I was a student who was asked to join the company to handle the business side, but I was really into simulation games. MH: Yeah! It's funny because I personally have no industry background. TR: You guys must have been huge Theme Park, Roller Coaster: Tycoon, and SimCity fans back in the day. We wanted big maps and to fully focus on single player because we didn't have the resources to make big fancy features, so it was driven by what we always wanted to do but could also pull off. We had the vision for the game before SimCity, so we stuck with it and didn't research what they were doing too much. We began to notice that there might be room for another city builder, and our publisher was like 'your idea's fantastic, let's do this!'. MH: We were quite devastated and wondered what type of sequel we were going to make to Cities In Motion 2, but that all changed after SimCity's launch. TR: Did SimCity change how you approached making Cities: Skylines? We thought they were going to build this fantastic game and leave no room for competition!

By the time we had the technology and a skilled team needed to create a city builder, SimCity 2013 was announced.

It was impossible to make one at the beginning with only five people and no track record, so in 2009 we started to focus on creating a smaller-scope game which became Cities In Motion, followed by Cities In Motion 2 that came out in 2013. MH: It's a funny story because we've been pitching a city builder for many years. TR: People tend to pit Skylines against SimCity 2013 - did you do any research into what gamers might want that was missing in SimCity?

Cities skylines disasters