One thing we were all looking forward to this year at E3 was SimCity. We’ve been following it for a while and got to listen in on a Producer Broadcast with SimCity lead producer Kip Katsarelis. We got to hear 30 minutes of questions and answers, along with insight on several aspects of the game, including the sim engine, look and feel and some gameplay aspects.
One of the first questions Kip was asked was, “Why did Maxis and EA bring back SimCity?” He said that with this game, they wanted to bring back the possibilities of creating a world on PCs that can now handle the engine they wanted to create. The new game is a complete reboot of the franchise and Maxis looked at every feature from top to bottom to reinvent the game to make it the best ever. There is a new simulation engine in place, which we knew about, called the GlassBox engine. With GlassBox, every Sim has a place to live, work and shop.
Glassbox is huge and is the foundation for the simulation. It allows everything you see in the world to be simulated. Crime happens in realtime, traffic is amazing, every Sim is actively tracked and managed. If work is close, they will walk or take rail or bus stops, or they may even drive. You can then act on that (those problems) and see the impact of the changes you make.
Conversation by F5 Live for the TechPodcast Network.
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It’s been 12 years since I been interested in a computer game, I can’t wait to see this new SimCity!