SimCity V

This has probably been the single most disastrous launch I've ever seen. After Maxis's last game (Spore) went through the same shit and became the year's most pirated game in addition to sparking off massive DRM controversies, how the fuck were decisions made within Maxis/EA that led to this?

I feel sorry for many of the developers because from what I can see there's actually a really good game beneath all this, that can scratch that simulation itch many of us have been feeling for some years since the genre disintegrated over a decade ago. But the game's had so many bad reviews as a direct result of these issues that it doesn't stand a chance of living up to its potential. How many people are going to hit the 'buy' button after seeing the 1000+ 1-star Amazon reviews?

I suspect what'll happen is EA will solve these issues, make dedicated fans happy with less intrusive DRM and bigger cities, then re-release the game either as a special edition or an iterative sequel in less than a year so they have another chance with the mainstream/casual buyers (who would ordinarily constitute a large part of a Maxis game's audience). Saving the review scores of this release is pretty much a lost cause.

I want to play this game so bad - but I'm just gonna wait until it's in the bargain bin and they removed the "online all the time" requirement, if that's possible.

EA shuts down servers now and then for older games, I suspect they will do the same with this in a not to distant future...

Quote from Hipshot

I want to play this game so bad - but I'm just gonna wait until it's in the bargain bin and they removed the "online all the time" requirement, if that's possible.

EA shuts down servers now and then for older games, I suspect they will do the same with this in a not to distant future...

Exactly my concern. Online support for dozens of their older games has silently disappeared over the years. Considering that the longevity of previous SimCity titles has been so big — 10 years between this and the last one — what happens if people still want to play it after so long? It might seem stupidly irrelevant now but it's going to become a very real issue if going forward any online-enabled game just stops working after 10 years. That's a lot of gaming history down the pan.

holy shit. Everyone was saying this was gonna be bad a year ago but no one though it was going to be this bad. Polygon just changed their review score from 9.5 to 4 (not just because of the net issues but because they removed features in an attemp to fix them.

Also this :

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Wow, EA.

I am never buying from Origin.

But I agree that the online servers for older games being shut down is a real shame. Now, most of the games which have currently shut down their servers are still playable in a single player environment. What happens when they shut down the Sim City V servers in a couple of years? The whole game becomes unplayable. That is really sad.

It seems like a great game and I actually want to play it. But all this crap that's going on is preventing me from buying it. I wonder if Maxis was forced to go down this route by EA. Or if it was a "joint venture". I'm guessing EA forced this onto Maxis and to justify it they moved some of the simulation over to servers. But seriously, is it really too much for PC's to handle alone?

Quote from Beck

But I agree that the online servers for older games being shut down is a real shame. Now, most of the games which have currently shut down their servers are still playable in a single player environment. What happens when they shut down the Sim City V servers in a couple of years? The whole game becomes unplayable. That is really sad.

This. Games like these won't take part in being cultural heritage. perhaps it's for the best, perhaps we can just forget they ever existed.

lmao. Glad to see the community isn't disappointing:

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I bet they're really regretting tying online play into this so much now...

http://www.gametrailers.com/reviews/vfnz03/simcity-review

When your failure has hit CNN and BBC you know your launch is shit.

Everyone looking at EA right now...

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This is fucking hilarious.

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You cannot be fucking serious EA.

Haha.

"Stop playing the game guys and everything will be fine. We have your money so don't worry!"

They really didn't have metrics on average play session length before they released? Or the amount of preorders or sales estimates?

Actually, I believe them, I don't think they anticipated it, I just don't understand how they didn't think people would want to play for longer sessions.

Quote from SamCom

They really didn't have metrics on average play session length before they released? Or the amount of preorders or sales estimates?

Actually, I believe them, I don't think they anticipated it, I just don't understand how they didn't think people would want to play for longer sessions.

Or maybe they used metrics from the facebook game lol

drm free [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/ZYTpTE5.jpg]

Woo, free game!

http://www.ea.com/news/a-simcity…rouble?websso=1

and now we wait for the internet hivemind to turn this into another negative thing

kudos for them trying to win the gamers back

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comme…_to_executives/

Quote

To the executives at EA, from one of your employeesI am deeply embarrassed by the troubled launch of Sim City and I hope you are too. When I walk around our campus and look at the kind of talent we’ve collected, the amenities we have access to and the opportunities working at such a big company affords us, I can’t imagine how for release after release, EA continues to make the same embarrassing, anti-consumer mistakes. We should be better than this. You should not be failing us so badly.

Another thing I see when I walk around our campus are massive banners that display what are said to be our company values. They are on posters on every floor, included in company-wide emails and hanging above the cafeteria in bright colors. You even print them on our coffee mugs so we see them every day. But somehow when planning the launch of Sim City, you threw them all out the window.

Most important of the values you are ignoring is Think Consumers First. What part of the Sim City DRM scheme, which has rendered the game unplayable for hundreds of thousands of fans across the globe, demonstrates that you are thinking about consumers before you are thinking about yourselves? Does “first” mean something different in boardrooms than it does to the rest of us? Does the meaning of that word change when you get the word “executive” in front of your title?

You can’t even pretend that you didn’t know consumers would be angry about this. Common sense aside, consumers complained about this during your public betas. In fact, when one of them posted his criticisms on the forums, he was banned! You tried to silence your critics. The same thing is happening now as users write in to demand refunds. What part of this behavior aligns with our company value to Be Accountable?

What you’ve demonstrated with this launch is that our corporate management does not believe in our core values. They are for the unwashed masses, not for the important people who forced this anti-consumer DRM onto the Sim City team. This DRM scheme is not about the consumers or even about piracy. It’s about covering your own asses. It allows you to hand-wave weak sales or bad reviews and blame outside factors like pirates or server failures in the event the game struggles. You are protecting your own jobs at the expense of consumers. I think this violates the Act With Integrity value I’m looking at on my own coffee mug right now.

On behalf of your other employees, I’d like to ask you to fix this. Allow the Sim City team to patch the game to run offline. If Create Quality and Innovation is still a core value that you believe in, then this shouldn’t be a hard decision. Games that gamers can’t play because of server overload or ISP issues are NOT quality. Be Bold by giving the consumers what they want and take accountability for the mistake.

Finally I’d like to ask you to follow the last company value on the list in the future: Learn and Grow. When you made this mistake with Spore, the company and all your employees suffered for it. You didn’t learn from that mistake and you are making it again with Sim City.

So please, learn from this debacle. Don’t do this again. Grow into better leaders and actually apply our company values when you make decisions. Don’t just use them as tools to motivate your staff. With the money, talent and intellectual property available to EA, we should be leading the industry into a golden age of consumer-focused game publishing. Instead we’re the most reviled game publisher in the world. That’s your fault. Things can only change if you actually start following the company values and apply them to every title we launch.

Sincerely,

A Disappointed But Hopeful Artist at EARS

EDIT: with regards to proof, I am an employee, so I do not want to jeopardize my standing, but today, all regular EA employees got an e-mail with a note from Gabrielle Toledano in celebration of International Women's Day. Another EA employee would have to confirm, but its the most proof I'm willing to risk providing.

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