Sid Meier's SimGolf Preview

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The idea first came to him as he was leafing through a golfing magazine. Sid Meier, legendary game designer and cofounder of Firaxis, stumbled upon a contest to craft three challenging and attractive holes out of a lush, unspoiled piece of land. "I thought to myself 'Hey, that might make a cool computer game,'" remembers Meier. "So I grabbed some trees and textures from Gettysburg!, built a couple of golfer animations in Poser, and threw together a quick prototype. From then on I was hooked." Instantly, Meier knew that we wanted to create a strategy game that involved designing, building, and managing a golf course from a micromanagement level. He also wanted to add some character to the game to make it more accessible for the masses. But before he started turning his ideas into lines of code, Meier did something most designers are too proud to do: He sought the advice of others. And whom better to seek advice from for a micromanagement city-building strategy game than Maxis founder and creator of the Sim franchise, Will Wright.

For a few weeks now, Maxis' official Web site has been dropping some vague rumors about Sid Meier being "spotted" at the Maxis offices. In reality, Meier has been visiting Maxis for a number of months now. He first pitched his golf idea to Will Wright late last year, and the two designers have since collaborated on a few gameplay ideas a handful of times. With that, Sid Meier's SimGolf was born earlier this year. Not to be confused with Maxis' 1996 release of SimGolf, Sid Meier's SimGolf is a management strategy game that will be instantly familiar to anyone who's played any of the SimCity games. Basically, much like the magazine contest that spurred Meier's creativity, you're tasked with taking a piece of land and crafting it into the perfect golf course.

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You don't need to know a thing about golf to enjoy this game. And yet, golf fanatics will undoubtedly enjoy the challenges that this game will pose. The game plays a lot like SimCity, but instead of creating the ultimate metropolis, you'll be creating the ultimate golf resort. Basically, you'll start out your session on a randomly generated map in one of 16 unique locales throughout the globe. Your level will contain several unique landmarks, and its terrain will reflect the stereotypical image of your location. For example, if you're designing a course on the British Isles, you'll have to contend with jagged coastlines and roaming sheep. Build on Hawaii, on the other hand, and your course will be surrounded by volcanoes. Each of these 16 locations is split up into four environments: lush parklands, arid desert, sculptured links, and a tropical setting. And much like the Sim and The Sims games, each of these environments will have a separate tile- and structure-set that you can use to beautify your course and give it its own unique look and feel. Unlike SimCity, however, SimGolf won't have any prepared scenarios. SimCity fans will remember that the game threw a number of challenges at you like preparing a city for a meteor strike or strengthening public transportation to a new sports stadium.

Course design in Sid Meier's SimGolf will be fairly robust. You can add sand traps, water bunkers, and a wide variety of trees to each of your holes. Your course can be made more challenging by increasing the slopes or by changing the elevation of certain holes. After you lay out your preliminary design, you'll be able to add snack bars, hotels, grand resorts, expansive homes, and even an airstrip to fly in celebrities. Obviously, you'll initially only be able to build a fairly small, fairly simple hole, since you start out with a meager budget. But after you start attracting some golfers to your course, you'll be able to use the money you charge to expand into a full-fledged resort. Of course, you'll have to limit your spending and budget some of your money for maintenance costs like lawn mowing and grooming. But golfers will start playing as soon as you open your course, so expect the cash flow to start rolling in relatively quickly.