When I first saw the city of the future, everything seemed to be perfect.The skyline was dotted with MegaTowers, buildings so tall, so efficient and so densely populated that they functioned as vertical cities unto themselves. Instead of having to walk around the corner for a gallon of milk, tenants needed only descend a flight of stairs. A person’s daily commute was reduced to an elevator ride. The neighborhood park wasn't a few blocks away, it was on the 27th floor. Everything a MegaTower resident needed was mere steps away.
The MagLev is a public transit system that's powered by magnets and closely resembles Elon Musk's proposed Hyperloop.(Courtesy EA Sports).
In the rare case residents did leave their self-sustaining superscrapers, they used the MagLev, an elevated bullet train powered by magnets. While the MegaTowers and the MagLev required lots of power, they produced little waste. Advancements in fusion technology had it made it easy to produce large amounts of clean energy, and new waste treatment technologies — like the Garbage Atomizer and the Air Scrubber — cut down on whatever pollution was left. The result was a beautiful mix of sleek high-rises and green spaces.
But as they often do, appearances proved deceiving. There was something amiss in the city. Down the road from the immaculate downtown was the city’s grittier, blue-collar counterpart. The buildings there were dark yet adorned with tacky neon lights. Instead of high-income intellectuals, it was filled with low-income laborers. Yet here, too, the citizens were overwhelmingly happy. Suspiciously happy.If this sounds like the setup for a disturbing science fiction novel, you’re not far off: This is actually the premise for SimCity: Cities of Tomorrow, a deeply cynical expansion pack for the SimCity game, set to be released November 12. The original SimCity game, of course (along with its most recent fifth edition), allowed players to act as mayors and design the ideal modern city. But the evil genius behind the game play was always that sustainability was illusory: even the most well-designed cities eventually imploded. Players thought they were all-powerful mayors, but they were merely delayers of the inevitable. The best they could do was stave off their city’s collapse.
A city dominated by OmegaCo will feature dark buildings adorned with neon lights. (Courtesy EA Sports)
Cities of Tomorrow extends this tension to a dark, satirical future. You’re technically still mayor of a metropolis, but in the case of the gleaming downtown scenario, the true arbiter of power is a small organization called The Academy. Tucked below the elevated trains and glittering skyscrapers, The Academy is basically a publicly funded think tank whose sole mission is to push the boundaries of urban infrastructure. The Academy develops all of the city’s technology, and the more public funding it receives, the quicker it innovates. The catch is that all Academy-developed technology has to run on ControlNet, a computing system owned and operated by The Academy.Alternatively, when running the industrial district, you act as the business tycoon behind a shadowy conglomerate called OmegaCo, the largest employer in the area. OmegaCo’s main source of revenue is Omega, an energy resource of unknown origin. Lucky for you, your citizens don’t mind that Omega is highly flammable or that using it means emitting noxious purple smoke. Omega is so cheap and potent, they never even bother to find out what it actually is....MORE
