'There will be a Chirper, for sure' in Cities: Skylines 2, says Colossal Order CEO

pcgamer.com:

When Cities: Skylines launched in 2015, one of the earliest popular mods for it was a killer. Literally. The mod assassinated Chirper, the noisy little bluebird who serves as the city builder's in-game, onscreen social media notification system.

Clearly, a lot of players didn't like Chirper—myself included—but in retrospect it feels a bit mean to assassinate the little blue birdie with a mod. Chirper is just trying to help, after all, passing on messages from the tiny citizens of your city. Chirper's chirps may clue you into problems like blackouts and weather events, and share your citizen's opinions on the look of the city, the state of traffic, or player-enacted city policies.

But just like the actual social media app it's based on, Chirper can be pretty annoying and sometimes you just want it to shut the heck up—Colossal Order even patched the game so players could hide Chirper's chirps without needing a mod. On the other hand, as we see with other annoying digital assistants like Microsoft's Clippy(opens in new tab), over time a fondness for an annoying entity can form. I may not really like Chirper, but eight years later… I sort of also love Chirper?

We don't have all that many details about Cities: Skylines 2(opens in new tab) yet, and Colossal Order has said it's not ready to reveal much more than we already know until closer to the sequel's launch later this year. But while speaking with Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen earlier today about the original Cities: Skylines, I couldn't resist trying to extract a little information about the sequel. Important, world-shaking information. I wanted a Chirper scoop.

«Chirper has kind of become the mascot of the game,» Hallikainen said. «Unintentionally. It was not