SimCity is a city-building and urban planning simulation game where many players can play together online. It was developed by Maxis Emeryville and published by Electronic Arts. Released for Microsoft Windows in early March 2013, it is a new version of the SimCity series and the first major game since SimCity 4 was released a decade earlier. A version for macOS was released on August 29, 2013.

In the game, players create a settlement that can grow into a city by assigning land for residential, commercial, or industrial use. They also build and manage public services, transportation, and utilities. SimCity uses a new engine called GlassBox, which allows for more detailed simulations than earlier games. During its development, the game received praise from critics for its new engine and updated gameplay. However, some publications warned that the game required an internet connection at all times, which enabled cloud saves and multiplayer features, such as trading and sharing resources between cities.

Before its release, SimCity received positive reviews. However, its launch was poorly received because of widespread technical and gameplay problems linked to the mandatory internet connection needed to play and save progress. Issues included internet outages, problems saving progress, and difficulty connecting to the game’s servers. Because of these problems, reviewers could not test the game, calling the launch a "disaster" and the game "unplayably broken." They advised players to wait until the issues were fixed before buying the game. SimCity was the final game developed by Maxis Emeryville before the studio closed in 2015.

Gameplay

SimCity uses a new GlassBox engine, which helps create more realistic visuals. System architect Andrew Willmott said the game aims to show players what they would expect to see, such as traffic, economic issues, and pollution. Two new features include multiplayer gameplay and limited resources.

This version of SimCity has curved roads and zoning areas that can fit different road types. Zones are divided into residential, commercial, and industrial areas. The density of buildings in these zones depends on the type of roads nearby.

Cities in a region are connected through networks like highways, railways, and waterways. Players can see traffic and pollution moving between cities. Cities can trade resources or share services like garbage collection or healthcare. They can also work together to build large projects, such as solar power plants or airports. Larger regions allow more cities and projects.

Modules in SimCity are attachable parts that add features to buildings. For example, fire stations can have extra garages for more fire trucks, and city halls can have a Department of Safety to unlock advanced medical, police, or fire buildings.

The user interface, inspired by Google Maps and infographics, helps players understand the game better. Visual cues like animations and color coding show how a city functions. For example, opening the water tower shows water density, and clicking the sewage tab shows waste flow and system overloads. Other data shown include air pollution, power distribution, police coverage, and zones.

Many resources in the game are limited. Some, like groundwater, can be renewed. Lead gameplay engineer Dan Moskowitz explained that if a city relies on a resource that runs out, its economy will suffer. Creative Director Ocean Quigley said all terraforming changes are natural results of building roads, zones, and structures.

Unlike earlier versions, zones are not divided by density categories. Instead, the density of nearby roads determines the type of buildings in a zone. This means each zone type exists once, and building density depends on road density.

Roads are a key part of the game. They carry water, power, and sewage. New tools let players draw roads as straight lines, rectangles, arcs, circles, or free-form shapes. Roads range from dirt paths to six-lane avenues with streetcars. Road density affects nearby building density. Streets are 24 meters wide, and avenues are 48 meters wide. Upgrading a street to an avenue requires demolishing the old road. When high and low-capacity roads intersect, the higher road has priority, with stop signs or lights added automatically. Road guides help players space roads for building development. Transportation options include boats, buses, trams, and planes.

Players can focus cities on specific industries, such as manufacturing or tourism. Each industry has unique looks, behaviors, and economic strategies. The game includes a global economy where resource prices change based on supply and demand. For example, if many players sell oil globally, prices drop. If a resource is rare, its price rises.

This version of SimCity is the first to support full online play since 1996. Regions can include cities from multiple players or be private. Players must log into EA's Origin service to play, even in single-player mode. At release, an internet connection was required for every session until an offline mode was added later. The connection is asynchronous, so brief network issues don’t stop gameplay, but longer outages (over 19 minutes) can cause data loss.

Cities in a region can share resources or build "Great Works," such as an Arcology.

Development

Before the game was officially announced, the German magazine GameStar shared concept art. Shortly after, a pre-rendered trailer was also leaked. The official announcement happened on March 6, 2012, during the Game Developers Conference. At first, the game was available for Windows. Later, a macOS version was confirmed. EA showed two new trailers at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012, which displayed in-game graphics for the first time.

In August 2012, players could sign up to test closed beta versions of the game. These tests took place in January and February 2013 to test how the game servers handled large numbers of users.

Ocean Quigley, the creative director of SimCity, confirmed that a macOS version was being developed. However, it would be released after the Windows version.

Maxis created the game using a new simulation engine called GlassBox. This engine works differently from previous simulation games. The GlassBox Engine was designed by Ocean Quigley and Andrew Willmott of Maxis Studios. Earlier games used high-level statistics and then created animations to show those statistics. The GlassBox Engine replaces statistics with agents, which are units that represent objects like water, power, and workers. Each animation is directly connected to an agent’s actions. For example, instead of showing a traffic jam animation to represent traffic problems, traffic jams are created by many Sim agents moving to and from work. A four-part video was released with Dan Moskowitz, the lead gameplay engineer, explaining the engine’s behavior.

The citizens in the game are also agents. They do not live realistic lives; they take the first job they find and return to the first empty home they find.

After the game was released, players created mods that allowed offline play and access to developer tools. On January 9, 2014, Maxis shared its modding policy. This policy allowed re-skinning and building creation but did not permit mods that changed gameplay rules.

The game’s audio is connected to the simulation’s activity. For example, when a building generates power, its music and sound effects match the simulation’s beat. Audio Director Kent Jolly explained that each car in the game is tracked individually. When a car leaves an intersection, a sound plays. The sound changes based on the car’s speed. As cars move faster, the audio matches what the player sees while staying true to the actual traffic.

Chris Tilton composed the game’s orchestral score. The music changes based on the player’s actions and the game’s state. For example, when the player zooms out, the full version of the score plays. When zoomed in, some musical elements are removed to make space for other sounds in the city. The music also grows as the player’s city develops. Tilton aimed to create new music for SimCity rather than reusing older styles. He synchronized all gameplay music to 120 beats per minute. To add variety, he wrote some tracks in triple meter or with syncopated rhythms while keeping the beat consistent.

Release and launch issues

SimCity was released on March 5, 2013, in North America, on March 6 in Europe, Australia, and Japan, and on March 7 in the UK. The game was available in three editions: the standard edition; the Limited Edition, which includes the Heroes & Villains and Plumbob Park DLC sets; and the Origin-exclusive Digital Deluxe Edition, which also includes three European City DLC sets.

The initial release in North America had many problems, especially because the game required an always-on internet connection. When the game became available for purchase through EA’s Origin service, many players tried to download and connect to EA’s servers at the same time. This caused network outages. Players reported issues like long loading times, disconnections, crashes, and loss of saved game data.

The server problems and negative feedback led some media to call the launch "disastrous." Others compared it to the launch of Diablo III, which had similar issues. Online retailer Amazon.com temporarily removed the downloadable version of SimCity from its site because of customer complaints.

It was also found that the GlassBox engine had several problems, such as traffic taking the shortest route instead of the one with more space, and Sims not living in the same homes or workplaces consistently.

EA addressed the server issues by adding more servers and creating a patch that turned off "non-critical gameplay features," including leaderboards, achievements, and region filters. On March 7, Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw said more servers would be added over the weekend. She noted that over 700,000 cities had been built in the first 24 hours but acknowledged that many players faced server instability. She confirmed that more servers would be added to meet demand.

Senior producer Kip Katsarelis explained that servers were often at maximum capacity because many players stayed connected for long periods, making it hard for new users to join. He said EA planned to keep adding servers until demand was met.

Nathan Grayson from Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote that EA handled the situation as well as possible but damaged the idea of "games as a service." He criticized the lack of learning from past launch failures.

On March 8, 2013, EA paused some online marketing campaigns for SimCity due to ongoing technical problems. EA stated it would not offer refunds to users.

In a blog post on March 8, Bradshaw said server issues had improved and server space had expanded, but some users still faced stability problems. She explained that more players logged on than expected and called the error "dumb." She reported server capacity increased by 120 percent and errors dropped by 80 percent. She promised another update over the weekend and offered a free game from EA’s catalog. Maxis said making the game playable offline would require significant work, but later it was found that a line of code could be changed to allow offline play.

Fans of the series filed a petition through the White House website, asking for an industry-wide return policy for games that rely on remote servers and DRM. This was later covered by mainstream news.

To compensate for launch issues, EA offered early purchasers a free game in March 2013. Origin users who bought and registered the game before March 23 could choose a free game from a list of EA titles.

EA maintains a Server Status page on the SimCity website, allowing players to check server status worldwide.

Since the initial release, Maxis has released patches through an in-game utility. These patches addressed issues like traffic intelligence, game-save rollbacks, and emergency vehicle routing. Maxis continued updating the game to improve quality and fix bugs.

A month after launch, Maxis had released 8 official patches, bringing the game to version 1.8. A 2.0 patch was released on April 22, 2013, with major improvements. Patch 4.0 was released on May 23, 2013, re-enabling leaderboards. Patch 6.0 was released on July 30, 2013, adding a new region. Patch 7.0, released on August 22, 2013, added a bridge and tunnel tool and improved traffic. All patches included notes describing their contents, available on EA’s forums.

Offline mode was added in Update 10, allowing players to save cities locally. Cities are static and do not operate while working on another city.

On November 13, 2014, EA released SimCity: Complete Edition exclusively on Origin. This compilation included the Digital Deluxe Edition, the Cities of Tomorrow expansion, and the Amusement Park and Airships DLC sets. It did not include the Launch Arcology DLC set from the Cities of Tomorrow Limited Edition.

Reception

In June 2012, at E3 2012, the video game SimCity won 8 awards out of 24 nominations. On August 23, 2012, SimCity received the "Best PC Game" award at Gamescom. The Gamescom jury said the game had "fantastic graphics" and balanced old game features with new elements to make it easy for new players. On December 14, 2012, the SimCity development team answered questions on Reddit, where players criticized the game’s DRM system. This system required players to stay connected to Electronic Arts’ servers to play the game. The blog Kotaku also expressed concern that if Electronic Arts shut down their servers, the game might become unplayable.

In response, a person named Bradshaw defended the always-online requirement, explaining that real cities depend on each other and that connecting cities in the game improved trade and made effects like crime and pollution more realistic. She also said the game’s performance was better because EA’s servers helped with calculations.

After the game’s release, Rock, Paper, Shotgun reported that cloud resources were not used for gameplay but only for features like city interactions and social media. This information was later confirmed by Bradshaw changing her statements.

In late 2012, Electronic Arts shared results from the SimCity beta, which had over 100,000 players. Peter Moore, an EA executive, said the beta was successful and praised the game’s online features.

When SimCity officially launched, it received mixed reviews. Many critics lowered their scores after players reported server problems. GameRankings and Metacritic gave the game scores of 63.82% and 64/100, respectively.

The launch issues caused some critics to delay their reviews or change their scores. Eurogamer, CNET, and IGN could not connect to the game’s servers and postponed their reviews. Polygon, which had given the game a 9.5/10 score before launch, later lowered it to 8/10, then to 4/10. Josh Derocher of Destructoid gave the game a 4/10, saying the online requirements and DRM system ruined the experience. Rock, Paper, Shotgun called the game “hideously broken” because it required a server connection even for single-player mode. Leif Johnson of GameTrailers gave the game an 8.0/10, noting that despite online issues and bugs, the game was still enjoyable.

By March 2013, Metacritic reported a user score of 2.0/10, and Amazon customers gave the game an average rating of 1/5 stars. Players and critics reported problems like poor pathfinding, broken economic systems, and missing features from earlier versions of the game.

SimCity was also criticized for the small area players could use to build cities, which was much smaller than in previous games. Maxis, the game’s developer, said the smaller size was intentional to ensure the game ran smoothly on most computers. They acknowledged the criticism but said they were not planning to increase city size in the near future. In October 2013, Maxis said they tried to make cities larger after player feedback but had to stop because performance issues would prevent most players from using bigger cities.

SimCity sold over 1.1 million copies in its first two weeks, with 54% of those sales being digital downloads. By July 2013, the game had sold over two million copies.

Expansion pack

An expansion pack called Cities of Tomorrow was announced on September 19, 2013. It was released on November 12, 2013, and takes place fifty years in the future. The expansion includes new areas, technology, city specializations, and transportation systems.

The new features are grouped into three categories: "MegaTowers," "Academy," and "OmegaCo." MegaTowers are huge buildings constructed floor by floor, with each floor serving a specific purpose, such as housing, businesses, or services like schools, security, power, and entertainment. Each floor can provide jobs, services, or homes for hundreds of people at the same time. The Academy is a futuristic research center that sends a signal called "ControlNet" to power structures and improvements created there. OmegaCo includes factories that produce a mysterious material called "Omega" from crude oil and ore. Omega increases profits from residential, commercial, and industrial buildings and helps create drones to improve healthcare, police, fire services, or assist citizens with shopping, reducing traffic. Over time, Omega causes problems, such as making people sick, creating extra waste, and causing buildings to catch fire on their own.

The expansion also includes a feature called "futurization," where futuristic buildings change nearby roads, buildings, and services to look more advanced. This includes changes like different traffic light designs, more futuristic police cars, and altered architecture. Buildings that cause futurization are marked with a hexagon pattern at the bottom when viewed in the Construction screen.

Cities of Tomorrow was released in three versions: the standard edition, the Limited Edition (which includes the Launch Arcology DLC), and the Origin edition (which includes the Skyclops Coaster Crown DLC).

Critics had mixed opinions about the expansion. Brett Todd from GameSpot said the expansion "hides the same dissatisfying experience under a more attractive surface" and called it "more of the same." Paul Dean from EuroGamer noted the expansion "is heading in the right direction" but added that it "still doesn't make SimCity a particularly good game."

Legacy

The server problems when the game launched led to bigger changes for Maxis and EA in the years that followed. EA stopped focusing mostly on games that required an internet connection, a policy it had followed since 2012. This change affected The Sims 4, which was originally planned as a multiplayer game that needed an internet connection. Eventually, the game was redesigned as a single-player game.

Besides a 2014 mobile version called SimCity: BuildIt, no other games in the SimCity series were made. The company Maxis Emeryville closed in 2015. The poor reception of SimCity encouraged Paradox Interactive to approve the development of their own city-building game, Cities: Skylines. This game was released in 2015 and received more positive feedback. It is often seen as a successor to the SimCity series.