Jimquisition: SimShitty

[Brad Gardner]

now I feel a shamed for buying the game day 2. Publishers aren't willing to take the risk that there would be millions of players and when suprise there are only has room for a few thousand. I was bored as hell when I bought this game. it was this or spec ops: the Line and I don't like shooters in general. Never play a CoD so I wouldn't understand the subcontext so the srt would have been watsted on me.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Yes, most gamers eat up corporate bullshit with a shovel

This just kills me. Sure all the gaming sites and forums are up in arms but when they release the sales figures all the corporates are patting each other on the back for another successful release.

 

[PatchStixington]

Love the House of Cards reference. Always awesome. Also agree the revolution is definitely due.

 

[snave]

This sort of DRM is the solution to "piracy". It's the only truly effective scheme. They take a significant chunk of the game (in this case, the actual town simulation algorithms), and don't actually give it to you in the box. They keep that part on their own servers where they can control it.

No way to 'crack' that. Perfect protection from copying.

Until a disgruntled employee leaks the missing code.

 

[Reduced_Silver]

Any lawyers here from the UK. Sounds like Jim says some pretty libelous stuff here.

I'm sure he doesn't have proof for a lot of the accusations he makes against EA.

 

[Something Amyss]

but if you had told me just five years ago about some of the video game controversies of today, I wouldn't have believed it.

There's a very famous saying that "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."

If you told me five years ago that we'd still be buying this crap, I'd be surprised. But then, people have an amazing threshold for crap.

While I agree the current practices are unsustainable, I don't think that means a crash. It means that EA/Activision/whoever have to further tune their practices, as they've been doing for years. History shows that we as a community will buy a new game with always-on DRM, knowing both that it has it and that historically it won't work near launch. They don't even need to fix this problem, unless there's a major sea change.

I'm sure that EA has probably made it's money back on SimCity by now. However, is someone who buys SimCity and left unable to play it going to be a repeat customer.

Yes, but you aren't representative of the whole. Further, while I hear the sound and the fury from the internet, this is the same outrage we got last time and the time before. The internet is full of people who scream "BOYCOTT!" who then silently buy up the game anyway. If I had a nickel for everybody who 'boycotted' Mass Effect 3 but was playing it onXBL or Steam, I'd be rich enough to start up my own publishing company. With blackjack. And hookers.

I'm not saying you are or aren't sincere. I try and believe the best in people, but the flipside is that I'm aware of the disconnect between the individual and the whole.


"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

It loses a little bit when translated from the original Klingon, but still.

I'm betting the next game will also more than make its money back. And the next one. I don't even know what the next high profile releases are, but I'm betting there will be issues there, too.

As such, I will leave you with the words of the great philosopher, Peter Townshend:

But the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war


Meet the new boss....

 

[grey_space]

YAAAAARRRRRRR
In any case I wonder how this will go down when consoles too have always online DRM

Well then I for one will not be buying any consoles.

I mean I don't even buy any DLC since I think that it's a pile of poo.

 

[geizr]

What is really the most amazing thing about this is that EA, in an effort to stop piracy, has in fact made piracy the most convenient method of playing the game. Brilliant!! Actually you should all go to Amazon and look at the positive reviews of the game. Yes, the positive ones. They're amazing.

OMG! That is so absolutely hilarious! Thank you for mentioning the reviews on Amazon.com. Those are the best, most epic reviews I have ever seen for a game. [Spoiler: People are actually happy they can't play the game because it's given them an excuse to reclaim their lives from gaming. Good job EA! You'll get the industry to crash, yet. Of course, you lost my dollars long ago.] I think it would be awesome for the Escapist to reprint some of the reviews (if that is possible and legal) just to show how much people really love not playing SimCity.

 

[Undeadpool]

EA's logic is kind of backwards. If they were really afraid of us, you'd think they'd be doing everything they could to appease us.

Not really. Appeasement is one valid option, and so is exerting control. EA's problem is not that they are trying to control the behavior of gamers, but that they are doing it poorly and that they are worried about the wrong things.

So an issue that Maxis has taken full responsibility for is still getting heaped on EA's doorstep because...boy, EA sure is hateable!! EA can be held accountable for PLENTY of crap decisions, enough that they don't need stuff invented to heap upon their doorstep.

Seriously, the word MAXIS was mentioned THRICE in Jim's video, while EA was mentioned more than quadruple that. This is all being heaped upon the PUBLISHER, not the goddamn DEVELOPER. Don't get me wrong, the DRM is absolute crap (even though Steam gets away with it on a constant basis), but let's place the blame where it BELONGS.

Oh and listen to Jeff Gerstmann's views on why the videogame crash, as it happened before, basically will never happen again. There could be a "Second Crash," but because of how gaming's infrastructure is structured now.

 

[Colt47]

An interesting situation of note is that I've seen some think that there is some kind of band wagon that people jumped on with this whole always online DRM thing for Sim City, but in this case it seems like those of us expecting and complaining about it now were already in agreement that the always online DRM scheme was setting a bad precedent. We just sort of got an ideal outlet for our disdain of the system and it happened to involve a company that already had reputation issues to begin with. Kind of like a hateful version of a peanut butter and Jelly sandwich.

 

[Edible Avatar]

Oh sweet, sweet internet justice:
[link]http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/simcity[/link]

 

[Something Amyss]

Any lawyers here from the UK. Sounds like Jim says some pretty libelous stuff here.

I'm sure he doesn't have proof for a lot of the accusations he makes against EA.

While Jim is indeed British by birth (and Jim Sterling by the grace of God), he lives in the Deep South and I'm pretty sure resides in the states for all legal intents and purposes. I'm not sure what the UK would have to do with this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, of course. I haven't really kept close tabs with Jim since the restraining order. >.>

hahaha waiting a few weeks is a partial stick-it-to-the-man method if any I suppose lol...sigh

It is really smart, though.

Yes yes, we suspected that these Servers will have difficulties on day 1. Well, day 1 is over and the game is still in a rather sorry state.

FROM day one should be more accurate. These problems weren't going to go away by virtue of it being Day 2. It was going to take time. The problems, quite literally, don't get fixed overnight.

 

[Lord Draenor]

Now then. Where did I put my eye-patch, triangle hat and skull-flag?

 

[Treblaine]

The pirated version I found is currently the best and most fully functional pirated version that exists on the internet. Prove me wrong please.

You make a claim without basis.

But I have to prove you wrong? You've got that backwards.

 

[Waffle_Man]

While I agree the current practices are unsustainable, I don't think that means a crash. It means that EA/Activision/whoever have to further tune their practices, as they've been doing for years. History shows that we as a community will buy a new game with always-on DRM, knowing both that it has it and that historically it won't work near launch. They don't even need to fix this problem, unless there's a major sea change.

If you agree the practices are unsustainable, then you should also agree that, at some point down the road, they are going to breach a threshold that consumers aren't willing to cross. I should say that I'm worried less about a crash and more about the market simply drying up. Not some sort of 15 car pile up, but a bunch of cars gradually running out of gas.

I'm sure that EA has probably made it's money back on SimCity by now. However, is someone who buys SimCity and left unable to play it going to be a repeat customer.

Yes, but you aren't representative of the whole. Further, while I hear the sound and the fury from the internet, this is the same outrage we got last time and the time before. The internet is full of people who scream "BOYCOTT!" who then silently buy up the game anyway. If I had a nickel for everybody who 'boycotted' Mass Effect 3 but was playing it onXBL or Steam, I'd be rich enough to start up my own publishing company. With blackjack. And hookers.

I'm not saying you are or aren't sincere. I try and believe the best in people, but the flipside is that I'm aware of the disconnect between the individual and the whole.

I didn't buy simcity, so this isn't something I'm typing up because I got burned by it and am mad. Hell, I'm not even in an active boycott of EA at the moment, I just haven't had the need to buy anything from them in the past couple of years.

I'm not talking in terms of sales or boycott or anything based off of morality. Rather, the companies are consolidating all of their risk into fewer and fewer outlets while making much more risky decisions with their products when cutting corners (usability issues are far more objectively bad than quality issues). This alone doesn't necessitate a failure of the market, as people will take plenty of shit, but when you couple this with the horrendously inflating budgets, a single failed money pit could potentially irreparably hurt a large company, if not now, then at some point in the future. It may not happen in the next three years. It might not happen in the next five years. But when it does happen, if the games industry hasn't gotten out of the toxic business practices they're into right now, it's going to hit them harder than they can afford. People will endlessly put up with shitty service on an airline, but if an air line starts having regular crashes of increasingly expensive planes, they aren't going to last long.

THQ wasn't the biggest player in the industry, but the mere fact that a publisher as large as them can fail, even when the quality of their products was decidedly above average, should be a sobering moment for everyone in the industry. Hell, what happens if one of the new consoles has a wide spread RRoD level issue on day one? With this economy, it would not only spell a fairly early doom for the console, it would also have a devastating effect on anyone developing for it. I'd like to think that companies are careful enough to avoid such mistakes, but I'm starting to have doubts.

I'm sure that the next gen will go smoothly, but this isn't about the quality of the games themselves, it's the accessibility failures that worry me. The consumers aren't that dumb.

 

[dubious_wolf]

I actually have resolved to not buying videogames. It's saved my a ton of money. That I've been throwing at my LGS for MTG product and Wargames minis.
I am effectively ol boycotting. It's not hard everyone else who claims to and fails is too lazy

 

[Atmos Duality]

This sort of DRM is the solution to "piracy". It's the only truly effective scheme. They take a significant chunk of the game (in this case, the actual town simulation algorithms), and don't actually give it to you in the box. They keep that part on their own servers where they can control it.

No way to 'crack' that. Perfect protection from copying.

Indeed, but there are large tradeoffs to be made in the process.
The most obvious, is that not every game is sustainable in this manner. As Ubisoft learned, very few people were willing to tolerate the always-online bullshit unless they wanted specifically to be online.

Then there's gameplay.
Diablo 3 butchered its own gameplay in an attempt to make more money without overtly charging an online subscription, and SimCity HORRIBLY limits your ability to build compared to previous games by chopping up regions into baby-cities, to allow for multiple players to work on a region at the same time.

Gameplay design suffers when it goes from being single-player or select Single/Multi, to ONLY multiplayer.

Sure, you can play by yourself online, but what is the point? What's the practical purpose beyond having access to the game? There isn't any.

Gameplay suffers to the point where pirates cracking the DRM are doing it more for the challenge (or possibly out os spite) than any practical reason.

But of course, like all solutions to piracy, it's the paying customers who are punished the most.
Here we have a real solution, and it's worse than the problem it's meant to fix.

 

[Treblaine]

The pirated version I found is currently the best and most fully functional pirated version that exists on the internet. Prove me wrong please.

You make a claim without basis.

But I have to prove you wrong? You've got that backwards.

The basis is that I have not found any other, better version on the entire internet nor on the most visited pirate site on the internet.

Now either prove me wrong or shut the hell up.

Have you looked everywhere on the internet? The entire internet?

Otherwise "not found any other" is as relevant as not finding any Pink Flamingos as proof that pink flamingos don't exist anywhere on earth.

or shut the hell up.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/codeofconduct

 

[EmperorZoltan]

check out the first video in the que.... nappa and vegeta trying to play simcity, gold

http://teamfourstar.com/