How SimCity's Failure Led To The Creation Of Cities Skylines

In the world of city-building games, two titles have stood the test of time: SimCity and Cities Skylines. But which one truly reigns supreme?
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#SimCity #CitiesSkylines #CityBuildingGame #Gaming #VideoGames #SimulationGame #StrategyGame #PCGaming #Gamer #GameComparison #CityBuilder #Simulator #PCGames #PCGamer #Simulation #Strategy #GamersUnite #GamingCommunity #CityPlanning #UrbanPlanning
Timestamps:

[@trooperguy715]

you misspelt "brief" in the thumbnail

[@TheBitGarage]

My thumbnail guy is fired.

[@OJGamingYT]

@@TheBitGarage You said you actually made the thummy 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@dariootero5579]

@@TheBitGarage this was posted Jun 16, 2023, 11:00:14

[@WeaselReacts]

i before e except after c

[@CorrosiveCitrus]

@@WeaselReacts Unfortunately there's so many exceptions to that with common words, it's not worth remembering

[@Vibinhasoueu]

"I for one am greatfull for EA's incompetence" is one of the best phrases I've ever heard in my life!

[@TheBitGarage]

Thanks!

[@humorpalanta]

*Sad CnC noises

[@philbear2185]

I think technically it should be "EA's greed" that led to the fiasco.

[@danielkatona8778]

But it's quite a paradoxical statment, because if EA wasn't incompetent, than it would also be fine. What's amazing is how competitive this industry is (unlike many others).

[@Toodyslexicforyou]

But I still miss a free maxis

[@mariodeabreu199]

I rememer that the first feature that attracted me in Cities Skylines was the possibility of zoning neighborhoods and naming streets

[@TheBitGarage]

Really was an attractive feature and still is!

[@cumaproto9466]

THIS! The zoning feature in Cities: Skylines is so much more realistic than plopping down every single house which was a big factor in pulling me to the game.

[@Project2457official]

@@TheBitGarage For me part of it was the map, I remember seeing all the tiles you could expand too back as a kid in 2015 and being wow'd by it. I remember feeling like SimCity 5 couldn't even hold a candle to it. My young preteen self wanted to build sprawling metropolises, I even looked at modding SimCity just to build outside the map limits just to give me some more freedom. Eventually and thankfully, I started playing Cities: Skylines and I quickly racked up 700+ hours over less than a year. Eventually my mods list became too vast for my shitty laptop to handle and some mods were just flat out incompatible and shitty, so my interests pivoted towards modding GTA and other games. Good era that I'm fond of though, was actually part of the reason I invested in building my own PC. As of yesterday, after my interests earlier last week were peaked by Cities: Skylines 2 coming soon, I tried my hand at making a city in skylines 1 again. After spending hours on modding via the steam workshop I anxiously waited watching the loading screen and I am still amazed by all the differences and evolution of the workshop community in Skylines 1 since I last saw it. Harmony, no more prefab hook, bloody penguin mods have better counterparts now? Network Tiling is no more, Network Anarchy, Intersection marking tool...the list goes on and on. Anyways, let me stop before writing a dissertation, my college life beckons me back but hopefully come this October I'll have enough time to put down my textbooks, laptop and essays, and be able to delve into the next iteration of the ultimate city builder.

[@TheBitGarage]

The map size on SimCity was horrible. I'm right there with you, I always wanted to make mega cities. It felt like you could build out a city in SimCity in just a few hours, and then be bored with it.

[@cgollimusic]

@@TheBitGarage To me the size of the map just allowed me for a more realistic scale to the city. CS1 wasn't ideal in that aspect, but CS2 seems to take yet another step in that direction. I just wish they managed to give us larger maps. I do wonder if they changed the way maps work in any way, chances are slim, but maybe it'll actually be possible to mod in larger maps?

[@MYVP.]

Personally, my favorite thing about CS has always been the modding abilities, and the extensive workshop addons.

[@Merecir]

Something the SimCity4 community thrived on, but that EA forgot about for the sequel and thus no modding community for SimCity contributed greatly to its demise.

[@nikhileditz-25]

Me on console 😢

[@yojlik]

i just wish updates wouldn't crash everything

[@Theo-oh3jk]

I personally was never able to get mods from the workshop to work for me. It's probably my incompetence, but still. *shrug* I just wanted to make Asian-style cities and was never able to. One thing I hope for CS2 is that there is more city styles than Eurocentric ones.

[@shaddythewiz3836]

@@Theo-oh3jkyou can technically with the Japanese and Korean content creators packs but i understand it’s behind a paywall

[@rexgoodheart3471]

When I was a child, some 60 years ago, I loved geography and maps so much that I would take out paper and pencil and sketch out my own highways and interchanges, etc., and name my own streets, and erase and revise routes as I imagined my city was growing. Naturally, I cherished all the SimCity releases, but got turned off by that online play requirement. Glory to Cities Skylines!

[@duskmoon181]

If it wasn't for Cities Skylines i would have never found my love for designing highway interchanges and seeing just how far I could push my designs. So thank you to EA, for failing at pretty much everything with Sim City. And a bigger thank you to Colossal Order and Paradox for wonderful past 2 years of playing CS. I am absolutely going to buy CS2 and give it chance.

[@andrewdubs5664]

I regret that I piratted C:S thinking it's another plain city builder, but now that I played it for a year, I'm definitely buying C:S 2

[@willbebexxsoon]

i don’t know how you, or anyone would thank EA for their incompetence. EA’s incompetence ruined maxis. if EA was competent then we wouldn’t need C:S, Simcity would still exist, The Sims 5 would actually be good. so it doesn’t matter if C:S didn’t exist since Simcity 2013 would actually be good. that sentence doesn’t make sense.

[@jadmansour1735]

​@@willbebexxsoonThe same will happen for The Sims franchise! With Sims 5 being online and probably full of micro transactions, people will start to play alternatives like Paralives and Life by You. 😊

[@br3nus966]

This is a really well made video. I can't wait for cities skyline 2. It looks so good.

[@TheBitGarage]

Thank you! We appreciate it! We're also very excited. Be sure to stay tuned, as well be doing a giveaway of the game closer to launch.

[@Heer3945]

Eh, it's a Paradox game which means it'll be a stripped down and buggy Alpha on release. I'm going to wait a while and let the game mature a little.

[@Pearloryx]

@@Heer3945you don’t understand anything, NPC.

[@cutfromfreshman5657]

@@Heer3945Paradox is the publisher, not the developer. So the performance of the game will have nothing to do with it being published by Paradox.

[@electro5175]

@@Heer3945the developers of Cities Skylines are one of the few developers that actually listen to the community. Quit crying now.

[@e1123581321345589144]

I played a lot of Sim City 2000 and Sim City 4, but the failure of their last release in the series was so complete that I had totally given up on the genre before CS was released. I reluctantly picked it up three years later during a summer sale and I have to say, beside Stellaris, which is also an awesome game, CS is my most played title to date. Can't wait for CS2. It looks amazing. Already prepurchased 😊

[@TheBitGarage]

I'm gonna have to check out Stellaris!

[@Infernal_Elf]

Never ever Pre purchase u usually dont get much for it anyway. And the game might be Total shit upon release.

[@cmasterson]

Then they tried to do the mobile version and made it even more bad. You have to wait for a building to make nails to build wtf.

[@cmasterson]

@@Infernal_ElfI learned my lesson with that game prelaunches is always high. Launch week it’s discounted and some websites 6-12 months give for a discount. I got cS1 for $7.99 18 months later. I played other games between and stuck with SC4

[@coleciervo5454]

@@TheBitGarage Stellaris is like crack to me, it finally overtook TF2 as my all-time highest steam game, which is scary

[@brickitect420]

I grew up playing SimCity4, and I remember my sophomore year of high school when Simcity5 came out. I certainly remember the wait times to play it, and it was infuriating. I have pretty much all CS1 dlc with no regrets.

[@NazmusLabs]

SimCity 3000 ❤

[@johnsonaustinj]

My first AOL screenname was maxisguy (after maxis) Needless to say I'm still mad at EA for closing Maxis. Will Wright was my childhood idol. That being said, I have about 500 hours in CS, all the DLC, and have already preordered CS2. I have faith that Colossal Order will deliver another great city builder.

[@TheBitGarage]

That's too funny! My first AOL screenname wasn't nearly that cool. Will Wright is a legend!

[@pbilk]

I miss Spore from Maxis. Silly EA really doesn't know how to care for their customers.

[@JakeSoulFreeTravels]

I'm waiting for the physical edition of CS2 before I order.

[@iratepirate3896]

EA murdered so many great studios

[@ReinisIkass]

Loved SimCity4, so naturally was hyped for SimCity5. To me it felt more 'fun' than CS at the time, though the dumpster fire of the traffic management killed the joy and fun of building cities rather quickly. So naturally I landed in CS and never looked back. Hopefully CS2 has a good Linux support.

[@TheBitGarage]

It certainly had a "fun" aesthetic to it. Hopefully Skylines 2 has a little more fun to it than the first one did. Or at least a good soundtrack!

[@cy_torrent]

@@TheBitGarageI also hope it has things like Spotify or iHeart compatibility. Something CS1 could only do with mods or if your computer was strong enough to run a browser simultaneously lmao

So far CS2 is Windows only.

[@theverybestof5352]

Funny how Citylife and its successors CitiesXL and XXL got totally forgotten and were lost in time. Despite their many shortcomings, their surface painter was not only way ahead of its time but also doesn't seem to be matched even by the next installment of Cities Skylines.

[@retrorevival1]

forgotten with good reason, man did Focus shit the bed with XXL and CS came out one month later and that was that.

[@JC_Cali]

Lol, I really did play everyone, from the first SimCity to even these! I remember their social dyanmics really ... innovative for its time too.

[@wackmanzack]

I absolutely despised the block by block building footprints in cities XL 😅 - I still played it and enjoyed it for a while but jeez what an inaccurate and unrealistic way to construct a city. I wasn't a fan of the employment class system either yuck

[@ldaragao6811]

A proper surface painter is exactly what will be missing in CS2 and an opportunity for the likes of other studios to launch a city game. As paradox had a transport simulator and launched a city simulator, i just hope the guys from Transport Feever 2 has the same idea. With their terrain and brush tools, plus the fantastic models for transportation, they could overcome CS.

[@wackmanzack]

I forgot about that surface painter! It really did add a lot to the sense of creativity in designing the cities. I liked the tree one and the construction site one. @@ldaragao6811

[@xaos8098]

Unpopular opnion but I actually reallt enjoyed SC5, It had some special features that CS doesn't have. The Upgrading mechanic of city services or the Future DLC. Nevertheless Cities Skylines remains the very best.

[@TheBitGarage]

I got pulled back into SimCity 5 a bit while making the video, it wasn't as bad as a I remembered. I always loved the aesthetic of it!

[@mortingenstrasse.]

simcity 5 cities were area-wise limited, but they were emotionally more real, it made you feel like you were a mayor and there were real citizens living after your choices. the ui and the overall aesthetic simcity going for was awesome. cities skylines had many better features but was more of like a economy, build a larger city-simulation.

[@_ikako_]

how the heck do you only have 250 subscribers???? this is the level of quality i'd expect from at least a 500k+ sub channel. i didn't even know you had so few subs until like halfway through the video, you seriously deserve a whole lot of success! also, you really don't need 13 highway interchanges for a city of 38k people 😭city planner plays would have a stern word with you about road heirarchy 😭😭 other than the interesting city design, excellent video and i really hope the algorithm picks up your content.

[@TheBitGarage]

Haha I know, I know. It's a sandbox city that I play around with and build ridiculous road layouts. Thanks for all the praise, it means a lot to us!

[@gamechip06]

Holy crap I didn't even realize how few subs they have... I thought this was a several hundred thousand subbed channel (currently only 1.3k)

[@wackmanzack]

I was intrigued by this video's topic but quite disatisfied with the content personally. The video quality is great and I totally couldn't do any better but it's such a shallow review of each game and didn't mention anything interesting other than it's release itself and the issues with launch. There's tons of interesting differences especially with simcity and skylines that makes Skylines a much better city builder (region size and connectivity, zoning density wasnt based on road width, Sim City 4 was way less car centric and suburban than its predecessors) and I was surprised to not hear anything about the actual features of the games that city builder fans wanted for years. Also such a sad brush over the greatesness of Simcity 4 with that short and dark scene - SC4 was also modded to the max by fans and was quite an amazing sandbox for years that made up for SC5 years after it's release. I was reluctant to get into Cities Skylines 1 because of how it looked and felt and I felt I could make much more aesthetically pleasing cities in SC4 with mods. Did anyone else have the same experience? I am really impressed by how Skylines 2 is looking but still have some reluctance about the aesthetics and organicness of it. Just my opinion. Very excited for October!

[@Project2457official]

This is a repost from one of my replies to another comment but... What got me into Cities: Skylines I remember was the map, I remember seeing all the tiles you could expand too back as a kid in 2015 and being wow'd by it. I remember feeling like SimCity 5 couldn't even hold a candle to it. My young preteen self wanted to build sprawling metropolises, I even looked at modding SimCity just to build outside the map limits just to give me some more freedom. Eventually and thankfully, I started playing Cities: Skylines and I quickly racked up 700+ hours over less than a year. Eventually my mods list became too vast for my shitty laptop to handle and some mods were just flat out incompatible and shitty, so my interests pivoted towards modding GTA and other games. Good era that I'm fond of though, was actually part of the reason I invested in building my own PC. As of yesterday, after my interests earlier last week were peaked by Cities: Skylines 2 coming soon, I tried my hand at making a city in skylines 1 again. After spending hours on modding via the steam workshop I anxiously waited watching the loading screen and I am still amazed by all the differences and evolution of the workshop community in Skylines 1 since I last saw it. Harmony, no more prefab hook, bloody penguin mods have better counterparts now? Network Tiling is no more, Network Anarchy, Intersection marking tool...the list goes on and on. Anyways, let me stop before writing a dissertation, my college life beckons me back but hopefully come this October I'll have enough time to put down my textbooks, laptop and essays, and be able to delve into the next iteration of the ultimate city builder.

[@TheBitGarage]

Enjoy your college life!

[@Project2457official]

@@TheBitGarage thank you!!!

[@wackmanzack]

well said!

[@Project2457official]

@@wackmanzack thank you :)

[@gavinmartin4109]

The big city size is what really made me get this game.But what made me say was the mass transit.2013 simcity was too small

[@TheBitGarage]

Agreed. All these games had their fun unique features. I loved building cities with friends in sim city. I hope city skylines allows co-op builds or online play like sim city had. Mixed with the features and expansiveness of skylines the game would be unstoppable.

[@cheeseguy0198]

I liked the graphics of simcity 2013 more, perhaps if they did not fail they couldve made a dlc to expand the size of the plots. Excluding the plot size and minor bugs I think that it was a well made game, nothing felt out of place and the attention to detail was great.

[@TheBitGarage]

I really like the aesthetic of SimCity 2013. To give it credit, they made a very laid back game to play. I also liked not having to worry about laying out water pipes and power lines. Just roads.

[@cameroncook2048]

The plots were limited due to an engine limitation. They would've had to have made a new game.

[@mddojo]

I was hoping you would mention Simcity Societies, but I understand why you omitted it. It may not be much of a game, but its focus on social development was very interesting and I wish a proper city builder would use that as a mechanic.

[@kevink313]

I was about to comment about SimCity Societies. It used to be one of my favorite games to play growing up.

[@wackmanzack]

true good point!

[@kewiired9271]

Let’s not forget EA said offline play was impossible, but turned out that only two lines of code needed to change to allow it

[@KentoKei]

What I've learnt about Paradox is when they step into a niche genre, more often than not they end up dominating it

[@TheShortStory]

I grew up with SC 3000 and it had a formative impact on my musical taste even to this day, but in terms of the gameplay, SC4 was the peak. Easy to learn and intuit, lots of depth, and it looks good even to this day.

[@Outfrost]

Honourable mention goes to the largely unknown series Cities XL, first released in 2009, 3 years before the announcement of SimCity 2013.

[@sakumisan]

Yea Cities XL wasn't bad, it just wasn't that good. It had potential!

[@azraelle6232]

I was kinda hoping you'd touch on Cities XL or some of the other city builder attempts at unseating Maxis/EA, but oh well, this was a fantastic breakdown of the history of one of my favorite genres! I was so mad when EA bought Maxis, I knew they were going to ruin everything from that point on (even though SC4 was still a solid game). I had been working at a Maxis studio when they bought the company, and we were closed down the next day. At least I'd been able to buy SC2000 for $4 with my employee discount beforehand, and got to hear Wil Wright's voicemail message once.

[@joshuaking5875]

Good video bro and I hope it goes viral! Sim City 4 is personally still my favorite and you are right it’s definitely the most difficult in the series. I prefer the 3D graphics of Skylines. I hope Cities Skylines II is a fusion between SC4 and CS. I still think Sim City (2013) graphics look phenomenal however.

[@TheBitGarage]

Much appreciated! As a kid I was a big fan of the Rush Hour U-Drive It missions in SC4.

[@Overxpossed]

@@TheBitGarage there you have it. As a game SC is funnier, is more a game than a cosmetic thing with impossible to fix transit thing, like CS1. Which I think those +5000 hours I have on CS were for fixing traffic, which is the only funny feature it has. I hope CS2 be more like SC5 mixed with transport fever.

[@waltblackadar4690]

I've been around long enough to have played each of these games at their release. 2K and 4 were the best entries in the series IMO. 2K was just...fun - it took everything from the original and made it bigger and better. The arcologies were marvelous. 4 was the most detailed and challenging of the series. It would challenge your mind and your computer hardware. It took Rush Hour for 4 to come into its own. It forced the player to pay attention to everything and I spend hundreds of hours with it.

[@michaelhunsinger8351]

I'm with you, I think SC4 was the best in the series, followed by SC2k.

[@dogtaggamer1]

What I really liked about Sim City was that you could go in first person and fly helicopters or walk the streets. I would love for Cities Skylines to enable something like that if possible/feasible.

[@moondog548]

The moral of this story: Your sister is an Angel.

[@TheBitGarage]

She really is!

[@Drewoid]

How do you not have at least hundred thousands subs, absolute quality work. Great editing, excellent sounding mic and most importantly a host with good charisma driving the show. I hope great things for your future, you deserve it!

[@VideoCesar07]

Wow, this took me WAAAY back remembering SimCity 3000 and Cities in Motion. 😎☺ I won't be buying CS2 at launch just because I barely started playing CS last year and am really enjoying it along with about 6 DLCs that I bought when I saw it and thought how cool it would be to play. There are tons of online tutorials now but the game itself taught very little and made it rather frustrating experience at times to learn to play the game efficiently. I will most likely buy it 6 months to a year after launch. I saw the system requirements were finally put out yesterday and while the minimum requirements isn't very high the recommended requirements are fairly high if you want to have the max resolution, max graphics and a large number of assets. For how beautiful the game looks it isn't surprising. I look forward to seeing how it goes when it releases.

[@TheBitGarage]

I will probably still pre order it. However, I had very similar thoughts when I saw the recommended requirements that my PC currently do not meet. There is definitely a learning curve with Skylines. That's something they could do better. Like how SimCity had a tutorial world.

[@10C45E]

I actually played quite a lot of SimCity 5. Before I discovered Cities: Skylines it was the best city builder I owned, though I played it after the offline patch. Cities: Skylines was a dream come true after I was becoming frustrated towards the limited plot size and difficulty of the game. Can't wait for Cities: Skylines 2!

[@TheBitGarage]

It wasn't mentioned really in the video, but the small plot sizes in SimCity 2013 was a huge disappointment to me. I did like building multiple cities in the region however.

[@erickelley1680]

One thing I liked about Sim city 5 was how you could specialize your city towards one industry and pump the resources out into the world. And that changed based on supply and demand in the world. Outside of that and the upgradable buildings, not much to write home about for that game.

[@jcm2606]

@@erickelley1680 Yeah, SimCity 2013 felt more like a game whereas Cities Skylines felt more like a sandbox, at least IMO. Thankfully CO is adopting those same features for Cities Skylines 2, with the modular building upgrades and importing/exporting resources with neighbouring cities.

[@kyleh6962]

One of the best things about SimCity 2k I thought was the two additions, Streets of SimCity and SimCopter. Not only were those standalone games, but you could load your own city in those games. SimCity 4 had a "missions" thing, but it was just controlling a vehicle, it wasn't a first person mode, driving/flying around the city you built. That was a really cool experience, and just greatly enhanced those two games, as well.

[@mrdriver2988]

The new road tools in City Skylines 2 they talked about and released a video showcasing it got me so hyped for the game. And the fact there are going to be car accidents in the game like dam hyped

[@paulharsh78]

Great video! My 1st city builder was Sim City 2000! Hit me right in the nostalgia!

[@Glitch_Gaming]

I literally had a talk with a gaming buddy the other day about how Sim City screwed up a genre of games so bad that City Skyline didn't even need to try hard to take them over and beat them into the ground.

[@TheBitGarage]

They had soo much time to develop a great game, and still messed it up. Good ol' EA. Thanks for watching!

[@Glitch_Gaming]

@@TheBitGarage the fact it’s EA as well. Makes it all the better one company I will not use. Or buy from.

[@DewaKrishna_]

The fact that cities skylines 2 will be on gamepass as well is just such a huge win for everyone

[@EmeraldGamerOriginal]

I absolutely loved to og cities skylines and I’m literally counting down the days until the sequel releases I can’t wait to see the improvements they put into the game for roads and other stuff

[@themthew638]

I'm glad someone gave sim city 3000 its due, I tell people all the time it was the best one. :D

[@TheBitGarage]

Absolutely the best. Thanks for watching!

[@davidhuston495]

I always enjoyed bringing in my SC2000 cities into the game. You had to redraw some things. But see how the SC2000 pollution, crime, and land values change. I really liked SC3000 a lot.

[@DariusKhan]

This bought back memories. After a 4 year gap away from computing (not sure why I never took my Atari 800xl to uni!), Sim City 2000 was the first PC game that I got hooked on. Spent way too many hours playing it. I think the next one was Civ II.

[@justinmcgough3958]

As bad as Sim City 2013 turned out, there's still things about it that I miss in CS. I loved the modularity/customizability of service buildings. It made things like tourism so much more engaging to me. I also liked how in depth the industry was with you able to have custom made oil fields and mines and you could track your produced materials as you sent it out to be refined into products. On top of that, the art aesthetic was really cool too. For me those are some things I'll always miss. CS does seem to be catching on with the modular buildings a tad, but even then it doesn't look quite the same as Sim City 2013 had it.

[@CyberCraft]

Dude I watched your video thinking you'd have atleast 50k subs... This is incredibly high quality and you put forward some incredible points! You just gained a subscriber! I myself am hyped about Cities Skylines 2 and can't wait to get my hands on it!

[@TheBitGarage]

Thanks for the feedback and the sub. It means a lot to us!

[@CyberCraft]

@@TheBitGarage Yeah man keep up the good work! You'll get really popular I can feel it

[@Invad3rDiz]

@@TheBitGarage man.. if you keep producing 😎👌 @cyberCraft is definitely right here.. Got some Gamerax Vibes going here😊

[@Scambush]

I remember how SimCity 2013 went through like a billion patches and updates. Also how my city would go broke all because the armored money carrier wouldn't reach city hall in time being stuck in traffic.

[@LillanTism]

I remember playing SimCity Buildit on my phone in middle school. Then I cities skylines and was blown away. More than a trillion in-game dollars made later and Ive never been so hyped for a game in my life. Excellent video, hope to see more!

[@JaNieWie]

So, I was never into city builders until I randomly stumbled across Cities Skylines in 2016. I didn't play the game often though, but I'm actually glad another one is being made. I planned on getting Payday 3 Silver Edition, but community of that game is slowly turning into dumbster fire, so all that money will go towards Cities Skylines 2 pre-order.

[@lundberg70]

I played Sim City from start to finish, from the first version up until the last. I think that the main reason for it´s ultimate faliure was the fact that the maps were too small and that you were forced to share the game with others via an internet connection. Pity, I loved Sim City. Long live City Skylines!

[@brkr78]

Well, the BS with which EA tried to sell the always on DRM, stating it was no DRM but the computers were "too weak to process all the data", which was rather quickly proven false by modders, their insistence on "social gaming" in a community that was, and still is, not exactly known for favoring that kind of gameplay, their broken promises to fix the game with the next patch and a lot of toxicity from both EA and their customers were in my opinion the largest contributors. And then Colossal Order, a studio that had a fraction of the numbers of employees of the now entirely defunct remains of Maxis, delivered on many things that were promised by EA, but never delivered. Methinks that this was a decision made by some MBAs at the higher tiers in EA, having seen how all the "social games" on Facebook back then were successfull, while not understanding that the audience for those simple casual FB-games did not overlap with the intended audience of SC for the most part, they decided to task the studio with with writing such a game, and likely against the pushback from those who worked there and understood that this was a bad idea. This was ineptitude of leadership on EAs part through most levels, and once the backlash began the at first did little to mitigate that said backlash, instead tried to shift the blame onto the customers for something they messed up. They probably thought they could weather out that shitstorm, but it only grew in intensity, so they begrudgingly got rid of the very mechanics that slowed down the game, made it nigh unplayable in the beginning and were never actually needed in the first place.

[@TheBitGarage]

Such a bummer. The map size was terrible, and while I liked having a region with my friends, it got boring quickly!

[@johngaudet7363]

It's amazing that games like this, as well as Roller Coaster Tycoon, were available at the Scholastic Book Fairs. Absolute steals. That's where I first got the games as well

[@TROPtastic]

Nice job on the video, it had great narration and pacing! To answer your last question, I'll be waiting for reviews of C:S2 to decide whether it's worth buying near launch. It looks like it will have major enhancements over the first one, but also some missed opportunities (plot footprints are still square) and regressions from C:S1 + DLC (no bikes or elevated rail stations). Time will tell how the sequel will evolve with DLC.

[@TheBitGarage]

Sound reasoning! I am usually cautious with new game releases and wait for the reviews. But I'll risk it for Skylines 2. Thanks for watching!

[@Dinocaleb1]

Nice video, well put together, great editing.

[@FortuneZer0]

0:38 "The worst business deal in the history of business deals. I'm never gonna financially recover from this." -TechBrewsGames as a kid, probably

[@pentagaming9986]

This is an amazing video. You have 818 subscribers at the time of writing, but this is literally a million too few. The quality is astounding. I hope the algorithm blesses you!

[@Grayald]

Skylines 2 hype brought me here. Seeing that old original SimCity gameplay really took me back. It was my first ever builder.

[@austinzupon]

There's also a massive modder community for Cities: Skylines that took the game to the next level. From the developer info releases, it's obvious they've listened to the community and have implemented groundbreaking and refined features for C:S2. I cannot wait for its release.

[@fieryphoenix586]

Demonstrates the difference between an Independent Company and a Major AAA Company.

[@TheBitGarage]

Exactly!

[@MrCai01]

I couldn't log on for easily four days. Amazon emailed me offering a refund, then later origin emailed offering an apology and a free game. Huge shame because I liked the idea of sharing services between cities, but the game just didn't work but they released it anyway!

[@pip07200]

Great upload and content. Been playing most SC games since SC2000, and we're lucky to have CS:S for the past seven years and really looking forward to CS:S2. Best wishes for your channel as well.

[@HessenUK]

Sim City 4 is still the best actual town management sim Skylines is more of a design tool, kind of like how people use Planet Coaster to make pretty things and recreations more than functional parks

[@TheRobRok]

I asked my father if he could buy me sim city, never felt so ashamed. I remember i would play it so he thought it wasn't a waste of money😂

[@TheBitGarage]

(Dad walks in bedroom door) TheRobRok quickly hides Skylines and pulls up SimCity so not to hurt his Dad's feelings. You're a good kid!

[@cesarmatos8105]

You missed. Simcity Societies… was a game where you could only plop buildings and not grow

[@elFulberto]

I remember hearing those Cities in Motion devs were making a new city builder and thinking, "eh, who isn't?" SimCity's failure inspired a lot of indies to take a crack at the genre and it was obvious mist of those new projects would never see the release. It wasn't until I stumbled upon one of C:S pre-release streams and saw the water physics with all the floods and the dams that I was sold.

[@loganc2087]

I normally don’t comment but I am just so I can help boost this in the algorithm. You deserve far more subs than you have with this level of skill.

[@RamsesTheFourth]

I played Sim City 2000 in its time and then Sim City 3000 a lot, great memories :) But Cities Skylines pushed the concept in the way that SC never did.

[@TheBitGarage]

I have hours and hours of great memories playing 2000 and 3000. But you're absolutely right Skylines is what SimCity 2013 wishes it was. Maybe we'll get a new SimCity one day to compete with Skylines. Thanks for watching!

[@RamsesTheFourth]

@@TheBitGarage I remember that those days with each new SC game we collectively dreamed that it could be possile to build a city and then walk as one of the citizens there in FSP mode or something. I think one day that will happen as the graphics and level of detail in these games getting better and better.

[@blackbird1891]

Bro you struck a nerve bringing up the "game that should not be mentioned" 👿 - but then you quickly reminded us that Paradox Interactive isn't EA - and that our consolation was the beginning of something new 😇. SC5 was such an easy step to make. How EA tripped is beyond me. Heart goes out to the Maxis employees who caught the brunt of it.

[@TheBitGarage]

They had a monopoly on city builders, and they had almost 10 years to develop a successor to SC4, and they still ruined it. Poor Maxis :(

[@napoleonibonaparte7198]

City Skylines 2 trailer should've used Country Roads as its theme.

[@woesmaro]

Great video, I never got into ciities skylines but watched it on YT. I was scared being overwhelmed by all the content haha. Defenitely picking up 2 on release though super excited to get into another citybuilder, since anno1800.

[@rafario448]

the art direction of Sim City 2013 is so beautiful, its such a shame what they did to the rest of the game.

[@InnerHacking]

I loved playing the first SimCity on my 086 PC back in the day, I didn't even had a hard drive, it was all on floppy disks. It was sort of mystical watching cars appear in the streets out of thin air 🤣

[@tjlambaes]

I was there for Sim City on Nintendo. When I’m city 2000 came out I remember filling the whole map with city and leaving the game running all day and night so I could get the money to build those awesome bio dome structures.

[@Unmannedperson]

One thing worth mentioning is the dark age between SimCity 2013 and Cities: Skylines where many city builder enthusiasts like myself searched all over for the perfect scratch to that itch that EA bungled. Enter Cities XL and Cities XXL. Interesting concepts that just fell so short in many ways. Or the Tropico series, which is great in its own ways but doesn't really fulfill the same need as the SimCity or C:S entries. Same with the Anno series or Banished and its clones.

[@LetsTakeWalk]

This video is so well made, and you at this moment have less than 250 subs? Subscribed.

[@TheBitGarage]

❤️ Thanks for watching and subscribing!

[@gamingdexter]

Great video! My first was Sim City 2000, I loved that game. I super enjoyed City Skylines and was so hyped to see the sequel, I'll be getting it on release day for sure. Cannot wait!

[@julienb.4482]

As a huge SC4 fan, I found Cities XL to be a much better game than SC5. It didn't evolve in the proper way though, but it made me more reluctant to start cities skylines. Because without all the DLCs, Cities Skylines base game was... light. What i really miss though, is the difficulty :p For a long time i did not understand why SC4 was said to be hard. But then I played the new city builders, and yeah, SC4 is more difficult :p Thanks for this great retro :)

[@johnsonaustinj]

The rumors are CS2 ups the difficulty a little. I agree that mid/late game CS was fairly easy once you hit a certain point.

[@TheBitGarage]

Skylines is a bit too easy to make money, kind of like SC5 was. I never got into Cities XL. I was too scarred from SC5 at the time.

[@Tamaldo]

The funny thing is, with Life By You also being published by Paradox, it's looking like the game that will kill The Sims franchise, another EA product. As we've seen with the Titanic submarine, history tends to repeat itself...

[@xplayman]

I remember SimCity servers taking days to load, not hours. I left the launch window open overnight and still wouldn’t open. I didn’t like Cities In Motion 2 as much as Cities In Motion, but the devs did a top notch job with Cities Skylines. They properly updated the game, eventually, even though early on day time and night time were two separate fixed maps (and you had to buy DLC to get the night maps) but then they patched in the day/night cycle. A weather cycle in addition to the day/night cycle would be killer! Excited for everything they showed in CS2 so far.

[@christianosminroden7878]

I had *finally* just set up my C:S DLCs, mods and assets in a way where I didn‘t actually miss something AND had no compatibility issues anymore for two or three frackin‘ *weeks* (during which I didn‘t even got to play because I didn‘t have the time) when C:S2 was announced. Talk about „mixed feelings“ of both frustration and excitement simultaneously. Now, after having seen the dev diaries that have been released already, there’s left only the joy of building what‘s most likely to become my last and best, my _ultimate_ C:S city, along with growing excitement about what’s to come as official C:S2 base game as well as future DLCs and whatever the workshop will have to offer.

[@NoobsofFredo]

This is some insane production value for such a small channel! You've definitely earned a sub, mate.

[@OzoneGrif]

Cities Skyline is amazing, especially with mods like Real Time and Traffic Manager. Version 2 promises all of this, and even more! Looks like the perfect city builder game on paper. Yes, I will buy it

[@dubua2695]

Thank you SimCity. I used to play SimCity 2000 ... had in on a floppy disc back in the days... these floppy discs were my most precious treasure as a kid. Can't wait for the launch of CS2

[@TheBacktimer]

If anything, Cities Skylines success is mostly thanks to Steam Workshop. That was a good decision because the game was basically a clone of Sim City (with /larger tiles), probably heavily ported from Cities in Motion.

[@SShiJie]

I have been playing Cities Skylines on PS4 (Vanilla), without mods, what made me buy the game was the freedom to do things like zoning, and actually building your city

[@abelsuisse9671]

I feel so old watching this. I spent countless of hours on the original simcity, and then simcity 2000, and 3000. Never made it to the 4th series.

[@larkendelvie]

Thanks - subbed - brought back memories - for years I've bought new machines based on either SC or CS. I bought a new computer last year with CS2 in mind (had to buy it for work because I had to have Windows 11). Luckily my new machine meets suggested specs.

[@Romrijsel]

despite the massive improvement CS brought compared to SC, the fact that there isn't any relationship between different cities in CS is frustrating to me, yes there are some tourists and goods that are transfered to/from random cities, however the management there was in SC was something fun to work with and I was really hoping CS2 would enable me to make long distance mass transit (unless it is part of the game and it's still a secret but I don't want to get my hopes up for nothing lol) Still hyped AF for CS2's release!

[@MountainSnowInc]

Already pre purchased the Deluxe Edition. First game I pre purchased in about 7 years. First time I’ve felt confident enough in a game to do so in that time.

[@ayce2553]

The single best thing about cities skylines is the fact that there are an infinite amount of kids and assets that are supported via steam Ea just wouldn’t have done that It’s gotten to the point where I can’t load my games anymore because of the amount of beautiful mods and assets I’m trying to use

[@basedmathh]

I wish there was a mod on one of these city builders to have a Coruscant sized skyscrapers for the city.

[@TheBitGarage]

That would be awesome!

[@MatthewMS.]

I grew up in the 1990s with 3 games. Sim City, Sim City 2000 and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Those 3 will always be the best. I’m excited to try skylines one day, probably in retirement.

[@TrolliNaattori]

I bought cities skylines because I used to play simillar city builder woth my cousin when I was a kid. So I did not have any idea what gem I had bought. Cities is propably my favourite game now.

[@TheBitGarage]

It's such a great game to jump into for a bit. Like riding a bike, I could take a year off and jump right back into Skylines without missing a step.

[@TheCreateOutdoors]

I haven't played CS in over a year, but with the excitement of CS2 coming I'm going to hop back on and build one last city before I transition over.

[@nothumbbowler1802]

Sim City 4. I forgot about it. Those clips brought back some memories. I actually bough the last Sim City game, way after it was launched and thought it was pretty good. Then about 2 months later City Skylines came out. And I never bothered with that Sim City again.

[@cossallo]

dude, this is a great video. you deserve more attention!

[@kxmapper]

The algorithm has chosen you, nice video, you have a new subscriber

[@tayntp]

Couldn’t ever be more excited for the mixed-use zoning that coming in CS2. City builder games really need this along ago. The RCI separated zoning is good for the beginner to learn but it isn’t how the real world cities functions.

[@marcom9103]

The map size was the deal breaker for SC 2013

[@TheBitGarage]

Definitely! I felt like I could build out a city in a few hours and then get bored of it.

[@Hannodb1961]

I like how you dont even acknowledge the existence of Simcity Societies, and rightly so. My simcity journey consisted of Simcity classic Simcity 2000 Simcity 4 Cities XL Cities XXL Cities:Skylines Cities:Skylines 2

[@TheBitGarage]

I had never played Societies, so I didn't feel like I could really talk about it too much! But from what I saw, it didn't look great.

[@jacksonbarkerthebluehairedfox]

Cities: Skylines is a great city builder game, but the sheer amount of DLC and how dull the game is without them really kills the game for me.

[@DuaLeaD]

6:00 That freeway interchange near the top of the screen is barbaric and triggering my PTSD....

[@Seriously_Unserious]

Very good video and I too remember most of the games covered in it. I played Utopia for the Intellivision back in the day and upgraded to the original Sim City when it came out, as well as the 2000, 3000 and 4 versions of the game. I learned of the dumpster fire the 2013 installment was turning out to be and ended up skipping it, but did get into Cities Skylines when I had a computer that could support it and love the game to this day, especially the built in mod support, so flaws in the game like traffic management tools like the popular (must have for Steam users) mod TM:PE.

[@TheBitGarage]

I have never played Utopia! I always thought it looked like a great game to play with a friend. Thanks for watching!

[@Seriously_Unserious]

@@TheBitGarage It was a fun game for it's time, and you could also play it single player, just pick one island and leave the other unattended.

[@finfan83]

SimCity 3000 and Caesar 3 is my start with the city builders and it has been my on/off love with the genre ever since. Never played Cities Skylines, seems very complicated and involved in much micromanagement to the pain in the ass level.

[@deangianotti906]

Great video ! just wanted to say a huge part of cities skylines enduring success has been it's modding community, many very talented 3d designers recreating things like highly detailed trees all the way up to large real world skyscrapers has allowed people to recreate RL life cities very close to 1:1 scale :)

[@Jakeurb8ty82]

good on you for shouting out sc3ks soundtrack - I still play it and 4's when I'm in skylines. Total vibes.

[@Goodall10]

SimCity4 was great, but the writing was on the wall when it only got 1 expansion pack at a time where The Sims was redefining how many expansions a game could get. I was devastated by the failure of SimCity2013, mainly because it seemed no one was willing or able to continue to carry the genre. Fortunately, Colossal Order and Paradox were able to capitalize on the void in the market.

[@grantp.5700]

Great video! I was in love with Sim City but unfortunately never had the hardware to properly run it when I was younger. Let's see if that happens again with Skylines 2 😅