How players talk about disastrous game launches: What went wrong with Cities: Skylines II?

29 Nov 2024·
Dom Ford
Dom Ford
· 2 min read
Abstract
Cities: Skylines (Colossal Order, 2015) took the city-builder throne from Maxis’ SimCity series (1989–2014) after the disastrous launch of the fifth SimCity (Maxis Emeryville, 2013). But history may be repeating itself, as developers Colossal Order and publishers Paradox Interactive are facing a backlash to the launch of the hotly anticipated Cities: Skylines II (2023). While studies have been conducted into games which had poor launches, like No Man’s Sky (Hello Games, 2016; see Chien et al., 2020) and Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red, 2020; see Siuda et al., 2023), these focus on the games’ celebrated turnarounds, rather than on the period of the launch itself. The extensive cost of game development means a single failure can be catastrophic, as evidenced by SimCity developer Maxis Emeryville being shut down as a consequence of the poor launch. Yet these events seem to be becoming an increasingly common occurrence. Here, I analyse a snapshot of player reaction and discourse to Cities II’s launch. 30 threads have been scraped from the subreddit /r/CitiesSkylines2 and coded using an open coding approach based on grounded theory (Gibbs, 2018, p. 67) to build a picture of themes of player speculation regarding why the launch was poor.
Type

Presented at the Conference on Language, Norms and Digital Lives, Copenhagen, Denmark, 28–29 November.

Abstract

Cities: Skylines (Colossal Order, 2015) took the city-builder throne from Maxis’ SimCity series (1989–2014) after the disastrous launch of the fifth SimCity (Maxis Emeryville, 2013). But history may be repeating itself, as developers Colossal Order and publishers Paradox Interactive are facing a backlash to the launch of the hotly anticipated Cities: Skylines II (2023).

While studies have been conducted into games which had poor launches, like No Man’s Sky (Hello Games, 2016; see Chien et al., 2020) and Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red, 2020; see Siuda et al., 2023), these focus on the games’ celebrated turnarounds, rather than on the period of the launch itself. The extensive cost of game development means a single failure can be catastrophic, as evidenced by SimCity developer Maxis Emeryville being shut down as a consequence of the poor launch. Yet these events seem to be becoming an increasingly common occurrence.

Here, I analyse a snapshot of player reaction and discourse to Cities II’s launch. 30 threads have been scraped from the subreddit /r/CitiesSkylines2 and coded using an open coding approach based on grounded theory (Gibbs, 2018, p. 67) to build a picture of themes of player speculation regarding why the launch was poor.

References

CD Projekt Red. (2020). Cyberpunk 2077 [PC]. CD Projekt.

Chien, L., Xiaozhou, L., Timo, N., Zheying, Z., & Jaakko, P. (2020). Patches and player community perceptions: Analysis of No Man’s Sky Steam reviews. Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere. 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere, Tampere, Finland. https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/view/1303

Colossal Order. (2015). Cities: Skylines [PC]. Paradox Interactive.

Colossal Order. (2023). Cities: Skylines II [PC]. Paradox Interactive.

Hello Games. (2016). No man’s sky (Version 1.77) [PC]. Hello Games.

Maxis Emeryville. (2013). SimCity [PC]. Electronic Arts.

Siuda, P., Reguła, D., Majewski, J., & Kwapiszewska, A. (2023). Broken promises marketing: Relations, communication strategies, and ethics of video game journalists and developers: The case of Cyberpunk 2077. Games and Culture. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120231173479

Dom Ford
Authors
Dom Ford
Postdoctoral Researcher
My research focuses on myth, digital game communities, monsters, spatiality and the representation and depiction of history and the past (both real and fictional histories) in digital games.