Why you'll 'never lose' in SimCity

SimCity lead designer Stone Librande explains why you can be down in SimCity, but never truly out.

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Maxis has already detailed the unspeakable fates that can befall citizens of your SimCity, but those disasters are setbacks. You won't actually lose the game, and in fact the developer has intentionally made it impossible to lose the game. According to lead designer Stone Librande, the closest you can come to a failure state is being flat broke and buried in loans.

"In the worst case, if you run completely out of money, you can turn off all of your government buildings," Librande explained to PC Gamer. "Even if you have one zone with one house, you would start making money again and get back in the black. That's the basic idea. You'll never lose. If you get down to zero dollars, it might be very painful to recover, but it's never game over."

But then, he notes, the team realized one potential problem, very much like real life problems: debt. "When we started working on the loan system, we realized that there's one thing that could happen where you could have so much debt in loans that even turning off all your government couldn't let you recover from that debt. Then it would really be like, 'I can't play this city anymore.'" But, he says, the game still doesn't actually force you to stop playing or present a "Game Over" screen. Another city in your region, either one of your own or a friend's, could donate you the cash to bring your city back in working order. As long as you can beg, you can keep going.

Inversely, Librande noted that the game doesn't really produce a win condition either. "For a lot of players, harmony is not a desirable goal," he said. "But the basic loop of the game, from the beginning stages up through the high-density buildings, is that when your city gets really happy, it grows. It grows in density. Every time that density growth happens, it puts pressure on your city. In a way, happiness causes growth, which causes pressure, which causes collapse. Then you work to get back to happiness, and once you’re happy, it's time to grow again."

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    December 13, 2012 8:15 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Why you'll 'never lose' in SimCity.

    SimCity lead designer Stone Librande explains why you can be down in SimCity, but never truly out.

    • reply
      December 13, 2012 8:38 AM

      I still don't know what to think about this version....

    • reply
      December 13, 2012 8:52 AM

      I remember having to really work to get my ass fired in the SNES Sim City games, so this doesn't seem that far off to me.

      • reply
        December 13, 2012 8:54 AM

        I was about to post the same thing; I can only recall "losing" in Sim City 2000 when things were so damn bad that it was easier to just restart anyway.

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          December 13, 2012 9:08 AM

          This is the way I remember things, the city would just go to shit if you mismanaged. People would move out, few would move in and you never lost but coming back from that was so hard that it was easier to restart on a new city. I see no difference in this version.

    • reply
      December 13, 2012 9:09 AM

      I would think that this is the same design since the previous SimCity. You can never truly lose and the good thing is that you can actually start over.

      Since this game is going to be online only and connected, I think the only way to actually 'start over' will be to create a new city in the region (or invite friends/strangers/etc) and hope that will be good enough to help the other failing cities.

      OR, perhaps you could just activate all kinds of disaster as a 'cheat' to demolish all different buildings instead of paying to demolish them and start new since we no longer have save/load function (or will we?)

      Either way, not at all excited at the direction they are going with this game despite the nice graphical update. Might skip this altogether and stay with SC4 or Anno series.

      • reply
        December 13, 2012 9:31 AM

        [deleted]

        • reply
          December 13, 2012 9:57 AM

          Does it work on Windows 7? I seem to recall not being able to make it work in Vista.

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            December 13, 2012 10:01 AM

            Yes, SC4 and Anno series works fine on WIndows 7.

            If you are planning to play the older Anno (Anno 1707), you will still need to install an updated driver for Tages (their stupid copy protection), but it will work. Anno 1404 is no longer using DRM and SC4 no longer carry any DRM as far as I know.

            Both works on Windows 7. I have them installed in my system.

          • reply
            December 13, 2012 11:52 AM

            horrible horrible performance in higher resolutions, poor support for widescreen, artifacts above 1280x1024.

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            December 13, 2012 1:06 PM

            [deleted]

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          December 13, 2012 10:00 AM

          I concur and I owned both of their SC4 add on packs (SImtropolis) and still playing the game from time to time.

          This game can wait forever if it does not have an offline option. I do not care for the economic simulation and I am not about to sacrifice my enjoyment playing the game dealing with lags, griefers, disconnections, and inability to save/load and restart a new game :)

    • reply
      December 13, 2012 9:55 AM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      December 13, 2012 10:09 AM

      Interesting. I'm not sure that "you can beg for money" really qualifies as "never losing", but otherwise it sounds good.

    • Zek legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      December 13, 2012 10:28 AM

      I don't think it really matters, but it does seem silly that you can have a single dude in a single house and you'll slowly start making money again. Why doesn't that guy leave town? There doesn't need to be a failure state, but it should be possible for you to be the last one standing, when all the citizens have left and no workers will ever come and all you can do is stare at the ruins and wonder where it all went wrong.

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        December 13, 2012 10:44 AM

        Some people simply WILL NOT LEAVE.

        There's still people living in Centralia, PA, which was condemned by the state after an underground mine fire wrecked half the area and spread deadly gasses all over the place. It's the goddamned inspiration for Silent Hill and there's some people who won't leave.

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          December 13, 2012 11:04 AM

          Best part of centralia is that the fire has been burning for 50 years, but people are like "lol, it'll all work out."

          • reply
            December 13, 2012 11:25 AM

            I haven't read the wiki page on it in a while, but isn't it projected to burn for another couple of hundred years?

            If all the denial made by Centralia residents were a river, it might still not be enough to put this thing out!

        • reply
          December 13, 2012 11:23 AM

          Haha, holy fuck.

          ..as a result of a mine fire burning beneath the borough since 1962. ..
          ..The underground fire is still burning and may continue to do so for 250 years.


          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

    • reply
      December 13, 2012 11:05 AM

      huh, so does this mean that there will not be a money cheat?
      I used money cheats in previous games to sandbox a city. I really hope that they don't leave that out.

      • reply
        December 13, 2012 11:23 AM

        trainers will be out soon enough

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          December 13, 2012 11:26 AM

          Don't bet on it, this game is online-only like MMO.

          Your best bet for 'cheat' will be to activate disasters and start new. Just make sure to do it before you run out of money, otherwise its beg-for-money time.

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            December 13, 2012 1:14 PM

            whoa, online only? i didn't realize that

          • reply
            December 14, 2012 5:19 AM

            its not online only. The DRM requires a connection, but the game isn't online MMO style only.

            • reply
              December 14, 2012 10:09 PM

              [deleted]

              • reply
                December 18, 2012 1:22 PM

                you can set your session to private.

                Although, if every game still contributes to some kind of leaderboard im sure that will rule out cheats.I'm not sure if that is the case or not.

    • reply
      December 13, 2012 11:39 AM

      Should add an 'Ironman' type mode like XCom where you can lose.

    • reply
      December 13, 2012 11:59 AM

      I'm curious as to if the multiplay city thing will be able to be controlled such that I only have friends playing cities around me, or the general public. I can just envision some random person building a nuke plant near the border with the hopes that it'll have a meltdown.

      • reply
        December 13, 2012 2:00 PM

        You can make an invite-only region, or public, or even solo.

    • reply
      December 13, 2012 1:16 PM

      It's the American way!

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