SimCity 2013 is coming tomorrow

March 4, 2013

Topic

Maps  /  ,

I’m not into video games, and my experience has been near zero since high school, but I’m excited about SimCity 2013 coming out tomorrow. I think my excitement comes from one part nostalgia and one part GlassBox — the game engine that drives the simulations of the city you build and its citizens:

All the glowing reviews probably have something to do with interest, too. But that memory of installing SimCity 2000 from two floppy disks in my 486 totally brings back happy thoughts.

Apparently, the game makers were inspired by Google Maps and information graphics to display the data generated during gameplay. I hope Maxis releases some of that data. It could be fun to compare SimCity demographics to the real world. Then again, who’s going to have time to look at the data, when we’ll be too busy building arcologies?

6 Comments

  • Christophe — March 4, 2013 at 12:21 pm

    Ars Technica people have some remarks on the gameplay though:
    http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-we-waited-ten-years-for-this/
    But you’re right it looks fantastic

  • Derrick Schneider — March 4, 2013 at 2:57 pm

    Longtime FlowingData fan, but also a lead engineer on SimCity’s online features. I can tell you that many a link from FlowingData went around in the early days of the project as we looked at different styles of data visualization: what worked about them, and what didn’t. The game itself is sort of the ultimate data visualization of what the GlassBox engine is doing.

    • Nathan Yau — March 4, 2013 at 3:15 pm

      @Derrick – That’s awesome (and maybe why I’m so excited about it). If you want to pass along a copy, I am totally okay with that.

  • Jen — March 4, 2013 at 4:32 pm

    I went to a Teradata conference a few years back and one of the reps there from EA games was talking about how they use geospatial data in The Sims. Goes to show that data nerds are needed everywhere. :)

  • Tieteense — March 7, 2013 at 5:45 am

    “But that memory of installing SimCity 2000 from two floppy disks in my 486 totally brings back happy thoughts.”

    Been there, done that too. And the new game is awesome, now that servers are patched (or at least until Europe release).

  • Nplugd — March 7, 2013 at 8:34 am

    The reviews on Amazon are pretty appalling though. Apparently EA really botched the game with their DRM.