Flood of SimCity news incoming – of course, a lot of the info is mostly going to be the same, but always nice to hear other people’s take on the game. Very cool to know Maxis plans to stick with putting llamas in the upcoming SimCity.
If there is one facet of gaming culture that Maxis has been kind to, it’s been the modding community. Since the release of SimCity 2000‘s Urban Renewal Kit, which allowed players to create their own versions of the game’s sprite-based buildings, Maxis has opened their SimCity games to modders who’ve unofficially added their own custom-made and real-life buildings to the games. The new SimCity games is taking this modding spirit and places it directly into the core game by allowing players to modularly customize certain buildings such as a school or a firehouse, with most customizations actually effecting that building’s features and statistics.
As for other buildings and city infrastructure, power plants will still need to be built to chug away producing power (though electricity and other utilities can be imported from other cities), real-world landmarks can still be plopped into cities, and fire departments are still needed to take out the occasional fire. The inclusion of arcologies, which were made popular in SimCity 2000 yet have not been seen since, is an idea Katsarelis says the office is tossing around.
As for the legendary Maxis llamas, the game’s Lead Producer joked that they have “lots of plans for Llamas.”
