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It’s been seven months since we released SimCity and I wanted to take stock of where we are, respond to some questions and talk about the future.

We’re Listening

First, I want you to know that we are listening to your feedback. We dig deep into the forums, Facebook posts, and Twitter feeds every day to see what players are talking about. There is a lot of feedback and there is a clear passion for SimCity. That’s great to see. And while we appreciate positive feedback, we take very seriously the players who have criticisms. Players have high expectations of what goes into our games and we have an obligation to deliver.

We continuously review this feedback alongside in-game telemetry to help us decide where to focus our game tuning and development efforts. We’ve formed dedicated teams to explore specific features. Some player requests, such as a tool to raise and lower roads, were straightforward challenges. Some of the larger asks, such as bigger city maps and an offline mode, have required more thought and exploratory work.

Seven Months, Seven Major Updates

We’ve released seven major updates in the last seven months, which have evolved the gameplay experience and the core of our simulation. GlassBox powered our first agent based simulation and this system created depth and complexity like we’ve never had before. This opened up a whole new world of tuning and we’ve spent our time making sure that all players, whatever track they take their cities through, are getting a challenging experience. I encourage you to watch Dan’s great talk from GDC 2013 to give you an idea of just how complex SimCity’s system really is.

Traffic was always meant to be a challenge; in fact, many of our team considered traffic to be a strategy game all on its own. But, in reality, traffic was behaving irrationally. We got the player feedback and fixed it. Cars are smarter, buses are more intelligent in their routing, and the new raise/lower tool brought new ways to route traffic throughout the city. Tuning is the life blood of the simulation and we continue to monitor and make enhancements to the way GlassBox responds to our players. Stability and performance increases are also a constant area of focus for us; servers are stable and performance continues to improve on lower spec machines.

We’ve also heard feedback on our strategy and pricing for DLC. My commitment on DLC for SimCity is that we do not force players to purchase game elements that are essentially helping to tune the simulation or fix specific issues. And for that optional content, we always want players to feel like it’s valuable. Along with paid DLC, we’ve also been providing free content. The first two million players received the Launch Park, we recently released new hotels and houses of worship, and we’re planning to release additional free content soon – more region maps, more free buildings and more.

User Generated Content (UGC) Discussions Underway

Maxis has a long tradition of supporting User Generated Content (UGC) and the UGC community. We have begun a discussion with our players with the ultimate goal of giving you space to mod while assuring all our players that the multiplayer gameplay experience is safe and has integrity. It’s difficult to determine what makes a “good” or safe mod and what mods cross the line. Clarifying guidelines for UGC will help players understand where that line is. We want to have an open discussion with our community about what you want out ofSimCity and hear your thoughts about UGC guidelines. To join the discussion go here.

Exploration for Offline Mode is Happening

Right now we have a team specifically focused on exploring the possibility of an offline mode. I can’t make any promises on when we will have more information, but we know this is something that many of our players have been asking for. While the server connectivity issues are behind us, we would like to give our players the ability to play even if they choose not to connect. An offline mode would have the additional benefit of providing room to the modding community to experiment without interfering or breaking the multiplayer experience.

Bigger Cities

City sizes have been a constant point of conversation among our players since we released the game. The game’s original design focused on the density of an intimate urban environment. It was about intercity connectivity and the challenge of managing a region of cities instead of one metropolis in isolation. However, we recognize that many players have expressed the desire to build up one big city rather than manage the interrelationship of multiple smaller cities.

We’ve put months of investigation into making larger city sizes, reworking the terrain maps, changing the routing algorithms of our agent-based system and altering the way that GlassBox processes the data in a larger space.

After months of testing, I confirm that we will not be providing bigger city sizes. The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn’t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities. We’ve tried a number of different approaches to bring performance into an acceptable range, but we just couldn’t achieve it within the confines of the engine. We’ve chosen to cease work on bigger city sizes and put that effort into continuing to evolve the core game and explore an offline mode. Some of the experiments we conducted to improve performance on bigger cities will be rolled into future updates to improve overall game performance.

Cities of Tomorrow

Thank You

Our launch wasn’t what anyone on the team hoped for. We think about this every single day, but we’re proud of how far we’ve come over the past few months.

Like you, I’m a SimCity fan and a passionate gamer. That passion for the original SimCity was one of the influences that led me to study Government in college and to work on Capitol Hill. But my love of gaming drove me from Washington DC to California to join Will Wright’s studio 17 years ago. SimCity is in my blood and if there’s one thing I know about Maxis is that it attracts a certain kind of game maker, those who love simulations and take personal joy in bringing these worlds to life. We’re all passionate about SimCity and we want to make it better.

So that’s the state of SimCity right now and we feel that it’s improving every day. Agree or disagree, tweet me at @EAGamer and let’s get the conversation going.

Greetings, Mayors! When you think of a city of tomorrow, I’d bet you picture amazing high-tech buildings using mind-blowing, innovative science. Well, welcome to The Academy! The Academy is a new building in the SimCity Cities of Tomorrow expansion pack that helps transform your city into that futuristic metropolis in your imagination. The Academy is a think tank that hires workers to research new high-tech buildings and modules. While there are jobs at The Academy for all wealth levels, most are high wealth, so The Academy thrives in a gleaming and pristine city of rich people.

Once The Academy employs enough workers to open, you can start researching high-tech buildings. You’ll immediately have multiple research projects to choose from, including the Maglev, a hyper-fast elevated train, which we’ll be talking more about in the coming weeks. After you complete at least one research project, you can research a level upgrade for The Academy. With each upgrade, you can add a new annex module to The Academy, unlocking additional research projects.

Annexes to your Academy will allow you to research awesome new buildings like the Fusion Power Plant, which provides large amounts of clean power at a huge cost (perfect for cities that want to stay nice and clean). Another module leads to the Garbage Atomizer that slowly atomizes garbage to reduce pollution. Keep in mind, however, that researching these upgrades will require a lot of upkeep, so it’s best to ensure your city is making a steady profit before you invest in these clean technologies. But if your city can support it, building The Academy will not only support your current city, but also the neighboring cities in you region as well, as everyone can take advantage of all the beneficial research it provides.

One of the best effects of The Academy is that all of the high-tech research being conducted at The Academy raises the tech level of nearby industry. The Academy also raises the land value around it, so you’ll have to decide whether to position it near industry or residential. Providing more high wealth workers to The Academy will help you complete research faster, but they’re a notoriously picky bunch, so keeping them happy will be a challenge. You can build a MegaTower near your Academy to bring in those high wealth Sims fast, though. Part of the challenge of building a future city is balancing the wants and needs of The Academy works against the wants and needs of your MegaTowers.

The Academy not only researches new buildings and their modules, it also researches new modules for some of your existing buildings. Complete the Solar/Wind Power Amplifier research for example, and anyone in the region can double the power output of their Solar or Wind Power Plants. These particular modules unlock for anyone in the same region, even if they don’t have Cities of Tomorrow expansion pack.

There’s one thing you need to know before you start deploying all these cool new technologies. All of the buildings and modules researched by The Academy require a connection to ControlNet. ControlNet is a wireless quantum computing network that The Academy generates. The workers at The Academy will generate ControlNet bandwidth. If the signal is weak, your city won’t be dealing with dropped calls, it’ll be dealing with buildings shutting down, so keep The Academy supplied with workers! High wealth workers create more ControlNet than lower wealth workers, so a high wealth city is your best bet to keep that technology running. Keep this in mind when building out the levels in your MegaTower, as what you choose may have a significant impact on how your city develops.

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