Of all the games we’ll be watching, playing (and attempting to steal…) at Gamescom in August, the new SimCity is at the top of our list.
Perhaps it’s our basic, persistent megalomania – and the chance to unleash our hellish vision of civic misery in greater detail than ever before – which has us excited about the new title, due in 2013?
Maybe it’s the game’s retro appeal, and the promise of the first truly connected, multiplayer experience in the history of the series.
Or its just that we want to build a SimCity with red London buses in it for the first time?
Ahead of Gamescom we caught up with Jason Haber, a producer at Maxis and Electronic Arts, who is working on SimCity, to get the lowdown on the new title.
What are the features which are going to inspire new players most?
There are several great new features in this SimCity that will inspire players in different ways. GlassBox, our powerful new simulation engine, creates an incredibly detailed simulation where players can see exactly what’s happening.
New SimCity Pic
Cool Looking City: Residential Robot
However, in a recent blog post on the SimCity website, creative director Ocean Quigley revealed that, “Your cities live on the cloud, and you can play them from any PC you like. If your PC is unplugged, your cities are safe, you can go over to your friend’s laptop and start playing. We don’t care where you install SimCity. Since your cities are on the cloud, we can give you rich online data visualizations, showing you the vitals of your city and how it compares to and relates to other cities in the SimCity world.
“More prosaically, from its inception, we built this SimCity to be online and multiplayer. We’ve built servers to handle the simulation of regions and communication between cities in a region. We built servers to connect cities to global trade and commodity markets. A decent chunk of the simulation happens in the cloud.
“And finally, the relationships between different cities and between different mayors are a big deal, and we think it’s one of the ways that we’re bringing new life to SimCity.”