What makes a game a classic?  Is it graphics?  Is it brand name? Is it replay value? Or, is it much deeper than that?  Why has SimCity4 lasted for over 6 years and why does it continue to reign supreme as the world's foremost City Building Simulator? 

Six Years is not an insignificant amout of time in the world of software; it is downright ancient.  The longevity of SC4 is seen not only in the community support on the web but also on the retail store shelves.  SC4 and its expansion pack, Rush Hour, are still being sold in many venues all over the world, it was even included in the latest boxed set for the more recent Sim City Societies possibly as a way to increase the value of the much loathed sequel.  You would be hard pressed to walk into a video game store and find a new copy of a 6 year old game.  SC4 is one of the few titles that has stood the test of time in spite of more recent 'next gen' simulators that have tried (and failed) to topple the city building monopoly that is SC4. Sim City 4 has out dated graphics, a limited grid design structure and is no longer maintained by the manufacturer (last official patch was April 2003), so, why has it remained so popular over the last 6 years?

The answer is not in one single feature but in a multitude of dimensions.  SimCity 4 is not just a game, it is a mechanical simulation, a designer's tool, an artist's canvas and the foundation for an international community of over 300,000 fanatics and growing everyday.  It is these dimensions that has allowed SC4 to survive the fast paced world of software development and remain a champion of the simulation game market.

I have found that my personal experience with SC4 has covered all of these dimensions.  I have even taken long hiatus' from the game several times and eventually I find myself back in the community, answering questions, performing experiments, writting blogs, and having fun.  sometimes you just have to sit back and marvel at all the ways that makes SC4 a great experience.

As a game, SC4 appeals to the gamer, allowing them to create their own challenges and achieve thier own goals.  SC4 has an intuitive set of rules than can be easily understood by a casual player while remaining deep and complex enough to challenge even the more hard core gamer.  The player is free to set their own goals within the sandbox nature of SC4, whether that be to create a self-sustaining farming community, a bustling suburban shopping plaza or a profitable central business district with millions of highly educated inhabitants.  As the player's city grows, so too does the player's vision and personal skill, but, all the while the rules of the game remain constant giving the gamer a stable environment in which to achieve their goals and feel a sense of personal satisfaction.

This is how I started in my SC4 adventure.  I was a hard core gamer.  My initial goals with SC4 were to build as large a city as possible with the most efficient space I could.  Waffleton, here I come!  As I kept trying to achieve this goal I realized that SC4 has a suductive complexity that at first seems simple to understand and manipulate, but, the more I dug into it the deeper it went.  Eventually I found myself falling into the rabbit hole that is the city building simulator and I never once wanted to crawl back out.

"Waffleton, you've all been here before!"

As a city simulator, SC4 appeals to the mechanic, allowing them to experiment with various city designs and see exactly what is going on under the hood.  SC4 offers many different kinds of charts, graphs, and visual queues that gives the user the feedback they need in order to understand the consequences of their desicions and plan a better future for their city designs.  This aspect of SC4 appeals to those people who love to take things apart and figure out how they work. It is not about the challenge of achieving a goal within a set of rules but in understanding how the deep and complex rules all work together to create the city they have built.  It's about pushing the limits of the simulation and experimenting within and without the rules.

Once I started down the path of the mechanic I started building experimental cities.  I wanted to understand how the population caps worked, how the different mass transit systems worked together for the greatest effects, how the individual pieces of the RCI structure affected one another between cities in a region.  I started building roadless cities, I planned out meta-grid designs on graph paper and I think I spend more time outside of the game developing plans in bitmaps and spreadsheets then I did actually playing the game.  Eventually I graduated my personal understanding of the games mechanics to the point where I could start writting tutorials for other players.  I felt that I had 'mastered the game'...then I saw my first City Jounal using BATs and was mystified once again.

"Experimenting in the SC4 underground"

"Oh yes, its a meta-grid."

As a designer's tool, SC4 offers users a way to create an architectural design and watch it come to life in a simulated environment.  The architect may see SC4 as an outlet for their creative skills in designing new buildings and as a way of seeing these designs "live" in relation to other creations in an organic simulation.  the designer is not as concerned with the rules or mechanics of the game as they are with taking their idea and seeing it come to life in a simulated world.  SC4 provides a creative outlet for all kinds of designers with variying levels of skill to ply their craft and expand their own horizons.

"Now ain't that purdy?"

I was awestruck when I saw my first set of CJ's with BATs and Lots.  These cities did not use grids, they were naturalistic, organic and inspiring.  I never imagined that SC4 could be so versitile.  I had always thought that SC4 was a game where the point was to build a big city and make a lot money.  I knew I had neither the time nor the talent to create a BAT, but, I was inspired to contribute to the vast collection of precious archictural designs known as the STEX.  I got my hands on the SC4 Lot Editor, downloaded a few prop packs and all of sudden my focus changed from designing meta-grid-mass-transit-hyper-efficient cities, to designing parks, gardens, and other fillers to make any city a more beautiful place.  I had begun my transformation from gamer and mechanic to designer and artist.

As an artist's canvas, SC4 provides a blank medium on which a new world can be painted.  SC4 provides every level of detail that any artist would want to explore.  Regional play offers a vast area for the creation of large, expanisive networks, terraforming, and visual recreations of real world cities.  In each city, the player can decorate every single square with trees, parks, buildings or transit adding personality to their virtural dream.  Within each square the artist can use the Lot Editor to design a new landscape for a pre-exiting lot using various props and textures.  For the artist, it is not about the rules or the mechanics, it is about the freedom of expression and the potential for visual artistry and story telling.

After reading and viewing many City Journals I was finally struck with inspiration to create my own masterpiece.  I already had confidence in my ability to manipulate the mechanics within the rules of the game so that I could build any kind of city (rural, urban or anything in between) and all I needed to do was make it beautiful.  My masterpiece became my obsession.  I spent hours everyday toiling over every single square in every city in the region.  I was just as concerned about the zoomed in view with the parking lots of the new mall I desiged as I was about the regional view and making sure that all the small farming communities blended together into one giant rural hinterland.  The region had to be hand terraformed with mountains, rivers and beaches and the roads had to seem to curve with the landscape.  I downloaded gigabytes of BATs and Lots and made a few of my own.  finally I was able to break away from the grid style of play and was able to create the beautiful scenes of an organic, living city.

"Now that is a work of Art and Science, If I do say so myself."

"Peaceful, beautiful and simulated"

I think that many of us can identify with at least 1 of the above personalities and perhaps more than one, but, these personalities of the game alone are not enough for the game to survive.  When the gamer achieves his one millionth resident, who does she tell?  When the mechanic has uncovered a secret of the simulator, with whom does he share it?  When the architect designs another skyscraper, who can build it?  when the artist paints another terraformed masterpiece, who can admire it?

The answer, of course, is the community. 

I know, that if it weren't for the community that I might have been stuck at the gamer phase, constantly trying to build that huge Megalopolis.  I most likely would have put it down many years ago and only played it a few times here and there to get that "big city" fix.  It was the people on the forums sharing their ideas, asking their questions, and writting their City Journals that inspired me to move on and try new things.

SC4 gives the individual an outlet for our various desires and personalities, but, it is the community that gives us a way to share our achievements and gives us a reason to go back to SC4 and achieve more so that we can share those experiences with others.  SC4 by itself is a good game, decent simulator, useful tool and open canvas which appeals to a wide variety of personalities, but, it is the community of enthusiastic players, detailed mechanics, visionary arcitechts and talented artists that come together to keep the game alive.

Related Entries:

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• The unfortunate truth about SimCity fans

The dimensions of SimCity 4