Source: Kakha Kolki via FlickrĮxperts like Dante Douglas agree that Cities:Skylines does not care a lot about its people. Cities:Skylines allows you to create public spaces, green spaces and cultural institutions, but the focus of the game is not very people-oriented. While this is understandable in a computer game designed for entertainment (and an exceptionally good one!), the difference between the overall realism of the game and the minimalism of its social aspects is stark. Of course, the cities in the game have no history – the game only gives you the option of marking a building as historic -, which also contributes to the absence of important politics or civil movements. However, their happiness index immediately lowers. The virtual citizens of the cities in the games are very passive and never even complain when you displace them, rip out their sidewalks or replace a public park with a parking lot. Game expert Dante Douglas has described game Cities:Skylines as a “ gentrifier’s dream”, because it teaches you to invest in high-profit infrastructure and to focus on the economy, without taking into account people’s needs and wants. Gentrification as a danger even in the virtual world
#City skyline game professional
Here is an example of a professional city planner building his ideal city in Cities:Skylines, where the virtual citizens interact with the gamer via Chirper: There is Chirper, a Twitter-like dialog bar that allows you to know how citizens are feeling about your recent actions, as well as a measurement of general happiness that helps you guide your decisions. However, there are some interesting elements of the game that allow you to have an interaction between the player and its simulated citizens. The history of this discipline repeats itself rather uncritically. Like other city building programmes and games, Cities:Skylines is symptomatic for larger problems in urban planning. Streets and highways are central in Cities:Skylines. In Cities:Skylines, cars are actually spawning out of nowhere. Even when you focus on using more public transport, the base game makes it hard for you to experiment with more people-friendly urban utopias. Grid layouts are pushed, whereas public spaces, pedestrian space and other elements of modern, liveable cities are easily neglected. It is the quintessential concept of American city designing.Īlthough there are community-created modifications (mods) in the game that allow you to design cities around pedestrian- or bicycle-oriented paths, private vehicles are the backbone of every city and of the whole game. This entrance is usually a flyover highway.
#City skyline game series
This is showcased by how a player starts building cities: by connecting a series of roads, streets, and highways to an already existing main city entrance. It is important to note that a game like Cities:Skylines also shows what is wrong with urban planning in the real world.