Maxis Development Team doing an AMA on Reddit

[erbush 8]

The Maxis Development team is doing a live AMA on reddit tonight. (HERE) is a link to the AMA page. They are taking questions on SC5 and other Maxis things and will answer them for 4 hours tonight between 8pm-12pm PST. Upvote questions you'd like answered or post one of your own.

[KeanoManu 42]

That's in the middle of the night for us Europeans.

Someone who lives in the US has to ask about clarity in the Single Player/Multi Player issue.

[Firebird 40]

That's in the middle of the night for us Europeans.

Someone who lives in the US has to ask about clarity in the Single Player/Multi Player issue.

Unfortunately it's one of those AMA's that goes something like, 'Hey guys, we're doing an AMA! But not now... sorry. We'll be back in 12 hours to answer stuff!' So the top comments are covered with rage memes, memes, ramparts, and circlejerks. Anything posted now would just get lost in the pile of comments.

  Edited March 8, 2012 by Firebird  

[waybig 35]

Actually, it's supposed to start in about 10 minutes, i.e, 12pm - 3pm PST

[croxis 150]

Current answers so far:

[Dan] Great question! The integrity of our simulation is first and foremost – without a good simulation under the hood the game wouldn’t hold your interest. Yesterday Ocean, Andrew, and I gave a presentation at GDC explaining exactly how our new simulation engine, GlassBox, works. Here’s a recap of the talk that took place yesterday: http://www.1up.com/news/radical-transparency-simcity

[Ocean] We’re making SimCity, not some dopey casual game.

The most important thing is the integrity of the simulation underneath it, the stuff that represents the systems that make up a real city. I don’t want to enforce sustainable design principles in the game – I want them to emerge as natural consequences of your interaction with the simulation.

If you don’t deal with your sewage, with traffic congestion, with walkability & transit, with ground and air pollution – your city will reflect that! And there are lots of people who will want to explore the simulation and see what happens when they do. Making some polluted, congested, urban nightmare is a total win condition, as far as I’m concerned.

[Firebird 40]

My favorite quote so far: "We're making SimCity, not some dopey causal game." Nearly made me cheer! I'm compiling a list of all the questions / answers for everyone here if they want to read.

[brynhyfryd 222]

All responses can be found here. http://www.reddit.com/user/maxis/comments/

Link changed to the one mentioned below

  Edited March 8, 2012 by brynhyfryd  

[croxis 150]

Wrong link. You want this one to view all of maxis' comments. Click context to see the question they are answering: http://www.reddit.com/user/maxis

[BurroDiablo 222]

All responses can be found here. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qmi0w/iama_maxis_development_team_on_simcity_amaa/c3z0npz?context=2

That's just a single reply for me, all their responses will be here - http://www.reddit.com/user/maxis/comments/

I'm not familiar with Reddit so I'm not sure how to view the comments they replied too, but the responses so far speak for themselves.

edit: Ninja'd by Croxis

  Edited March 8, 2012 by BurroDiablo  

[Nevets13 27]

Yeah, like SC4, you can build out a region by yourself, and make all of the cities serially. There are lots of players who just want to control their own world, and they don’t want anybody to interfere with it.

Yes, Yes, Yes. I'm now officially sold. It has zoning, will support modding, and will have solo regions. Those were my big 3.

[mattyriddy 12]

But even those solo players are going to be participating in the flow of resources that constitute the core of the games economy – the economic landscape that they’re operating in will be shaped by the actions of other players, even if they are only playing solo.

Sounds very always online to me and not what I would class as solo play.

[Trioxis 32]

Yeah, like SC4, you can build out a region by yourself, and make all of the cities serially. There are lots of players who just want to control their own world, and they don’t want anybody to interfere with it.

Yes, Yes, Yes. I'm now officially sold. It has zoning, will support modding, and will have solo regions. Those were my big 3.

This is indeed good news, although I'm not sure how this will work out:

But even those solo players are going to be participating in the flow of resources that constitute the core of the games economy – the economic landscape that they’re operating in will be shaped by the actions of other players, even if they are only playing solo.

Sounds very always online to me and not what I would class as solo play.

You may be right, but that's the direction most games are taking these days to combat pirating. Anno 2070 did this to a certain extent, but also featured an 'offline mode' so you can play while the servers are down. I'm hoping SC2013 will have the same option.

  Edited March 8, 2012 by Trioxis  

[brynhyfryd 222]

Yeah, like SC4, you can build out a region by yourself, and make all of the cities serially. There are lots of players who just want to control their own world, and they don’t want anybody to interfere with it.

Yes, Yes, Yes. I'm now officially sold. It has zoning, will support modding, and will have solo regions. Those were my big 3.

This is indeed good news, although I'm not sure how this will work out:

But even those solo players are going to be participating in the flow of resources that constitute the core of the games economy – the economic landscape that they’re operating in will be shaped by the actions of other players, even if they are only playing solo.

I conclude that means that you must be online at all times to play, Even in single player mode.

[SpcmanSpiff 0]

These comments seem a bit clearer on the single-player aspect:

[Kip] I can relate to you on this one, since I have a 12 year old myself and have seen firsthand what’s she capable of when playing online games. This SimCity is tailored to many different player’s and play styles. You can choose what’s right for you when planning out your city or region. You can choose to play in a region entirely by yourself, being the Mayor of each city. Or you can open up cities and invite your friends, so it’s a more controlled environment. If you’re feeling adventurous, hop into quick play and join others in a preexisting region. It’s really up to you.

[Andrew] We've addressed this elsewhere, but I just want to repeat, single player is definitely still a big focus. And if you want to play all the cities in a region yourself, that's absolutely possible. I think there's some research somewhere showing that, even with strictly multiplayer games, people wind up soloing for the majority of gameplay hours, so you're not alone!

[BurroDiablo 222]

Interesting reply...

[Dan] Yes absolutely, resources in our simulation engine are finite. As you extract oil or coal out of the ground it doesn’t get replaced, it’s gone. So if you’ve built up an entire city on the economic basis of extracting a certain resource, when that resource runs out your economy will collapse. For resources like water it works the same way, but can be replenished by environmental factors like rain

So we're going to finally see weather?!

[Trioxis 32]

Well this is rather disappointing:

[Dan] The size of our new cities are roughly equivalent to the SC4 medium sized city (2 kilometers square). That said, you can connect cities together inside a region and build out a network of connected cities - each city providing different resources and abilities to its neighbors and the region.

I had really hoped we would get to build larger cities this time around.

[nashville nelson 51]

I had really hoped we would get to build larger cities this time around.

Me too, but i am sure they have good reasons to limit the city size to 2x2km. As long as the scale reflects the real life we have plenty of room on this mid sized maps.