The art in SimCity has a big job to do.

According to EA's Ocean Quigley, it's providing the player with a toolkit for city creation, it's enabling the illusion of a living city, and it's showing the player what's going on in the underlying simulation.

At GDC 2013, Quigley spoke in detail about the motivations that drove SimCity's aesthetics and the methods that were developed to achieve them.

He also described the techniques that were used to make SimCity's dynamically composable world, and the techniques that were used for authoring the buildings, vehicles, networks, and Sims that populate it in his talk, "Building SimCity: Art in the Service of Simulation", which you can watch right now for free via the GDC Vault.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

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