City-building game

City-building game is a genre of computer game where players act as overall planner and leader, normally looking at the city from a point-of-view high in the sky, to grow and manage a simulated city. Players are only allowed to control building placement and city management features such as salaries and work priorities, while actual building is done by game citizens who are non-playable characters. City-building games are generally economic simulation games and sometimes confused with god games.

Distinguishing features

City building games differ from other computer and video game genre titles in that:

Game goals focus on building a strong economy and high quality of life
Cities may continue to be grown even after win conditions have been met
Players can only indirectly influence individual citizen activities
Players focus on city-level structures and economics (houses, factories, stores) versus, for example, individual skyscrapers as in SimTower, amusement park businesses as in RollerCoaster Tycoon, or global economies as in Civilization.

Players must fulfill the needs and wants of the citizens by initiating structures for food, water, shelter, employment, health, security, spiritual care and economic growth. Success is achieved when the city budget makes a growing profit and citizens experience an upgraded lifestyle (basic and luxury needs met; appealing environment achieved, including low pollution and high aesthetics). While military development is often included, the emphasis is on economic strength.

Establishment and evolution as a genre

The city building game genre was established in 1989 with SimCity, which emphasized continuous building versus competing to win and "blowing stuff up". Players followed personal preferences in design and growth. Indicators of success were maintaining positive budget balance and citizen satisfaction. Subsequent SimCity titles soon followed when high sales of the game demonstrated its popularity.

The first sim game, Utopia (1982) covered many of these same elements, but the primitive screen resolutions of its era meant that it displayed two islands because the detail necessary to show cities was not possible. Unlike the thousands of individual spaces possible a few years later in SimCity, each island held approximately 16 "buildable" spaces for schools, factories, etc. The players' score was based on the well-being of their people.

A second boost in genre popularity came in 1993 with the publishing of Caesar, which modeled cities in ancient Rome, replacing electricity and mass transit with aqueducts and roads. Subsequent titles in the City Building Series followed, all modeling cities in past civilizations.

Also in 1993 the Dungeons & Dragons PC game Stronghold appeared, which was advertised as "SimCity meets D&D in 3D." Elves, humans and dwarves each built neighborhoods with unique architecture within the player's town. The title also had elements of real-time strategy games when enemies attacked the city, and the line between city-building and RTS games has often been blurred with this kind of hybrid title. True 3D graphics were not yet possible in 1993, and the advertised 3D was actually a clever use of 2D graphics with mathematically-generated terrain and overlaid bitmaps and sprites.

What can be learned from city-building games

SimCity has been used as a teaching tool in urban studies classes. The assumptions within its economic model have been much discussed (e.g., effect of low vs. high taxes). Many historical games teach aspects of past cultures in an engaging and entertaining manner (e.g., Chinese culture). While the games are not economically or historically 100% accurate, because of their engaging nature they may stir interest in learning the theory and history behind the simulations.