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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

#41

Post by maerch »

dfxm12 wrote: post #23
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

You can only sell a game once. Once you have your customers' money, you've achieved your goal. What else is there to do? DLC has a hard cap on your possible sales... You could work on a totally new game, but, I think companies are looking to cut costs by reusing content.

Factorio 2.0 seemed to pull it off. I think that as long as users don’t feel misled by a DLC that only adds a few skins, they generally appreciate larger updates to a game.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#42

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#43

Post by hypeatei »

master-lincoln wrote: post #31
hypeatei wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

To claim Factorio Space Age as counter example would require to show that it was as successful as DLC as it would have been as a new game. Probably not easy to show...

I think that's impossible to prove and I don't see how it's relevant. The OP claimed that people aren't willing to pay full price unless it's a clear, separate sequel with hype around it. The devs of Factorio proved otherwise with 400k copies being sold in the first week of Space Age's release[0].

0: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-434

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#45

Post by patwolf »

The funny thing is that CS1 probably wouldn't have been as successful had EA not dropped the ball on the SimCity franchise. There was a decade between SimCity 4 and SimCity (2013/5), and when it finally came out it was a completely underwhelming.

On the bright side, maybe another developer can pick up the reins and release the next generation's city builder game.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#46

Post by bhouston »

It does feel like they bet on Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline and it locked them into a specific way of development that was hard to escape from once it proved problematic.

City simulation games (Sim City, Factorio, etc.) are sort of a unique beast in that they have a ton of small scale detail that is animated and and dynamic.

The choice of engine here matters a lot, because engines are often highly optimized for specific assumptions and the assumptions of standard games (mostly static worlds with just a few dynamic entities - a platformer, a first-personal shooter) do not hold.

The studio taking this over should ensure they have some really good low level 3D devs guys on the team and a flexible engine.

I think that a home built engine could work in these cases, but only if you have the right guys for the job.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#47

Post by bhouston »

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

> I still don't know why we needed a sequel...

$$$. I think they need to design a long-term monetization strategy that does not require new major releases, but rather just more DLC, seasons, etc.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#48

Post by wongarsu »

TylerE wrote: post #39
bob1029 wrote: post #14

> 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 b…

Cities skyline is not top down. It’s a fully three d environment

But you are rarely looking at it from street level, you spend most of your time in a birds-eye view

I guess you could argue that top down should be defined narrower than that, but the steam tag Top Down is full of games like this [1]

1: https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Top-Down/

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#49

Post by standardUser »

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

He mentions Prison Architect 2, which like Kerbal switched studios for the sequel and ended up an unfinished mess that's objectively worse than the original. Meanwhile, Rimworld is raking in the cash (presumably) by continuing to make popular DLCs for a 12-year-old game! But it sounds like they wanted to go big, and I kind of get it since graphics matter a lot more for a city builder than a lot of other simulation games.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#50

Post by bob1029 »

bhouston wrote: post #46

It does feel like they bet on Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline and it locked them into a specific way of development that was hard to escape from once it proved problematic. City simulation games (Sim City, Factorio, etc.) are sort of a unique beast in that they have a ton of small scale detail that is animated and and dynamic. The choice of engine here matters a lot, because engines are often highly optimized…

Unity can definitely support scenarios involving 100k+ scene elements. The problem is that you cannot place the art team any meaningful distance away from the development team when using something like ECS. Game objects + components allow for a high degree of decoupling between the art & technology teams, assuming the total # of scene elements is well bounded (A custom engine is probably not a bad idea for a city builder. I feel like ECS is a good middle ground because you would need some pattern like this anyways and it would serve as a good reference if you decided to go fully custom.

I would challenge the notion that we couldn't develop an effective city builder within the constraints of a reasonable # of game objects. Players may be compelled to accept an experience that has a significantly smaller world size if the richness within each unit of world space is much higher.

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