Sketchnote: Working With System Dynamics

Cities: Skylines (2015)

Developer: Colossal Order
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Platform: PC (Digital)
Genre: City-building simulation, strategy, and management sandbox
Target Audience: Players interested in urban planning, creativity, resource management, and strategic problem-solving
Gameplay Time: 2 days (6+ hours)
Game Website: https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines/about

Figure 1: A screenshot of the game’s main menu.

Introduction and Game Overview

Over two days, I spent more than six hours playing Cities: Skylines, a city-building simulation in which players take on the role of a mayor and develop their own city. The game is open-ended rather than story-driven. Players decide where to build roads, establish residential and commercial areas, develop industries, and provide essential services such as electricity, water, healthcare, and transportation.

There is no predetermined storyline or fixed ending. Instead, the experience develops through the player’s decisions and the challenges that emerge as the city grows. The main focus of my gameplay was exploring how different parts of a city depend on one another, particularly zoning, infrastructure, transportation, finances, and public services.

At first, building a city seemed relatively straightforward. However, I gradually realized that adding more buildings or expanding neighborhoods could create additional demands elsewhere. This made me think about cities not simply as collections of buildings, but as interconnected systems.

Figure 2: A screenshot of an overall city view (daytime).

Figure 3: A screenshot of an overall city view (nighttime).

Genre and System Dynamics

Cities: Skylines combines city-building, strategy, and management simulation. This combination has a significant impact on how the game represents system dynamics. Unlike action games that focus on immediate challenges, this game allows players to observe how decisions affect a larger environment over time.

For example, creating a new residential neighborhood increases the population, but those residents also need employment, transportation, electricity, water, and public services. If these systems cannot support the additional population, new problems can emerge.

This connects to Tracy Fullerton’s discussion of formal systems in Working with System Dynamics. The game contains objects such as roads, buildings, vehicles, and citizens. Each has properties and behaviors, but the relationships between them are what create more complicated outcomes. Managing these relationships is more challenging than simply constructing individual buildings.

Figure 4: Zoning and infrastructure systems.

Interaction Loops, Arcs, and Player Experience

One of the strongest connections to Daniel Cook’s discussion of interaction loops is the repeated process of observing, making decisions, receiving feedback, and adjusting strategies.

I found this particularly relevant when considering traffic and infrastructure management. Players need to identify problems, consider possible solutions, make changes, and then observe how the city responds.

In Cities: Skylines, this can be summarized as:

Figure 5: Interaction Loops Diagram.

For example, traffic congestion cannot always be solved simply by adding another road. Players need to consider road connections, intersections, and the movement of vehicles across the network. A change in one location can affect other parts of the city.

The game also demonstrates reinforcing and balancing feedback. Population growth can generate additional tax revenue, which may support further development. On the other hand, when electricity demand exceeds supply, players need to increase capacity or otherwise address the shortage to restore balance.

Cook’s concept of interaction arcs is also relevant. The game does not have a traditional storyline with a main character or predetermined ending. Instead, the city’s development creates a player-generated experience. Population milestones, new building unlocks, and overcoming challenges provide moments of progression and achievement.

The loops and arcs work together: repeated decisions and feedback shape the city, while its overall development gives those interactions a larger sense of meaning.

Figure 6: Traffic information.

Figure 7: Road network.

Values and the Formal System

Another aspect I considered was the values communicated through the game’s mechanics.

Cities: Skylines encourages players to prioritize economic growth, efficiency, financial sustainability, public services, and citizens’ well-being. These values appear through the decisions players must make rather than through direct moral instructions.

For example, industrial development can support the economy but also create pollution. Similarly, expanding a city may increase its population while placing additional pressure on infrastructure and public services.

However, I think the game has limitations in representing real urban systems. Real cities involve political negotiations, cultural differences, social inequalities, and individual experiences. These aspects are difficult to capture through numerical indicators such as population, income, traffic, and service coverage.

This raises a question for me: What aspects of real people’s experiences are lost when complex social problems become resource-management challenges?

In terms of formal systems, Cities: Skylines provides defined rules, resources, properties, and relationships that influence gameplay. Players can also observe emergent behavior when many citizens, vehicles, and services interact. However, the game remains a simplified model of reality rather than a complete representation of an actual city.

Figure 8: Environmental information.

Figure 9: Public-service information.

Inspiration and Criticism for My Own Game Design

The biggest lesson I take from Cities: Skylines is that meaningful player decisions should have consequences that extend beyond the immediate action.

For my own system-based games, I want to design choices that influence multiple elements, such as characters, resources, relationships, or future opportunities. I also appreciate how the game uses visual information and numerical feedback to help players understand what is happening.

At the same time, the complexity of the simulation can make it difficult to identify the exact cause of a problem. When several systems change simultaneously, players may not know which decision produced a particular outcome.

This is something I want to consider in my own design: providing enough feedback for players to understand their decisions while still leaving room for experimentation and discovery.

I also want to bring together Cook’s ideas about interaction loops and arcs. Repeated interactions should help players develop skills and understand the system, but those interactions should also contribute to a larger experience that gives their decisions meaning.

Figure 10: Overall city view.

Conclusion

Playing Cities: Skylines helped me understand that a city is more than a collection of buildings and roads. It is a system in which decisions can create consequences across different areas. The game demonstrates how interaction loops, feedback, and emergent behavior can make a relatively simple set of rules produce complicated outcomes.

More importantly, the experience gave me ideas for my own game design. I want to create systems in which players can experiment, recognize the consequences of their decisions, and gradually understand how different elements connect. For me, the most valuable part of Cities: Skylines is not simply the ability to build a large city, but the opportunity to discover how the city responds to the choices I make.

AI disclosure: The blog’s thumbnail and the Interaction Loops Diagram were created by generative AI (ChatGPT). The analysis of the play and the written explanation are my own work.