So I've got a confession: I just can't be bothered to play games with strangers online. That's all there is to it.
I am sure you are all decent upstanding people, but you'll understand that I just don't want to have anything to do with you when it comes to playing games.
It's not you, it's me... really.
MMO's are for a certain league of gamer and for which I am woefully unqualified. While I like the idea of teamwork in gameplay, I just don't want to be pressured to commit. Sure, I like co-operating toward a common goal, I just don't want to feel obligated to play because people need me to. I love obsessing over game minutiae as much as the next geek, but I hate the thought of missing out on something just because I haven't logged in.
And I'm all for on-going developer support, new content and getting online perks, but I resent the idea of paying a monthly fee for something I may not use much (I'm looking at you, Xbox Live Gold Membership).
I'm not saying that playing with real people can't be fun. Some games are brilliant in the company of friendly fools whether you're lobbing sticky grenades, or ripping up Shot Through the Heart on a plastic Stratocaster while the ghost of Kurt Cobain gently weeps. But all that is self-contained, uncommitted, unindebted fun.
Of course you can't go to a website these days without it demanding that you join its social-hub-face-media-twit-space-opolis. So game companies really can't be blamed for trying to steal a squeeze from the udder of the social-media cashcow. But can you make a social city simulation game succeed?
You know how when you were a kid and a friend would come over to play with your Legos and it just grates on you when he keeps using your pieces completely wrong, like stacking three thin pieces to make a fat piece, and you become so disgusted by the complete ignorance and wastefulness, so much so that you have to fabricate an argument, which leads to a yelling match, which leads to you faking a punch to the stomach and crying just so your mom has to drive him home? I think that's what it would be like trying to build a city online with other people.
I know Cities XL isn't trying to force you to collaborate, from what I've seen, the actual online interactions, the "massive multiplayer" part, seems to be pretty passive, as nothing really requires you to be actively engaged in real-time, all the time. And you pretty much have to build your own city yourself, and the biggest interference from other players seems to be in the form of a chat window that refuses to go away.
Anyway, I get what Cities XL is trying to accomplish here. But I question the usage of the MMO term that Monte Cristo has applied to it. Is this just a case of the marketing department's fetish for buzzwords? It seems like branding the game as an MMO might actually be doing Cities XL a disservice. When you call something an MMO it pretty much gets put in the company of games like World of Warcraft and you're always going to look small and out of place standing next to a juggernaut. And, if you are a game like Cities XL, you couldn't be blamed if you felt like maybe you should have made that left turn at Albuquerque.
It could be that Monte Cristo has set out to redefine what an MMO means, and perhaps Cities XL will be that genre redefining game. If so, they are definitely pushing an enormous sacred stone up a gigantic hill. Still, I can't help but think that the "MMO" label might be misapplied here.
Unsurprisingly, when I think about what a city-builder could be like online, I remember how Will Wright described Spore as a Massive Singleplayer Online game. That seems like an appropriate description for this kind of thing, doesn't it? Just that term alone, as it applies to city-building, provides warmth and comfort to us devotees who feel we have all been left out in the cold with the llamas by Maxis. So it's easy to fantasize about the "MSO" concept of Spore as it applies to a city builder, and I think this is more in the element of what this type of genre could nicely adapt to and evolve from.
With cautious optimism, I might say that Monte Cristo is at least heading in the right general direction, but whether Cities XL is going to take us directly there the first time round remains to be seen.
Still, I question the true appeal of Cities XL as a singleplayer game, when all the virtues of a rich city simulation is being promised only to paid subscribers. So, from this single-player, I would rather trade in all the massive-multiplayer-online-social-widgets in an instant if that meant I could have a solid, feature-rich, fun, realistic, expandable, customizable city-builder. But seeing that the game is yet to be released, drawing any sort of final judgement based on a beta build and a limited demo is not only inconclusive but unfair at this point. So I will just say that.
Despite some reservations, I am keen to see what the released game will be like. I realize buzzwords help with marketing, so I won't hold it against Monte Cristo if Cities XL doesn't live up to the "MMO" appelation, as long as it provides hours of good solid fun.
But I still won't play with you.
(Ok, maybe for a month. )
Are you a social gamer? Will only social gamers be able maximize their experience with Cities XL?
Sep 24, 2009 at 9:48 AM :-)
Sep 24, 2009 at 11:00 AM The real problem would appear to be that Monte Cristo appears headed with CXL to sorely disappoint both camps- those looking for a MMO are howling about the absence of features that interest them and those looking for a stand-alone city builder are furious about the absence of key features altogether.
David
Sep 24, 2009 at 7:12 PM The whole thing just really leaves me scratching my head. Honestly, I just cannot understand why you would expend ANY development resources on a gaming model that your target audience has flat-out TOLD you they have little to no interest in.
Sep 24, 2009 at 7:18 PM :o, even the biggest CitiesXL partner's leader wants only a city builder with no MMO. Another reason for MC to give back SP some features! :p
Sep 24, 2009 at 8:58 PM Be careful! Don't post this on the Simtrop forums, the mods are constantly removing posts just like this!
Oh wait, that probably wouldn't happen to you.
Sep 24, 2009 at 10:59 PM I agree with you Dirk, i couldn't have said it better myself. The lego comparison was perfect, i hate it when others meddle in my business, even if it's a game.
Sep 24, 2009 at 11:34 PM Are you a social gamer? No I am not. The main reason why games like SC4 are so popular is because you don't have to relay on other people to play the game, the computer is always there ready to play.
Sep 25, 2009 at 4:31 AM Thankyou for sticking your neck out (even to any tiny degree) and saying some of the obvious (to us who have been playing the game for months) things, that alot of people may not know. However, even if the game does present MMO functionality, which it does not currently, theres a whole heck of a lot more wrong with MC atm other than mis-classifying a game, and making it so ridiculously hard to get rid of the chat window. yes, the rest of us find it annoying too.
For example, terraforming was very buggy, VERY buggy. half the time it would flip back to the way it was and half your city would be underground, so there solution was to make terraforming 10x as expensive, and declare that it would not be usable for large portions of the map. These are the sort of fixes MC is doing with bugs in CXL.
One VERY dissapointed beta tester
Andrew
Sep 25, 2009 at 7:22 PM I am a MMO player, one of World of Warcraft. I am also a SimCity 4 player. I like them both. When I want to do something alone and creative, I'll play SC4. When I want to play with friends, I'll go on WoW--except lately, but that's due to a developer's issue. But, I was looking forward to CitiesXL being the next step in city simulators. This is indeed shaping up not to be the case, the more I read.
In the original SimCity, you could create airports, provided you met the goals (enough capital). In fact, all of the first 4 SimCity versions set up incentives to play using a goal-based system. Want a stadium? You can work at getting population up to where the desire is needed. However, all things need to be balanced. Maybe you want to discourage cars in downtown. But take away a feature like busses, and that discourages your population, or city planning. It shouldn't be a feature you need to pay $xx per month for. It also doesn't need to be linked to other cities.
I was all set for pre-ordering this game, as it was intended that the "MMO" portion was to be an extra to single-player mode. This is seeming to not be the case. Also, the term "MMO" is faulty, in that there are not multiple designers in any one city. This is more of false advertisement, bad PR here from the company. I will be holding back on my purchase until I see that there is more to the single-game content. I don't always want to go online, especially when it comes to city designer.
Sep 26, 2009 at 4:50 PM I love this article. It hits a lot of points of what I find irritating online and in gaming today. I don't get the purpose of things like Twitter. I don't play enough online games to justify XBox Gold. I play games at my own pace and thus balk at the idea of MMO monthly subscriptions. I don't even have a Facebook page! Sure, social networks can be nice for some things, but the vast majority of the time I completely avoid them.
I was very disappointed to see Cities XL shift for the MMO focus, stomp on the single player experience, and fail to include basic necessities at launch. Seriously, does everyone really believe Monte Cristo will deliver on all the things they've promised? Seriously people were you born yesterday? Did you suddenly forget how unreliable software companies and particularly game developers can be? Weekly patches don't happen on most of the games that promise them. Expansion content doesn't show up on the schedule it was promised (unless it was plucked out of the retail release and held back like so many companies do these days). Online support isn't as reliable as the ads make it look. I've learned a lot from games like Spore, The Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Unreal Tournament, Need for Speed and others. The one thing in common is that you really can't trust what's promised particularly when the company is cutting corners even before release.
Now please give me the option to turn off Rockstar Social Club, Steam friends list, Playstation Home, XBox Live, Impulse friends list, Games for Windows Live, and all that other online junk. I want a solid, expandable, single player experience! Not one that's been stripped down to force you into the planet version.
Sep 26, 2009 at 7:15 PM When I play a game, it is when I want to relax and forget that there are 6 billion less or more people in the world, and I dont care what they do as long as they leave me alone.
off topic, I want to get an anti-social shirt like that xD
Sep 30, 2009 at 2:16 PM I'm really saddened by the turn of events with MC stripping out features from singleplayer to try to force me to subscribe to their planet offer, which by no means could be considered an MMO. In fact labeling this game as a MMO is laughable at best.
It's really odd to me, but with every move that MC makes, it's like they have a spiraling death wish for their company, how they could possibly think that this will succeed in the MMO market is beyond me. I highly suggest that they stop what they are doing, take a deep breath and re-organize to...
1st. Create the expandable, feature rich, single player game that they touted in the early days.
2nd. Drop the whole MMO moniker, you guys really don't have one here.
3rd. Drop the release date back 6 months or 1 year or however long it will take to put out a quality single player game with the planet offer actually being the secondary importance in the game.
4th. Put your eggs in the GEM basket and anticipate making money that way.
If you put out a stellar single player game then people will be willing to buy GEMS to improve or expand their game, as it is now, you seem to have alienated your primary audience in hopes of cashing in on the MMO craze of which again, CIties XL is nowhere near being an MMO, hybrid MMO or any sort of MMO.
And finally, if they wish to continue down this path of MMO (which I think is suicide for their company), then you'll still have to delay the release and REALLY start pumping in MMO features into the game, which a global chat room is barely considered part of that experience.
I will not be one of the ones paying to try out their new idea as the guinea pig, I will let others experiment and see if the game matures any with time to actually add in some real features. Im really not sure what they didn't understand when they looked at their model game for Cities XL (SimCity 4), and saw all the features that are included with SC4 that they could have incorporated into CXL to make it a more feature rich gaming experience, but they seemed to just go off down that old City Life road which was Not by any means a successful games (perhaps they made some good money out of it, but as far as the gamers are concerned, it was not a successful game), and one that when the gamers were questioned, told MC what they liked and disliked, and MC said they heard us, yet acted to the contrary anyway.
Good Luck to MC, I think they are going to need more than luck however with this turkey.
Oct 24, 2009 at 12:36 AM Dirk, I couldn't have said this better! The stripping out of key features to a game to force gamers to subscribe to the planet offer is just a mean trick to play on your customers. Now, if they had waited to add some more features like mass transit and others BEFORE they released the game, I bet you they would have had more customers and they would have made more money. I think Monte Cristo's biggest mistake in this is that they rushed to release the game. Knowing that, I can tell that they have a lot to learn from Electronic Arts and how you present a game to customers and the do's and do nots, you know what I mean?
Oct 28, 2009 at 5:10 AM Totalement en accord avec vous Mr Dirk and more: I hate any kind of unfinished game... even if its my favorites sort of game!
Would you buy a car with 3 wheels only? No, of course!
And what about if the Dealer tell you:
Hey guy, try it and tell me what is wrong on this car and come back to repair it by youself in few months!
You will probably used one of your finger to explain what you think about that situation!
Oct 28, 2009 at 7:47 AM [Quote]
You will probably used one of your finger to explain what you think about that situation!
[/Quote]
I think many people already have,(virtually) and many more do once they realize that the game they bought does not quench their appetite for a real city building experience.
Nov 13, 2009 at 4:10 AM Am I the only one that finds it rediculous to pay a monthly fee to play a SimCity knock-off? It's not even worth the one time fee to buy and play this trash single player. Wait for Will Wright to make the next SimCity, MC has already failed twice at CB games. Pick a new genre, MC. Fail.
Feb 6, 2010 at 6:32 AM I want my money back and NO i will never buy 2011.
MC should update CitiesXL with mass transport and trees for solo mode.