Cities XL: Another One Bites The Dust

01 Feb 2010 at 00:00:00 by Bill Vaughan

Last week, it emerged that Monte Cristo would be closing down the online section of its recently released city-building sim, Cities XL. The company had always referred to the title as an MMO, so where does this leave the game? Just five months after its launch, Cities XL is to be re-branded as a single-player title, but why did it fail, and was it ever truly an MMO?

Questions over the game's Planet mode first arose during the beta testing, when players noted that the online version of the game didn't offer much in return for the proposed subscription fee. Currently, anyone who shells out for Planet gains access to one of Cities XL's persistent shared worlds. These worlds have limited space and the landscapes vary, so it's necessary to spend some time looking for the perfect unoccupied plot of land. Once settled in, players are able to trade, combine efforts and create megastructures. Another sell point of online play is the ability to take tours of other player-built cities.

So, dissection tool at the ready, let's decipher the possible cause of Planet's failure; To my mind, many of the so-called benefits of online play are actually hindrances.

Shared worlds mean that players often have to spend a while searching for the ideal city location, because their first few choices are already in use by others. Beginner zones tend to go faster than plots that pose more of a challenge in, say, mountainous or desert regions. Having to spend time finding a good plot instead of being able to build wherever you want to is a little irritating, right off the bat.

The feature that allows you to tour other cities wouldn't get a lot of use from me either. The aim of the game is to make your own city as profitable and successful as possible, not to go sight-seeing. If a friend had done well in the single-player game, I'd be content to see screenshots. I don't necessarily want to take time out of my own gameplay to wander the streets of someone else's town. It's like being shown someone else's holiday pictures – it's vaguely interesting for a minute or two, but am I really interested in seeing where you had dinner on the third night? Oh, is that another view from your balcony? Yes, the people you met look very nice, yada yada.

Is the game really an MMO? In the sense that thousands of players can be online, sharing the same server and chatting with one another, then yes. However, a large part of massively multiplayer online games is the interaction one can not only take part in, but be submerged into. Apart from the chat channel, it's possible to play Cities XL Planet without noticing that you're online.

In short, you can't blame people for not willing to pay for something that adds so little to the gaming experience. Therefore, it wasn't a surprise when last week's announcement was revealed, but it's another blow to developers hoping to make successful MMOs. It's a tough industry; MMOs are notoriously expensive to make and maintain, and their rise or fall depends entirely on the dedication of their players. The very public closures of a number of high-profile titles in the past few months, including Hellgate: London, The Matrix Online and Tabula Rasa, has taught us this much.

On the up side, at least Cities XL has a strong single-player game, and Monte Cristo has promised to keep adding content for it - for a price, of course. But it does make me wonder how well other MMOs that give players an option on whether to subscribe will do.

A game that springs to mind immediately is the upcoming spy-fi MMOGlobal Agenda. Players may choose to pay a monthly fee in return for the Conquest content, which enables them to take part in claiming land in the persistent world, opens up more character customisation options and grants access to other features such as crafting. Alternatively, players will be able to simply buy the game and log on to access the PvE and PvP content, use the auction house and try out the majority of the features for free. Unlike Cities XL, Global Agenda doesn't have a single-player option, so here's hoping enough people feel like paying for that extra content. The industry could do with fewer announcements like the one from Monte Cristo.

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