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The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

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Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#11

Post by nottorp »

luckyturkey wrote: post #4

The story is familiar: small team nails a niche, publisher scales expectations, sequel inherits AAA scope without AAA staff. Ten years later we call it "mismanagement", but really it's the same incentive loop that breaks most creative partnerships once success hits Excel.

Yep. It's the curse of too much money.

Just because you hit on something and gamers threw their money at you because you deserved it, it doesn't mean the next iteration has to have MORE OF EVERYTHING.

Even some series that have maintained quality have got a bit too big for their own good if you ask me. Did Horizon Forbidden West need to be that big? Zero Dawn was the perfect length if you ask me.

Even Witcher 3 has a faint whiff of 'it could have been a bit shorter and still brilliant'.

I'm not sure it's always the publisher's fault though. Success and the worldwide obsession for cancerous business growth can go to your head even without outside pressure.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#12

Post by input_sh »

manyaoman wrote: post #2

"Developed by the Helsinki-based Colossal Order" -> Tampere-based? (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Order )

You'll have to excuse Claude, it must've missed that.

They're both Tampere-based, in fact they're like 500 meters away from each other. Unlike CO, Iceflake is owned by Paradox. CO has no public projects outside Cities Skylines, so the question is will they fail and will their employees simply be poached by Iceflake.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#13

Post by PLenz »

gear54rus wrote: post #5
voidUpdate wrote: post #3

I still don't know why we needed a sequel... Couldn't they just keep working on the original game, which already worked really well and lots of people loved? I had similar feelings about kerbal space program, but at least there it's somewhat understandable, given the jank that crept in over time

There definitely were improvements to be made in both KSP (physics of large vessels) and CS (FPS in large cities). Instead we get this... 0/2

Kitten Space Agency is looking like it will be the KSP2 we deserved but didn't get

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#14

Post by bob1029 »

> The engine lacked occlusion culling and relied on high-resolution shadow maps, causing “an innumerable number of draw calls”.

The engine does not lack or cause these things. The fact that the developers chose the HDRP pipeline for this game should be the most obvious dead bird in the entire coal mine. These games should be running on URP without question. We don't need advanced lighting systems in a top down city builder.

If we want an art workflow that allows artists to shit arbitrary content into the editor without thinking, we should probably reach for Unreal and flip on TAA like everyone else is doing.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#15

Post by Forgeties79 »

voidUpdate wrote: post #9
gyomu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Development teams are expensive to fund, and people who have bought a game will pay full price for a sequel, but won’t pay full price for updates/DLC. And releasing a sequel gets you hype and press coverage - potentially expanding your customer base - in a way that releasing updates won’t. There are some exceptions (No Man’s Sky?) but they are very few and far between.

Well ok, I know "value to shareholders" is a good enough reason for some people... I guess I'm not thinking capitalistically enough about stuff

In most cases I would agree with you but ultimately games get older and can’t be sustained forever without people being compensated. People don’t pay for DLC like they pay for sequels, as the other person said.

It’s not about shareholders necessarily. It’s also about sustainability and people paying bills - they live in a capitalist society and can’t choose not to participate at the end of the day. You can’t ask a dozen or more developers to keep working on a game for free for a decade or more. They have to eat too.

The only other option is keep playing the exact same game with little to no changes. Which you can! The original is still available. But if you want it to improve and change over time or receive substantial DLC’s, somebody has to get paid at some point.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#16

Post by hypeatei »

gyomu wrote: post #7
voidUpdate wrote: post #3

I still don't know why we needed a sequel... Couldn't they just keep working on the original game, which already worked really well and lots of people loved? I had similar feelings about kerbal space program, but at least there it's somewhat understandable, given the jank that crept in over time

Development teams are expensive to fund, and people who have bought a game will pay full price for a sequel, but won’t pay full price for updates/DLC. And releasing a sequel gets you hype and press coverage - potentially expanding your customer base - in a way that releasing updates won’t. There are some exceptions (No Man’s Sky?) but they are very few and far between.

> will pay full price for a sequel, but won’t pay full price for updates/DLC.

I'm not sure this is true, see Factorio as an example. They released Space Age as a "DLC" but for full price and with clear messaging that it's version 2.0 of the game.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#17

Post by shadowfiend »

voidUpdate wrote: post #9
gyomu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Development teams are expensive to fund, and people who have bought a game will pay full price for a sequel, but won’t pay full price for updates/DLC. And releasing a sequel gets you hype and press coverage - potentially expanding your customer base - in a way that releasing updates won’t. There are some exceptions (No Man’s Sky?) but they are very few and far between.

Well ok, I know "value to shareholders" is a good enough reason for some people... I guess I'm not thinking capitalistically enough about stuff

The point above wasn’t about value to shareholders but rather about being able to pay the people doing the actual work.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#19

Post by voidUpdate »

zamadatix wrote: post #8
voidUpdate wrote: post #3

I still don't know why we needed a sequel... Couldn't they just keep working on the original game, which already worked really well and lots of people loved? I had similar feelings about kerbal space program, but at least there it's somewhat understandable, given the jank that crept in over time

Both could definitely have used a completely updated engine at the very least (not just graphics, but scaling/capabilities around the core gameplay had grown quite a bit beyond what made sense originally), which would enable a lot of things which weren't as feasible in the original games, but it's hard to do that kind of reset and match 10 years of building and tweaking on the original. Hopefully KSA (Kitten Space Ag…

As far as I remember, KSP did keep pretty on top of engine updates. And I never thought the graphics were that bad, TBH. Sure, its not raytraced to hell and back, but I thought it looked just fine. However, there was a lot of physics jankery that never really got fixed (the kraken likes to eat complicated ships), and it did have performance issues in some areas. I think the community kinda wanted multiplayer and colonisation too, and the codebase was probably getting quite mangled and convoluted, making that hard. It would have been nice to see Squad get some time to be able to rework their systems over the course of a few updates, not really adding many features but focusing on performance and de-spaghettification, but I'm guessing Take-Two wouldn't see it the same way and just wanted MORE CONTENT, MORE SALES, MORE PROFIT

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#20

Post by phgn »

voidUpdate wrote: post #3

I still don't know why we needed a sequel... Couldn't they just keep working on the original game, which already worked really well and lots of people loved? I had similar feelings about kerbal space program, but at least there it's somewhat understandable, given the jank that crept in over time

The interesting part about Cities 2 is that the simulation is much more in-depth: pops have a real job where they commute to (versus taking any available one in the first game), they don't just teleport around, companies have to import&export resources and make profit based on that, etc.

Also the graphics/lighting seems much improved with a more realistic art style.

Both things which you cannot really retrofit into Cities 1.

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