Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

CEO of Monte Cristo, Jérome Gastaldi, recently took some time to sit down with Ten Ton Hammer to answer a slew of questions about their upcoming game, Cities XL. For all the gamers out there that have spent countless hours designing their cities, amusement parks, and more, this game is right up your alley. The project looks to be a massive endeavor, but the results so far speak for themselves. Monte Cristo is one of the reigning champions in the city building genre.

Thanks again to Jérome for the great answers provided!

---

Just imagine... a city without polution.

Ten Ton Hammer: Do you see CITIES XL more as a single player game with online aspects, or as a complete MMOG that happens to allow players to experience the game in a single player mode? Do you see other MMOG's as direct competition, or do you feel CITIES XL is different enough from current market offerings to not be an issue? 

Jérome Gastaldi: First of all, CITIES XL is a great city builder, with a solid solo experience. We added an innovative online aspect which takes the best practices of MMOGs, but it is difficult and restraining to categorize CITIES XL as either a city builder or an MMOG. It’s a mix of both and yet so much more…    CITIES XL is an alternative to current MMOGs, so yes we look at very carefully what goes on with these games, but we are confident in our offer because we are just very different and unique compared to any other game out there today.

Ten Ton Hammer: Looking at the scope and size of the cities, I imagine the graphic challenges had to be interesting to say the least. Did Monte Cristo develop its own graphics engine for the game, or were you able to use existing technology from outside the company, or perhaps from another Monte Cristo title? 

Jérome Gastaldi: We developed our own engine because we wanted to be flexible enough to have different views and levels of details within the game, without the necessity for games to possess top-end PCs.

Ten Ton Hammer: In the FAQ, it states your goal is to have the game be "accessible to all gamers, and thus run on older systems, all the while providing gamers with a realistic and enjoyable experience." The screenshots I've been looking through are amazing, so when you say "older systems", just how old are we talking about here?

Jérome Gastaldi: The game will run smoothly on PCs that are 3-4 years old with the minimum level of details.

Ten Ton Hammer: Despite the awesome screenshots and videos available on CitiesXL.com, a game has to have more than graphics to make it fun. What do you think is the single most exciting gameplay feature of CITIES XL?

Jérome Gastaldi: The incredible level of interactions and possibilities offered by the game is probably the most exciting feature. Possibilities in terms of city management, online aspects and GEM expansions will allow you to always have something new to discover within the game for a long time! For a personal favorite I also have the citizen animations, it’s always fun to walk around your city and look at what your citizens are doing!

Ten Ton Hammer: For the more casual player, will there be a need to consistently micromanage their city and its citizens, or are there settings to allow the AI to take care of the small details so players can just concentrate on the "big picture"?

Play with others around the world.

Jérome Gastaldi: The game will actually let you play as you wish. If you are a control freak and want to micromanage every building and aspect of your city, you will be able to do so. If you just want to lay down your buildings and only worry about the big picture and the way your city looks, the game will not force you to do otherwise.

Ten Ton Hammer: With the online community for CITIES XL so active, you must get bombarded with ideas and requests on a daily basis. What's the number one request you guys receive that you'd like to eventually see get into the game, even if it's sometime after release?

Jérome Gastaldi: We are continuously talking with the community about their ideas, suggestions and criticism on the many features that make a city builder game for more than a year now on the official website and we will keep such relation as we move on because we are looking for a long term relationship between our players and the team.

We tried to fulfill the ideas that made sense in the directions we were leading but still, if we want to get the game released someday, we have to decide where we stop adding new features before debugging and making sure the game is well balanced.

One of the features that players are looking for is Custom Content made by players. This is a feature we want to support but we have some technical points that need to be solved before to make sure to avoid cheating on the Planet offer for instance.

We already started talking with some Custom Content & Modders of the community to embrace them into the technical issues. It will be one of the features that should also keep the game fresh on a long term basis.

Ten Ton Hammer: A game's online community is normally made up of a very diverse and interesting section of the world's population. Have there been any ideas presented by the community that the team had never thought of, but were so cool (or potentially useful) that they've made their way into the game or at least the drawing board? 

New York City will have nothing on you!

Jérome Gastaldi: To be honest - and because we have a team-based game design decision process, I can’t think of any idea we integrated so far that hasn’t been thought up by our developers first: we are ourselves city builder fans and therefore can be very creative on the features we would like to have for the game ;)

However, the community has been very helpful to us when it comes to the details. They spent a lot of time detailing on their posts in our forums the deepest points they want in the many features CITIES XL will have to offer.

For instance, the Mass Placement Tool that allows you to select how and which buildings you want to see in your cities is the melting pot of a set of ideas coming from the community but was originally suggested by one of our dev team.

Ten Ton Hammer: Thanks so much for taking time to answer these questions for our readers! Before we go, is there anything we've left out you'd like to share? Any juicy tidbits you want to reveal on Ten Ton Hammer, haha?

Jérome Gastaldi: There’s one last point you didn’t ask about: the CITIES XL website. :P

This is a unique new feature for all our players as you will be able to expose and see all the activities around your cities. Moreover, we want you to be able to interact with your city even if you are not in front of the computer you installed the game on. Therefore, all the trading features between cities will be directly accessible through the website as well as the major projects you will build…

We want you to be able during your lunch break or from any other computer through the world to log in the website and control your cities as well as seeing what’s going on with your friends, comment their latest city journal entries, etc…

Ten Ton Hammer: Thanks again for your time. We look forward to talking to you again when we can really discuss the nitty gritty details of the game!