The SimCity Thread of Offline Play

[Patticus]

SimCity becomes Amazon's worst reviewed product ever: http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-Limited-Edition-Pc/product-reviews

 

The 5 star reviews are just sarcastic.

 

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in EA/Maxis' meetings right now.

[Remy]

the PR department must be having so much fun 

[Patticus]

the PR department must be having so much fun 

 

The morale in the studio must be plummeting daily. Still though, if they're going to lie to and mislead us, they deserve everything they get (except closure and SC dying).

[Remy]

Yet still.

 

http://news.ea.com/press-release/company-news/simcity-sells-more-1-million-launch

 

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced that SimCity™ recorded more than 1.1 million units sold through in the first two weeks, making this the biggest SimCity launch of all time. Roughly 54 percent of those sales have been of digital versions of the game, downloaded directly to players’ PCs via Origin™ or other digital download services.

“SimCity had a great weekend with sales strong across both North America and Europe, adding to overwhelming demand at launch that has us tracking well beyond expectations for the game,” said Peter Moore, Chief Operating Officer for EA. “SimCity is one of the storied brands in gaming, and Maxis delivered a game re-envisioned and engineered for the online age.”

 

Gamers have logged on to SimCity via Origin in record numbers, with 44 percent of SimCity sales delivered via EA’s direct-to-consumer digital download service. SimCity gamers have also helped set new records for peak concurrent users on Origin, now at 1.3 million and rising.

In just two weeks:

• SimCity players have logged more than 15 million hours of online gameplay.
• More than 5.7 million original cities have been created since launch.
• More than 780 million buildings have been built.
• SimCity mayors to date have built enough road and railroad tracks to circle the globe more than 40,000 times.

The Maxis™ studio also continues to enhance both the core SimCity game and the online service infrastructure; in the last two weeks, they have increased server capacity by more than 400%, optimized server response times by 40 times, and deployed fixes to address players' direct feedback on game performance.

 

Everything is intelligently simulated in this new SimCity, from all of the Sims in a city, to every kilowatt of power pulsing through a region thanks to the powerful GlassBox Engine. It is the most expansive city management game yet where multi-city gameplay across regions delivers a larger playing field. No longer are players relegated to playing one single city, now they can manage and play up to 16 cities at once. Each city can have different specializations; they can share services and trade resources; they can help or even hinder each other; every decision a player makes in each city has impact in the broader region. It’s up to the player to decide where and how they play.

 

For the first time in the series multiplayer is added to the gameplay giving players a new dimension to the game, as decisions impact both the city and the region, creating new ways to play by collaborating or competing to earn achievements. Underpinning SimCity is a live service that simulates real-time updates and pushes them to players in the form of new challenges and achievements. Players will track their progression alongside their friends and the world for the most polluted city, the richest city and more. Whether players play by themselves, with their friends or with the rest of the world, SimCity will challenge players to create the city of their dreams and answer the question – what kind of mayor will you be?

 

SimCity is available now worldwide on PC via Origin and retail stores. SimCity is rated E10+ by the ESRB. For more information regarding SimCity, please visit www.SimCity.com. SimCity for Mac will be available in spring 2013. Press assets for SimCity are available at www.info.ea.com.

 

So much for people voting with their wallets :/

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

Now EA will see this title as a major success. -.-

 

This is only the beginning of EA's online DRM...

[Emmett L. Brown]

I have a reaction to this news, but it's basically just a swearword drawn out to six times its normal length.

 

Was really hoping this would be the nail in the coffin for always-online DRM. There's some Cobra Commander-degree villainy going on here, and GI.Joe got laid off due to budget cuts.

[Sean]

EA is like the Saturday morning cartoon villain of the video game industry, they're so horrible I actually want to laugh.

[Badnik Mechanic]

Got a plot of land that you want to turn into a bustling metropolis of over 1.8 Million?

 

But... Don't want to charge tax? Don't want to provide electricity? Or water? Or sewage? or garbage collection?

 

With no crime? Or fires? With a 0% sick rate?

 

Maybe you should play Sim City 5!?

[SenEDDtor Missile]

EA is like the Saturday morning cartoon villain of the video game industry, they're so horrible I actually want to laugh.

 

Huh, that's what I said!

 

EA at this point feels like a really badly written cartoon villain: Evil for the sake of being evil and no common sense whatsoever.

Edited April 2, 2013 by 743-E.D. Missile

[Badnik Mechanic]

SIM CITY IS SAVED!

 

 

Product placement will bring in the money! Yes, that is a real piece of DLC (though it's free DLC).

[Patticus]

Wow, look at EA's latest response.

 

tl;dr: "Let us tell you how wrong you are for feeling the way you do, and why our crappy business practices are fine and you just don't understand."

 

Quoth Peter Moore:

 

Chief Operating Officer

 

POSTED BY Peter Moore ON Apr 5, 2013

We Can Do Better

 

The tallest trees catch the most wind.

 

That’s an expression I frequently use when asked to defend EA’s place in the gaming industry.  And it comes to mind again this week as we get deeper into the brackets of an annual Web poll to name the “Worst Company in America.”

 

This is the same poll that last year judged us as worse than companies responsible for the biggest oil spill in history, the mortgage crisis, and bank bailouts that cost millions of taxpayer dollars.  The complaints against us last year were our support of SOPA (not true), and that they didn’t like the ending to Mass Effect 3.

 

This year’s contest started in March with EA outpolling a company which organizers contend is conspiring to corner the world market on mid-priced beer, and (gulp) allegedly waters down its product.  That debate takes place in bars – our audience lives on the Internet.  So no surprise that we drew more votes there.

 

Let me cut to the chase: it appears EA is going to “win.”  Like the Yankees, Lakers and Manchester United, EA is one of those organizations that is defined by both a legacy of success, and a legion of critics (especially me regarding all three of those teams).

 

Are we really the “Worst Company in America?”  I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity.  We owe gamers better performance than this.

 

Some of these complaints are 100 percent legitimate – like all large companies we are not perfect. But others just don’t hold water:

 

Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme.  It’s not.  People still want to argue about it.  We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.

Some claim there’s no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam.  45 million registered users are proving that wrong.

Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming.  Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games.

We’ve seen mailing lists that direct people to vote for EA because they disagree with the choice of the cover athlete on Madden NFL. Yes, really…

In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games.  This week, we’re seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America.

 

That last one is particularly telling.  If that’s what makes us the worst company, bring it on.  Because we're not caving on that.

 

We are committed to fixing our mistakes.  Over the last three weeks, 900,000 SimCity players took us up on a free game offer for their troubles.  We owed them that.  We’re constantly listening to feedback from our players, through our Customer Experience group, Twitter, this blog, or other sites.  The feedback is vital, and impacts the decisions we make.

 

I expect the debate will include a lot of comments under this post. But here’s the truth: each year EA interacts with more than 350 million gamers; Origin is breaking records for revenue and users; The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Real Racing 3 are at the top of the mobile charts; Battlefield 3 and FIFA are stunning achievements with tens of millions of players; and SimCity is being enjoyed by millions of passionate fans all over the world.

 

Every day, millions of people across globe play and love our games – literally, hundreds of millions more than will vote in this contest.

 

So here’s my response to this poll: We can do better.  We will do better.  But I am damn proud of this company, the people around the globe who work at EA, the games we create and the people that play them.

 

The tallest trees catch the most wind.  At EA we remain proud and unbowed.

 

So much bullshit.

 

Denying that SimCity's always-on shit is DRM when it so obviously is (trying to call it an MMO to back up the BS), claiming Origin is a legit competitor to Steam when people only used it because Battlefield 3, Sim City and a few other games are exclusive to Origin and force you to sign up to it to play. Worst of all is the stupid and utterly shameless attempt to suggest that the only reason EA won last year was because of homophobia, effectively using the LGBT community as a shield against criticism (LBGT support is clearly a very unpopular opinion on the internet!). 

 

[Badnik Mechanic]

EA have announced a new DLC pack... and... I am at a loss for words...

 

The DLC is exclusive to North America and it's a pack of 5 tourist hotspots.

 

So how do you get it? You have to buy... this....

 

 

What? What do you look so confused about? To get this DLC, you have to buy that. The toothpaste.

 

No really, I'm not making this up. You get the DLC if you buy some Oral-B toothpaste... No I'm not making it up. To get the DLC, buy some specially branded toothpaste and you get a DLC code for SimCity.

 

You don't believe me?

 

And heres where you redeem the code.

 

Am I this a dream?

[Cobalt_Bolt]

Is it sad that I can't help but watch how Sim City 5 has crashed since release and wonder how it can get any worse when this comes along.  Maybe the toothpaste is to help clean the bitter taste of disappointment out of the customers mouth after they payed full retail price.

[FourCartridge]

 

I honestly thought it wouldn't get worse than the Nissan charging station. WTF? 0_0 You can't go more sell-out than that.

Edited April 18, 2013 by FourCartridge

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

Maybe this is EA trying to do a self-parody.

 

...

 

That's all I got.

Edited April 18, 2013 by Sixth-Rate Soma

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

 

I honestly thought it wouldn't get worse than the Nissan charging station. WTF? 0_0 You can't go more sell-out than that.

 

Yes they can. I've seen these things when I played The Sims Social alot. Sounds dirty, but hey more money for EA.

 

...well until they shut down the servers.

[KHCast]

Sad to think EA probably think this is a smart decision that will save the game....

[Patticus]

I actually quite like this strategy; it encourages oral health. They should start giving us DLC with condom packs, fruits, veggies, bikes, weights. Get gamers healthy!

Or, you know, they could just do things normally.

[FourCartridge]

This get even better: EA is also offering toothpaste codes for another game on the website

 

 

Purchase specially-marked packages of Crest toothpaste and Oral-B Glide floss for a chance to win great prizes! Plus redeem cool content for SimCity PC or The Sims Social, and get discounts off EA games. Look for products with an orange colored sticker.

 

 

Which is getting canned in two months.

Edited April 18, 2013 by FourCartridge

[Badnik Mechanic]

I actually quite like this strategy; it encourages oral health. They should start giving us DLC with condom packs, fruits, veggies, bikes, weights. Get gamers healthy!

Or, you know, they could just do things normally.

 

 

Buy any dulex condoms and get the HIV clinic DLC free, now your sims can be fucked and screwed over just like when you bought this game.

[Stacy]

I actually quite like this strategy; it encourages oral health. They should start giving us DLC with condom packs, fruits, veggies, bikes, weights. Get gamers healthy!

Or, you know, they could just do things normally.

 

 

 

"Huh, huh, huh, he said Oral!". 

 

Honestly this is the strangest Video Game Product tie-in I have heard of. Usually they go for a product that is usually unhealthy? 

[Gabz Girl]

This is...pretty damn weird. O_o Most videogame tie-in's are with Doritos or Mountain Dew, and other unhealthy snacks and soft drinks. XP

[Patticus]

Which is getting canned in two months.

That's SimCity Social, a different game entirely.

[Sean]

I actually quite like this strategy; it encourages oral health. They should start giving us DLC with condom packs, fruits, veggies, bikes, weights. Get gamers healthy!

Or, you know, they could just do things normally.

 

EA: "If you're opposing our business practices then you're opposing DENTAL HYGIENE."

[The Kid]

I thought the point was that at least you could have a clean mouth after you swallow the shit they hand you.