SimCity: Now With 92% Less Crashing; Maxis Walks Back from Offline Comment

SimCity Update #4 is penned by EA Maxis SVP Lucy Bradshaw, who is "happy to report that the core problem with getting in and having a great SimCity experience is almost behind us," saying they have "reduced game crashes by 92% from day one." She admits she's not able to offer the "all clear" for the game she'd hoped to, but seems optimistic that they've turned the corner from the game's rocky launch. There's also a new tweet on the SimCity account quickly walking back from this tweet they posted over the weekend which said: "We have no intention of offlining SimCity any time soon but we'll look into that as part of our earning back your trust efforts." It seems there is a disagreement among the operators of their twitter account, because the new update states this isn't actually possible: "The game was designed for MP, we sim the entire region on the server so this is just not possible."
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Re: SimCity: Now With 92% Less Crashing; Maxis Walks Back from Offline Comment
Mar 11, 2013, 09:27
11.
Re: SimCity: Now With 92% Less Crashing; Maxis Walks Back from Offline Comment Mar 11, 2013, 09:27
Mar 11, 2013, 09:27
 
Capitan wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 09:18:
This is what happens when already large companies try to come up with new ways to make money. The company makes excuses about what is done is for the customer / users best, when in actual is about the come up with ways to "force of money" by the customer / user.

The extension of this will be that the diversity of game ideas will suffer and the games will probably be increasingly unimaginative and mainstream to guarantee an income.

I'm afraid that companies like EA isn't good for the gaming industry at all.

It's an interesting problem, the cost of development has made companies like EA the only resource available if you want to make a traditional AAA quality title. On the other hand there's a legitimate argument to be made about marketing and other support costs helping driving the cost of bringing a title to market too high.

EA has brought some quality titles to the market in the past, Mass Effect, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, etc. Unfortunately like Hollywood, they've devolved into playing it safe, even worse they keep seeking new revenue sources and their tactics keep becoming more and more invasive while they justify it as good for the consumer.

As a consumer I don't see anything good for me here. The game isn't cheaper to offset any potential inconveniences, they retain control and can shut down the servers at any time under the guise of "no one plays it anymore". I see some pro-EA posters say that people need to get with the times, everyone has internet blah etc blah. What do I get from this change? Why should anyone accept something that is only good for EA?

I'm sure that hackers will come out with a server emulator... probably one that can be run in the background of the same machine as the game client... and one that will be better since you won't be running against EA's artificial size limitations that they intend to sell "unlocking larger zones" to people.

Assuming it's feasible to reverse engineer in the first place, I'm not sure there is the interest level to bother unfortunately. I haven't heard of any efforts to do so yet.

This comment was edited on Mar 11, 2013, 09:33.
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 Re: SimCity: Now With 92% Less Crashing; Maxis Walks Back from Offline Comment