The Return of the City Builder - Move Over Sim City

Cities: Skylines....Wow. This is what a modern city builder should be. After YEARS of not having a good game to represent this small genre, there is finally a game to fill that void. I grew up playing Sim City, Sim City 2000, and Sim City 3000, spending hundreds of hours crafting my dream cities.

However, the quality of these titles started to decline in recent years. Sim City 4 was okay but didn't quite have the charm of previous games, and the Sim City Reboot (2013) was pretty much a failure on all fronts. But Cities: Skylines has finally pushed over EA's Sim City and brought the city builder back to it's roots.

Anyone else playing this game and enjoying it as much as I am? I feel like a kid again; I've been wanting a true city builder with modern graphics for about a decade now and it's finally here. **** yeah

I love it, despite its flaws. Tried to play it like Simcity 4 and was and are still irritated by some missing features/quirks (no individual budgeting of services, no alternate coverage maps open while zoning/building, no high-capacity versions of certain buildings.), but the agent system more than makes up for it IMO. Plus it was highly moddable right out the gate and you can find mods to fix many of the flaws.

Was a great first attempt of a city builder for Colossal Order. It'll be interesting to see what they can do in the future with the experience and boatload of cash they've gotten from Skylines.

Actually the last few years have been amazing for city builder genre. What was underserved was one specific type of it (complex modern city sim), which now Skylines filled.

EA: "City builders are dead, we don't need Maxis anymore"

meanwhile Cities Skylines has been sitting in the top 5 sellers on Steam since it launched. What utter idiots at EA. They really don't have the faintest clue that Simcity failed because of their anti-consumer design decisions, NOT because people don't want city builders anymore.

I hope in the future they'll bring day and night cycle, different weathers/seasons and different locations (some dry lands without water). These things will bring new kinds of challenges.

I really need to check this game out. Just the great mods for it have me all itching to get my hands dirty with it.

@charizard1605: Pick it up when you can - it's only $30 and truly is amazing. I can already tell that this game is going to suck countless hours out of my life (in a good way of course). It reminds me exactly of Sim City 3000, which was my favorite of the series, but the formula has been almost perfected and updated with modern graphics.

EA soiled their Simcity brand name. Im glad other games can do better then Simcity

If the people who make the decisions are not gamers, that is exactly what happens. IF I had a game studio looking for people, then anybody who can't name a couple hundred titles that they played, need not apply. A chef should know what things taste like. They shouldn't be making decisions about games if they have no clue what they're talking about.

did EA actually say that? i thought they said they are still working on sim city games but they just moved maxis people with the rest of the teams

plus didnt the new sim city sell good they prolly working on a sequel i bet, city builders are some of the most fun games on PC that you can play

Exactly. The people leading Ubisoft, EA and Activision are far from being gamers. They are marketers. They don't know what gamers want, but they think they do.

No, they didn't actually say that. But it's pretty clear that is what they think.

They closed Maxis, there isn't much more proof needed for me. Just because they moved to other teams, does not mean they'll still work on Simcity, on the contrary.

The last 2 Simcity games sold nowhere near the other games, they were nowhere near as popular. And instead of admitting guilt with the awful DRM that blocked gamers from playing the game and the small city sizes, EA instead put the blame on Maxis and the PC gamers just not being interested in City Builders anymore.

It eventually sold around 2 million copies. I wonder what the return on investment was though, after considering the marketing budget, cost of servers, and cost of production. I'm betting Skylines, with a team of 17 or less people, little marketing, and no server upkeep will see a better net profit down the line, despite the $30 price tag.

It's one seriously fantastic game. I believe it revitalizes a genre considered dead. EA nearly killed it but Paradox stepped up and funded a proper city builder.

There are a few other city builders out there that are a bit more modern, but they've all sucked. The Cities XL games were all pretty bad.