Post by Bytor on Apr 20, 2010 14:29:26 GMT -5
CMS: Construction Management Simulation games are games which basically a type of simulation game in which the player manages and/or builds communities/cities etc with a limited amount of financial resources. There are many, many different types of CMS's which can range from city building to world building to simply managing a single hotel/resort/zoo or even theme park. The largest differences between CMS games and RTS games is the financial aspect. CMS games most often depend upon the ability of the player to generate income with existing enterprises (as opposed to conquering as happen in RTS's) and there is no building of armies, instead the player has to manage what resources are available and continue to develop the enterprises by utilizing different aspects of the gameplay which is designed to stimulate continued growth of said enterprises. CMS's have several aspects which define the genre. The most important is typically economic in nature. You are forced to use economic factors to determine whether you are currently building or managing existing buildings. The goals of typical CMS's are varied, some are time constrained, others will go on indefinitely, but usually there are set goals to be reached, whether economical or demographical. Most gamers think Intellivision's Utopia (released in 1982) was the first CMS type game but the first truly successful CMS was certainly SimCity (released in 1989) which brought sim type games to a whole new level. Caesar released in 1993 was the next progression of the CMS genre with it's historical aspect as opposed to more modern types. Shortly after the genre was divided even further, with God Sim Games (Populous released in 1989 being the first great one) Sports Sim Games (of which the Madden franchise stands out) and Business Sim Games (Tycoon series being the stars). Typically one person games (for obvious reasons, lol) and seldom is the player actually involved except as someone who controls the environment and attempts to utilize everything to reach goals using various tools and typically 2-3 screens/maps/legends defining controls and actions.
