Specialization Is Key to SimCity Success, Says Producer

Jason Haber, a producer working on SimCity at Maxis, says that the upcoming city builder will allow gamers to create specialized cities in order to maximize the value of their urban landscape and build regions that benefit from a variety of bonuses.

Speaking to CVG, the developer says, “It's really up to the player playing a region how they want to build their cities in order to relate to each other, but I find a lot of the time when I'm playing multiple cities I have one city that is a big tourist city, then I have another that's more about residential, then I'll have another that is more the commercial city.”

Haber adds, “I don't think it's that they're naturally competing, but there's a natural collaboration between those specializations.”

The new SimCity video game will be more focused than ever on the activity and the abilities of citizens and will encourage players to make specialized cities in order to benefit from the various unique structures they can build.

Because multiple settlements can be created in each region, players will also have the option to pool a number of resources and deliver complex projects that can benefit all cities that collaborate on them.

The SimCity reboot is using a new game engine, called Glassbox, which will allow for curved roads to be simulated for the first time and delivers landscapes that can look like tilt shifted photographs.

The game will also give players more options when it comes to individual citizens and their daily actions.

There are also more data oriented outlays that will help players determine the biggest challenges facing their cities and work to remedy them all.

SimCity will be available on the PC on March 5 of next year in the United States and three days later in Europe.