Second, there was a clear gap in the market for a city building game that avoided SimCity's mistakes. First, the demand for city building games (that actually work) was very high. This episode taught Colossal Order a number of lessons. EA spent months trying to fix the problems, but its Maxis brand's reputation was in ruins. In the history of game launches, it ranks as one of the worst. SimCity launched in 2013 as a broken game. Critics saw it as an overbearing attempt to control players and diminish piracy. Publisher EA claimed it wanted to create a city building online universe, not just a standalone game. SimCity launched with a demand that players always be online. If the initial appearance of SimCity (2013) was terrible news for Colossal Order, that game's subsequent disastrous arrival was a tonic for the little company. And once again, it was Maxis that provided the impetus. "There was no cake that day."īut a year later, Cities: Skylines was revived. "There was no point, no room for any competition. Maxis and EA announced plans to reboot SimCity.Įveryone who worked at Colossal Order understood what this news meant. But something happened that ruined all their plans. There was a day, early in 2012, when Colossal Order was just about ready to begin work on its dream game, when Paradox looked about ready to greenlight the long-cherished project. Paradox was cautious about embarking on such an ambitious project.
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Hallikainen and her team had spent years pitching a city building game to publisher Paradox, which the developer had worked with on urban transport series Cities in Motion. For a while it looked like the game wouldn't get made at all. The celebration was all the sweeter because success for Cities: Skylines had been a long time coming. Being from Finland we don't really do elaborate parties." The cake, she says, was "a classic, very good." It's in our nature to be very humble and hard working. There were a few words of congratulation and some laughs. Her 13-strong team gathered together in their Tampere, Finland offices and ate the cake. She decided to splurge on a decadent and indulgent treat.Īs CEO of the game's developer Colossal Order, she wanted to celebrate the young company's success. The numbers were wildly ahead of all projections.
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