“As soon as we got the team together,” he recalls, “we went to visit one of the premier theme parks in the UK at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. This wasn’t a random choice: Chris Sawyer, the guy who originally created RollerCoaster Tycoon, reckons it has the best mix of different types of rides squeezed into a small place, which was perfect for our research.”

Round and Round. Notice that the snapshots you take are added to the images that cycle through the main screen.

Watts adds: “We are also fortunate to know John Wardley who, as well as being a real life rollercoaster designer extraordinaire, is full of insights into both ride design and the business aspects of theme parks.” You’ll find many of Wardley’s thoughts scattered throughout the RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 manual.

Viewing Angles

Thus began the process of building a game that challenges both your ability to design thrilling rides and your skill at managing such a complex operation. To address the former, Watts’ team made the game 3D for the first time, enabling you to view your park from any angle and zoom in all the way to ground level or zoom out to take in the sights from a bird’s-eye-view.

“[RollerCoaster Tycoon 3] really offers both the classic ‘play to beat the objective’ and ‘toybox’ aspect of gaming.”

- Jonny Watts, senior producer

In addition, the Coaster Cam lets you experience any ride in your park from the point-of-view of a “peep,” which is how Frontier refers to your customers. “My favorite ride is the observation tower,” reveals Watts. “Although it’s about as un-extreme as you can get, I just love watching my parks from such a superb vantage point — it’s beautiful.”

And when you enter the appropriate code found in our Tips, Tricks and Cheats section, you can also see your park through the eyes of any peep. Another cheat code, named for a famous movie director, gives you access to an in-game camera editor for creating your own theme park videos. “It’s been used to great effect by amazingly talented and dedicated fans to produce some beautiful and hilarious movies,” says Watts.

Burnin’ Rubber. The dune buggy — available with a cheat code — tears across a park.

Meet the Peeps

Those of you who enjoy people watching will also get a kick out the peeps who inhabit the game. While the peeps in previous RollerCoaster Tycoon games were what Watts calls “a homogenous ‘fluid’ that passed through the park,” these peeps offer not only unique features and fashion sense but also independent thoughts that you can read to glean insight into your park management skills. You can also create your own peeps and customize groups of them.

Watts adds: “We wanted to ramp up the entertainment factor from several perspectives — for example, you can see peeps telling jokes, having a kiss and a cuddle, taking pictures with the lens cap on, and so forth, along with kids throwing tantrums.

“As well as the joy of individual peep watching, graphically there is also a particular beauty to be had from the presence of such large numbers and their large-scale behavior — I think it’s the first real-sized crowd in a game.”

He notes that he’s seen up to 26,000 peeps enjoying themselves in a park at the same time, although typically you can expect somewhere between several hundred and a couple thousand visitors during one gameplay session.

“My favorite ride is the observation tower. Although it’s about as un-extreme as you can get, I just love watching my parks from such a superb vantage point — it’s beautiful.”

- Jonny Watts

The Best of Both Worlds

Of course, the peeps don’t exist simply for entertainment value — their reactions to your park tell you what’s working and what isn’t. Given that you control everything from the price of food and drinks, to how many employees you have on staff, to how much you want to spend on advertising and R&D, you’ll need to experiment to figure out the mix that keeps peeps happy without putting your operation in the red.

A Peep’s-Eye-View. Experience your rides through the peeps’ eyes.

The amount of minutiae under your control also becomes readily apparent when building rollercoasters, which form the main attractions for your theme park but must be designed with a delicate balance in mind. Give peeps too many stomach-churning steep drops and they won’t want to ride again; skimp on the thrills and they’ll feel the same way. Either result means less revenue for you.

When park management becomes stressful, though, take Watts’ advice and explore what he calls the game’s “mischievous sense of humor. There are some pretty funny results if you only have one toilet open and hike the price up,” he explains, “or decide to send peeps to their doom by deleting a section of coaster track just before a car full of screaming peeps hurtles round the bend.”

Two Parts Planning, One Part Execution. Pause the game before you undertake a major construction project like this rollercoaster.

Not that John Wardley would recommend such moves, of course, but they highlight why Watts thinks the RollerCoaster Tycoon series has been so successful: “It really offers both the classic ‘play to beat the objective’ and ‘toybox’ aspect of gaming,” he says.

If you liked this game, check out:

• Railroad Tycoon 3
• The Sims 2
• SimCity 4: Rush Hour
• Zoo Tycoon