City building games have a Soul Problem pt.2
- ID
- 31733
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 03 Oct 2026, 11:52 PM
- Fetched
- 05 Oct 2026, 7:43 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://www.radical-elements.com/minor-epiphanies/city-building-games-have-a-soul-problem-pt2
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 2.5
- Created
- 05 Oct 2026, 7:47 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developers
What happened
Alex Lingris argues that city-building games like Cities: Skylines 2 have a 'soul problem' because generated cities look square, flat, and neurotically clean, missing stairs, potholes, trash, cables, graffiti, construction sites, scaffolding, poles, traces of the past, leaves, and organic shapes. Mods and decals can add some of that detail, but the piece says it would take ~40 hours of micromanaging every corner, which also destroys the surprise of seeing what the algorithm generated. The Hacker News thread had 158 points and 151 comments.
Why it matters
For most developers, founders, and AI/agent builders, there is no direct action item: no version, price, API, policy, or infrastructure change. The only concrete takeaway is for game or procedural-generation builders: if you want generated environments to feel alive, the essay's specific missing details (stairs, potholes, trash, cables, graffiti, construction sites, scaffolding, poles, traces of past, leaves, organic shapes) are a more useful design checklist than 'improve graphics'.
Discussion angle
Can 'soul' in generated content come from procedural messiness—stairs, potholes, graffiti, organic shapes—or does it always require hand-painted decals and hours of cleanup? Compare that trade-off to AI-generated code or art.