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We Built This City

Monte Cristo's Jerome Gastaldi on the launch of Cities XL, and the challenges of creating a new kind of MMOG

The city-building genre has been around for a very long time indeed, but this month French developer Monte Cristo released its take on that sector of the industry with Cities XL, a game that can be played offline or online, and with significant meta-game elements taking place on the official website.

Following the game's launch, we caught up with studio head Jerome Gastaldi to get an impression of how gamers have responded to the title, what the challenges of multiple play-styles (and multiple revenue streams) have been, and what the plans are for ongoing development.

GamesIndustry.biz What's the response been to Cities XL since launch?
Jerome Gastaldi

I think that to be honest we had a launch that's gone according to plan. We entered the top ten in the UK according to Chart-Track this week, and we're second in France, and we're expecting to be top five in Germany.

So the good news is that we've got the volume we were expecting, perhaps a little bit higher, and those extra users are triggering some early-stage problems on the platform, but overall, within the game we're pretty positive.

What we see is that people are playing a lot - we've got a really high level of concurrency, a lot higher than we thought we would have. It's peaked at around 70 per cent, with the lowest point being in the region of 37 per cent... which for a builder game online is certainly higher than we expected - but that's early-stage.

In terms of service, the launch went well - we've started to have some little platforms issues on the trading side this past weekend, and we're playing cat-and-mouse with that at the moment. It means that the trading is very well used, and there's a bit of latency there that we need to fight against. But that's the only noticeable problem we've had, but it's getting better.

GamesIndustry.biz It's unique in terms of the way that it's engaging players, with the choice of playing offline, online or the meta-game using the website - but clearly that's not been a difficult concept to sell to people?
Jerome Gastaldi

Well, I don't think most people have fully understood the scope of the project, and that's normal. It will take them weeks to learn the full game, and weeks to understand the benefits of using the world to play - and also to realise what trading will allow them to do.

So I think the overall level of understanding isn't there yet - what's clear is that it is a difficult concept to put across, because when you say you're making a builder game with subscription, but you don't have to subscribe if you don't want to... we're a bit out of the box in terms of thinking.

But there's a logic there for us, because there are two populations that can be interested in Cities XL - people who just want to play solo, because they've never played multiplayer before, and you can't force those people to play multiplayer, you need to provide them with a solo game... but if there's a level of curiosity there, they can go to the Planet offer.

And then there are those people who are really interested in the idea of building cities and being able to trade and collaborate - and we need to give them the option to do that straight away.

So I think the message has gone out loud and clear now, and we don't have any indication that it hasn't - but a lot of the game has yet to be discovered, and I think people who are going to go online will have a few months of surprises.