Cities XL - Building a Better City

We chat with the CEO of Monte Cristo about his plans to re-define the city-builder genre with Cities XL.

GameSquad: Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do as part of the Cities XL team.

Jérôme: Hi! My name is Jérôme Gastaldi, and I am the CEO of Monte Cristo. Amongst many things, my main goal is to make sure everything runs smoothly on the project, on both the development and commercial sides.

GameSquad: Monte Cristo is not new to city simulation games, City Life having been the first foray into the genre, is that right? Will Cities XL be an improvement on City Life or is it a completely new game design?

Jérôme: Actually, we had a game before City Life called Medieval Lords, where you could build a medieval city, using new construction tools for the genre. It laid the ground for City Life in many aspects. City Life was a solid city builder in the likes of Sim City, but it introduced new gameplay elements, like the notion of various classes of citizens for example.

Cities XL is far more than just an improvement of City Life, it’s a whole new experience. It’s really a next-gen city-builder, and by that we mean many things. First of all, Cities XL has a new 3D engine, which allows us to have great levels of details and zoom, going from satellite view, down to street view where you can see your city as your citizens do. This entire graphical change is a revolution in itself because it allows you to experience a city builder like never before.

The second important aspect of the game is its modularity and evolutionary aspects, which come not only with the online mode, but with what we call Gameplay Extension Modules, or GEMs. Imagine playing a Tycoon game such as Rollercoaster Tycoon or Zoo Tycoon, but integrated in your cities. This will be possible with our GEMs which are just that, fully featured Tycoon games. Our first GEMs will be available at launch and will be the Ski GEM and the Beach GEM, where you have to build and manage these resorts.

The third innovative aspect is the online mode, which we call the Planet Offer. We wanted to give our players an experience where they could play with others in a cooperative online mode that made sense in terms of gameplay. I will go more into the details of the Planet Offer afterwards.

All these elements make Cities XL stand out as a revolution of the genre and engage players over a long time.

GameSquad: When you mention city simulation games to most people they immediately think of the SimCity series. I'm not going to ask you to compare Cities XL to EA's game, but can you tell us whether Cities XL will incorporate the basic concepts from those earlier games, or will it really be a different kind of game with a different feel? Will the player use zones to plan the city's growth?

Jérôme: Cities XL will stay true to the values of city-builders, using the basic concepts that you find in these games. You will have to create homes for your citizens, make sure they have jobs and entertainment available. But that’s just the basic gameplay common in all city builders. We offer much more, even in terms of pure construction tools. Players will be able to use either a zoning tool or place each building individually and these decisions will have an impact on the city simulation. Creating roads that can overlap each other, impressive bridges or tunnels, all this will be easily available in Cities XL.

GameSquad: That sounds really cool. Is there an upper limit on how large cities can grow? Will gamers be able to create truly massive cities like New York or Tokyo?

Jérôme: The size of any map will be 10Km by 10Km, and it is quite a large zone. To fill it entirely with a running city will take a lot of time. We also plan to have realistic maps, such as New York, were we will create the roads and place a few landmarks, and let players finish and manage the rest. In the end, cities will look massive, even when they don’t occupy the entire map.

GameSquad: Monte Cristo has recently announced that Cities XL will include a built-in capability for GEMs (gameplay extension modules). Can you tell us a little bit about the GEM concept? Will these be official add-ons from Monte Cristo, from third party developers, or will they come from the player community?

Jérôme: As explained earlier, the GEMs will be full Tycoon games that you can purchase individually from the Cities XL website, but will need Cities XL to function. You can ‘plug’ these Tycoon games inside your Cities XL game, thus expanding your possibilities. For example, if you get the Ski GEM, you will have to find a map with snowy mountains, and from there you can build an entire Ski station. You will have a micro-management approach to these Tycoon games, where you can place and manage each building in detail, such as deciding when the Ice Ring is open, how much a soda costs and the wages of the employees. You will also have to build your ski domain, and trace the proper slopes and equipment. These GEMs will have an impact on your cities, in terms of budget and tourists, since they can provide entertainment for your citizens.

Right now we have a few GEMs in development, and we are constantly in touch with our community to know which ones they prefer, such as transport, theme parks, zoo or car industry tycoons. Looking at development from third parties, it’s something we thought about but that we won’t be doing right away, same with our player community.

GameSquad: Fans of city simulation games always want to create unique cities, and there are a large number of mods and player created buildings and lots for the SimCity series. Will Cities XL come with tools to allow players to add custom content like new lots and buildings? Will Monte Cristo provide additional buildings and lots for download after the game is released?

Jérôme: We will provide our players with new buildings and tools for the simulation on a regular basis because for us it’s part of the service. Some elements will be exclusive for our Planet Offer subscribers however. We won’t allow from the start user-created content because it requires certain resources (time and tools) that we don’t have right now. We would rather focus on finishing a great city-builder game on top of which we will be able to build a strong and long term relationship with custom content makers.

GameSquad: Earlier city building games were made up of 2D sprites while Cities XL is fully 3D. How will that change gameplay from the player's perspective? Will it allow the player to do things that just weren't possible in a 2D design?

Jérôme: Yes, that’s exactly what we want to do with full 3D, give players the option to do things they couldn’t do before. It’s always nice to have better looking games, but if it doesn’t serve the game, then for us it would have been a waste of time and money. If you remember games like Sim City, you could only build roads that were in a grid pattern. With our full 3D engine, you can build curved roads, and also impressive curved bridges and tunnels or even overlapping roads with different heights. You can also zoom all the way down to street level and move around city, observing your creation and your citizens’ lives. The immersion in your city is just much more intense than what was possible before.

GameSquad: Judging from the videos of Cities XL in action, the game looks to have the capability to create a very detailed traffic and highway system. Will managing traffic and planning for road expansions be an important part of the Cities XL gameplay experience?

Jérôme: It will be very important for your city to have a properly planned traffic system. Access to certain jobs or buildings like hospitals or convenience stores will be directly affected by your city traffic, so it’s a huge element of gameplay. If your citizens have to drive 3 hours per day to get to their job, it’s going to anger them, the way it would in real life. We will therefore provide players with a set of features to help them manage their traffic and optimize your citizen’s daily commute time.

GameSquad: Cities XL may be the first city building game to incorporate a multi-player mode where cities created by one player will interact with those created by other players. Can you tell us a little bit about the multi-player capabilities? Will this be a persistent "world" like a massively multiplayer online game, or will cities only exist for the duration of the game session?

Jérôme: MMOs are so popular now that it was an obvious evolution for us for Cities XL to include such aspects, but we had to find the right gameplay for this type of game where you won’t be killing Dragons and Goblins. Our players told us they wanted a cooperative mode, and it was pretty obvious for us from the start that this was the way we would be going anyways. Players will be able to create cities on a persistent Planet, which should contain around 10,000 cities, share and trade resources with each other and engage in the creation of Megastructures, like NASA’s Cape Canaveral center or the Empire State Building.

To build these Megastructures, players will have to obtain the blueprint of the Megastructure, via a loot system on their webpage. It will be a random loot, done on a weekly basis. Players can then decide to activate this blueprint and start the construction of the Megastructure, or then they can trade it or give it for free to another player. Each blueprint has a limited duration so you have to act fast.

Once you decide to build your Megastructure, you have to gather resources to build it, such as money, workers, electricity or even oil. All these resources are created by cities, and your city will never be able to produce enough resources to build a Megastructure on its own, just like in real life. So this is where you have to enter the trading aspect of the game, and enter commercial deals with others players. You can exchange your city resources for which ever ones you are missing. Each Megastructure will take several real-life days to produce and will have different phases of construction. Why would you want to have a Megastructure in your city if takes so much time and effort? Not only does it look cool and impressive, it also gives your city a boost, such as tourists coming to your city to visit your Eiffel Tower, staying in your hotels and thus increasing your wealth.

Players will have Avatars to visit other cities, chat and trade, but they will also be able to do so via our website. Our website will give each player a dedicated page, where they will see the status of their cities with numerous statistics, see what their friends are doing, chat and trade with them, and upload screenshots and videos about their own creations. The cities will still exist on the Planet, even if the owner is not online, and will still create resources and can be visited.

GameSquad: Sounds like Cities XL is shaping up to be a very interesting game. Any final thoughts?

Jérôme: We will soon open the registration for our beta test, so check back on our website www.citiesxl.com regularly!