With SimCity Societies, EA brings energy consciousness to classic city-building gameplay.
Therefore, power plants produce varying levels of smog. A Solar Farm creates none, while a coal-hydrogen plant generates a "slight haze" and the Super Coal Plant "chokes the city's air with a massive output of smog." In keeping with real figures, the smog-producing plants also generate the most power. Managing such a trade-off is a key element of the gameplay.
As solar energy and wind are renewable resources, they can be improved by building power collection hubs or substations to store power and even out the flow of energy. A carbon exchange can also add income to a city for "maintaining a low carbon footprint with a high power output." It's not a cheap proposition, though: 7500 Simoleans, or less than the cost of two coal plants.
Bernstein is specific about how the developers wanted to implement choice. "We didn't want to impose a direction a city should go. We wanted to put out enough power alternatives to make a very green city or a heavily polluted one or something in between."
New, updated visuals help create not only a wide range of new cities, but do a much better job of modeling the effects of energy reliance. Put a series of smog-belching plants on the ground and the city will soon be literally draped in darkness. The warming effects of massive CO2 output can lead to natural disasters which, if exaggerated, are pretty obviously related to the way the city lives. By way of massive contrast, green-leaning societies look clean and livable, and we haven't yet seen a wind turbine fall over to crush a swath of Sims.
While fun always remains the focus of the game, more realistic models of energy and the environment have consequences that are both entertaining and, if not educational, at least informative. Bernstein asks, "How much realism is fun? Realism is one thing as long as it's helping you get to fun, and when it stops helping you get there, you let it go."
Fun for some will be building their own nightmarish megalopolis where smokestacks are barely visible through clouded, smoggy skies. It's a visually attractive proposition (thanks in part to the bleak romanticism imbued through movies like "Blade Runner"), but they'll have to work harder to keep the people happy. Meanwhile, we have our own notions that a coal lobbyist might sit at home playing late into the night to create his own terrifying alternate society: one where green energy is used thoroughly and to the near-exclusion of non-renewable sources.
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Posted: 5 Dec 2007
- Release: 13 Nov 2007
- ESRB rating: E10+
- Publisher: Not Available
- Developer: Tilted Mill Entertainment
