City building games have a Soul Problem pt.2
City-building games are increasingly criticized for looking sterile and “soulless,” with players contrasting pristine, low-detail environments against the messy, aging, lived‑in feel of real cities. Commenters debate whether richer environmental detail—wear, decay, foliage, clutter—should be purely cosmetic or tied to mechanics like maintenance and urban decline, and how far performance, budgets, and polygon limits constrain these ambitions. Many point to older titles such as SimCity 4, niche sims like Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, and heavily modded setups as examples of deeper charm or stronger simulation, while others argue that abstraction, clean aesthetics, or AI-assisted asset generation can be equally valid design choices.
Overall sentiment on recent city builders
- Many players were hyped for recent big releases (e.g., the latest Cities game) and found them disappointing or sterile.
- Some feel modern city builders prioritize scale and traffic logistics over charm, personality, or a satisfying “game” loop.
- Others still enjoy them as large sandboxes and see the lack of failure conditions as a feature, not a bug.
What “soul” in a city builder means
- For some, “soul” = visual evidence of history: wear, grime, aging materials, lived‑in clutter, paths in snow, etc.
- Others emphasize sound, music, UI feedback, and small details that make the city feel alive and personal.
- A counterview argues aesthetics alone can’t “add soul” if underlying mechanics are shallow.
Pristine vs worn: strong disagreement
- One camp likes clean, idealized, “architect’s render” cities: no cracks, weeds, or decay; real‑world dinginess is not desirable fantasy.
- Another camp finds perfectly pristine cities lifeless and uncanny; imperfection and aging are central to emotional impact.
- Debate over whether depicting decay romanticizes neglect vs. realistically reflecting entropy and trade‑offs in real cities.
- Some propose decay as a gameplay mechanic (maintenance vs budget) rather than purely an aesthetic overlay.
Gameplay depth vs aesthetic detail
- Complaints that many city builders are mostly traffic/placement puzzles with little systemic challenge compared to older SimCity titles.
- Suggestions for deeper simulation of maintenance, snow clearing, urban decay, and non‑US city patterns.
- Others are fine with abstraction and prefer dev time go into systems, not micro‑details like leaves and cracks.
Technical, cost, and workflow constraints
- Multiple comments stress GPU/poly/VRAM budgets and performance trade‑offs, citing notorious high‑detail assets in recent games.
- Real‑time rendering has very different constraints from pre‑rendered “mockups” or AI still images.
- LOD, culling, and careful asset design are necessary; adding stairs, foliage, clutter, etc. everywhere is nontrivial.
AI, mods, and alternative approaches
- Some see AI‑assisted asset variation as a promising way to add contextual wear and uniqueness cheaply.
- Others worry about hardware requirements or subscription/cloud models.
- Mods are highlighted as already providing much of the requested detail for enthusiasts.
- Several point to less realistic or more abstract games (tile‑based, 2D, stylized) as feeling more soulful precisely because they avoid realism’s expectations.