily modded versions of SimCity 4 to realize its creative visions, a decade-old game.

With the opportunity for a proper follow-up city-building game now open to anybody, I’ve been thinking of some concepts that could be implemented into the simulation.

• Zoning. At the beginning of a game, players could choose to implement zoning laws. This contrasts with SimCity, where zoning is automatically in place via the RCI (Residential, Commercial and Industrial) system. A city without formal zoning laws would develop like Houston – the player would choose what land to open for development, but the type of development would be up to the virtual developer/owner. However, there would still be rhythm to the chaos – commercial development would cluster in certain spots, residential neighborhoods would still exist. The player would still be responsible for laying down infrastructure (roads, electricity, water, ect.) in the first place.
• Urban sprawl. In SimCity, players have complete control over every single individual building and lot of land. A new game could incorporate a system where virtual developers can buy up large tracts of land and build subdivisions and master planned communities. The player can approve or reject these proposals. Approval can, over time, encourage urban sprawl as developers build suburbs further outside the city. This would give the development of cities a more organic feel.
• City limits, multiplayer, and annexation. In SimCity, cities are built on square plots of land. Only one edition in the series, SimCity 2000 Network Edition, incorporated the concept of players having to purchase land. Of course, in reality, cities aren’t squares – they are irregularly shaped and obtain land through annexation. A new game could incorporate this essential aspect of municipal government. In order to expand, players would have to incorporate surrounding territory into their city limits. This presents an interesting multiplayer situation. Playing against an AI or other players online, gamers would have to annex quickly and strategically to avoid losing land to competing jurisdictions. Some games could develop into “twin city” situations, where two major cities are located adjacent to each other. Like in reality, conflicts over annexation could also be incorporated into the gameplay.
• The federal government. A new simulation could involve the federal government acting as an omnipresent third party. It could offer to help players build otherwise unaffordable infrastructure (interstate freeways, flood control, disaster assistance) – but with certain conditions that the player must meet. Overusing federal assistance could become a burden on the city government.
• Global city rankings. Cities with significant economic, political and cultural leverage often find themselves ranked as “global cities”. There are multiple categories of importance – alpha, beta, gamma, high sufficiency, and sufficiency – with the highest, alpha++, reserved for NYC and London. Players could build up their metros and meet certain criteria to move up the categories of importance. Rankings could play a large part in…
• Scenarios. SimCity has been devoid of scenarios since SimCity 3000. A new game could bring them back. Players could take control of troubled cities, like Detriot, or build their own cities and attempt to reach certain goals.
• Transportation options. Like in SimCity, players could choose between road, rail, air and other infrastructure. However, the choice of what to focus on could have long-term impacts. Constructing more roads and highways would drive development further away from the city center. Building light rail would focus development on areas where it is constructed. An international airport could boost commerce and the city’s global ranking. Expanding on SimCity 4 and its expansion pack, Rush Hour, players would have a great number of options to choose from when constructing transportation infrastructure. Highways, for example, could come in a variety of sizes and styles. They could be either elevated, ground-level or sunken. They could feature light-rail lines running down the median. Previous editions of SimCity have provided absolutely no customization of airports. A new game could allow players to lay down individual runways, terminals and taxiways with a user-friendly interface to prevent the process from becoming too complex. Players could also construct dynamic rail lines (with varying numbers of tracks), yards and stations. The next city-building game should take note of transportation business simulators like Cities in Motion 2.
• Corporations. A special interface for negotiating with large fictional companies could be developed. Players could attempt to entice these corporations to relocate their headquarters or major operations to their city by granting them certain incentives. When a city becomes large enough, the tables could turn and corporations would move in out of their own will. Corporations would be the primary developers of supertall skyscrapers and office complexes.
• Industry. Players could gear their cities towards certain industries (this already exists in the new SimCity, but on a less comprehensive scale). For example, constructing a large port could encourage shipping. Allowing dirty industry and refineries could expand a city’s petrochemical production. Investing in a state-of-the-art airport could lead to the city becoming a hub for a major airline. However, relying too much on a single industry could easily plunge the area into economic plight with the onset of variable market conditions. Therefore, players are challenged to maintain diversity.
• Districts. Players can zone special areas in their city, such as downtown, uptown, midtown, museum, theater and historic districts, and other cultural areas. This can only occur after the area has been developed for a period of time (except for downtown, which is zoned at the beginning of the game). This helps players focus the development they want to see in certain areas.
• Flight to the suburbs. If players fail to diversify industry or maintain a healthy economy, more affluent residents will gradually move out to the suburbs. Like in many American cities, this could lead to a dysfunctional, impoverished urban core riddled with crime and a low level of services. Abandoned buildings would start appearing, and the player would lose tax income to competing jurisdictions.
• Mayor approval. SimCity has a mayor approval rating interface, however, it has little impact on the gameplay itself. In a new city-building game, a mayor’s rating could be impacted by a variety of actions. For example, allowing a high-rise building in a low-density neighborhood could draw criticism from residents over traffic and preserving their area’s identity. Demolishing historic buildings or using eminent domain to build a freeway would yield similar effects. On the flipside, building schools, libraries and parks would improve mayor rating. Areas that develop a low approval of the city government could break out in protest and scare away developers.
• Zoning public buildings. All editions of SimCity make public buildings, such as schools, police and fire stations, hospitals and power plants “ploppables” – that is, the player “plops” the building wherever it’s needed. This is different from zoning, where the player selects an area of land and the game randomly generates buildings to fit into the space. A new game could instead make public buildings zonable. The size of the zone would be proportional to the size of the building, and consequently, its service capacity. For example, a small school zone would have the capacity of an elementary school, while a large one would be a high school. This would allow players to fit their public facilities into irregularly sized spaces or city blocks.
• Graphics and plot size. It’s been a decade since SimCity 4. Since then, the major city-building game franchises have attempted to move into full 3D graphics – and while I guess it looks nice, a lot is sacrificed in terms of gameplay. This is EA’s excuse for the ridiculously small city sizes in the new SimCity. But why do we need full 3D? I don’t think computer graphics have advanced to the point where fully 3D cities even look good, much less realistic. Using an engine like the one in Civilization V, where everything is rendered in 3D yet the player cannot rotate the view, would be more suitable for a new city-building game. This would allow for much larger plot sizes – enough to allow urban sprawl, multiple cities and metropolises.
  
• Terraforming. The new SimCity relies entirely on prefabricated maps. The terraforming features of the previous iterations of the franchise are nonexistent. I believe terraforming should be returned to city-building games, but with a twist: geological aging. Players should be able to place rivers, mountains, oceans, ect. – and then have the option of pressing a fast-forward button that simulates thousands of years of erosion and other natural processes. This would yield much more interesting and authentic landscapes.

Ultimately, I feel that city-building games have gone down a path focused on extreme micromanagement. The new SimCity touts being able to simulate every single resident in a city. But what’s the point? SimCity 4 has proven that a good city-building simulation works on a macro scale, where you can construct enormous metropolises that feel realistic and interesting. The satisfaction of being able to sit back and look at a huge, sprawling city that could easily be replicated in real life is the reason the genre became so popular in the first place. I think some of the ideas I’ve listed above could make the entire experience even more authentic.