Who has never dreamed of being the boss of the place where he lives? The exhilarating feeling of being in control of all those who live under our charge, as well as the satisfaction of favoring them in the way that we believe consequently. The perfect egotism exercise has a genre within the video game, and we want to explore its first 25 years of life.
There is something exhilarating about the City-Builder genre . Maybe it’s the feeling of having full control over a virtual parcel of land, the ability to build something out of nothing to our liking; or perhaps, seeing a non-existent population grow and thrive, as if it were an ant terrarium, without the real responsibility of having living beings in our charge. Whatever the reason, it is a genre with a faithful community within our environment, as well as one of the most developed and exposed in the last thirty-five years.
It is also one of my favorite genres, I have spent an obscene amount of hours of my youth creating my perfect city in SimCity 4 , or eating my head with trade routes in some installment of theAnno saga . Now the genre is in limbo. Works like Banished propose new points of view, while others like Frostpunk rescue the more classical side from a modern and, sometimes, revolutionary perspective . All of them, always based on the great names of the genre, which throughout their history have taken us from the contemporary city to the immensity of space.
Reviewing that story brick by brick, title by title, is such an abysmal task that it would not fit in a single text; but we can start this task. Review the first fifteen years of this great genre. To do this, it is essential to ask what defines a gender of these characteristics. They all enter, to a greater or lesser extent, within the great branch of simulation; But it is important to define where a Tycoon ends and a City-Builder begins , for example, or we will risk not talking about anything in particular.
I am going to refer to the words of the father of this genre, Will Wright , to answer this. The American developer defined his first great work with a sentence that read “(SimCity) It’s like a garden. You decide how you are going to do it and your goal is that it grows in the best possible way while the plants grow.” In other words, in every city-builder, the main game loop must always revolve around the creation and maintenance of a city and, although other elements may appear, such as economic management, they will always be added, never as protagonists .
A strong foundation
Will Wright. Father of the modern City-Builder.
Although it is widely recognized to date the establishment of the City-Builder genre with the launch of SimCity, Will Wright’s work was not the first to show the elements natural to this genre. We already saw in titles like Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio (1978) things like the management of a city, its development and the construction of buildings that give us various types of bonuses, and how in this title, in many others.
Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio put us in command of a medieval Italian city
Perhaps the video game that is closest to what we understand today by City-Builder before the release of SimCity was the revolutionary Utopia(1981) by Don Daglow. A title that laid the foundations of the modern simulation, management and strategy genres in the middle of the arcade era. We say that Utopia was revolutionary because of what the home video game was like when it was released. Daglow’s title placed great emphasis on providing a board game experience on our screens, an idea that was far removed from the arcade gameplay that proliferated at the time. Of the transgressor of the well-known title of Intellivision we want to highlight two elements that would remain present in the genre that we are discussing today in this text: its character in real time and the support in a graphical interface.
Although Utopia would not fall within the genre, it showed many of the elements that we would see later
Utopia’s playable loop is essentially straightforward. Each of the two possible players takes control of an island, which they will have to manage and develop to overcome their enemies. To do this, we must develop a strong economy that allows us to sustain and protect our island. From fishing boats to military units. Elements foreign to your opponent also come into play, such as calamities or pirate attacks.
The game was developed in real time, so the management we do must be fast as well as efficient ; as well as reactive to what our opponent does, and all this is represented on the screen in a graceful and colorful way, in contrast to the importance of the text in titles of similar cut previous to Daglow’s work. These are elements that we would see reflected later in SimCity, which, while not directly inspired by Utopia, does borrow part of the foundation it laid on the home video game.
The Micropolis accident
Until 1989 video games did not have a very pleasant relationship with cities. In the best of the cases they were scenes in which events took place; while in the titles in which he gained more presence he used to take the role of objective, such as the New York of Crush, Crumble and Chomp! by Epyx. It was one of these games, in which the city took on a background stage role, which would lead to the first great known City-Builder.
Micropolis was the predecessor of the legendary Sim City and was published in 1989, after years of development.
Raid on Bungeling Bay (1984) was a Shoot-em up for the NES and Commodore 64 that took place in a colorful seaside town. It was the first title developed by Will Wright. During its development and numerous playtests, the famous developer realized that designing the video game sets – the city in which the title takes place – was more fun than what the game itself could offer. That was the seed that led him to inquire more about the creation of tools to ” paint“These cities and the subsequent systems that interconnected the buildings placed on the screen. The germ of what would become SimCity began to take shape from that moment, under the name of Micropolis, until in 1989 it saw the light, after several years of documentation and development , on personal computers of the time.
The premise behind the game was simple: you are the mayor of a prosperous future city and your duty is to develop the initial wasteland until it is. the freedomthat Wright’s work gave the player when planning the urban spaces of the city, as well as the relationship between the various systems of the game – economy, energy, needs and growth – would be the key to the success of the title. We already see in this first installment the elements that would define the saga, such as the delimitation by functions of areas and buildings, or the buildings that meet specific needs. All this network of systems had a deep impact on many players, as the title gave neophytes enough space to have fun with their ideal city, while the ability to optimize space and game elements gave free rein to those who liked to more brainy challenges. And he did all this without a fixed goal , the game had no other objective than to play him.
“The cavalry is coming!”
SimCity 2000 improved on many aspects of its predecessor. He expanded the bases of what his first installment showed.
When other games demanded reflexes, the City-Builders invited you to play with squad and bevelThe success of SimCity with the general public made it one of the video games of the moment. The intention of Jeff Braun , co-founder of Maxis, to make “a video game that even the Yuppies could play” materialized, and the success of the work published by the company was followed by many others. First of the own Maxis, as it is the case of the curious SimAnt , a carefree simulator of ant hills; o SimCity 2000 (1993), the second installment in the series. But it also came from other studios and developers, who had seen something unique in SimCity . When most games focused on fast fighting, action and reflexes; the SimCity genre asked you to think and take things easy. Play with square and bevel.
One of the first movements that we could see within the genre was to take “the city” to other spaces – or literally to space – in works such as the remarkable Moonbase (1990), or Utopia: the Creation of a Nation (1991), as many other titles of the genre these early years, both released for the Amiga and MS-DOS; a trend that would eventually consolidate the home computer as the preferred platform of the genre. Historical settings also begin to proliferate, with works such as the first Caesar (1992); or fanciful, as happened with Stronghold .
The Settlers is one of the most remembered and influential strategy sagas in video game history.
As expected, with each title released, the genre thickened its mechanics. Many of these were related to their theme. History and fantasy titles began to add touches of real-time strategy – another genre that was beginning to expand at the time – to the formula; while those with space or futuristic settings liked to add elements of survival or defense. The City-Builders were beginning to take shape and attract large studios. Producers and developers such as the legendary Sierra Studios , or the only LucasArts , used to getting away from the dizzying pace of arcade action, launched their own vision of the genre in works as remarkable as Outpost , or Afterlife. The latter, considered one of the first “God game” of the modern video game.
Of all this batch of titles, one of the most prominent was The Settlers (1993), by the renowned Blue Byte. The German studio released a title that combines a large part of the mechanics that we still see in modern titles of this genre today; mainly, due to the appearance of objectives and the economic and territorial micro management that the title had. Also noteworthy is the emphasis that the Germans gave in their graphic section, being able to even observe the inhabitants of our territory. The Settlers was a huge success, kicking off a long series of titles and laying the foundation for a different school than the one SimCity founded. One more focused on the strategic aspect.
The madness of the “SimGames”As a note to part of the text itself, I would like to leave a space for the huge number of titles that were released after SimCity. The success of SimCity served as a catapult for Maxis in the early 1990s. The study wanted to explore how far the theme “Sim” could take with results, in most cases, not very favorable. SimAnt was not as successful as its predecessors, but its sympathy is undeniable. It is to this time of the North American company that we owe titles such as the already named SimAnt; the curious SimFarm; the infamous SimCopter; or the popular SimEarth. Over thirteen years, Maxis released more than twenty-two titles. His experience gained during many of them, ended up leading to such popular works as The Sims.
The golden age of the genre
If the early nineties were the years through which the genre laid down much of the mechanics that we still see today, at the end of that same decade we would see the true magnitude of these video games. A trail that will continue until the beginning of the new millennium. We speak of the golden age of this genre not only because of the release of great sequels to the titles that had developed the City-Builder until then; but because of the appearance of new titles that continued to expand the genre.
Tropico’s formulaWe are going to make a short stop along the way to discuss the case of Tropico. At the time of its departure, we were in the golden age of the City-Builder genre; as well as in the early golden age of modern RTS. However, the predominant settings were historical or fantastic, in part, the result of the success of the already named RTS and their settings. SimCity 3000, the spearhead of the genre in terms of name, was not able to mark as its previous installments did, and the contemporary setting was losing steam. The response from PopTop Software, creators of the first Tropico, was to bring together elements of both genres and add a layer of humor. It was far enough away from its direct competitors and did not fall in comparison with titles like the already named SimCity, or Constructor. What’s more,
Within this framework, the years 1998 and 1999 attract attention. Caesar III represented the advance in mechanics that was not seen in its second installment, focused on improving elements of its predecessor. It added new playable layers with elements such as religion, artificial intelligence of citizens, or non-player systems designed to enrich their games. In the same year, the third installment of The Settlers further expanded the warmongering elements of its predecessors, while adding new systems for the development of cities. We would also see the birth of the Anno series with Anno 1602: Creation of a new World; whose greatest virtues, not the only benefits, was the inclusion of its exploration and the developed goods trading system. Characteristic of this series.
Right the following year we would have the release of works as interesting as Pharaoh , published by Sierra Studios. A title that will expand the concept of micromanagement within the genre that has aged excellently thanks to its solid mechanics. A setting that we will see again twenty years later in the future Builders of Egypt this year. Other notable titles from the same developers would be Master of Olympus: Zeus (2000) and its expansions; o Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom (2002). But of these first years of the two thousand we want to highlight the first installments of the Tropico series, by PopTop. Some carefree City-Builders that would gain great popularity during this time and that opened the way to one of the most beloved sagas of the genre.
SimCity 4: the City-Builder that marked an era
SimCity 4 was the finishing touch for the contemporary turn-of-the-century City-BuilderThe third installment of the most influential saga of the genre was not so lucky. SimCity 3000 was a commercial success, but, unlike its predecessors, it was not able to take a seat in its setting in the same way that SimCity 2000 did after its launch. In the same way, do not underestimate what Maxis achieved with this installment, being one of the most successful of the saga , the gateway to the genre for many ordinary players.
It would be the fourth installment that recovers the throne of this name. Since the boom of the nineties, the genre tended towards fantastic or historical themes; with some great representatives that we have already named. The launch of SimCity 3000 didn’t change that trend. The contemporary theme did not open the doors to mechanics as original and interesting as those we had seen in installments like Anno, or Stronghold (2001), and those who approached it did so from a unique perspective that the saga could not afford to take , as was the case with Tropico. In addition, The Sims focused much of the efforts of Maxis, being the most successful saga of PC at the time.
The development team’s solution was to rethink some of the foundations of the saga, but not its mechanics. Sim City 4 had to be easy to learn, but keep the optimization and systems that its most loyal audience demanded, and it had to achieve all this with a renewed graphic section according to the time. To achieve this, they introduced elements recognizable by new users, such as an interface based on The Sims, as well as the MySims mode. For those staunch to the saga, the delimitation of zones and the economy system that they remembered now had interface and management improvements; while the various modifications that came to the game by the community further enlarged the possible cities that we could build.
SimCity 4 was the last great installment of the saga and the main inspiration for other great contemporary-themed titles, such as Cities XL (2009), orCities Skylines (2015). The latter, considered by many to be the true successor to the saga after the controversial 2013 reboot : SimCity. The latest release of this mythical saga.
The state of the genre today
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This golden age was followed by a few years of continuity that preceded the huge hiatus that the City-Builder suffered both in launches and in mechanical development until well into the new millennium. Sagas like the several times named Anno in his various installments; Tropico, the latter, with its redirection from its third and fourth installments under Kalypso Entertainment; o Cities XL, also named in the previous section; they were in charge of keeping the genre always alive, but it would not be until the release of Banished in 2013 that we would see a real change in trend.
Frostpunk is the latest game from the authors of This War of Mine.
The Shining Rock Software studio’s work was not particularly prominent in the year of its release; but it is the first of several titles of the same cut that we would see later in the genre and that have revitalized it enormously. Works like Frostpunk by 11bit Studios, or They Are Billions , by Numantian Games, mix the genre with Survival in an almost intelligible way. Rimworld has numerous narrative elements alongside this formula. Meanwhile, works like Dawn of Man take scenarios that we had not yet experienced in depth within the genre. And titles like Rise of Industry put the Tycoon and the City-Building twinned to the core.
Oddities like Foundation have also had a lot to do with it , a construction game that asks us for nothing more than to beautify a medieval area; or Islander , which advocates extremely simple and relaxed mechanics. Along with the resurgence of some sagas that did not see a new installment in years, it seems that we are at the gates of, but a new golden age of the genre, which seems very difficult; a resurgence of this.
