Having been invited to the closed beta of SimCity this weekend, I thought I'd take to my keyboard and get some of my early thoughts out there.

Be aware though that the game is still in beta and over a month away, so any criticism here can be taken with a pinch of salt until the full game is out. You also only get one single hour, and any SimCity fan knows that it takes days or weeks of gameplay to get a decent city built.

As much as I'd love to post some videos or screenshots I took, I'm not 100% on how strict the NDA is for this beta.

So, without further ado, these are a few of the main additions, improvements and problems I found in one hour of the game.

Space

The real major complaint stemming from the beta is the issue of how much space you are given to build your city. I have to agree that upon being given my chunk of land, the first thing I noticed was that it was considerably smaller than past games. As the beta is only an hour, I didn't get the time to decide whether it was actually enough or not. What I can say, is that in one hour I had filled approximately half of the land. Part of this is due to the amount of road that is required for zoning (see below), and another part is due to the fact I was rushing, but even so it felt like it could easily be filled in a day of play.

It is a genuine worry, and in a recent Reddit Q+A, it was confirmed that the largest spaces available in SimCity are around the size of a medium landscape in Sim City 4. It's difficult to understand why this is, given that with the resources available today, you'd expect a bigger city if anything. If this game receives any negative reviews or comments, it's highly likely that the small spaces will be at the root of the complaints. It also leaves me wondering exactly what use an airport or rail system might be, unless of course they are linked to other cities.

Other cities are available to play in the same region, so if you find yourself out of room it is possible to make a new city and have it cooperate with the old one. The two will function and work together like neighbours if you allow it. However, I get the feeling that those empty spaces are really meant for playing with friends.

Zoning and Building Modules

After the atrocity that was Sim City Societies, it's good to see area zoning back. It's not SimCity without residential, commercial and industrial zoning, and it's all back with all the proper indicators and meters that you need. It has been simplified though, which I still can't decide is for the better or worse. The good thing is that it's no longer possible to control the zoning of different land values yourself. Where before you could zone residential areas for the poor, middle class and rich separately, the game now does that for you. You'll simply zone the area, and as land values rise (through low pollution, good transport, low crime etc.) the sims will simply upgrade the buildings themselves. It works, because it means you really have to work to keep land values up if you want big skyscrapers and large hotels.

One of the downsides of the new system though, is that zones now have to be placed directly onto a road. Previously, you'd zone a large square area and the game would add some roads in for you, leaving you to upgrade them at a later date. Now, you can only zone the edges of existing roads. It makes sense, but I found that space was very quickly becoming less as I had to constantly lay new roads to zone new areas. It means you have to have a line of road on either side of every row of buildings, or try to make the gap between two roads big enough to fit two streets of buildings without wasting precious space - which can be difficult to tell at first. It led to me often zoning an area and sims not having enough room to build on it, rendering it wasted space. I'm not saying it's a bad system, but it takes a little getting used to and could possibly result in a city with a LOT of road when given more than an hours playtime. This adds to the feeling of larger canvases being needed.

Gameplay footage showing zoning

Aside from zoning, you can still put buildings down ('plop', as the game puts it) singly in the form of fire/police stations, hospitals, schools and many more. A new feature to this however, is modules. They are extensions and add-ons to buildings you've already placed that enhance both its properties and design. It can include adding extra classrooms for a school rather than forking out for an entire new building, or simply adding some extra squad cars to a police station. The beta locked out most of the upgrades, but it's easy to see how adding modules to existing buildings will be essential later on.

City Specialisation

One of the major new additions to SimCity is what Maxis have called City Specialisation. It's pretty self-explanatory and can be seen in most of the videos that Maxis have put out. The beta only shows seven specialisations to choose from, but I'd say more are likely to be added post-release. Only Gambling was available this time, and then only a single casino. On my second run through, I flew through the things I'd normally plan carefully - zoning, road placement, pollution worries - and got right into placing my casino to see the difference it makes.

I was pleasantly surprised.

The casino brought in some criminals, crime went up dramatically and I hadn't yet placed a police station, causing chaos. Many of the buildings already built were torn down and new hotels put up to accommodate the tourist influx. Land values rose around the casino, and so did my funds. I placed a few modules - a comedy club and a room for reasonably rich folk. That brought more business. Coffee shops and hardware stores disappeared, restaurants and posh banks put in their place. The city suddenly felt more alive, like it had a reason for being there. Night fell and the casino glowed in the centre of my town as people continued to flock to it. It became instantly obvious that in order to get a bustling, vibrant metropolis like was shown in the trailers, you have to take up a specialisation. That's really the idea of the game.

Official Maxis Screenshot of a Casino City

Unfortunately, the other, larger casinos were blocked for the beta, but I'm incredibly intrigued to see what happens when the larger ones are laid down. I would assume that as you upgrade and build better things from the specialisation menu, sims will upgrade the rest of the city themselves providing the land value is kept high. Specialisations are what are likely to form the backbone of your town, and as a result the towns around you.

Verdict

It's far too early to say whether or not SimCity will be a huge success, and the beta didn't allow for enough access to different parts of the game to really give a definitive review.

The game does feel like it's been dumbed down slightly, perhaps for the benefit of younger players. Statistics about your city now appear less detailed than before, and while this could be seen as a negative, it does actually allow for smoother, more relaxed gameplay. I'll stress again though, it's entirely possible that some options were simply locked out for the beta.

Still, it takes a good hour of careful city building to be ready for a specialisation, meaning that most beta players won't get chance to really tinker with it unless they rush like I did. I firmly believe that the specialisations will transform your city in more ways than I mentioned above. Mining cities will cause pollution in the way that casinos cause crime, and it's sure to bring a new dynamic to the gameplay.

What I can definitively say is that I thoroughly enjoyed what I played and I now have no doubts about keeping my pre-order. I played through my hour about 5 times, experimenting with different methods, and each one provided a different experience. It's incredible zooming down to street level and just watching your city come to life.

With the only major worry at this point being the small city size, SimCity is shaping up to be an incredible game and one that should be enjoyed by most.

In the wake of yet another tragic gun massacre in America, articles are flying around all over the web - as we all probably suspected - trying to pin some of the blame on video games. We see it every time.

"Mad man played Call of Duty!" or "Gun rampage psycho played video games!" headlines are a common occurrence after tragedies, as though that information is supposed to explain the motive.

But there's a noticeable trend in that most of these articles and opinions come from people who, quite clearly, aren't very well versed in the world of gaming. People who appear as though they haven't sat down and enjoyed a video game since the 1980s, if at all.

Below is a video from UK chat show, The Alan Titchmarsh Show, where two 'experts' and the host gang up on someone from Computer and Video Games (CVG) over his thoughts on violent games. It says it all that the host can't even get the name of a game right, referring to it as 'Call of Duty 2: Modern Warfare'. Best to pop a prozac before you watch it and move any breakable objects out of sight.

The woman makes a point that violent games are more responsible for crime than other entertainment mediums because they're interactive. The player is actively choosing to be violent, rather than passively watching it. Fair point, except it's irrelevant. It's still pretend violence. If anything, a game should satisfy a psycho's needs more than a movie does, since it would likely help fulfil their sick fantasies of causing violence. Now for the best part, a quick google search reveals that the woman is Julia Peasgood, and some of her previous work includes doing a voiceover for Playboy TV and voiceover work on a horror survival video game called Martian Gothic: Unification. So apparently, she's "categorically against violence for entertainment" unless it means she's getting paid. Brilliant hypocrisy.

Then there's the other guest, Kelvin MacKenzie. A British 'journalist', famous in the UK for producing some of the most inaccurate stories and outright lies that Britain has seen in the last 25 years. Nothing that comes from him should ever be trusted. He's like a worse Piers Morgan.

It's plain to see that they have no idea what they're talking about, and the poor guy from CVG gets lynched - in spite of being absolutely correct - simply because they refuse to acknowledge or respect his point. Their minds were made up before the guy started speaking, and the studio audience completely eat it up.

Here's some things to consider for these 'experts' or parents that campaign to have violent games completely banned:

1. Do some research. There is nothing to show that people who play violent games are more likely to commit crimes than those who don't or those who watch violent movies. Unless the person is mentally ill, in which case anything could set them off.

2. What about music? Mainstream rap music often refers to guns, violence, gangs and crime, yet anyone has access to this by simply going on YouTube or turning their TV on. There's no age restriction on TV music channels, and it's easy to bypass it on YouTube.

3. On the topic of age restriction, games do have them. If you don't want your child playing violent games, it's your responsibility as a parent not to buy them. But then you may as well stop them watching most movies too, just incase they start wanting to blow stuff up or something.

4. Consider the ratio between gamers who don't commit crimes and those that do. Probably similar to that of movie watchers or rap listeners. Because it makes no difference.

5. This graph:

People need to remember that it's 2013 and gaming is an art form now. It's growing at exponential rates, and it's just as much of an entertainment form as films, TV and books. It is not just mindless shooting, violence and swearing. It is not only teenagers or thugs that enjoy it. Games are story-driven and immersive, and some even impart knowledge.


I've played games since I was 6-years-old (1996), and my parents were always incredibly lenient in letting me play violent games. I first played Grand Theft Auto when I was 9, I've always loved first-person shooters, and I love gory games like Gears of War. Yet here I am, a university student without a violent bone in his body who doesn't even swear in front of most people. I'm yet to mow anyone down in a tank or beat someone to death with a bat.

Why? Because I'm not evil. I'm not an idiot, which is what you need to be to commit evil crimes or believe idiotic theories that games can somehow be the root cause of violence. It's naïve, and a claim seemingly only made by 'experts' or so-called psychologists.

It is possible, admittedly, that a violent game could potentially tip someone who is already insane over the edge. But the same can be said for violent movies, TV shows, even books. Any medium has potential to implant sick ideas into a mentally insane mind. Why is it gaming that always has to take the flack? The massacre in Aurora occurred during a midnight premier of The Dark Knight Rises by a man who was a huge superhero fan and reportedly thought he was The Joker. Yet, I don't recall seeing any 'experts' claiming that we need to stick the boot into violent movies.

Accidental murders also occur all over the world every single day, whereby the killer is simply someone who is easily angered and strikes out. Not because they've watched a violent movie or played violent games, but because they have issues.


While I cannot say that games don't have potential to send someone over the edge, I am saying that anything can, and it's unfair and inaccurate to blame every tragedy on video games simply because it's the newest form of entertainment and thus easily targeted. It's time that we started raising awareness and finding help for those who are mentally ill, rather than laying the blame at a completely innocent door.