This was dreadful and embarrassing to read through. Zero new information, no apologies, just dodging.
> You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available to you anywhere.
"Anywhere" there's an internet connection, "anytime" their servers are up.
You want to claim its an MMO? You want to claim game-as-a-service? Fine. But sell it as that, charge me $15 a month for an ephemeral product. Not $60 for something I can't even use on my own time.
edit: The point of the last statement isn't to compare it to an MMO, the point is that EA are not upfront about the odds of the game itself being very ephemeral. I'm not sad I can't buy it for $15. I'm sad that its quite possible in just 2 years time that no one can.
Guild Wars 2 sells an actual MMO as a one-time fee, and they're doing just swell. I've heard most people claim that as one of its benefits, not a downside. Not sure what that means, just wanted to point out that people often do enjoy single-fee game-as-a-services.
Also, when you say "$60 for something I can't even use on my own time" are you claiming that the game doesn't even work, as all of the hyped up gaming articles are claiming? I've been watching someone stream the game for the past week and a half, and he's been doing just fine, playing consistently for about 8 hours a day, each day since the release. So, sure, there are some problems with it, but it's not like the game is so horribly broken that you can't use it.
If they charged you $15 per month, they'd have to refund you for the fact it's been down a significant portion of the month; I mean, can you imagine the shitshow if WoW were down for a week and Blizzard just kept charging people (and gave no credit)?
This way they can pretend they aren't just taking your money and completely failing to deliver a viable product on the timing promised.
EA should clean house on their PR team. What disastrous responses. To starting this post with, "I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity," is so gross, self congratulatory, and not contrite. That plus doubling down on the dishonesty instead of really offering straight answers is just going to fuel the fires.
> "I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity,"
I really cannot believe they actually started the post with that line. The very reason they are in this PR nightmare is because people have been unable to play the game.
There's a subtle piece here that a lot of folks are missing: it's not just EA, but also Maxis, independently responding to the community. Maxis being the developer, EA being the publisher. That's why part of this is a shitstorm, Maxis and EA are sharing contrary words with the community, so the community sees double-speak and stops trusting anything from EA or Maxis.
> We even check to make sure that all the cities saved are legit, so that the region play, leaderboards, challenges and achievements rewards and status have integrity.
Wait, didn't someone demonstrate that a modified client can edit the region as well as their own cities? There's obviously no sanity checking going on with the data the clients return, much less server-side simulation.
This week many of the stability issues were mitigated, and I began to enjoy my game. To be honest, while I didn't ask for the multiplayer features, they were a bonus when they worked. I could even ignore the DRM if the game worked.
But posts such as this can only make my blood boil. What I read is neither "straight" in a sense of honesty nor an "answer" of any sort to the downtime/mismanagement they've done.
Shame on you, Lucy. The next time you want to lie, at least don't claim it's "straight". Only there won't be a next time.
I feel as though I just read the political equivalent of watching paint dry, atrocious. No apologies, no explanations, just justification and dodging the real issues. They could have made it all somewhat right by coming out and admitting they made bad choices, instead we get dribble about how they've always had an always online vision, etc.
How about we get some questions about the horrible path-finding AI and what they plan on doing about it?
Their research for the vision they have developed for the new SimCity had quite a different result from the basic Facebook poll I did earlier this week amongst my friends.
Self-selected responders replied to my post asking if they were interested in playing the new game as SP, MP or both, along with how many have purchased and how many would like to or will.
Of sixty responses, two chose MP only. Fifty-three both SP & MP(including sandbox option I hadn't initially mentioned), and five SP only. Three had purchased the game, all wanting refunds because a lack of SP and server issues (which had to do with their own connection issue in one case).
Over fifty had played one of the previous versions of SimCity. Almost none now wanted to buy/license this version, because of the issues, connectivity, and lack of SP gameplay.
Granted it was a small sample, not scientifically done, and self-selecting responders, but I very much doubt the sincerity of EA's reply that the "vision" they have developed for this new version is based on actual user feedback, or the users are an EA selected group designed to give that them the response they want.
> I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity,
All 12 of you who can actually play
> but I’d like to offer some straight answers on the topic: Always-Connected and why SimCity is not an offline experience.
I'm going to spend exactly one word answering this question.
> Always-Connected is a big change from SimCities of the past.
We at Maxis used to care about our customers, games, and integrity
> It didn’t come down as an order from corporate and it isn’t a clandestine strategy to control players.
We don't care about controlling you, any more than we care about whether or not you have any fun. We just want to make more money. But we noticed we were making less money than we predicted, then found out that you're mad, so here comes the best rationalization we could come up with on short notice.
> It’s fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity.
Making more money
> From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.
We took a look at Zynga, and they seemed to be making money at the time.
> We put a ton of effort into making our simulation and graphics engines more detailed than ever and to give players lively and responsive cities.
Here's a completely irrelevant anecdote to butter you up before we lie to you again.
> We also made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation into the cloud to support region play and social features. Here’s just a few:
Again, by innovative, we mean for our bottom line.
> We keep the simulation state of the region up to date for all players. Even when playing solo, this keeps the interactions between cities up to date in a shared view of the world.
We don't know how to design distributed systems.
> Players who want to reach the peak of each specialization can count on surrounding cities to provide services or resources, even workers. As other players build, your city can draw on their resources.
Our engineers told us there was no technical excuse we could hide behind, so we altered the game mechanics instead.
> Our Great Works rely on contributions from multiple cities in a region. Connected services keep each player’s contributions updated and the progression on Great Works moving ahead.
We know we could have built a game with mechanics that work offline, but then we wouldn't have much to hide behind, would we?
> All of our social world features - world challenges, world events, world leaderboards and world achievements - use our servers to update the status of all cities.
We thought of calling it SimCityVille, but that just didn't have the same ring to it.
> Our servers handle gifts between players. We’ve created a dynamic supply and demand model for trading by keeping a Global Market updated with changing demands on key resources.
We update each city’s visual representation as well. If you visit another player’s city, you’ll see the most up to date visual status.
Here are some more examples of "features" we came up with that are plausibly related to a game about simulating a city. We know they're a stretch, but we've already used up all the good ones.
> We even check to make sure that all the cities saved are legit, so that the region play, leaderboards, challenges and achievements rewards and status have integrity.
We might lack integrity, but we'll be damned if we let you.
> Cloud-based saves and easy access from any computer are another advantage of our connected features. You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available to you anywhere.
Thin, we know, but this was the least contrived use case we could come up with to justify removing your ability to save.
> Almost all of our players play with connected cities. But some chose to play alone – running the cities themselves. But whether they play solo or multiplayer, they are drawn to the connected city experience.
Altering the game mechanics to support our business needs appears to have successfully influenced their behavior.
> And Always-Connected provides a platform for future social features that will play out over regions and servers. The game we launched is only the beginning for us – it’s not final and it never will be.
Until we decide to sunset the game.
> In many ways, we built an MMO.
We heard those make more money.
> So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes.
Remember, by subset we mean subset of the things important to us, not you.
> But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision. We did not focus on the “single city in isolation” that we have delivered in past SimCities. We recognize that there are fans – people who love the original SimCity – who want that. But we’re also hearing from thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality.
We get that you don't like it. But we don't really care.
> The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology.
We did our best to maintain a superficial resemblance to the game you knew and loved. Hopefully this will fool a few people who have been living under a rock into purchasing it.
> So I’ll finish with another HUGE thanks to everyone who stuck with us through this launch. Hundreds of thousands are building and sharing cities online now. And what you’re creating just blows us away. SimCity is a special game, with a very special community of players, and we’re proud to be a part of it.
Thank you for playing SimCity.
Remember, it's not your game, it's ours.
>> From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.
>We took a look at Zynga, and they seemed to be making money at the time.
You should slap this into a nicely formatted HTML page and put it up on "honestmaxis.com" (or something less susceptible to a lawsuit).
In the best case someone at Maxis reads it and gets a clue (sadly unlikely). In the worst case it puts a smile on the face of every Sim City player who stumbles over it.
Either way, thanks from me, I enjoyed this translation.
Previously I had implemented a project that needed to be always-connected, and in order to take network outage into account, we would write to a buffer (a sqlite database actually) if we couldn't detect network. We will sync with server once online and sync the related information as necessary. Simcity can use similar technique because I don't see there is any hard real-time interactions between players or the server. In offline mode, the simulation will run with a default parameter set, or the data from the previous sync, until the next sync happens. In fact, my gut feeling tells me the simulation engine should have an offline switch to let it run stand-alone, or else it would be hell to debug a system that keeps on changing states.
This is actually a better point than you might think, because the state of game journalism means that most journalists and reviewers are both overworked and dependent on publishers, and this the publisher's spin doctoring. Many have just reposted the press releases without context or commentary.
I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity, but I’d like to offer
some straight answers on the topic: Always-Connected and why SimCity is not
an offline experience.
We're super pretentious!
Always-Connected is a big change from SimCities of the past. It didn’t
come down as an order from corporate and it isn’t a clandestine strategy to
control players. It’s fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity.
From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind –
using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to
create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a
global, ever-changing, social world.
Which not many SimCity fans actually care about! Of course it didn't come down from corporate, it came from General Managers like you! That isn't corporate...no!
We put a ton of effort into making our simulation and graphics engines more
detailed than ever and to give players lively and responsive cities. We
also made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation into
the cloud to support region play and social features. Here.s just a few:
Let me just insert arbitrary features we had 'envisioned' and reinforce the idea that this isn't DRM right here.
Cloud-based saves and easy access from any computer are another advantage
of our connected features. You can pop from work to home, play the game and
have your cities available to you anywhere.
Guess what, Lucy? Steam Cloud provides the exact same thing and not all of them involve DRM. -shock-
Almost all of our players play with connected cities. But some chose to
play alone . running the cities themselves. But whether they play solo or
multiplayer, they are drawn to the connected city experience. And
Always-Connected provides a platform for future social features that will
play out over regions and servers.
Let me be pretty clear about what SimCity was and always has been. The basement dweller's dream of creating the life and the feel that they were never able to partake in. Social? You're out of your brains...
The game we launched is only the beginning for us – it’s not final
and it never will be. In many ways, we built an MMO.
No. No you did not. You marketed it as a once off game to buy and play. MMO's have a very distinct feel about when they're released. They have alpha and beta releases, news releases all up until 'official' launch date. You had an official launch date. You failed. This is not an MMO. Please don't try to spin the wording.
So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we rejected that
idea because it didn't fit with our vision. We did not focus on the
'single city in isolation' that we have delivered in past SimCities. We
recognize that there are fans - people who love the original SimCity - who
want that. But we.re also hearing from thousands of people who are playing
across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected
functionality. The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its
heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology.
Really? Where have you heard these reports from? Please, do tell.
So I'll finish with another HUGE thanks to everyone who stuck with us
through this launch. Hundreds of thousands are building and sharing cities
online now. And what you.re creating just blows us away. SimCity is a
special game, with a very special community of players, and we're proud to
be a part of it.
'Please be kindly understanding in our most insincere apologies as we give out some lame excuses and reiterate that this was all part of the plan.'
And as one commenter said on the article:
With all due respect, to write an article about why the new SimCity has to
be always online and not to mention DRM or the anti-piracy measure even
once, is dishonest and down right disrespectful.
[+] [-] simonsarris|13 years ago|reply
> You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available to you anywhere.
"Anywhere" there's an internet connection, "anytime" their servers are up.
You want to claim its an MMO? You want to claim game-as-a-service? Fine. But sell it as that, charge me $15 a month for an ephemeral product. Not $60 for something I can't even use on my own time.
edit: The point of the last statement isn't to compare it to an MMO, the point is that EA are not upfront about the odds of the game itself being very ephemeral. I'm not sad I can't buy it for $15. I'm sad that its quite possible in just 2 years time that no one can.
[+] [-] xymostech|13 years ago|reply
Also, when you say "$60 for something I can't even use on my own time" are you claiming that the game doesn't even work, as all of the hyped up gaming articles are claiming? I've been watching someone stream the game for the past week and a half, and he's been doing just fine, playing consistently for about 8 hours a day, each day since the release. So, sure, there are some problems with it, but it's not like the game is so horribly broken that you can't use it.
[+] [-] jarcoal|13 years ago|reply
They did say it would be online-only long before launch, so anyone who paid for it knew what they were getting in to.
[+] [-] DannyBee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuuuuuuuuuuu|13 years ago|reply
This way they can pretend they aren't just taking your money and completely failing to deliver a viable product on the timing promised.
[+] [-] NoPiece|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n3rdy|13 years ago|reply
I really cannot believe they actually started the post with that line. The very reason they are in this PR nightmare is because people have been unable to play the game.
Too soon Lucy, too soon!
[+] [-] endianswap|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fnordfnordfnord|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevingadd|13 years ago|reply
Compares her current 'straight answers' with previous statements from Lucy (and other EA reps) along with the truth. She doesn't do too great.
[+] [-] nwh|13 years ago|reply
Wait, didn't someone demonstrate that a modified client can edit the region as well as their own cities? There's obviously no sanity checking going on with the data the clients return, much less server-side simulation.
[+] [-] ipsin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uptown|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggy2011|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MBCook|13 years ago|reply
Or why it took so long to scale up to manage the "unexpected" demand.
[+] [-] ebbv|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bencxr|13 years ago|reply
But posts such as this can only make my blood boil. What I read is neither "straight" in a sense of honesty nor an "answer" of any sort to the downtime/mismanagement they've done.
Shame on you, Lucy. The next time you want to lie, at least don't claim it's "straight". Only there won't be a next time.
[+] [-] DigitalSea|13 years ago|reply
How about we get some questions about the horrible path-finding AI and what they plan on doing about it?
[+] [-] blaabjerg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nekojima|13 years ago|reply
Self-selected responders replied to my post asking if they were interested in playing the new game as SP, MP or both, along with how many have purchased and how many would like to or will.
Of sixty responses, two chose MP only. Fifty-three both SP & MP(including sandbox option I hadn't initially mentioned), and five SP only. Three had purchased the game, all wanting refunds because a lack of SP and server issues (which had to do with their own connection issue in one case).
Over fifty had played one of the previous versions of SimCity. Almost none now wanted to buy/license this version, because of the issues, connectivity, and lack of SP gameplay.
Granted it was a small sample, not scientifically done, and self-selecting responders, but I very much doubt the sincerity of EA's reply that the "vision" they have developed for this new version is based on actual user feedback, or the users are an EA selected group designed to give that them the response they want.
[+] [-] Maven911|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niggler|13 years ago|reply
I suspect those people far outnumber those who want a messy online experience
[+] [-] milkshakes|13 years ago|reply
All 12 of you who can actually play
> but I’d like to offer some straight answers on the topic: Always-Connected and why SimCity is not an offline experience.
I'm going to spend exactly one word answering this question.
> Always-Connected is a big change from SimCities of the past.
We at Maxis used to care about our customers, games, and integrity
> It didn’t come down as an order from corporate and it isn’t a clandestine strategy to control players.
We don't care about controlling you, any more than we care about whether or not you have any fun. We just want to make more money. But we noticed we were making less money than we predicted, then found out that you're mad, so here comes the best rationalization we could come up with on short notice.
> It’s fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity.
Making more money
> From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.
We took a look at Zynga, and they seemed to be making money at the time.
> We put a ton of effort into making our simulation and graphics engines more detailed than ever and to give players lively and responsive cities.
Here's a completely irrelevant anecdote to butter you up before we lie to you again.
> We also made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation into the cloud to support region play and social features. Here’s just a few:
Again, by innovative, we mean for our bottom line.
> We keep the simulation state of the region up to date for all players. Even when playing solo, this keeps the interactions between cities up to date in a shared view of the world.
We don't know how to design distributed systems.
> Players who want to reach the peak of each specialization can count on surrounding cities to provide services or resources, even workers. As other players build, your city can draw on their resources.
Our engineers told us there was no technical excuse we could hide behind, so we altered the game mechanics instead.
> Our Great Works rely on contributions from multiple cities in a region. Connected services keep each player’s contributions updated and the progression on Great Works moving ahead.
We know we could have built a game with mechanics that work offline, but then we wouldn't have much to hide behind, would we?
> All of our social world features - world challenges, world events, world leaderboards and world achievements - use our servers to update the status of all cities.
We thought of calling it SimCityVille, but that just didn't have the same ring to it.
> Our servers handle gifts between players. We’ve created a dynamic supply and demand model for trading by keeping a Global Market updated with changing demands on key resources. We update each city’s visual representation as well. If you visit another player’s city, you’ll see the most up to date visual status.
Here are some more examples of "features" we came up with that are plausibly related to a game about simulating a city. We know they're a stretch, but we've already used up all the good ones.
> We even check to make sure that all the cities saved are legit, so that the region play, leaderboards, challenges and achievements rewards and status have integrity.
We might lack integrity, but we'll be damned if we let you.
> Cloud-based saves and easy access from any computer are another advantage of our connected features. You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available to you anywhere.
Thin, we know, but this was the least contrived use case we could come up with to justify removing your ability to save.
> Almost all of our players play with connected cities. But some chose to play alone – running the cities themselves. But whether they play solo or multiplayer, they are drawn to the connected city experience.
Altering the game mechanics to support our business needs appears to have successfully influenced their behavior.
> And Always-Connected provides a platform for future social features that will play out over regions and servers. The game we launched is only the beginning for us – it’s not final and it never will be.
Until we decide to sunset the game.
> In many ways, we built an MMO.
We heard those make more money.
> So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes.
Remember, by subset we mean subset of the things important to us, not you.
> But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision. We did not focus on the “single city in isolation” that we have delivered in past SimCities. We recognize that there are fans – people who love the original SimCity – who want that. But we’re also hearing from thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality.
We get that you don't like it. But we don't really care.
> The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology.
We did our best to maintain a superficial resemblance to the game you knew and loved. Hopefully this will fool a few people who have been living under a rock into purchasing it.
> So I’ll finish with another HUGE thanks to everyone who stuck with us through this launch. Hundreds of thousands are building and sharing cities online now. And what you’re creating just blows us away. SimCity is a special game, with a very special community of players, and we’re proud to be a part of it.
Thank you for playing SimCity. Remember, it's not your game, it's ours.
PS We're not sorry we lied
[+] [-] DrJ|13 years ago|reply
Sounds so true that I almost spat out my drink.
[+] [-] moe|13 years ago|reply
In the best case someone at Maxis reads it and gets a clue (sadly unlikely). In the worst case it puts a smile on the face of every Sim City player who stumbles over it.
Either way, thanks from me, I enjoyed this translation.
[+] [-] ijk|13 years ago|reply
Amusingly, EA also has SimCity Social, a Facebook game, launched last June. It doesn't have server problems.
[+] [-] atesti|13 years ago|reply
Now you are a bit unfair to her! There is no place where she ever said or wrote such a thing like that she would be sorry!
[+] [-] evolve2k|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endianswap|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] happywolf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|13 years ago|reply
Hindsight is 20/20 indeed.
[+] [-] anonymousab|13 years ago|reply
If a release group (against all odds) beats them to it then all the better.
[+] [-] codezero|13 years ago|reply
If you're still thinking of buying SimCity, don't, we're not going to change a thing. To those of you who bought it already, thanks for your money.
[+] [-] zem|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ijk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atx|13 years ago|reply
And as one commenter said on the article:
[+] [-] losethos|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]