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Experience with IBM’s City One Game

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IBM has recently launched an online game called “City One“. It was heralded to be similar to SimCity. You are something like the major of a city, and you have to “make decisions” in four sectors energy, water, retail, and banking.

Unfortunately, I found CityOne to be a worse game than SimCity. The decisions you make are in fact not real decisions. For each of the sectors you have an “expert”, who gives you three options. I never found that your decision has a major negative impact on the overall status of your city. In fact, all of the offered solutions sort of make sense. Sometimes it even seems like the proposed solutions could be out of a consultant’s (IBM?) catalogue. For somebody who has never thought about what a measure could be that could lead to less water losses in a distribution system, this game might be better suited for.

Earning bonuses at IBM's 'City One' game.

IBM's 'City One' game. I just earned a bunch of bonuses.

Some of the proposed solutions are more expensive than others, your funds are limited. However, the game is played in rounds, and in each round your funds recover. After the default 10 rounds my city’s status has been very positive, I had a score of 97,700. It remained unclear when the game is over, I could have continued to play.

Written by Claus

December 2nd, 2010 at 6:09 pm

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