SimCity was released in 1989, was originally called Micropolis and was designed by the infamous Will Wright. For those that don’t know Will Wright, its suffice to say he’s one of the most popular and influential game designers of our time. SimCity, TheSims, SimAnt, SimFarm and Spore are a few of his hits and TheSims has taken many records since its original release.
Wright had trouble finding a publisher for a game in which you couldn’t really “win or lose.” Turned down by Broderbund, Wright eventually pitched the idea to Jeff Braun of Maxis. Maxis agreed to publish Simcity as one of its first two games.
When near complete, Wright and Braun took the game back to Broderbund to clear the rights for the game. Broderbund executives Gary Carlston and Don Daglow saw how addicting the game could be and signed Maxis to a distribution deal. Four years after initial development, SimCity was released for the Amiga and Macintosh platforms, followed soon after by the IBM PC and Commodore 64. On January 10th 2008, the SimCity source code was released under the GPL license as… Micropolis!
The objective of the game is simple, build and design a city. Though the player could focus on building a highly efficient city with an ever growing populace, it was by no means required. In a sense, open ended, the player was free to design the city as they chose.
Included in the city building experience was the possibility of natural disasters such as flooding, tornadoes and more. Pre-designed scenarios were also included in the game such as the Boston 2010 nuclear meltdown, or mass coastal flooding of Rio de Janeiro of 2047 … even a Godzilla attack of Tokyo in 1961.
In the years to follow, the SimCity franchise would continue to expand with greater detail as SimCity 2000 (1993), SimCity 3000 (1999), SimCity 4 (2003) and a host of other “Sim” games and until the release of “The Sims” in 2000, the SimCity series was the best-selling line of games made by Maxis.
In Fall of 2008, EA will release the next child in the SimCity family, SimCity Creator for the Nintendo Wii and DS systems. And thus, history continues!
I could have sworn you did 720 Degrees a few months ago – because I suggested it.
The reason Sony is doing $70/yr for “free games” is that their PSN games have not been selling at all. Sales have been dreadful, and they may as well charge $70/yr because the average PS3 using is buying far less than that in PSN games per year anyway.
I could have sworn you did 720 Degrees a few months ago – because I suggested it.
The reason Sony is doing $70/yr for “free games” is that their PSN games have not been selling at all. Sales have been dreadful, and they may as well charge $70/yr because the average PS3 using is buying far less than that in PSN games per year anyway.
Using = user. Can’t edit anymore.
Using = user. Can’t edit anymore.
When it’s not mainstream it is bleeding edge 😛
@WoW Remote Auction house:
LOL, microtransactions on a payed MMO?
I mean I thought that microtransactions were invented to get some money in the “free” MMOs …
I guess that can work, although I just can’t see myself mixing microtnasactions with a monthly fee …
@Fallout New Vegas getting big changes and mixed reactions:
Mixed reactions are good. If you want to make a game that is playable by your entire player base, then you can’t take sides. You have to add features that some will hate, others will love, and features that some will love, others will hate.
If the game is good enough, then people will develop their own individual style of play, to avoid unpleasant features.
@ used game sales:
Jennifer’s right, it is double dipping. They get money for the same individual product, again and again.
And yes, Derrick is also right :D. Digital distribution will make this a moot point.
As for Gamestop as a new type of Steam? Well, Steam was already brought in by Valve 😛
@PSN premium:
lol!
I have Steam and Desura clients installed for free. And I pay only for the games I download.
And as for the free game, well, it’s one game from a list of games Sony selects. And no, you won’t get any of those $ back if you don’t download a game that month …
So, read this with me: FAIL!
@Portal, and Carmack open sourcing his engines:
It’s more than marketing. I mean, in this case, even if you don’t buy the new product, you still get value, by getting a game, or a game engine.
@Question of the week:
It will fail. There are plenty of networks that are free. None for playstations, that is true, but still.
To me it looks a lot like what’s happening in my country: the government is trying to raise money by increasing taxes. They did that last year and the amount of money they got was even smaller, because a lot of small companies went bankrupt.
I foresee a similar future for PSN: less cash coming in, because fewer people could afford it.
When it’s not mainstream it is bleeding edge 😛
@WoW Remote Auction house:
LOL, microtransactions on a payed MMO?
I mean I thought that microtransactions were invented to get some money in the “free” MMOs …
I guess that can work, although I just can’t see myself mixing microtnasactions with a monthly fee …
@Fallout New Vegas getting big changes and mixed reactions:
Mixed reactions are good. If you want to make a game that is playable by your entire player base, then you can’t take sides. You have to add features that some will hate, others will love, and features that some will love, others will hate.
If the game is good enough, then people will develop their own individual style of play, to avoid unpleasant features.
@ used game sales:
Jennifer’s right, it is double dipping. They get money for the same individual product, again and again.
And yes, Derrick is also right :D. Digital distribution will make this a moot point.
As for Gamestop as a new type of Steam? Well, Steam was already brought in by Valve 😛
@PSN premium:
lol!
I have Steam and Desura clients installed for free. And I pay only for the games I download.
And as for the free game, well, it’s one game from a list of games Sony selects. And no, you won’t get any of those $ back if you don’t download a game that month …
So, read this with me: FAIL!
@Portal, and Carmack open sourcing his engines:
It’s more than marketing. I mean, in this case, even if you don’t buy the new product, you still get value, by getting a game, or a game engine.
@Question of the week:
It will fail. There are plenty of networks that are free. None for playstations, that is true, but still.
To me it looks a lot like what’s happening in my country: the government is trying to raise money by increasing taxes. They did that last year and the amount of money they got was even smaller, because a lot of small companies went bankrupt.
I foresee a similar future for PSN: less cash coming in, because fewer people could afford it.
Going back to EA charging $10 for used game owners to play online.
I just remembered that EA shut down tons of servers for older games, so you can’t even play online for games that people DID buy new, and just didn’t buy the new edition.
It’s penalizing LEGIT BUYERS for buying Madden 09 and deciding they didn’t want to waste money on Madden 10.
This is an outrage no one’s really brought up yet.
Now you know why Microsoft charges $4/mo for server use – I can find players on really old games if I want, like the first Rainbow Six for the Xbox 360.
Going back to EA charging $10 for used game owners to play online.
I just remembered that EA shut down tons of servers for older games, so you can’t even play online for games that people DID buy new, and just didn’t buy the new edition.
It’s penalizing LEGIT BUYERS for buying Madden 09 and deciding they didn’t want to waste money on Madden 10.
This is an outrage no one’s really brought up yet.
Now you know why Microsoft charges $4/mo for server use – I can find players on really old games if I want, like the first Rainbow Six for the Xbox 360.
The reason why “no one’s really brought up yet” the Madded outrage is that very few people play Madden. They’re a minority. And in all democracies the minority endures the dictatorship of majority.
While my personal feeling is that this is seriously wrong, there’s very little that can be done.
What makes me feel a hell of a lot better is the fact that in the case of my favorite game (AvP2) things turned out better: a community-made master server patch. So, while AvP2’s online component was disabled by the publisher, we managed to bring it back. Now people can play the game for as long as they want.
The reason why “no one’s really brought up yet” the Madded outrage is that very few people play Madden. They’re a minority. And in all democracies the minority endures the dictatorship of majority.
While my personal feeling is that this is seriously wrong, there’s very little that can be done.
What makes me feel a hell of a lot better is the fact that in the case of my favorite game (AvP2) things turned out better: a community-made master server patch. So, while AvP2’s online component was disabled by the publisher, we managed to bring it back. Now people can play the game for as long as they want.