Turns out you can have bigger maps in SimCity after all

SimCity sets strict boundaries on the size of your cities, something longterm series fans found very disappointing. Maxis said it was a technical limitation. Modders say it's not.

A new SimCity mod called Project Orion extends the possible boundary of your city to 3km - about four times the default size.

You can download the mod from Simtropolis.

Naturally, the mod isn't perfect - you may have trouble building other cities nearby, and the various starting values like pollution and land value may be misaligned, among other issues But all in all, it proves that with a bit of fiddling, it is possible to have bigger cities in SimCity.

This is a little embarrassing for Maxis, which said that "system performance issues" made it impossible for most users, and said it had completed months of testing before arriving at this conclusion.

This is almost as good as the time it said offline play was impossible, and then modders did that. Maybe Maxis will add official support for larger cities the way it did offline play.

Ah, well, let's cut Maxis some slack - it has a particular vision for what the new SimCity should be, and an offline, single-city game isn't the connected, social, multi-city game it seems to have been aiming for. It's heartbreaking when fans and creators find themselves unable to agree on a balance between keeping the spirit of the original and moving the genre forward.