SimCity Societies

• Title — SimCity Societies • Developer — Tilted Mill Entertainment • Publisher — Electronic Arts • Producer — Mat Williams • Designer — Chris Beatrice • Programmer — Mike Gingerich • Artist — Mike Malone • Writer — Andrew Bradley • Composer — Trevor Morris • Series — SimCity • Released — Windows Mobile 2007 Windows Phone May 7, 2009 BlackBerry August 14, 2009 SimCity Societies: Destinations June 23, 2008 • Genre — City-building • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — Microsoft Windows, mobile phones, Windows Phone, BlackBerry

• Illustration — A city, showing the day and night cycle in the game SimCity Societies has a different style of gameplay compared to previous SimCity titles, with less focus on "stricter city-planner roles", and more focus on "social-engineering". Tilted Mill Entertainment also reduced the complexity of SimCity Societies after the previous games in the series had been described as too complex by Will Wright. Complexity was reduced by removing the need to lay pipes and power grids. The ability to fund buildings individually, building evolution, and zoning were also not featured in the game. The adviser system of previous SimCity games was replaced, with a city's status instead indicated to the player by the behaviour of citizens, with each building having an effect on citizens' behaviour. Furthermore, there was an awards system to give players access to new buildings and other features when they meet certain goals. Six "societal values" feature in SimCity Societies, which determine the attributes of a city. The six societal values are productivity, prosperity, creativity, spirituality, authority, and knowledge. Focusing on a certain "societal value" can change the visual appearance of a city, for instance the authority "societal value" can result in security cameras appearing on buildings. "Societal values" can also affect what buildings are unlocked by the player. The game is "fully customizable" and allows the player to customize individual buildings, decorations, citizens, and game rules. Prior to its release, when mentioning the depth to which the game would allow customization, a Tilted Mill Entertainment representative stated that people who were proficient in C# and XML will be able to easily edit the gameplay. It was also announced that an online exchange would be provided to allow for the exchange of buildings.

On June 5, 2007, Tilted Mill Entertainment announced that it would be developing SimCity Societies instead of Maxis, which had developed SimCity 4. Maxis did not develop the game due to their focus instead being on the development of Spore. Immediate reaction was negative, especially on the official forums of the developer towards this game. Responses directly from the developers attempted to ease some concerns.

On June 23, 2008, an expansion pack was released titled SimCity Societies: Destinations. The main focus of the game is tourism, with new features that allow players to build tourist destinations. • Illustration — Screenshot showing the features of SimCity Societies: Destinations Destinations that can be created by the player include ski resorts, beach resorts, and theme parks. Air travel and water travel have also been introduced to the game, along with an improved map generator. The Destinations expansion received "mixed" reviews according to Metacritic. GameZone described it as a "decent expansion", but "not a must-have one". The review describes the game as more challenging than the original release of SimCity Societies, but "with just enough content to make it new". GameSpot commented that the expansion "makes a decent game a good one", and went on to praise the game's increased complexity. IGN concluded that the expansion "finally starts to make SimCity Societies feel worthy of the SimCity name." Their review acknowledges IGNs criticism of the original game for lack of direction, and praises the expansion pack for improvements to the gameplay. The review however also criticised the game for poor frame rate performance and repetitiveness. 1Up.com also criticised the game's poor performance and described the expansion pack as redundant to the patches available for SimCity Societies.