Yet today, where cities allow growth at all, it typically occurs in an ad hoc fashion, resulting in suburban street networks larded with dead ends, confusing curves, and overburdened freeways. Historically speaking, American cities planned out streets and parks in advance of growth, most famously in the case of New York City's 1811 plan, which broke Manhattan out into a grid of streets and avenues. Plan out a street and park network that can handle growth in the long run, or risk game-breaking traffic and an unhappy populace. Every city in the series starts with a road network, built to the player's specifications. SimCity is also uniquely preoccupied with the planning of infrastructure, such as roads, sewer lines, and parks. In awe of how the series charts key metrics, Balkind urges readers to consider how we might deliver "New Yorkers a SimCity style interface for their city." As civic tech entrepreneur Devin Balkind argues at Gotham Gazette, real world cities have a lot to learn from SimCity in this regard. The metrics of SimCity provide players with clear gauges of urban success: shorten commutes, keep housing accessible, reduce pollution, and your city will thrive. Though the series is overconfident about the capacity of top-down management, its emphasis on data-driven governance is nonetheless refreshing. As longtime fans will know, casually destroying and rebuilding neighborhoods in response to planning metrics is a major element of the SimCity. From this framework emerges a case for controversial slum clearance and redevelopment programs-fashionable programs at the time of publication in 1969. For Forrester, a city can be broken out into a simple set of variables-population, housing, and industry–and mechanically controlled by planners. The book, reviewed by William Patterson for a 1971 issue of Reason, posits that we can model out cities as inputs and outputs, for the benefit of better policy making. Wright himself has admitted that the SimCity series was heavily inspired by Urban Dynamics, a wonky text by Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer Jay Wright Forrester. After explaining mechanisms like traffic management and municipal finance, the guide casually directs players to read city planning heavyweights like Kevin Lynch and Le Corbusier, an obtuse book on population projection, and the American Planning Association's monthly magazine. SimCity was unique in that it was the first video game to include an instruction manual with a bibliography. With subsequent re-releases on the Super Nintendo in 1991 and Windows in 1992, it became a bestseller. Who would want to play a game you can't beat? After multiple rejections by the major publishers, Wright co-founded his own publishing company, Maxis, in 1987 and found a distributor in Broderbund, best known at the time for edutainment games like Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (A quirky fit, as slow early sales would prove.) A trickle of positive coverage in mainstream outlets like The New York Times granted SimCity an early cult following. The concept initially flummoxed industry leaders. Players were given an undeveloped field, a stack of cash, and a few basic planning tools before being let loose. Would players enjoy the same opportunity, he wondered? Four years later, the result was SimCity, a game that departed from nearly every facet of traditional game structure, exchanging levels for open-ended gameplay and clear objectives for a sandbox. Thunderful says it'll have more details on its other SteamWorld projects at a later time, and while we wait for those - alongside a firm release date for the newly announced city builder - PC players can get stuck into a demo version of Build, now live on Steam.While working on Raid on Bungeling Bay -a game about bombing cities-legendary game designer Will Wright discovered that he had more fun designing cities than destroying them. That report pointed to a 2023 release for Headhunter and the mobile game, with the shooter due next year. SteamWorld Headhunter - a "stylised and colourful, third-person co-op action adventure" - was announced in 2021, and a company earnings report shared last May revealed Thunderful also has a city builder (now revealed as Build), a mobile puzzle title, and a turned-based tactical shooter/strategy game on the way. Watch on YouTube SteamWorld Build - Announcement Trailer.īuild's livestream unveiling was accompanied by teases of further SteamWorld titles in development, and while Thunderful didn't elaborate during its latest broadcast, previous announcements from the studio have given us a pretty good idea of what's still to come.
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