At EA’s recent Asia Pacfic Showcase, I had the opportunity to take another look at the upcoming SimCity. Better still, I was joined by Maxis’ Jason Haber, a producer on the game.
Haber took me (alongside various Asia Pacific media) through a fifteen minute runthrough of SimCity, focusing on the multicity play first demonstrated at E3, plus an in-depth look at the game’s RCI system and data layers.
SimCity’s RCI – Residential, Commercial and Industrial – system is a cycle of dependence between the game’s three different zoning types. Residents need commercial products built by industry and sold at retail for their homes. Industries need commercial retailers to buy their goods to stay in business, and those retailers need residents to spend money on their goods to likewise keep afloat. Each of the game’s three zoning types depend on one another in order to create a sustainable and thriving city.
The game is all about data-layers, which display anything and everything about your city, from the resources that sit under your city’s soil to the amount of human waste being carried from homes to various sewage processing plants. Haber illustrated many different data layer types, including a resident happiness layer, which he then improved by adding more commercial zoning around homes. The ability to buy goods close to home made the nearby residents in the area quite pleased. “In this case, simoleans can buy you happiness,” Haber joked.
Data layers also can show you what homes in your city are worth, and assist you in improving decrepit areas. When he identified that an industrial area was too close to homes located on his city’s waterfront, Haber deposited a park between the residences and the factories. The result was instantaneous; the value of the residential land increased, and residents built up their homes from simple shacks up to towering mansions.
As Haber continued to illustrate the various data layers pertaining to public transport setups, police effectiveness and the like, my first concern was that the game was going to prove to be too complicated to everyday users.
I was wrong.
In my first real hands-on session with SimCity, I went through a ten minute tutorial, assisting the Mayor of a small city in correcting various problems throughout her town before taking ultimate control myself. The tutorial takes you through movement in-game — you can zoom in and out with the mouse’s click wheel, interact with the left mouse button and move around your city by clicking and dragging with the right — before easing you into data layers.
Data layers are amazingly useful, and not hard to understand at all. Even with a myriad of options to select on-screen at all times, SimCity is simple to understand and simple to use. Data layers rely on the stop light system – everything displays as a connection; things that are going well are green, things that could do better, yellow and things that are awful are in red. It’s easy to identify where you need to improve your city, and the game helps with what the best course of action is.
The charm of SimCity, as noted in our first preview is ever-present. Building new units and seeing them fly down into your city, bouncing as they land, is priceless. During my twenty minute demo of the game, I wittingly spent FAR too much time simply clicking on various citizens of my city and do nothing but watch them interact with the world around them. I was even in love with the meteor shower that decimated my city at the end of the demo to signify I was done.
In short, Maxis has hit the ball out of the park with this one, I and I can’t wait for the game’s 7 March release on Mac and PC.
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