Whatever Happened to SimCity?

SimCity took the world by storm when it was originally released in the 90's. However, in recent years things have not gone so well for the IP. Let's explore the rise and fall of SimCity.
Enjoy!
Thank you for checking out my Patreon: / endingsexplained
Huge thank you for the footage, you guys are the real MVPs:
@oldcarboi9899
LawsListens
jdenm8
doormysh
Helimopp
Music:Bossa Antigua, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Hard Boiled, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Night in Venice, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Vibing Over Venus, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
On Hold For You, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

[@doormysh]

Thanks for making this! great video. SimCity forever. With the failure of Cities Skylines II it's now time for the return of a SimCity sequel in the style of SimCity 4, a beautiful isometric highly detailed accurate city simulator with depth

[@exitsexamined]

Hey thanks so much for the kind words! Glad you enjoyed it! It would definitely be interesting to see if a new SC will come out, would be good to have some competition haha

[@oldcarboi9899]

I would've never guessed there were so many SimCity spin-offs, a great video as well!

[@exitsexamined]

Hey, couldn't have done it without you! Thanks for the footage again!

[@AerialEscape]

You did an amazing job braking this down and introducing the main "players" (no pun intended). I really hope you have success on this channel. Great job!

[@exitsexamined]

Thanks so much for the kind words! It was actually a little difficult to cover so much in the video haha. Glad you appreciated it though!

[@StealthArcher]

4:07 No mention of SimIsle, the best worst best Maxis spinoff

[@Khronogi]

I'm still not sure that it wasn't a fever dream. And I'm also still not sure what I was even doing in that game. Simtower I only once got to 100 floors, simcopter was just a sim city rendering game, Sim safari had stuff

[@StealthArcher]

@@Khronogi As a kid I loved just playing the UFO level, as it's goal was nebulous and tourism had boosted income. Them Good Old Boys is the best level as a joke though.

[@exitsexamined]

There was a lot of facisnating and slightly unhinged titles to go over there, I just scratched the surface. SimIsle is worth a mention though, actually you can play it for free now, for better or worse haha: playclassic.games/games/business-simulation-dos-games-online/simisle-missions-in-the-rainforest/

[@meteorical8036]

What a great video. You deserve so many more views! Thanks for bringing back memories of playing SimCity 3000 as a kid. Now I’m going into urban planning, and I wouldn’t be surprised if SimCity influenced that

[@exitsexamined]

Hey thank you so much for the kind message! It's so amazing how this series inspired a generation of people to do urban planning and development, I'm sure you'll be amazing at it!

[@tymon5349]

the whole reason sim city is dead is jsut because of 1 thing.......... EA..........they dont make games, jsut brake them

[@exitsexamined]

Well in this case they fixed it, and then they broke it lol

[@tim3172]

Does EA also accelerate and turn? Or does it just brake?

[@yourlocaltoad5102]

A video about spore would be cool since there’s pretty much a universal nostalgia for this game and it’s weird offshoots.

[@donovian2538]

Speaking of SimCity, you should do a dive on the XO laptop. I remember my great aunt got in on the first wave of funding and got us one. If I recall correctly, it was a buy-one-for-one deal where we got a laptop and the company sent a laptop to a kid in a developing country to match our purchase. It had an older version of SimCity on it, if I recall correctly. Might have been the original SimCity. Had some other programs too. One for learning coding and another for music production. Also had the ability to connect to the internet, which was an absolute mistake.

[@exitsexamined]

That’s really interesting! I remember hearing about it awhile ago but totally forgot about it! It’s on the list, sounds like an awesome thing to have as kid. I added it to the list!

[@donovian2538]

@@exitsexamined I don't know about later generations of it, but the first one was pretty much a toy. The coding program was a very basic series of logic puzzles, other programs were similarly rudimentary. The music dev software couldn't even import or export files. My parents dismissed it as a toy and in turn that's how me and my brother came to see it. I hope it was put to better use elsewhere.

[@exitsexamined]

@@donovian2538 Even if it’s rudimentary I think it sounds like a great thing for kids in the early age of the PC. I’ll look into it a bit more and let you know if I release a full video on it!

[@sunalwaysshinesonTVs]

King of the city building genre is a title for CO/PI to lose. DONT FKN BLOW IT CO/PI! (All indications seem to point to CO/PI shit'n the bed). The city builder genre NEEDS competition!

[@exitsexamined]

Yeah that’s a good point, more competition could never hurt. Would be interesting to see what a 3rd party could bring to the table, there’s 100% some interesting ideas to do

[@johanwittens7712]

10:20 A city builder that doesn't allow you to build a city, just a tiny village sized unrealistic clumping of buildings, is not a city builder. Sim city 2013 was not a good game in any way. It was horrible and i still regret ever buying it. And there are many many more reasons why this game was utter crap. Just to name a few: - Tiny city size. - No terrain editing even in-game on the city level. - No public transit options worth the name. No pedestrians or cyclists either. Only car dependency. - Density system linked to bigger and bigger roads again forcing car dependant cities. - Building expansions are not shown at the start of building the building, making planning for the future near impossible. - Building expansions waste tons of extremely valuable, limited space. - Extremely limited building size variety, one size per wealth and density level means it all ends up looking the same, and/or wastes tons of that precious space. - Water and power is managed automatically removing one of the basic fun parts of the game. - Traffic is just abstract and does whatever. No way to effectively track it or manage it. - Pointless industry system that is pretty much useless in single player. - Industry chews up a ton of that precious precious space. And so on. They basically threw out EVERYTHING that had made the sim city franchise great and what players liked about it, and replaced it with idiotic pointless gameplay and features. It was like this game was designed by people who never actually played any of the previous sim city games. No wonder it failed so miserably. Cities skylines came along at exactly the right time, and was the game sim city 2013 should have been. I spent more time in skylines' terrain editor and map creator than i did in the entire sim city 2013 game.

[@Ambers128]

To quote SimPark "he is dead, his species was overeaten."

[@exitsexamined]

I’m just happy a SimPark quote was dropped on this video before it even reacked 1k views haha

[@Ambers128]

@@exitsexamined my sister and I used to quote that every time I loaded that game up. I swear the frog said that every minute. Like what else were the deer supposed to eat?

[@BPMa14n]

Sim City 4 you didn't mention it was probably the best one. Then the Simcity 2013 came and it was gorgeous, sometimes it kicked you out cuz drm but no biggie. The problem is that it lacked the depth that sc4 had like plumbing and power which cities skylines brought.

[@exitsexamined]

I agree, I think 2013 was actually a great game in many aspects but the fumble with the launch and the "dumbing" down of some mechanics mixed with the devs trying to push always online at the expense of other aspects of the game messed things up sadly

[@NA-ee8mt]

nice video

[@exitsexamined]

Thanks so much for the kind words, awesome someone out there in the world enjoyed it!

[@cnix100]

cities skylines 2 is awesome, its just really hard to run, the graphics are very ambitious

[@exitsexamined]

I haven’t played it, but from everything I read it does seem interesting and like a good game. Part of the reason I didn’t want to get into to much in this video is because it would go way off topic, but cities deserves it’s own video, will be interesting to see reception to cities 2 after the dust settles!

[@peoplelikefrank]

The mechanics don’t work! Traffic, money/income is f.ed up.

[@exitsexamined]

@@peoplelikefrank really? I didn't get a chance to play it, it's too bad to hear though...there's not a ton of other titles that are city simulators at such a scale

[@TheRealBlackNet]

Marble Dops was a great puzzle game not a sim.

[@exitsexamined]

Fair point! I just wanted to add it in somewhere in the video!

[@TheRealBlackNet]

@@exitsexamined yes Marble Dops deserved this 👍

[@dlistkris]

The title should be “what ever happened” not “whatever happened” - it will make your videos look more professional

[@exitsexamined]

Thanks for the advice!

[@TheRealEtaoinShrdlu]

The title should read "What ever happened to SimCity?". You are confusing "what ever" with "whatever". Typical American.

[@Dayshan]

As much as I'd love to have good faith in a successful new Simcity. Its better if the IP was bought out & taken far away from EA. Video is a really nice loveletter to the game 🤌❤

[@exitsexamined]

Hey thank you so much for the kind words! I agree EA does not have the best track record with SimCity but all we can do is hope that if they do reboot it they will learn from their mistakes. If all else e fails at least we have SimCity 4 mods 🤣

[@Dayshan]

@@exitsexamined Ah true 😂

[@marekkos3513]

Great video.I think this is the time , when Simcity 6 should be announced ;].Ea 90% is preparing MAXIS for a city building game.Now the question is , if its going to be a mobile game , or online only game.I would love to see SiMCITY 6 , for new generation machines.

[@exitsexamined]

Same! Although it would be interesting to see what a new vision would look like under basically a new version of MAXIS! I'd personally hope for another PC version as opposed to a mobile or online! Or do you think an online version might work this time around?

[@marekkos3513]

@@exitsexamined I prefer offline mode.Online version would be ok , but just in the far , far ,far future as a DLC.

[@exitsexamined]

@@marekkos3513 I'd honestly take any new SimCity title at this point, online only or otherwise. I guess we’ll see what happens in the future - hopefully they learned from past mistakes

[@johanwittens7712]

​​@@exitsexamined unfortunately that attitude is exactly what allows game developers to create utter crap games like sim city 2013. If they know people will buy anything they throw out, there's no incentive to make anything good. They made their money either way and don't care wether the game was good or not. This is why so many crap games are released these days in appalling states. Once they have your money they don't care anymore. EA had their chance and blew it. You should not be hoping for a new SIM city. You should be hoping cities skylines 2 gets better. And there's tons of great indie city builders and quirky city builders available too. I've been hooked on timberborn for a while now. I'm not waiting for a new SIM city iteration at all. EA will fk that up too with micro transactions, loot boxes, subscription systems, and so on. All they care about is getting your money, not about making a great game. Why do you think sim city 2013 was launched as online only? To eventually force you to pay to play online. That's it.

[@heatherharrison264]

@@johanwittens7712 You are right. I would not expect anything good out of Electronic Arts. If they get back into SimCity, it will have nasty DRM, it will be always online (gamers have finally been beaten down on this and won't whine about it as they did with SimCity 2013), and it will have DLC spam and microtransactions so absurd as to make Paradox look reasonable by comparison. Just look at how The Sims has developed over time to see what will happen. The best hope for the standard type of city builder at this point is that someone else comes from out of nowhere with a new one. As for Cities: Skylines 2, even if they fix it up, I don't think I want to jump on another Paradox-published game. Their practice of releasing bare bones games and then trying to nickel-and-dime the players with DLC spam (and introducing bugs and poor optimization into the games over time), while not as bad in this regard as Electronic Arts, is not something that I want to deal with. In the meantime, as you said, there are many smaller scale indie city builders these days. I too have been spending a lot of time with Timberborn.

[@nicholasbarton3184]

Awesome video! I NEED to check out SimAnts haha

[@exitsexamined]

It's free to play online! playclassic.games/games/city-building-dos-games-online/play-simcity-2000-online/play/

[@agilemind6241]

I definitely played way too many hours of SimAnts. It's not the most depthful game, but I remember it being fun when I was 10 years old.

[@exitsexamined]

@@agilemind6241 I had fun when I played it for this video and I'm way older than 10 lol

[@GoryWory]

Whenever you say 'My name is Otto' me being the Simpsons fan unconsciously add 'And I love to get blotto' p.s. this channel rocks!

[@exitsexamined]

oh boy now I'll think of that reference too every time. You might hear me change it on the next video haha

[@hobog]

I remember being hyped for CitiesXL, then resigning to wait for Cities Skylines to come along. Is SimCity 4's modding community still active? It was tremendous, and many of its modders came over to Skylines' mods

[@hobog]

Just queued a vid called "Is CitiesXXL Worth $2.73 in 2023?" 😂

[@exitsexamined]

I believe it is! Although appears to have died down a bit since Skylines. I think we were all hyped for CitiesXL :(

[@exitsexamined]

Some of these videos are getting out of hand lol

[@hammerhyena4207]

EA happened. The end.

[@nicholasbarton3184]

Well, it might not be the end, we'll see!

[@YellowBriefs]

EA saved Maxis actually, their financial decisions in the mid 90s were pretty awful, really bad management... The Sims 1 only saw the light of day thanks to EA's basically unlimited money/resources, and their best titles came after being acquired by them: SimCity 4, The Sims 2, etc. It is true that in the end EA would ruin the company, but it was in the hands of the very same people that had once built it, including Lucy Bradshaw and other executives. Ironically, EA was Maxis' best and worst thing to happen.

[@exitsexamined]

@@YellowBriefs Agree on this - MAXIS could make great games but sometimes didn’t seem like they always had good / consistent strategy. EA helped with this, at least at the start.

[@hammerhyena4207]

SimCity4 was not better than 3000 or 2000. They took away the randomly generated map. @@YellowBriefs

[@YellowBriefs]

@@hammerhyena4207 SimCity 4 is considered the best title in the franchise and probably the best city simulator ever. It also allows you to create entire regions from scratch with a map editor. But anyway that wasn't the point of my comment at all...