CITIES XL Q&A with Jérôme Gastaldi
We sit down with Jérôme Gastaldi and discuss Monte Cristo's massive city builder.
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We recently had a chance to speak with Jérôme Gastaldi, CEO of Monte Cristo, about their upcoming city builder, CITIES XL. He goes into great detail in his responses, and provides a wealth of new information on the game.
Shawn Snider (GamingExcellence): Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions about the upcoming city builder, CITIES XL. First off, can you tell us a little about yourself, and your role with Monte Cristo?
Jérôme Gastaldi (Monte Cristo): I'm Jérôme Gastaldi, the CEO of Monte Cristo.
Shawn: Can you briefly describe CITIES XL, and what it will offer players that we've never seen in a city builder before? What inspired you to combine a traditional city builder with MMO elements?
Jérôme: CITIES XL is first what we believe a single player city builder game should be in 2009. We took the genre's features and improved upon them, as well as bringing in some new concepts.
Our aim is to give you an incredible amount of power and realism when designing your city, while at the same time, offering easy tools to do this with. For instance, while your city grows, you will start facing more and more issues with your transport network. You will then have the choice either to totally change your roads by expanding and replacing them with wider avenues and the like; or you may choose to optimize your existing transport network by picking a lane in your roads and change it to a bus line only; or even a mix of the above.
Along with the city building aspects, we have the GEMs, which stand for Gameplay Extension Modules. The GEMs are entirely self-contained tycoon games you can play within Cities XL. These games expand Cities XL by allowing you to run a virtual business in-game. Burgeoning entrepreneurs can run a business that attracts citizens of other city to come to yours and spend their money, thus boosting your resources to help your city grow. We really think GEMs are a good way for players to specialize their cities the way they want and makes the core game more "à la carte" as you decide what game you want to play.
We also wanted to expand the player's "playground", and so we created the online/MMO component of Cities XL, called the Planet Offer, which will be available for what we plan to be a nominal subscription fee. Through the Planet Offer, you can enjoy an online multiplayer experience, building cities on massive online worlds while trading your resources to achieve your goals.
Another aspect of the Planet Offer is the social network, which will have players sharing City Journals, screenshots and in-game videos of their latest achievements within the game in their dedicated web pages on citiesxl.com.
But the website is not simply a place for social networking. We also wanted to provide you the ability to see your city status and tweak your different contracts during your lunch break for instance from your place, your college library or your office desk.
Our inspirations are numerous: from SimCity to Civilization, Railroad to Railcoaster Tycoon, from Facebook to Myspace, WOW to Eve Online, and so on.
The key reason we added all these features to a city builder is simple: we wanted to bring new features to the genre, thus giving fans and newcomers reasons to play and try something new but most of all: have fun!
Shawn: What sort of fine detail can we expect in the building element? It's my understanding that the game supports zoning and automated growth, but how much control can we expect to see for those who prefer meticulously building a city road by road?
Jérôme: We identify two different styles to play a city builder game: The "Gardener" and the "God" styles. Those who play the "Gardener" style are mainly looking to create a city that looks how they want which means they put a really high attention to details. Those who play the "God" style want to see their city live and just influence how their "pets" react to the simulation. Of course, it's not always one or the other and we aim to please a lot of players that are in between.
For example, there's always been the debate about "plopping" versus "zoning" when designing a city. We asked ourselves: "Why should we decide? Why shouldn't we let the player choose?" and that's what we've done. The new system works by tagging zones you create in your city where buildings will grow if your city's reputation/satisfaction level is high enough or you may simply take one of the available buildings directly from the library and place it in your map. Even the way you layout your transport network can be defined at the lane level.
The entire game is built with one motto in mind: "Let the player enter in the details of the game where he wants to, never force him to". We really want you to play micro management where you want and the GEMs are also a way for us to answer this need.
Shawn: What sort of infrastructure options will be available? Will the game support manual placement of this infrastructure (sewers, power lines, etc) or will it be handled automatically within a set radius (for example, power plants)?
Jérôme: No city in the world is autonomous: Paris doesn't produce the electricity its inhabitants and businesses consume; New York City doesn't treat the water and garbage, etc.They use other city infrastructures for such purpose. And it's even truer for small towns.
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