SimCity Societies is a city-building simulation computer game developed by Tilted Mill and published by Electronic Arts (EA), part of the Sim games series. It is the fifth main SimCity game and the second not to have a numbered title. The game was released worldwide on November 13, 2007,[1] This is the first Simcity game to have a E10+ rating by the ESRB (Most games in the series are rated E).
Announcement
On June 5, 2007, Tilted Mill Entertainment, creator of Caesar IV, announced that it would be developing SimCity Societies instead of Maxis, which had created all preceding titles.[2] Rob Humble, head of EA's Sims Division, indicated that EA representatives had asked Tilted Mill to create the game at E3. Immediate reaction was negative, especially on the official forums of the developer towards this game. Responses directly from the developers attempted to ease some concerns.[3]
Gameplay
A Capitalist city, showing the day and night cycle in the game
While previous mainstream SimCity titles could be best described as mayorship, or government simulators, SimCity Societies is different, as foreshadowed by the previews and statements from the developers,[4] by being a "social engineering simulator" rather than a city-building simulator.
Public works and a tax system do not play a part in the basic game. Instead, players get daily income from workplaces in the city. However, a downloadable update includes gameplay modes where a daily tax is incurred based on the buildings within a city. Transportation networks have been simplified to dirt roads, paved roads, subways and bus stops. Players do not build zones, a key element of past SimCity games; instead, they have the ability to directly place individual residential buildings, work places, and entertainment and shopping venues, something not seen in previous editions, and similar to Monte Cristo's game City Life. There are also six "social energies", called societal values, which allow players to learn about the characteristics of the citizens. The six societal values are productivity, prosperity, creativity, spirituality, authority, and knowledge.[5] The city will look, and act, in accordance with the energies the players choose. Players may focus on satisfying one, several, or all of these values. An improved version of the reward system introduced in the SNES version of SimCity Classic and SimCity 2000 has been included in the game.[6]
The game is "fully customizable" and allows the players to customize individual buildings, decorations, citizens, and game rules.[7] Prior to its release, when mentioning the depth to which the game will allow customization a Tilted Mill representative stated that those who were proficient in C# and XML will have easy access to every asset of the game and that basic tools would be provided for building editing.[8] However, no way of creating new building models was provided.
Societies
- Built up with a focus on authority, authoritarian cities are reminiscent of Fascist dictatorships such as Italy under Benito Mussolini or Berlin, or the fictional London in Airstrip One from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four—complete with surveillance cameras, secret police, propaganda ministries, opulent buildings for the leadership, and slum housing projects.
- Focus is on prosperity. Capitalist cities feature buildings such as department stores, skyscrapers, stock markets, corporately-owned condos, and major company headquarters.
- Focus is on spirituality. Buildings include cathedrals, pagodas, monasteries, evangelical centers, megachurches, dojos, and golden statues of Buddha.
- A futuristic city built with the use of knowledge, prosperity, and authority, complete with flying cars and holographic sport stadiums.
- Focused on creativity, a fun city is built up entirely of venues to maintain the happiness of its citizens. Buildings include ferris wheels, carnivals, zoos, casinos, water and amusement parks, and candy shops.
- Mainly producing productivity, industrial cities are primarily made up of polluting industry, slum housing, high crime, sweatshops, and factories to produce various wares.
- Focus is on providing prosperity to the Sims while maintaining cultural and artistic elements. Buildings include concert halls, opera houses, baroque fountains, and cobblestone streets, like Rome, Venice or Paris.
- A tribute to small town Americana. Focus is on small scale spirituality and prosperity. Buildings include windmills, sheriff stations, butcher shops, diners, drive-ins, and farms.
- Hidden profile included as an easter egg. It functions on a smaller scale than other profiles and is built up with buildings including graveyards, asylums, dungeons and haunted houses.
- An average North American/European city with no extremes on social energies. Buildings include a mix of buildings from the societies listed above. Also some futuristic technologies and some older housing or decorations.
Buildings
In SimCity Societies, there are four types of buildings: power plants, houses, workplaces and venues. Houses are where citizens live (granted the Sims are not homeless), workplaces are where Sims work (granted the Sims are not unemployed) and venues are places that provide happiness to citizens. Power plants provide power to the city, and generate income. There are also decorations, such as plazas and sculptures.
Reception
SimCity Societies received mixed reviews. IGN criticized the changes;[18] GameSpot commented that this version of SimCity was a "lackluster spin-off" and cited that the game was “way too easy” with the frame rate being mediocre even on higher-end computers. Other reviews reached as low as 3 out of 10 saying the game had completely gotten rid of the "city feeling".[19] However, GameZone praised the game for taking the simulation franchise in a "bright and bold direction" and containing "great graphics".[20] GamePro added that the game has "pretty architecture", but is "far too simple" and has "some frame rate woes". The review then noted that the new direction taken by SimCity Societies was a good idea, but unsuccessfully implemented.[21] Aggregate review sites result in scores of 62.65% on GameRankings[9] and 62 (out of 100) on Metacritic.[22]
In response to criticism, a second update was released to fix bugs and add new features to the game.[23] In this update three new modes are introduced into the "Creative play" mode. These modes are, in order, "Basic", "Hardcore", and "Nightmare". Basic mode is the easiest of the three but is more difficult than the most challenging mode from the game's release version.[24] A third update adds a UFO attack, bug fixes, performance improvements, and content from all previous updates.[25] A fourth update added a new disaster called "Monster!" to the game.[26] A fifth update added further features including six city scenarios and improved building maintenance costs.[27]
SimCity Societies: Destinations
On June 23, 2008 released the first expansion for SimCity Societies. The new expansion, SimCity Societies: Destinations, focuses on a new strategic scene in SimCity: tourism and transportation.[28]
References
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