I don't know if you guys have been following the Sim City debacle or not but it's flabbergasting to see such a solid franchise crash and burn. After Battlefield-3 on Origin I've made and stuck to a plan of only buying EA games well after launch. So far it has done nothing but pay off in actual dollars as well as lack of frustration.
Seeing what happened to Sim City genuinely makes me feel bad for Maxis which is a company that has someone I admire at the helm.
This shows us several things:
1. Always on connection/DRM is a failure and will continue to be unless the servers handling the requests are well beyond the scale of any we've seen to date.
2. Cloud computing is still in it's infancy or at least young enough that our games shouldn't have it deeply integrated into core functionality.
3. EA is only getting worse.
Sim City debacle
Moderator: Officers
Re: Sim City debacle
I haven't really been following, I just know there are 'issues', as with any new release game. I got this as a gift but won't receive my copy until Sunday, so I haven't seen it yet. I expected problems for the first month or so anyway, so I've been in no rush to get or install my copy. Maybe in a few more weeks it'll smooth out.
Re: Sim City debacle
I still don't understand why any game with a single player mode has to be online to play. That makes no sense to me.
Alts: Lirsha Deathwhistle & Ayidda
Re: Sim City debacle
DRM, really. It also forces people to go onto EA's Origin services - which gives them both numbers and "feel good" feelings for their business side of things.
Whatever EA can do to bring you into Origin, they have and will take.
Whatever EA can do to bring you into Origin, they have and will take.
Re: Sim City debacle
I agree Abric. There are public announcements from both Maxis and EA claiming that the "always on" is Maxis' idea. Maxis claims that it's not DRM (/rolleyes) but rather that they do it to utilize cloud computing. What burns even worse is the fact that our games will break once their servers go down.
For a game like Diablo it's no big deal to fix the authentication. If that game were to shut down tomorrow Blizz could easily flip a few switches to make it offline compatible. This shit though? Nuh uh. If half of my game is computed in a cloud that may not even exist in my country then there's not a paper cat's chance in hell that the game will work when the servers go offline.
The only merits to the idea have already been done and done better. If my computer can't handle SimCity then we got a fucking problem, yo. It's a city simulation. It doesn't need amazing graphics and realistic physics. It's fucking Sim City.
@Aureliya - If you get it to run smoothly for a few days then let me know and I'll pick up a copy and play with you.
For a game like Diablo it's no big deal to fix the authentication. If that game were to shut down tomorrow Blizz could easily flip a few switches to make it offline compatible. This shit though? Nuh uh. If half of my game is computed in a cloud that may not even exist in my country then there's not a paper cat's chance in hell that the game will work when the servers go offline.
The only merits to the idea have already been done and done better. If my computer can't handle SimCity then we got a fucking problem, yo. It's a city simulation. It doesn't need amazing graphics and realistic physics. It's fucking Sim City.
@Aureliya - If you get it to run smoothly for a few days then let me know and I'll pick up a copy and play with you.
Re: Sim City debacle
Word from a developer is that it doesn't actually use cloud computing - that and you can successfully play for up to 20 minutes before being spanked gives the big lie to that.
Grisbault, Twice-Made.
The p, s, l, and t are silent, the screams are not.
The p, s, l, and t are silent, the screams are not.
Re: Sim City debacle
There's some JS mod that you can download that will turn that 20min into infinity.
Re: Sim City debacle
Grisbault, Twice-Made.
The p, s, l, and t are silent, the screams are not.
The p, s, l, and t are silent, the screams are not.
Re: Sim City debacle
At the rate I'm hearing stuff (which is just bits and pieces mentioned, I still haven't looked into what's really going on), I think I'm going to leave my copy unopened and in the original package until either they figure out how to make the game work, or shut down the whole thing.
Re: Sim City debacle
That video was great. It's like documentation of what we've been observing. In one of the screenshots it shows all of the developers EA has consumed over the years. I literally had to stop and think when I saw Bullfrog and Westwood on there. Mythic and Bioware... it's sad to see companies that were doing such amazing things for entertainment spiral into irrelevance.
Does anyone even remember Bullfrog and Mythic? Dungeon Keeper and Myst could both be rebooted TODAY. Unfortunately EA has bastardized the rights so much that some Asian company owns DK and who knows where the fuck Myst went. Command & Conquer has been going downhill since 4 and I don't see that changing.
I think he's right that EA is doing terrible and will become more and more sports focused but I don't agree that they will go bust. Even if they do I'm sure they will somehow retain a lot of their rights to IP so that they can eventually reboot them.
As much as I hate GameStop I don't want to see them go bust either. Online Passes aren't only going to happen but they already are. The trend will continue to become popular. Instead of fighting it GameStop should embrace the model and start their own deployment platform similar to Steam. They would have to do 1 thing to make it popular: Develop a game and release it as exclusive to their distribution platform. BAM they're on the board.
Sadly I myself starting voting with my wallet beginning with Battlefield: Bad Company being the first game I felt burned on. Since then I've stopped purchasing Call of Duty and a few other titles that aren't making progress (Dead Space, Assassins Creed, Mass Effect). Very recently: Sim City.
The good news is that even if the entire industry crashes and burns the only thing we'll lose is huge budgets for our favorite franchises. Indie will thrive and in turn become the juggernauts I'm bitching about at this moment.
Does anyone even remember Bullfrog and Mythic? Dungeon Keeper and Myst could both be rebooted TODAY. Unfortunately EA has bastardized the rights so much that some Asian company owns DK and who knows where the fuck Myst went. Command & Conquer has been going downhill since 4 and I don't see that changing.
I think he's right that EA is doing terrible and will become more and more sports focused but I don't agree that they will go bust. Even if they do I'm sure they will somehow retain a lot of their rights to IP so that they can eventually reboot them.
As much as I hate GameStop I don't want to see them go bust either. Online Passes aren't only going to happen but they already are. The trend will continue to become popular. Instead of fighting it GameStop should embrace the model and start their own deployment platform similar to Steam. They would have to do 1 thing to make it popular: Develop a game and release it as exclusive to their distribution platform. BAM they're on the board.
Sadly I myself starting voting with my wallet beginning with Battlefield: Bad Company being the first game I felt burned on. Since then I've stopped purchasing Call of Duty and a few other titles that aren't making progress (Dead Space, Assassins Creed, Mass Effect). Very recently: Sim City.
The good news is that even if the entire industry crashes and burns the only thing we'll lose is huge budgets for our favorite franchises. Indie will thrive and in turn become the juggernauts I'm bitching about at this moment.