Post by Loendal on Mar 3, 2010 12:34:55 GMT -5
www2.citiesxl.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=84&lang=en
I suggest the Gameplay Presentation Video
Yet another unique online gaming experience bites the dust. I discovered this only too late, or I would have subscribed to this. There's a game out there (Relatively obscure, admittedly) called City Life. In City Life, you build a city, like most town building sims, but instead of worrying about Industry, Commercial and Residential balances and such, the game was based around social classing.
This existed several years before Sim City: Societies hit the scene, and I believe it's the original Social Structure City Builder (Or at least, it was the first I'd ever heard of). You have to maintain peace between the various social classes as they struggle for housing and the jobs you provide for them. You must maintain their happiness and lifestyle to the best of your ability without swamping them out and having class warfare break out.
Anyway... CitiesXL was an extension to this, wherein for a subscription fee, people could connect to a living planet with other player's cities as well. You develop trade, manufacturing, and other economic inter-city relationships with these other players cities. You can be a huge manufacturer, putting out commercial goods that would then be bought up by your fellow players out in the world. Or you could have all the good housing and be well interconnected roadways and attract people to live in your city, but work in someone elses down the road. You could move between these cities in real time. Literally hop a train or take a car ride and go down the highway to your neighbor's city. Global trade blossoms and cities thrive, all (Apparently) in real time.
If I hadn't found out about it just as they were closing down, I would have loved this. Perhaps yet another online concept is crushed under the foot of the "We want instant gratification" mindset of current online gamers. City Life (And I can imagine, CitiesXL as well) is not a simple game. Things are not just handed to you, you have to work at it to be successful. Shame I learned about this so late...
I suggest the Gameplay Presentation Video
Yet another unique online gaming experience bites the dust. I discovered this only too late, or I would have subscribed to this. There's a game out there (Relatively obscure, admittedly) called City Life. In City Life, you build a city, like most town building sims, but instead of worrying about Industry, Commercial and Residential balances and such, the game was based around social classing.
This existed several years before Sim City: Societies hit the scene, and I believe it's the original Social Structure City Builder (Or at least, it was the first I'd ever heard of). You have to maintain peace between the various social classes as they struggle for housing and the jobs you provide for them. You must maintain their happiness and lifestyle to the best of your ability without swamping them out and having class warfare break out.
Anyway... CitiesXL was an extension to this, wherein for a subscription fee, people could connect to a living planet with other player's cities as well. You develop trade, manufacturing, and other economic inter-city relationships with these other players cities. You can be a huge manufacturer, putting out commercial goods that would then be bought up by your fellow players out in the world. Or you could have all the good housing and be well interconnected roadways and attract people to live in your city, but work in someone elses down the road. You could move between these cities in real time. Literally hop a train or take a car ride and go down the highway to your neighbor's city. Global trade blossoms and cities thrive, all (Apparently) in real time.
If I hadn't found out about it just as they were closing down, I would have loved this. Perhaps yet another online concept is crushed under the foot of the "We want instant gratification" mindset of current online gamers. City Life (And I can imagine, CitiesXL as well) is not a simple game. Things are not just handed to you, you have to work at it to be successful. Shame I learned about this so late...
