colossal order ( company )
colossal order is a game development studio that focused on simulation and strategy games. colossal order is a private company. mariina hallikainen is the ceo of colossal order and has an approval rating of 50 from owler members. colossal order' s top competitor is traplight, led by riku rakkola, who is their ceo. colossal order has 67 followers on owler .
colossal order is a game development studio that focused on simulation and strategy games. colossal order was founded in 2009. colossal order' s headquarters is located in tampere, southern finland, fi 33100. colossal order' s ceo, mariina hallikainen, ...
colossal order' s ceo, mariina hallikainen, currently has an approval rating of 50% . colossal order' s primary competitors are
owler has collected 10 screenshots of colossal order' s website since may 2015. the latest colossal order website design screenshot was captured in jul 2017 .
colossal order currently has 5, 466 followers on twitter. as of march 2017 colossal order had 4, 391 followers. that' s a 24 percent increase in 5 months
colossal order currently has 3, 338 fans on facebook. as of april 2015 colossal order had 1, 793 fans. that' s a 86 percent increase in 3 years
traplight is perceived as one of colossal order' s biggest rivals. traplight is headquartered in tampere, southern finland, and was founded in 2010. like colossal order, traplight also operates in the systems software industry. traplight generates 37% the revenue of colossal order .
link to colossal order by selecting a button and using the embed code provided more ...
kopla games is one of colossal order' s top competitors. kopla games is a private company that was founded in 2015 in tampere, southern finland. kopla games operates in the application software industry. compared to colossal order, kopla games has 1 more employees .
paradox interactive and colossal order today announced the next major expansion for cities: skylines... .
colossal order ’s team knew cities: skylines would be popular when it was still in the making .
the developers of cities in motion and cities: skylines, colossal order ltd. are a finnish company founded in 2009 by experience developers and fans of the rts genre .
initially started by a group of five friends, the finnish game design company colossal order sold its game cities: skylines over half a million copies in less than a week .
paradox interactive and colossal order have announced that cities: skylines will be getting a new exp ...
colossal order: cities: skylines - concerts mini - expansion now available for $ 6. 99 on pc
don’t forget: in order to bring about the studio’s dream, colossal order’s artists have been drawing contemporary buildings for more than six years. they need a change .
on the cusp of its third birthday, developer colossal order - together with paradox interactive - hav ...
ferc order no. 888 on april 24, 1996, ferc issued its order no. 888, a final rule regarding electric industry restructuring. order no. 888 :
kyy games has been one of colossal order' s top competitors. kyy games was founded in 2009 in tampere, southern finland. kyy games competes in the internet software field. kyy games generates $ 300k more revenue than colossal order .
fortunately, chris bratt has a date with developer colossal order at gamescom this week, so we should know more soon .
colossal order' s revenue is the third highest among it' s top 10 competitors. the top 10 competitors average $ .
colossal order has employees and is the seventh highest among it' s top 10 competitors. the top 10 competitors average 98 .
colossal order knew what they wanted. a deep simulation with individually modelled entities: citizens with their own names, ages and workplaces .
colossal order took one element of the classic city builder - mass transit - and made it the focus of their first game, cities in motion .
/ view / news / 241275 / if _ you _ build _ it _ colossal _ order _ on _ cities _ skylines _ modding. php
colossal, meanwhile, are still in tampere - and still “very laid back” .
cities in motion was built on tech that one of colossal’s original team had been working on and maintaining for six years before starting the company. and it would have to be scrapped. colossal had no choice: they planned to make “bigger and better games” .
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colossal order is a private finnish game developer founded in 2009. the company has, among others, developed cities: skylines, which was released for pc in 2015 and based on ip belonging to paradox. the game is one of paradox’ most successful games to date .
although all the energy is now put into removing bugs and adding new features and updates to the newest game, colossal order looks further into the future, too .
the size of the team will stay moderate. hallikainen deems colossal order a bit like a family business, and the aim isn’t to employ people just for short projects .
there is no trivia on file. if you have any interesting trivia about this company, please add it .
modders will continue to upload buildings and vehicles, and colossal order intend to improve their tools. but they’ll also focus on features players can’t so easily implement - like tunnels .
cities: skylines, the new game by the finnish game design company colossal order, topped the charts of the biggest online games store steam on the day of its publication. in less than a week the game sold over half a million copies, and the ceo’s mailbox is now flooding with job applications .
paradox interactive ab, västgötagatan 5, se - 118 27 stockholm, sweden. swedish company registration number 556667 - 4759 .
reviewing certain holding company mergers and acquisitions involving electric utility facilities, a well as certain public utility acquisitions of generating facilities .
there’s a sense, though, that colossal order have been handed the baton for the city builder genre. in the days before the release of skylines, ea closed the emeryville studio responsible for simcity .
colossal order ltd is an independent game development studio located in tampere, finland. founded in 2009 by experienced developers and serious fans of the genre, the company focuses on original ip strategy and simulation games for pc platform. the highly motivated and talented team is working on the first title cities in motion, which released in 2011 .
that nine - person team structure, born partly out of necessity, is something colossal want to keep .
colossal order' s top 7 competitors are traplight, kopla games, kyy games, z2live, wildtangent, tinyco and koukoi games. together they have raised over 135. 9m between their estimated 715 employees .
colossal order ltd. is a finnish game development studio founded in 2009, and currently located in tampere. they specialize in business simulation and city - building games, with a big focus on public transportation .
”even when we started the company, we owners ate noodles and employees were paid a decent salary, ” hallikainen mentions followed by a laugh .
but for colossal order, there is only one version of skylines, and it’s the pc version. and in the current culture of post - release development, that means that they can be conscious of that moving forward .
we are greenbrier games inc. all products sold via this website go directly towards supporting our company. we thank you for your interest in our games .
initially started by a group of five friends, colossal order is now looking to expand its 13 - member team further. currently available positions have been open since last autumn, but it’s been hard to find the right people – until now .
red hook studios inc. is an independent game development studio founded in 2013 by veteran creators chris bourassa and tyler sigman. the company was established ...
big huge games is a computer game developer located in timonium, maryland. the company was founded in february 2000 by four veteran game industry developers ...
colossal order had previously made the cities in motion games, complex traffic and transport simulations, and while they have been modded, the support for modding was minor compared to what the developer has done with skylines. was it ever considered a risk ?
colossal order was founded in 2009, and cities: skylines is the company’s third game. the two previous ones, cities in motion 1 and 2, gained popularity as well. hallikainen points out that the newest game interests masses more than its predecessors; in cities in motion the player builds a public transportation system into an already existing city, whereas in cities: skylines the player creates the whole city from scratch .
there’s another reason skylines turned out as well as it did. colossal order do their best to nail their designs in prototype, to make sure they’re fun and working - and work extra space into the schedule to ensure there’s time for a few reworks .
cities in motion (cim) is a city - based mass transportation simulator for the pc. players operate their own transportation company, building a public network ...
and modders embraced skylines wholeheartedly. colossal order had learned the impact of modding early on, when cities in motion players broke the game to pieces (“we had no idea what was happening”). they were determined to provide the right tools for skylines, and players have taken advantage: importing custom buildings, and tweaking values in the api to produce first - person meandering mods - much to colossal’s surprise .
…now i think about, since cim is about running a transportation company, and not the city itself, why the hell do you have to foot the bill for the big things like tube lines yourself? surely, even in super - capitalist americaland, a city like new york pays a substantial amount of money up front to whatever company it’s giving a contract too .
the studio will total 15 in september; mariina is aiming for 18. she’s evidently wary of throwing out her company’s culture and ethos in pursuit of an ever - higher staff count .
colossal order’s designers don’t necessarily have coding experience, either. that’s something they like - it means they’re “not limited by the technical aspects of making games”, and can think outside those constraints. it’s then the job of those two programmers to work out how to make the designs work .
rome’s traffic systems and waste works weren’t built in a day. the construction of cities: skylines began six years ago in populous tampere, the city between two seemingly terraformed lakes in southern finland. there, five developers founded colossal order with the intention of one day making a city builder .
in an chat on one quill18’s streams, mariina hallikainen, the ceo of colossal order, said that tunnels and european - style buildings were both on the post - release list of things to be done. whether this will include mixed res / com or just different art assets remains to be seen .
on march 4, 1997, ferc issued order no. 888 - a, which provided detailed guidelines on implementing the
open access
rule .
the last point was particularly tricky. there’s always a trade - off in development between performance and memory - presumably the same maxis wrestled with and eventually compromised on. colossal order had to get “really creative” to make their maps happen - in one instance coding on top of unity to get dynamic water working .
ferc issued order no. 889, requiring the posting of available capacity on an electronic bulletin board; open access same - time information system (oasis) .
any of the classical orders used in such a way that the columns or pilasters extend through two or more stories of a building. also called giant order .
1985 ferc order no. 436 required that natural gas pipelines provide open access to transportation services, enabling consumers to negotiate prices directly with producers and contract separately for transportation ;
there’s a question mark over what colossal order can do without stepping on modders’ toes. but as mariina points out, while its most popular mod has around 300, 000 subscribers, cities is owned by over a million. it’s easy to forget: for any given pc game, the majority play vanilla. modding is a threshold many never cross .
avg said its new privacy policy was more intended to be more
transparent
. a spokesperson for the company confirmed users would have the choice to opt - out should it start selling anonymised search and browser history data to advertisers
dyn estimated that the attack had involved ‘100, 000 malicious endpoints’, and the company said there had been reports of an extraordinary attack strength of 1. 2 terabits (1, 200 gigabytes) per second. photograph: alamy
there’s an internal wiki page where colossal order staff pitch in on the design process. after work concluded on cities in motion 2, that wiki filled up with new game ideas. one, from mariina, was a stable manager sim (“i love horses - i think that would be huge in germany”). another was the city builder they’d dreamt of .
instead colossal conceived chirpy, the portal to the twitter - like service on which citizens divulged their needs. he’s since inspired ‘kill the bird! ’ threads and the chirpy exterminator mod .
in 1996, apo built a 13, 000 square foot manufacturing and office facility in bartlett, tennessee. the new manufacturing facility had a complete line of gluing, folding and die - cutting machinery, making apo the only vertically - integrated company in the market. these complete, in - house production capabilities provided apo with a key competitive advantage to execute quickly on large - scale projects. the new facility was instrumental in the company winning several large, high - profile orders .
security firm avg can sell search and browser history data to advertisers in order to
make money
from its free antivirus software, a change to its privacy policy has confirmed .
skylines’ future is all but secured. colossal have had none of the usual problems with convincing publishers to fund patches and free updates - investments from which they won’t see an immediate or tangible return .
the autobots must stop a colossal planet consuming robot who goes after the autobot matrix of leadership. at the same time, they must defend themselves against an all - out attack from the decepticons .
but that desire isn’t the only reason skylines has been successful. a big portion of that success has to be laid at the feet of the game’s thriving modding scene, both in how easy the game’s developers, colossal order, have made it to mod skylines, and also how easy it is to add those mods into your game, through a seamless integration of steam’s workshop .
avg is the third most popular antivirus product in the world according to market analysis from software firm opswat. the company has a 8. 6 percent share of the global market, behind microsoft on 19. 4 percent and avast on 21. 4 percent. in its privacy policy, avast, which also provides free security software, explains that it is able to collect certain non - personal information and sell it to advertisers. the company does not specify that this includes browser and search history data .
”everyone has got a vision of what a city should be like. city - building games appeal to both mathematical and creative players, as you can build your city as optimally functioning or as visually attractive as possible, ” the company’s ceo mariina hallikainen explains .
taking place after revenge of the fallen, the war between autobots and decepticons continue to rage on. in order to bring down the heroes, megatron plans to unleash a powerful transformer named shockwave .
at colossal order, we are focused on the simulation genre. after the cities in motion series, we are broadening our horizon with our newest title cities: skylines, an old - school citybuilder. we are always looking for talented awesome people to join our ranks. whatever it is you do, if it is related to what we do and you do it great, we want to hear from you !
in 1992 ferc issued order no. 636 (the restructuring rule). this mandated unbundling of sales services from transportation services, providing customers with full choice of providers and opening these markets to competition; and
if you watch through some lps, then it’s more than apparent, that there’s a limited number of building variations per zoning type. in an interview with the ceo of colossal order, she acknowledges the limited assets, due to their small dev - team size. (i believe it’s around 13 people now). though i strongly believe more amazing variation for all assets will become available through means of the integrated modding tools .
cities: skylines has already been sitting pretty at the top of steam’s top sellers list for a good number of days (at least three, i think) so pre - order sales are already quite good .
i never hesitate to explore new business sims, so it' s with excitement that i took on cities in motion. developed by finland - based colossal order ltd. and published by paradox interactive, cities in motion tasks you to create a profitable mass transit system in several european cities. you are in charge of planning routes, building transit stops, buying vehicles, and handling financial concerns to maximize your coverage of the city while making the whole system pay for itself .
that’s not to say that walling off certain things as ‘moddable’ and others as not is a super effective strategy when it comes to players tinkering with your game. within a few days modders had hacked access to systems that morello thought would take them a month. it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it meant that modders were playing around with systems that weren’t as stable as colossal order would have liked, and creating mods that did far more than the developer had anticipated .
“the decision happened really early in the project, ” says damien morello, a graphics and gameplay programmer at colossal order who' s closest to the development of the modding tools. “pretty much at the same time as when we discussed with paradox what the game was going to be, modding was considered from the beginning. we started to actively work on it two months after the project started, and we tried to design the systems so that we would be able to integrate the workshop with them quite easily. ”
the victim was the servers of dyn, a company that controls much of the internet’s domain name system (dns) infrastructure. it was hit on 21 october and remained under sustained assault for most of the day, bringing down sites including twitter, the guardian, netflix, reddit, cnn and many others in europe and the us .
because it has so many internet - connected devices to choose from, attacks from mirai are much larger than what most ddos attacks could previously achieve. dyn estimated that the attack had involved “100, 000 malicious endpoints”, and the company, which is still investigating the attack, said there had been reports of an extraordinary attack strength of 1. 2tbps .
and so cities in motion 2 was made in unity, by a team of seven. it incorporated new features at the behest of colossal’s budding community: day / night cycles; rush hour; custom timetables. remarkably, it took just a year and a half to build .
as a result of their expanded jurisdiction the fpc and the nation faced an energy crisis. there was a colossal backlog of applications for natural gas permits, while there were chronic brownouts in the 1960s and the opec embargo in the 1970s. this called for reorganization of the fpc .
“quick, we need video material for the trailer” “didn’t we order frank to do it? ” “frank’s busy cleaning the kitchen and making coffee” “well damn. any other suggestions? ” “we have this powerpoint from a couple of days ago…” “that will do… that will have to do…”
cities: skylines ’ success isn’t purely one of the right kind of game at the right kind of time. while it’s undeniable that there’s demand for a citybuilder at the moment, a demand that skylines definitely met with confidence and aplomb, it was the heritage of cities in motion that has kept it so consistently popular. building on the traffic model (as we learn about in our design deep dive on the subject), as well as the other systems, was a chief priority for colossal order, and one that worked in the favour of the modding scene .
as we’ve seen with games like minecraft, if you open up your game enough, the mods that people will make will fundamentally change the experience of the game. and while this is something that’s starting to happen with cities: skylines, it’s something that colossal games wants to enable more of .
an avg spokesperson told wired that in order to continue offering free security software the company may in the future
employ a variety of means, including subscription, ads and data models .
those users who do not want us to use non - personal data in this way will be able to turn it off, without any decrease in the functionality our apps will provide ,
the spokesperson added .
while avg has not utilised data models to date, we may, in the future, provided that it is anonymous, non - personal data, and we are confident that our users have sufficient information and control to make an informed choice .
in 1999, ferc issued order no. 2000, fostering participation in regional transmission organizations (rtos) and independent system operators (isos), by establishing guidelines that a transmission entity must meet in order to qualify as an rto. the expectation is that the rtos will increase efficiency in wholesale energy markets and lower end - prices to consumers. voluntary rtos and isos have been formed in california (caiso), southwest (spp), midwest (miso), mid - atlantic (pjm), new york (nyiso), and new england (iso - ne) .
or say you want to add a train station to an existing rail line. you can’t! you have to bulldoze out the existing line, and then add your station with rail segment to that line. but wait. you can’t insert your rail station into the line, you can only build your rail station in exact alignment with an existing road. so you have to use the crappy road - building tools to get a perfect angled line and perfect distance from the rail. oh whoops you messed up, bulldoze everything and try again. come on colossal order. did you play test this ?
i asked morello what colossal order’s thoughts were on a community member monetising their mods: “as a developer we can’t directly plan for or support every kind of modding, but when you’re putting assets on the workshop for free, it’s perfectly understandable that when someone is spending a lot of their time making very high quality assets for the game, they would want to get some money out of it. so we completely understand why, and i don’t personally think it’s a very bad idea, it’s just something that’s very specific to the player: are they willing to pay for something on top of the cost of the game ?
in 2006, apo continued its dominance in the 3d world by manufacturing over seven million anaglyph 3d glasses for the hit tv show medium and in 2007, apo manufactured 6. 5 million anaglyph 3d glasses for sports illustrated’s popular swimsuit edition. as if we were not busy enough, that same year we received what was at that time the largest order in apo’s history. this order was for 130 million mcdonald’s happy meal toys using our exclusive holospex lenses. these enormous projects continued in 2008 when apo manufactured over 40 million anaglyph 3d glasses for the television broadcast of the 3d hannah montana concert movie and dvd .
since the company originated, apo has become the world' s largest manufacturer of paper 3d eyewear. during this time, owner and 3d aficionado, john jerit, transformed a
silly
paper novelty business into a 3d eyeglass empire with products distributed worldwide. named
small business executive of the year
in 1998 by the memphis business journal, john attributes aggressive marketing and diversification to the company' s successful production of more than two billion 3d glasses. in november 1999, entrepreneur magazine selected john as one of the nation' s outstanding small businessmen for his masterful marketing of 3d glasses for movies, television, web - sites, theme park attractions, laser light shows, and fireworks displays. in september 2010, inc. 500 magazine ranked american paper optics number 1, 316 on its list of the top 5, 000 fastest growing private companies .
economic simulations are my second - favorite genre in all of computer gaming. maybe it' s just the capitalist in me, but i love the challenge of taking a fledgling company, wisely spending my cash, and ultimately creating a virtual corporate empire so vast and strong that donald trump begs to be my limo driver. i get the same satisfaction from turning my competitors into weeping shells of destitution as i do downing some final boss of an action game .
in september of 1990, john jerit founded a “start - from - scratch” company with only one main product. soon sales for american paper optics’ (apo) “3d fireworks glasses” grew, as did the demand for other variations of paper promotional 3d glasses. apo’s manufacturing and marketing evolved from a demand for quick turnaround promotional specialty optics. today, with a staff of 44 employees, apo manufactures more than 14 different types of specialty paper 3d glasses in an unlimited number of frame shapes .
obsidian entertainment is a us game developer headquartered in california. the company was founded in 2003 and has developed games like alpha protocol, fallout: new vegas and dungeon siege iii. obsidian game pillars of eternity, published by paradox, is the result of a crowd - funding campaign using kickstarter, which gave players the opportunity to invest in the project before it even existed. the game quickly rose as a favorite among critics and players, and qualifies as paradox’ highest rated game from an external developer .
immediately after the completion of the super bowl project, apo manufactured 16 million colorcode 3d magazine inserts for time, inc. to be included in their march 2009 issues of time, fortune, people, entertainment weekly and sports illustrated magazines. the popularity of colorcode has continued with apo manufacturing 10 million paper 3d glasses in 2009 for a channel 4 television broadcast in the united kingdom, followed by back to back two million glasses promotions in 2010 for v. m. m. , a belgium cable company, and the canadian broadcasting corporation .
had simcity been really stable and successful we wouldn' t have made cities: skylines. it wouldn' t have been possible ,
she says .
i' ve been pitching a city builder to paradox for a long time... i was like,' come on fred [ wester, ceo ], let' s make a city builder! just give us the money!' he always said we should pace ourselves, and it was good that we waited because we were a better company, skill - wise and in our experience .
it' s a shame, because the actual construction of your lines and other transit systems is sheer genius, and is undeniably the most fun part of the game. you simply open up the construction menu, select what you' re constructing out of the five types of transports (buses, trams, subways, ferries, and helicopters), then place down your stops. then, you open a menu to make a new line, click on each stop in turn for this line, buy the vehicles you wish to cover it, and click a button to start the line up. if you add a stop to an existing line, cities in motion will automatically place the new stop in the logical order, though you can override that to make your buses tackle the stops in any order you choose. i can' t think of a way to make the creation of a line more efficient .
avg' s potential ability to collect and sell browser and search history data placed the company
squarely into the category of spyware
, according to alexander hanff security expert and chief executive of think privacy .
antivirus software runs on our devices with elevated privileges so it can detect and block malware, adware, spyware and other threats ,
he told wired .
it is utterly unethical to [ the ] highest degree and a complete and total abuse of the trust we give our security software .
hanff urged people using avg' s free antivirus to
immediately uninstall the product and find an alternative
.
with over 12, 000 active customers throughout the world, the colossal numbers of 3d glasses produced include many back - to - back multimillion - piece orders. in 1991, apo received national notoriety as the manufacturer of 11 million 3d glasses for the “nightmare on elm street” sequel, “freddy' s dead: the final nightmare. ” soon, apo followed up by producing six million 3d glasses in 1994 for a television promotion of fox' s “married with children” and “revenge of the nerds iv. ”
epact 2005 the energy policy act of 2005 was the first major energy law enacted in over a decade, and makes the most significant changes in commission authority since the federal power act and natural gas act. by passing the energy policy act of 2005, congress signaled a strong vote of confidence in the commission. the energy policy act of 2005 gave the commission significant new responsibilities and granted it significant new authority to discharge these responsibilities by modifying the federal power act, the natural gas act, and the public utility regulatory policies act of 1978. in addition the energy policy act of 2005 repealed the public utility holding company act of 1935 and in its place created a new rule, which emphasizes access to books and records. the commission' s significant new responsibilities also include :
simcity had its own rules, and they came before whatever the player might want. a strict limitation on space to build in, this dependency on building further cities in order to build trade links, and of course the always - online foolishness. the latter aspect aside, it was attempting to do something different with an old formula, but whether or not it did that particularly well, it simply wasn’t what people really wanted. give me the toybox, let me play however i want to play, and i’ll finish when i’m damn well finished, thank you very much .
] feels like the response to a question. that question is “what, exactly, do people want? ” by contrast, 2013’s simcity felt like the response to an order: “make them do this. ” i don’t wish to get caught up in criticising the controversial ea city - builder, especially in light of the all - but - closure of its longstanding developer maxis this week, but the ethos of these two games is so very different, even though they’re both in theory offering the same scenario: design a city from the ground up, keep it running, make it richer, make it grander .
in the summer of 1997, apo produced 20 million 3d glasses for televisa, a major mexican network television station, for a month - long 3d broadcast in mexico city. undaunted, apo embraced the challenge of manufacturing over 21 million 3d viewers in less than three months for the august 1998 international distribution of “national geographic” magazine. during the last eclipse of the millennium, over seven million solar eclipse - viewing glasses were manufactured and distributed to more than 20 european countries followed by another seven million eclipsers for africa’s june 2001 eclipse. later that same year, apo successfully produced and distributed a 10 million - piece decoder order for a web sweepstakes promotion .
orla lynskey, a data protection and it law expert from london school of economics, welcomed the change in language but said users would be justifiably concerned by the implications .
its privacy policy is written in clear and simple language ,
she told wired, adding that users might expect an antivirus provider to be
more respectful
of their privacy and data security .
it appears that avg is adopting a generous interpretation of the data protection rules in order to justify its data use policy ,
lynskey argued .
although some of the data they classify as' non - personal' might not identify individuals directly, they may be indirectly identifiable based on that data .
“we had the dream, ” said ceo mariina hallikainen, “but with the small team we had back in 2009 we were scared to go and attempt such a big game. ”
just as great cities are made from hamlets that grow and merge so closely that the seams disappear, skylines’ constituent parts have been a long time in the making .
want more cities: skylines? here are the best cities: skylines mods .
like transport tycoon, cities in motion positioned players not as gods or mayors but lowly transport chiefs - responsible for improving the public networks in amsterdam, berlin, helsinki and vienna. it was, says hallikainen, “where it all began”. but a big chunk of it also had to be left behind .
“it was completely impossible to sustain our in - house technology without huge resources, ” said hallikainen, “which we didn’t have. ”
it wasn’t the first time they’d pitched skylines, or something like it, to their longtime publisher paradox. but it was the first time they’d done so in the aftermath of maxis’ simcity reboot. ea had succeeded in reviving appetite for the simulation genre, but not quite managed to capitalise on it .
“it creates realistic traffic, it creates realistic flows, ” explained hallikainen. “the [ citizens ] are born there and eventually they die. ”
they knew they wanted it to be beautiful - something they hadn’t always been able to prioritise, but were sure they could pull off by sticking religiously to their own artistic guidelines. and they knew they wanted big maps .
“a sandbox, ” said hallikainen. “just to make it so you had the room to make your own cities. ”
it’s important to note that even now, the studio aren’t exactly overstaffed with coders. the skylines team numbered nine, including management in the form of mariina. it had just one designer, a handful of artists, and a pair of programmers .
“i think this is very important, because it pushes the limits we have, ” said hallikainen. “it is something you can see in cities: skylines. ”
“when entering production, there’s not so much room for prototyping and it’s not so easy to implement new ideas, ” said hallikainen. “when somebody has a good idea, we really want to take advantage of that. ”
only one idea didn’t work out so well - one of mariina’s. during development, the team ummed and ahhed over how to give players feedback on the effects of their actions. they considered an in - game newspaper - but hallikainen, walking by, decided that wasn’t nearly modern enough .
“this has been one of the more controversial features, in the sense that before we released the game people seemed to really hate the blue bird, ” laughed hallikainen. “i’m pretty sure the team doesn’t want to hear my opinions ever again. ”
we know what happened next. cities: skylines released march 10th and sold 250, 000 copies in its first 24 hours, breaking paradox’s records. it’s now shifted over a million .
“it pretty much blew us away, ” said hallikainen. “we knew we had a good game in our hands, but to have people embrace it so quickly... it really just went better than we ever expected. ”
twitch had a huge amount to do with it. paradox released copies of the game to streamers two weeks early, and cities peaked as the second most - watched game on the service .
“that was huge, ” said hallikainen. “i think that was a genius move from the paradox marketing team. ”
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cities: skylines is an impressive and beautiful game, there’s no question about that. it’s done its homework, it’s stuck to traditional guns and it’s pinned the results to mostly excellent presentation. there’s very little about it i can point to say and “nuh - uh” about. at the same time, there is this nagging feeling that everything about it exists to meet the unmet needs of simcity players and, as a result, it’s hard to put my finger on its own identity and purpose. i struggle to come up with a succinct conclusion to the sentence “cities: skylines is great because…” without mentioning simcity. but maybe “this is what simcity should have been” is a fine enough purpose, and one which will make skylines wildly popular (already has, glancing at the steam charts) .
the canvas it provides is the thing to sing about. skylines has scale in spades: that first dingy conurbation has blossomed into gleaming spires and kaleidoscopic road systems within a few hours. what seems like a huge area to build within at the start of the game soon proves to be just a fraction of the available space. in what seems like a deliberate thumbing of nose at simcity, you’re regularly given the chance to purchase new plots of land which jigsaw onto your existing ones, as if the game is deliberately egging you on to say “oh come on, there’s no way i can fill that”. but of course you can. that’s what it’s about. that’s what cities are about. they don’t just stop .
there are limits to how big your town can grow, but they’re entirely reasonable ones, and you’re only going to hit them once you’ve built everything there is to build several times over. frankly, you’ll be out of ideas before you run out of space. there also an endgame of sorts if you want it, with semi - science - fictional superstructures gradually unlocked by meeting certain requirements (anything from enough cash in the bank to filling up tons of cemeteries) and each able to almost singlehandedly fulfil one of your city’s major needs once built. really though, the temptation to go start a brand new city, based on some flash of inspiration or something you saw in the steam workshop menu, is going to hit you long before you’ve ‘finished’ your current city .
skylines is a tinkerer’s delight, you see. its tools are clear but flexible, its space is generous and it’s so far away from the rigid grids of citybuilders past. you can create streets and districts in whatever shapes you want, and you can even name those districts .
such a simple thing, to assign titles to small parts of your town, but it lends so much more personality to it. there’s a profound difference between saying “oh no, the traffic’s backed up between that bit with the factories and those houses i built too close to a landfill” and saying “on no, the workers of backbreaking miseryland can’t get back to their homes in plagueburg. ” naturally, the district system also allows the more sober - minded to get that little bit closer to recreating real - world towns, or the more fanciful to make their own gotham or mega - city one .
that’s only part of why i love the district system, which is to my mind the best ‘new’ thing that skylines does. you define a district by drawing over a part of the city with this brilliantly squidgy paint tool. its semi - translucent grey - white colour is… unfortunate, but let’s be all innocent and say it’s like smearing jelly over cityblocks. once that’s done, you can assign policy decisions which affect only it. (you can also assign policies city - wide, then set districts as exceptions) .
for instance, i had this district i’d built along the seafront, and what i didn’t want to happen there was to have the view blotted out by row upon row of skyscrapers. so i set the ‘no highrise’ policy, and it remains this cute conurbation of colourful beachfront houses. then there’s the district with the ‘recreational use’ policy. bingo, my own haight - ashbury. this extends to industrial areas too – you can have distinct farming, lumber or oil districts if you wish. sometimes the effect of such fiddly is financial, but mostly it’s simply to add life and colour, to stamp more of your own identity onto this thing you’ve made .
incidentally, you can also rename almost every building in the game, plus every inhabitant and even every car. this is amazing, but almost overkill given the sheer number of moving parts. you’ll be lucky if you can ever find someone you gave a special name to ever again, while only the truly insane will attempt to rename absolutely everyone in town. it’s lovely that it’s there though – just this extra thing to tweak when you’re idling, when you see something that charms or tickles you or just want to send a stupid screenshot to a mate .
it’s just one more sign that cities: skylines really wants to be yours, rather than vice - versa. it’s bending over backwards to accommodate its players’ wishes, and it is going to be adored for it .
as for the strength of its simulation, i’d be lying if i said i’m the most expert witness you can get for such things, but i haven’t spotted anything particular egregious. following people around sees them dutifully move between work and home, while traffic clearly moves or grinds to a halt in accordance with the logic or chaos of your road system. water, sewage and power modelling seems less elaborate than that in simcity – you just need to worry about availability and connection, rather than ‘flow’ as such – but i’m not sure that’s any kind of loss. i’m sure other eyes will find shortcuts and compromises in the simulation, but i certainly didn’t see any overt signs that it was cheating .
the only thing that might have been a bug i encountered was a train jam. as they exited the map, carrying passengers and cargo out to other, unknown cities, they became backed up into this line of over a dozen stalled trains i could do nothing about because whatever was causing it was out of my city limits, in some place i couldn’t even see. i can’t rule out this being a result of something i did, but even wholesale rebuilds of my own train network just saw the same thing happen again soon .
i’m not worried. there are so many moving parts in this game, and it seems frankly miraculous that this was the only thing to (maybe) go wrong. often i’d pull out, look at the scale of this thing, all these cars, all these people, all those pipes and think “gosh. my pc is doing all this and doesn’t seem hugely troubled by it. ” it looks beautiful and it looks busy .
that said, skylines’ anti - aliasing leaves a lot to be desired, so i didn’t quite get the crisp model - world i’d hoped for. also, its faux - tilt - shift camera effect – borrowed from simcity – seems a bit off. too often it’d just make whatever i was trying to eyeball appear out of focus. fortunately there’s a slider for this, which i ended up turning right down, but this does lose a little of the wow factor .
i’m also not sure that the fictional in - game twitter rip - off is a total success. on the one hand it’s a more human way of being notified that there’s a problem – someone posts about garbage piling up or a water shortage – but on the other it means hearing the same pretty weak gags repeated time and again. you can pretty much turn it off, but it’s a shame it isn’t more fleshed - out and varied, given it by default occupies pride of place at top - centre of the screen, offering a notification every few seconds .
these are mere quibbles. you’re going to love it. skylines is very much the traditional yet hyper - modern city - builder that everyone’s been crying out for. me, i love it too, though i remain a little haunted by this concern that it’s more of a response game than its own game. in a way, this makes it seem a little unambitious. even in its style, as gorgeous as it may be it looks and feels familiar right out of the box. we’ve seen what can go wrong when risks are taken with that formula, of course, so it’s probably better this way .
it’s bittersweet, in the week that maxis died, to see the former king of citybuilders so thoroughly deposed by another. so let’s look upon skylines as simcity’s true heir – the line can continue after all .
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to me cities skylines is no response to sim city 5 but sim city 4. it has much more in common with sc4 and it looks as if a “modernized sc4” was the goal of this new take on city building. after all sc4 isnt dethroned after all those years. lets see what happens today. so far i see a lack of proper skycrapers.
colossal order is a finnish video game development company known for its business simulation game series cities in motion and for its city builder cities : skylines . the company was founded in tampere , finland in 2009 . its publisher is paradox interactive . paradox tests , markets , sells and distributes all games by colossal order . the ceo of colossal order is mariina hallikainen . 
colossal order is a finnish video game development company known for its business simulation game series cities in motion and for its city builder cities: skylines. the company was founded in tampere, finland in 2009. its publisher is paradox interactive. paradox tests, markets, sells and distributes all games by colossal order. the ceo of colossal order is mariina hallikainen.
colossal order is a finnish video game development company known for its business simulation game series cities in motion and for its city builder cities: skylines. the company was founded in tampere, finland in 2009. its publisher is paradox interactive. paradox tests, markets, sells and distributes all games by colossal order. the ceo of colossal order is mariina hallikainen.