Cities: Skylines and the future of city building games

The city building games let you imagine your own perfect city and build it from scratch. They give you the opportunity to control almost every aspect of the the city, giving you the opportunity to do whatever you want.

I have always had a dream to build a city building game. Well, I had the opportunity to Interview Karoliina Korppoo who is the lead designer and maybe lead dreamer for the world’s most popular city building game - Cities: Skylines. That game was launched just 2 years ago, in march of 2015, and has sold over 3.5 million copies of his game. It is available in Steam and you can play it in Windows, Xbox, OS and Linux.

Cities Skylines has sold over 3.5 million copies. Considering the success of Cities Skylines and the intense interest in the launch of SimCity 2013, why do you think the city building genre has so few games?

Simulation games were until recently seen as slightly outdated and oldfashioned. Simulation, aside from city-builders, has usually been a niche market and not very interesting to the general public. I believe lots of city-builders will emerge is the next couple of years, but the mobile and console trend had previously made them almost obsolete. We have seen in the last few years a sort of "old school revival", with many developers making games inspired by or based on old classics.

Both the SimCity series and Cities Skylines have been critiqued by players for flaws in their depth of simulation. Do you think we will have to wait until the advent of human level artificial intelligence before a city building game could have the simulation depth players want?

When players talk of simulation games, they very often bring realism into the discussion. Realism is important to any simulation game, in allowing the user to have an understanding of the consequences of their actions. Still, realism is usually not a very good direction for a game. Flight Simulators are ultra realistic, but have lost a lot of their game likeness in going for a 1 to 1 simulation of reality. In city-builders, the real building of a city is not very fun and takes a long time. When people pick up a city-builder game, they usually wish to be god-like beings ruling over the whole city, so that they can take actions which have consequences in the game simulation.

Often when a player asks for more realism or deeper simulation, what they are really talking about is more challenge, or that a certain game feature feels off. This is very valuable feedback, but more often than not is not actual lack of simulation, but rather an usability issue or something to do with balancing. It is very easy to think that if a simulation game feels "off", it is because of the lack of realism or depth, but from a game developers perspective, we have to be really careful to make sure we understand what the players are really talking about. Making simulation more detailed can have its cost in the game being less fun.

There are technical limitations to the algorithms we use, and surely they could be improved to make the game world seem even more alive. Currently the level is enough for a very enticing simulation with realistic cities and believable citizens you can relate to.

If you could have an unlimited budget to develop Cities Skylines, what features would you like to add?

This is tricky one! I would maybe add more actions for the citizens, so that they would react to player actions more. For example gather to look at a newly built building on do more interesting kinds of idle actions when traveling the city. I'd love to have more life on the waters, maybe citizens using their own boats to travel to places. I am very fond of the game and would not change that many things, rather I'd add more detail and liveliness to the existing features. Oh, and a public transport map resembling a subway map!

I am sure there are ways of doing that well, but at Colossal our focus is single player games. I would expect esports city-builders to have a lot less attachment by the players to their cities, and that is part of the core of Skylines. It's not just about making your city thrive, it's also about creativity, making the city you want to, and seeing just how the simulation reacts to different actions. These are elements that don't suit esports that well and are not often seen in multiplayer games.

Which do you personally prefer DLCs or Sequels?

I'm not sure if I understand the question. Do you mean small addition compared to large ones? We do smaller DLCs, free updates and larger DLCs. They are all very valuable, but as a designer my favourites are the large DLCs where I can be more creative, and free updates where I can make the game better for all players. We are currently working on a large DLC, Mass Transit, that will come with a free update that I am especially excited about. The update will add features inspired by mods that were originally made by players. We have looked at those mods and wanted them to be something all players will have to make the game more fun to play. Simple but useful things, like more visual guides to road building, will greatly benefit all players, both new and experienced.

Do you think a next generation city building game could be used as an innovation platform? Here are some examples of what I am thinking about. 3D printing houses from models created in game. Realistic topography to map flood risk for real cities. Cities that are created be actively to be used as social spaces in virtual reality.

Definitely yes. There have been a few cases where Skylines has been used by city planners and for city planning already. While it is a game, it can be used as a quick sketching tool for how a city might look. It's also very easy to pick up, so that people can participate in urban planning with no previous knowledge of the subject. For example the Finnish city of Hämeenlinna had a contest where they created a map with the real topography and how the city was at the moment, and asked for people to plan a new neighbourhood in an area that was to be developed in the recent future. Citizens got to participate (the city also offered a couple of game licenses so owning the game was not a requirement) in an easy, fast way, the city got feedback and ideas from citizens, and in a very easy format to understand.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk has launched a new company called Neuralink. According the article the company is pursuing what is called “neural lace” which one day may allow the uploading and downloading of thoughts. Could Cities Skylines be a useful first application for such a project where people will use their thoughts to create a city and then be able to interact in a massive multiplayer universe of other creators with cities populated by “sims”.

It is an interesting idea! Often just imagining something can be very rewarding, and I believe this applies to urban planning and playing city-building games. Imagining your own city and having it connected with other players' cities could be very interesting and satisfying.

Is anything else you would like to say about Cities Skylines and maybe some hints of what the feature may bring?

The next big thing will be the Mass Transit expansion. It brings new public transport options to the city, and is kind of a back to the roots experience for our game studio. Before Skylines, we made two public transport simulation games, so we have lots of experience on this area!