Tycoon City: New York Q&A

We talk to Deep Red Games' Development Director Paul Howarth about the ambitious Tycoon City: New York...

Boomtown: For the uninitiated please tell us a little about Tycoon City, what are its aims and who the game should appeal to?

Paul Howarth Tycoon City: New York is a 3D world building or Tycoon game where you get the chance to play out a rags-to-riches story in probably the most famous city in the world – New York. Starting from humble beginnings, you gradually build up your business and economic empire until you are, hopefully, the most powerful and respected entrepreneur in the entire city – the new Donald Trump.

As for who the game will appeal to, we have striven from the outset to make this a game that will appeal to literally everyone, to make it a truly mass-market game, even people that perhaps don’t ordinarily play games, but at the same time to not dumb it down or make it simplistic so that it retains its depth and is a constant challenge. The areas that we have focused on to achieve this are to not set any time constraints on the objectives within the game, something that alienates a lot of casual gamers as they feel overly rushed, and to remove as much of the micro-management as possible so that it isn’t daunting, something that clutters and bogs down many games in this genre.

Sandbox

How is the game structured? Is it a sandbox game or is gameplay more linear?

The game actually has both modes; a Sandbox mode with no structure and a Story mode which has a more linear structure, so the beauty of Tycoon City: New York is that it will appeal to people that prefer to play their games either way. In Sandbox mode there are no mission constraints with the entire island of Manhattan unlocked and completely open from the outset with all of the buildings, upgrades, customisations and iconic landmarks at the player’s disposal.

If you want to build the Statue of Liberty in the middle of Central Park for example as opposed to its correct location of Liberty Island then you can do so. There are no restrictions, it’s just you building and running your personal version of New York City at your leisure.

But if you prefer your games more structured and mission driven then the Story mode is for you. Here, only the district of Greenwich Village is open to you with the rest of the city locked and you must complete a set series of tasks and objectives before you can progress to further districts. As you complete each series of objectives in each district the city becomes more and more built up, and at the same time you are progressing up the league table of entrepreneurs in the city with the overall mission objective to become the number one business-person with the largest economic empire in all of New York by the end of the game. In addition, the more objectives that you successfully complete the more Landmark Bonds you will be awarded. These Bonds allow you to build likenesses of the iconic monuments of New York such as the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building to name but three.

Being Alert

What are the ultimate aims of the game? How does the player win?

As mentioned above the overall aim by game end is to be the number one entrepreneur in the entire city. The player is going up against 99 other AI entrepreneurs in New York, all striving for the same aim to build their empire and be number one, although the in-game ‘league table’ only visibly lists the top 10. How the player does this is by being shrewd and alert and by ascertaining what the inhabitants of a particular district are after; the right type of accommodation, certain types of retail outlets, entertainment, etc.

But each district is different and distinct from each other so it is essential you gauge the mood of the populace accurately. There are 64,000 individuals in the game, each with their own needs, desires and preferences, so you can’t just guess or approach each district in exactly the same manner.

Expensive jewellers and designer boutiques won’t work in Greenwich Village with its predominantly student and bohemian inhabitants for example, just as grungy bars and punk rock clubs won’t work in the exclusive district of Chelsea and its high-rollers with champagne tastes. If you don’t provide the people with what they want or need they will take their business elsewhere and you will be languishing near the foot of the league table and more than likely be broke. However, if you get it right and meet their needs then they will be happy, will spend their money with you enabling you to expand your empire and you will be well on your way to success.

The Smarts

How advanced is the opposition, what can we expect the AI do to compete with players?

The AI opposition won’t be noticeable to begin with; we wanted to introduce players in to the game gradually, to get them accustomed to the structure and how to navigate themselves around the game world. But as the player progresses the game AI kicks in and they will believe that what they are seeing and experiencing has sentient intelligence behind it, that they are going up against living, breathing competitors. These businesspeople are smart and ruthless, much as they would have to be in real life to have got where they have.

The further you get the more noticeable it becomes. As the city boundaries expand new land opens up along with new opportunities, and you ideally need to take on every business opportunity that presents itself because if you don’t any areas that are left untended or opportunities that aren’t taken will be developed or taken by other entrepreneurs in the city. But of course, this isn’t really a practical approach as you cannot be expected to run the entire city; it is just too vast, too expensive and would be unmanageable. So instead you must make strategic decisions to get involved in the areas where you have an interest, areas where perhaps you already have a stronghold and which you feel have a greater chance of expanding your empire economically. Whether you are being successful or not will be reflected in the league table and whether you are climbing it or being overtaken by other entrepreneurs.

New York, New York

How does the game make use of the New York setting?

Tycoon City: New York makes use of the setting by utilising the cultural and architectural diversity which makes New York such a vibrant and exciting city in real-life, exactly the reasons why we chose to set the game there. There are 12 real-life districts in the game, each of them with a distinct vibe and unique personality.

Greenwich Village and Chelsea have been touched upon in my earlier answers, but additional game examples of the city’s diversity include having to lay on the Chinese New Year in Chinatown with its markets and neon tigers & dragons hanging from buildings, organising a huge rock concert in Central Park with its wide-open tranquil spaces and placid boating lake, planning a Tickertape Parade in the Financial District with its towering skyscrapers, and arranging the Thanksgiving Day Parade with its floats and balloons in the Midtown retail district. These are all real areas of New York and actual events in the city’s calendar which makes New York arguably the greatest city in the world. You simply couldn’t dream up a better location for a Tycoon game so we didn’t!

No Restrictions

What kind of routes can people take through the game? What type of businesses can they run?

We wanted to give players as much freedom of movement in the Story mode as possible without time or mission constraints, that’s why there’s no in-game timer ticking down while you’re desperately trying to complete an objective with the dreaded ‘Game Over’ screen looming large if you fail. Even though there are a set number of objectives the player must complete in order for them to progress to the next district in the game they can tackle those objectives in any order they choose and take as much time as they like with them.

The only restriction that is in place is in the playing order of the districts, but that is purely for learning curve reasons. You have to begin the game in Greenwich Village for example, but that’s because that is where you are led through the tutorial and learn to navigate within the virtual New York. Each subsequent district has been designed so that it becomes steadily more of a challenge with new buildings, businesses and objects gradually becoming unlocked immersing the player further and further in to the game world. Once a district has been completed however, you can go back to it at any time to adjust or upgrade it in any way. If the player was simply able to randomly jump from district to district it would just unbalance the game, that’s why we implemented the Sandbox mode so anyone that did want to play like that could.

In terms of the businesses, there are literally hundreds and far too many to list here; Restaurants, bars, clubs, clothes stores, luxury goods, flower shops, taxi firms, comic-book shops, record shops, sightseeing tour operators, I could go on and on. If you can think of it chances are it’s in the game. You can also customise and upgrade them to make them look and appear as you want them to. But again, going back to my earlier point about the distinctiveness of the districts, this is typified by the businesses which I also touched upon earlier that certain businesses will only work in certain areas. Greenwich Village has a heavy student and artistic population for example so chances are businesses such as art supply stores and bookshops should do pretty well. A luxury car showroom on the other hand might struggle.

Graph? What Graph?

Getting people involved in economic simulations can be difficult; to what extent does Tycoon City give people freedom to explore the gameplay without a million figures running through their head?

That’s a very good point and one that I’m glad you raised. One of the problems that we realised early on in the development of this game which afflicts many games in the world building or Tycoon genre is the ridiculous level of micromanagement required of the player on an economic level. You are expected to immerse yourself in to a minute level of detail just to keep the game world functioning, adjusting every little thing from the price of a cup of coffee to a newspaper so as to keep your prices competitive to those of your opponent.

This soon becomes akin to spinning a large number of plates and you eventually begin to feel you are navigating a spreadsheet not playing a game! But the player usually doesn’t have a choice in the matter, the game demands that they do it or everything grinds to a halt or they lose. But let’s face it; for most of us it can be quite confusing and it’s a chore. And it’s certainly going to alienate the casual game player who doesn’t want to spend time with this ridiculous level of detail; they just want to have fun.

So from day one our mission statement for developing Tycoon City: New York was to let the game AI handle as much of this micromanagement stuff automatically in the background for the player so that they can just concentrate on the fun stuff; the building, the upgrading and customisations, making money! That’s why you won’t see any research trees and the minimum number of drop down menus in the game. We wanted the player to be able to navigate the game easily and for the menus that are present containing financial information to be legible and hopefully self-explanatory.

Summer in the City

We've seen the screens of the bustling city streets, but can you give us a flavour of the kind of screens the player will be using most. What part do those city street views play in gameplay?

I think the player will use a combination of views to play the game. For example, if you need to ascertain the requirements and desires of a cross-section of the population in a particular district to give you clues as to what types of residential buildings and businesses to introduce to the area, then you would probably use the city street view that you are referring to and seen in the screenshots. This view allows you to mouse-click on any number of individuals producing an information box on that person which is a detailed biography including their personal wants and needs. Replicate this exercise on, say, half a dozen people and you are going to start building up a profile on the area.

For constructing buildings then you’d want to use more of a pulled back view to give you an angle which takes in a far greater viewing area to ensure that you’re building has enough space on a block for example. For customising and upgrading buildings or to ascertain the requirements and desires of an entire residential dwelling by mouse-clicking on it in exactly the same way as you would an individual, then the most useful view would be somewhere in between the two. That’s the great thing about the flexibility of the in-game camera in that whatever action you are performing you will always have the optimum viewing perspective.

Spoilt for Choice

What aspects of the game are you most proud of?

I don’t think there is any one particular aspect of the game that we are most proud of, more a multitude of aspects and features that have gone towards creating not only the best game that we have ever developed but a game that we feel will be the benchmark for the Tycoon or world building genre. Tycoon City: New York has a playing area which is unprecedented in its size with AI driving it more sophisticated than any other game of its type. 64,000 individual living, breathing inhabitants each with their own wants, needs and desires.

Thousands of individual buildings and business types, thousands of vehicles filling the streets creating traffic jams in peak commuting hours exactly the same as the real New York. Full day and night cycles which is reflected in what’s going on down at street level; the streets are going to be far busier at 5 o’clock in the afternoon than at 5 o’clock in the morning for example. The most advanced graphics engine in a Tycoon game capable of displaying a bird’s eye view of the world high above the skyscrapers of the city and then with a simple scroll of the mouse wheel seamlessly zooming down to street level so that you are eye-to-eye with the inhabitants of New York with almost First Person Shooter graphical quality, and it’s 360 degree rotatable to boot.

People might look at the screenshots and think the actual game can’t look that good or detailed when you are playing it, but it really does. And of course, the one thing that can’t be conveyed in screenshots is sound. The game not only looks like New York, it sounds like New York. We took sound technicians out there and recorded everything from the sounds of fire engines with their sirens wailing, to yellow cabs honking their horns, and everything in between. All of the voice acting in the game was also performed by native New York actors. This really is as close as you can get to being in the Big Apple shy of actually being there.

Corporate HQ

Are there any things you'd like to mention here that we've not asked so far?

There are so many things that I could almost go on forever there is really that much in the game. One aspect which I will mention which is pretty cool is that as your empire business expands across the city you gradually begin to form chains of businesses. For example, you may want to create a chain of coffee shops across New York, your own version of Starbucks. After you have opened a set number of coffee shops you are then able to build your corporate headquarters; these massive buildings which form the heart of your coffee empire.

These are the only buildings that over a period of time you are able to increase their physical height with the more chains of coffee shops you open across the city. These become more and more imposing over time, gradually towering over other buildings in the area, until it reaches such a height that it is actually higher than the Empire State Building which is the tallest building in New York. This is the only type of building in Tycoon City: New York you are able to do this with and it is truly an awesome sight to behold!

Thanks for taking time to answer these questions.

Thank-you. I and the rest of the team hope your readers find it interesting and gives them an indication of what a special game we truly believe Tycoon City: New York is.

Tycoon City: New York will be available for PC in October.

Boom Town

Atari

That's So New York