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At E3 today, EA revealed that the SimCity franchise is now heading to Facebook.
It’s a collaboration between Maxis and Playfish that aims to bring the ‘real’ city-building simulation to the masses. Emphasis on ‘real’ by EA, which clearly feels Zynga’s previous building titles are simply pretenders to its throne.
It will launch on Facebook within the next few weeks and is currently in closed beta.
“Facebook gamers have been waiting a long time for the original and best city-building game to come to the platform,” said Jami Laes, vice president of Global Studios for Playfish. “This isn’t your typical drag and drop city-building game. Players don’t just build a city – they choose the kind of city they want and watch its soul come to life as it grows and reacts to their decisions. With SimCity Social, we’ve taken the best in social gaming design and married it with unprecedented depth to create an all-new deeply social experience.”
"Over the years EA has continued to bring major brands such as The Sims to Facebook," said Sean Ryan, director of games partnerships, Facebook. “SimCity Social is a great addition, and we look forward to another high quality game becoming available to the hundreds of millions of people who play games on Facebook each month.”
The developers say there are no set linear paths and that players will be able to directly influence how their cities evolve, for full creative freedom. There will be issues like fires, crime and pollution to deal with, and there’s a friend and foe system for that all important social aspect of the game.
We’ll have to wait and see whether it forces players to flood their friends Facebook feeds or not…
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