Big Brother meets Mayor Sim

"The Sims" Player 1:

Hey Johnny! How's it going? Heard you got that promotion on work today. Finally became Master Surgeon huh? That's great. Guess those latenight paramedic shift paid of huh? Say, if you look in your bathroom, you'll find a new topnoth jacuzzi. Yeah, you're bankaccount was loaded so... And the maid cleaned up your house: those friends of yours really made a mess last night huh? Ow hell, at least you're all happy now... Say...You've got to check out your bill, cuz' it really blows if the repo guy'd come over.

"The Sims" Player 2:

Hey Marina! How's it going? Tough times huh. Yeah those dead flowers in the lawn sure are depressing... I guess you want to take a shower now. Then I'd open that mechanics book because you can't afford a mechanic. And don't forget to clean up you're kitchen. Jeez babe. I can smell it from this side of the monitor... Oh no! Repo man! There goes that cherished pink flamingo. Heck! There goes the microwave. Aw don't worry, you have those beers in the sink right? What do you say? D'you have to go? Now? But the repo guy is beaming away the lavatory! No! Don't do it there! Nooooo....

The Sims was fun. For the first time gamers had a unique mission. Not to BFG the enemy. Not to crush the other base. Not to reach level 100. Not to become the greatest hero that frees us all from the opressive insurgent.
In The Sims you had to live the daily lives of the regular joe.

For years though, Maxis stood synonymous everything that had the term "Sim" in it. By far though, the Simcity series were the most appreciated. Sim City gave us the power to build grand metropoles, cities that would make Guilliani the size of the mosquito flying around my head.

Now Maxis announces the merging of these two formulae to concoct the almost logical new solution. Welcome Mayor Big Brother. Welcome to Simsville.

Simsville really is very much the dream of all Maxis fans. You get the involving closeby gameplay of the Sims, and the city building municipal tasks of mayor in SimCity.
In Simsville, you start of a bit like in SimCity. You have the unused patch of ground and some money. You construct housing, provide services and build industries and companies where the Sims can work in. Then you make roads, etc, etc. If you do a good job, you'll get reward like a town hall, a concert hall, and so on. But that's pretty much where the similarity with SimCity ends.

Where in SimCity your job was to create enough city services to keep internal revenues up and to keep down stats like crime and low land value, the key in Simsville to have a successful town is to plainly keep your folks happy. But the means to reach this is way more complex than the figure counting in SimCity and the simple basic needs of the Sims. In Simsville, the issues concerning a family and household, which actually is a macro-economical fact, is handled in a very closeby manner. Many actions you take will have very severe and noticeable. For instance. Imagine that your town loses its supermarket. The Sims don't get enough food. Then, a crime wave hits your town because you forgot to expand the police force. Now you hire more policemen. These men will become happier, although they are almost starving. Some townfolk are happy because of the renewed sense of safety but others will leave since they're fed up of the lock of foods. So, tax revenue goes down. But this revenue falls so sharply, you can't pay anymore for the extra cops. They too leave and your once quaint, little town now is a virtual ghost town. But now, the lack of police and low ground prices attracts lower class families and sleazes, and soon your town will be a sleazy version of Atlantic City.

Also, as a player you will have more direct input into the lives of the families. you can for example buy exterior things for a house. A sportsman for example will be very happy if you'd build him a pool, and what doctor wouldn't like his own lab? Remark though that you can't decorate the interior of a house. This is the personal atmosphere of the family. What you also can do is use "the forceful hand of God". Introduced in Dungeon Keeper, you can pick up a person that for example is unemployed, and put him/her in front of a retail store. If he/she wants to, he/she will become a clerk or salesperson.

Taking a quick look on the screenshots, the interface very much resembles that of the Sims. The graphics on theirselves though are now in full 3D. Well, 2,5D. Although all objects are rendered in 3D and you will be able to zoom in/out unrestrictively but only 4 set isometric views are offered. Concretely the engine for example will only render 2 visible sides of a building per view. This will greatly reduce system requirements.

Simsville promises to be the ideal marriage between SimCity and the Sims. But of course we all knew that. Maxis' reputation almost ensures good implementation of these promising gameplay features.


Simsville has been cancelled.

(c) 2001 Erwin's Pages
Erwin "Reaper" Husin


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