Cyberpunk 2: What We Can Learn From City Skylines 2

[Cyberdude]

This is a cautionary tale and I am sharing just to share my thoughts on what will be a VERY ambitious goal for cyberpunk 2.

You see, Cities Skyline had the market cornered for city builders after the collapse of Maxis and SimCity. And it was a big hit.

Especially WITH MODDERS.

The goals and ambitions for Cities 2 is not far removed from what CDPR want to do (and will do) with cyberpunk 2.

1. Living City
2. NPC's with schedules, jobs, homes, etc (admittedly they said this for CP2077 and fell short)
3. Full city simulation - or close to it.

The stage was set. But when Cities 2 released we quickly learned.

1. The city simulation was faked (NPC's didn't have jobs, homes, schedules)
2. Performance was so bad, people refunded the game. One issue here was the developers were modeling NPC's down to their teeth and not occluding those details with each render pass.
3. The developers removed steam mods support in favor of their own mod store and modders QUIT THE GAME entirely.

The result of all of this was a quick death of the franchise so to speak, the developers were booted off the IP (since the publisher owned it) and cities 2 was a commercial and financial failure.

It didn't need to be that way.

For Cyberpunk 2 I think we can definitely avoid these mistakes by doing the following.

1. Transparency to the players.
2. Support the existing modding community. A CDPR mod ecosystem is fine, so long as it doesn't break all the hard work and ecosystem modders are currently used to (e.g. nexus, etc)
3. Don't scope it too big that it doesn't excel at any one thing.
4. People remain skeptical of UE5. Yes, CDPR are making their own build of it, and by the time CP2 releases in 2032-2034 it will be like UE8
5. Finally, take as much time as is needed to finish the game. This probably means 8-10 years including 2 years of testing, fixing and refining.

 

[devivre]

I still think that is not an ideal comparison, as both games are different genres. For a narrative RPG Action Adventure like Cyberpunk I wouldn’t expect a “perfect” city simulation. My guess is that cdpr will try to make the city feel as alive as possible but in the end it has to serve the storytelling first and help the immersion as far as possible.

But I agree, that it’s always good to not rush the development. And it’s definitely good to not scope too big. Also, it’s never a bad idea to learn something from different games and genres, as long as you don’t lose your way.

That being said, I am sure CDPR has learned a lot from the development of Cyberpunk 2077 and will try to build the sequel on that foundation. I am curious to see how the sequel will evolve.

 

[Dunaedine]

Yeah, contrary to City Skyline 1, Cyberpunk and CDRP already suffer seriously from issues and, as proved by Phantom Liberty, learn a great deal from this. New issues are possible, but I think CDPR is at least for a medium term, more resilient and able to react to problems.

 

[SigilFey]

It's an abstract consideration to be sure. It's like:

"We're creating a culinary masterpiece -- a marinated meat or vegan sandwich on homemade baguette, featuring an aromatic cilantro dressing!"

Strengths:
Got both meat-lovers and vegans covered.
Sandwich sounds great.

Problem:
Sounds like the City: Skylines 2 team never added the cilantro.

Bigger problem:
All the people that hate cilantro.

 

[Spockprime]

In terms of learning from past mistakes, I will assume that CDPR has. Phantom Liberty demonstrated progress to me. It was cleaner than the original release, and on the bad side for last-gen console players, the company abandoned the basically hopeless task of continuing to chop out systems until last-gen systems could run it. But, at least CDPR came to grips with that fact and didn't try to offload a nonfunctional update on console players.

As for the comparison to City Skylines 2, I don't see one. The games are completely different, and CDPR's philosophy as a game publisher is very different from that of Paradox.

 

[Taril]

1. Transparency to the players.

This isn't always possible. Especially with early information about features that are planned/being worked on. As development is a fickle thing and things can go sideways pretty fast.

2. Support the existing modding community.

This is largely a developer decision. Especially when factoring in supporting consoles with the extra hoops that requires.

Not all developers want to support mods. Which is fine.

3. Don't scope it too big that it doesn't excel at any one thing.

I think we've seen that this isn't an issue. With all the problems of 1.0 version of CP2077, the narrative has remained unchanged and was the one thing that was good.

Even in 2.0 we see where they've prioritized polishing select features.

So we know that CDPR are very much capable of ensuring their game excels at something. Even if wide scope means a lot of under developed features outside of the good things.

4. People remain skeptical of UE5.

Aye, but REDEngine was needing to be improved. May as well utilize the new UE5 where a lot of the improvements are already baked in and fix it up so it works for what CDPR want rather than continue to work on REDEngine.

5. Finally, take as much time as is needed to finish the game. This probably means 8-10 years including 2 years of testing

Sadly, this often cannot be the case.

It takes money to pay the people developing a game. You can't just shove infinite money into a project, there will be a limit. Either based on how much you have, or how much you estimate the game to make (Since even if you can bankroll it with money from other avenues, such as other titles, if you're spending more than the game will make that's not a good business decision)

Not to mention stock prices which decline when money isn't being made (Thus shareholders get upset).

Yes, it would be nice if we could have all games get the full time required to be completely fleshed out... But in reality that just doesn't happen. Things have to release to earn money (Even if it's some sort of Early Access state).

Also, in general, average video game development time is around 3-4 years. 8+ years only happens when there's significant development issues (For example, CP2077 was originally being designed as a third-person title before being scrapped and remade into a first person one, which attributed to its 8 year development time)

 

[LeKill3rFou]

(For example, CP2077 was originally being designed as a third-person title before being scrapped and remade into a first person one, which attributed to its 8 year development time)

Honestly I highly doubt Cyberpunk was ever intended to be in third person... I know there are early video of the game which are in third person, but people shouldn't forget that they were made even before TW3 release, using the only Red Engine 3 tools available at time, TW3's (which likely were entirely and only intended to support third person view).

Anyway, I agree, it's totally unrealistic to expect games remaining years in QA testing... At some point it would cost way too much or money would lack. The best example is Kingdom Come Deliverance. Warhorse admitted they have to release the game, despite of its state because they didn't have the money to work on the game anymore. So they have only two options :
- Scrapping the whole project and likely shut down the studio
- Releasing the game as it was and count on the income generated by the sale to keep working on the game.
To be honest, I'm happy they choose the seconde option, because otherwise we wouldn't likely get this amazing sequel

I think it's the same for many games which were released in pretty poor state.

 

[Taril]

Honestly I highly doubt Cyberpunk was ever intended to be in third person...

That's how it was pitched and developed in the pre-production phase.

It wasn't until after 3-4 years was the whole thing "Rebooted" into being a first person title. Around the time it took the main focus of development (After W3: BaW's release)

I think it's the same for many games which were released in pretty poor state.

Aye.

Though the most common reason is due to executives wanting to hit quarterly reports. Be it publishers or major studios, if they're being scrutinized by shareholders, they want to release during specific windows so they can pad their quarterly reports with the incoming sales (Even if they are lower than they would be if the game was properly cooked before releasing, the prevailing mindset is short term gains >>> long term profit)

It's the reason why most AAA games release in poor states, as their release window is determined by arbitrary quarterly report timings rather than anything to do with actual resources or development. Even when they get delayed, it's usually just pushed back to the next quarter.

Of course, some games use other timings that lead to their poor state. For example, the Pokemon games are lined up with their annual anime series/new card releases... Which means an extremely rushed development of the games to keep up with this pace (They got a little bit of leeway with Scarlet and Violet... Having a whole 2 years to make a game that normally takes 3-4 years!)

The other side of this, is of course the issue with indie games and them being bought out by publishers. When this problem arises of funding development, publishers swoop in and offer money in exchange for their souls creative freedom... Allowing them to finish production of their game, but forcing them to add things the publishers want (Like censorship, MTX and Live Service...)

It's very rare that a game releases in a bad state without this financial pressure to release early. I think I can only recall that awful King Kong game that would count (Gollum seemed to have been fiancially driven, given the devs working on it post-release, albeit to no avail as they simply didn't have enough time to learn how to make a game of that genre, them being devs who only made point and click titles...)