Jimquisition: SimShitty

[nexus]

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.

You're both insulting someone, and trying to coerce them into giving you a direct link to a pirate site.

Why don't you just stop it.

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

One thing I would add: in this case waiting a week or fortnight may not be enough. I'd personally advise you to wait until next month. That way the profits don't show up in the 2012-23 financial year - the most likely reason for the rushed, shitty, release

 

[Aaron Foltz]

Skidrow will find a fix for this "server" issue. Too bad Maxis has been done with since The Sims 2. I was looking forward to this game.

 

[kailus13]

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.

You do realise that you haven't actually said which version you're using meaning that no-one can prove anything.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

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.

Sorry Undead, but your contribution caught my eye and got me rather curious. Maxis has been a pretty significant part of my gaming life, having loved previous city building sims. I find the always-on thing just....heartbreaking, when applied to games like this, or even great IP such as Assassins Creed, Far Cry 3, and now probably soon to be Rainbow 6. Are you actually saying Maxis is behind this design decision? And can you let me know where you found this out? I just find it hard given the backlash regarding always-on, that Maxis would want to do this to their own franchise.

Although I've never played any of The Sims games, Sims3 seems to be pretty broken as well with all the microtransactions. I wonder if this is more EA's fault, or Maxis at this point.

I'll have a listen to Gerstmann's video game crash after work though, thanks for that.

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

Unless they alter the model. Which I already said. Which they're already doing. This is a completely moot point by now.

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.

Yes, but if even the outraged players just buy in secret, there's going to be an extension to the straight up market. And when EA still manages tidy profit margins, bloated budgets are a non-issue. Should that ever outstrip profits, we'll have this talk again.

THQ

Let me stop you there. THQ, the innovator of such bull as the online pass, who lied about their business proceedings and gutted games for profit like EA, didn't go down for such practices. Or quality of games. It went down speculating on the uDraw tablet almost exclusively. The high cost and dependence on subsequent software meant that their stock rotting in warehouses was utterly disastrous. Not that other factors helped, but Superman Jesus and Luke Skywalker combined couldn't save that.

But it'd make for an awesome Captain Planet spin-off.

THQ was more dependent on that than even the makers of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and that should have been a warning sign. It also means there is NO safe equivalent within the gaming market. It's unlikely there will be. Even when companies like Activision have gambled on hardware, they have never wagered that heavily on it and they're unlikely to. To use the car comparison, it's like saying that the industry is headed for a head-on crash because a drunk driver did so.

It's possible they'll be brought down, but not likely based on any of this information.

 

[Novuake]

What everyone seems to be missing(and yes I am aware this is a far off concern), is that in lets say 5 years time when EA goes bankrupt or just decides to end support for the game, what happens then? Our 60$ goes down the drain?

 

[Treblaine]

What everyone seems to be missing(and yes I am aware this is a far off concern), is that in lets say 5 years time when EA goes bankrupt or just decides to end support for the game, what happens then? Our 60$ goes down the drain?

That doesn't even have to happen, they could simply decide to not spend any more money on it.

Microsoft still exist, yet they pull server support for Halo 2. And that's a huge game. Slightly lesser games rarely have server support longer than 4 years.

Cod hasn't exactly had server support pulled, but they have given up any kind of maintenance. COD WaW is utterly inundated with hackers and devs are doing nothing to seal security breaches that allow these hackers in.

 

[Strazdas]

What everyone seems to be missing(and yes I am aware this is a far off concern), is that in lets say 5 years time when EA goes bankrupt or just decides to end support for the game, what happens then? Our 60$ goes down the drain?

That doesn't even have to happen, they could simply decide to not spend any more money on it.

Microsoft still exist, yet they pull server support for Halo 2. And that's a huge game. Slightly lesser games rarely have server support longer than 4 years.

Cod hasn't exactly had server support pulled, but they have given up any kind of maintenance. COD WaW is utterly inundated with hackers and devs are doing nothing to seal security breaches that allow these hackers in.

4 years is long, a long of RTSes i play dropped server support after 2-3 years and community had to mod the game to allow user-created lobby to exist, and some poor folk is paying for it. problem is, some of thse games are dfesigned in such a way that you can play via direct IP without these server services, which is bull, but is not a new thing. gaming is moving very fast and dropping server support is nothing new and is to be expected. you do not buy a game for 60 years. you buy a 5 years license to play it (or whatever years they decide to let it run).

 

[lasati]

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.

Oh, there is going to be another crash. It will happen in a year or two. Only a handful of triple-A studios will be left standing. Bioware, Blizzard, Valve, Bethesda will survive. Parts of Ubisoft will live on (AC and Farcry teams, for example). EA will basically be Bioware + EASports. But I imagine an overall reduction of about 75% of existing game studios.

Here's the issue.

A game studio is structured like this: You have a pile of grunts in the trenches. They do the actual work, and make most of the day-to-day decisions within their limited sphere. Then you have team-leads, and sub-leads and these guys are also important because they either facilitate communication and coordination between teams (games have a lot of moving parts) or make high level architecture and/or technical/design decisions. Then Producer, which is ultimately responsible for resources and budget and you need someone who does this. Above the Producer you have a block of Executive Producers, Design Directors, Creative Directors, Studio Managers, Division Managers, VPs, C-level executives. These guys don't add any direct value to a given game, but in theory they add value to the company. In theory. Because it's at this level, in some private conversation, someone makes the decision "all games moving forward will have online DRM." These are also guys that basically never get layed off, unless the entire studio goes under and even then everyone VP-level and above is safe. I'm also kind of glossing over the split between a studio/publisher (aka Maxis management and EA management), but you get the idea.

So when you buy a game, I would guess something like 60% of your dollar covers the cost of what it actually took to make the game, and the rest pays the salaries of upper management. This doesn't even take into account cases where upper management actively hinders the game development by constantly changing the requirements/high-level goals.

What's not sustainable is the way the industry is currently structured. There are way too many people involved in making a game that shouldn't be, either due to their competency or position in the org chart (generally both). This wastes time and money. And then there is an overlapping category of people the game has to pay the salaries of, who didn't directly contribute in any meaningful way.

The games industry is filled with gamers who are also highly skilled professionals. They're just not the ones making the high-level decisions generally speaking (some companies are better about this than others). What's happening is the industry is run basically like how you would run a software company cranking out COTS. Except for a small handful of places, game studios are run like a Dilbert cartoon. Thing is, if you are making COTS there are a lot of ways you can survive making mediocre products and abusing employees as long as the product (mostly) functions in the advertised manner. But video games are a luxury entertainment -- nobody needs to play a video game.

The crash is coming because digital distribution is leveling the playing field. The large publishers survived for years cranking out games with gross inefficiency because selling a game was a function of how much shelf space you could get at the Best Buy, and THAT was a function of how much money you could throw at your marketing department. Companies are making less money because I can go on steam and get a list of games I've never heard of that have a metacritic score > 85. So the big publishers are losing money there... the response has been 1) bribing the gaming press to give inflated metacritic scores and 2) laying off employees in the "useful" category while keeping the overpaid execs, who stand around cracking the whips on the remaining workers and invent reasons to justify their positions. These reasons generally take the shape of company-wide initiatives, such as always-on DRM.

So now the industry is in a death spiral. Gamers will be fine -- every company that consistently puts out quality games that people like to play will survive. The remaining market will be AA indie studios that arise from the ashes, where people who've worked together want to try and make a game without an oppressive layer of management. My only fear is that kickstarter will be tainted -- every "rockstar" blah blah game developer who took credit for some awesome game in the late 90s I guarantee you wasn't the guy doing the actual work. The people who actually know how to make good games are the guys/girls you never hear about.

Anyway, just an observation from someone works in the industry.

 

[Dollabillyall]

I'm still mad at blizzard about Diablo 3.
I damned well paid ?60 (wich is magically more than $60, another weird way of unconsentially copulating with customers) for a game that didn't work and damnit wasn't even any good. The game fell about 50% short of actually feeling like a finished and complete game... when I had the oppertunity to play at all. After a week I just quit the entire thing forever and after that I recommended all my friends NOT to buy it.
They cured me off actually buying games I MIGHT like. With the demo culture dead beyond death that obviously means that there really is no way for me to judge wether a game is worth my money. I don't buy games that I don't KNOW are worth my money.
I don't buy games anymore.

 

[Lightknight]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary/

Hey Jim, this article should be interesting. A developer stepped forward and announced that the servers do NOT handle complex calculations for single player games and that making an offline mode would require minimal work. Looks like they're actually getting caught in a complete lie.

 

[Lightknight]

Andy alrfeady copied it over to the Escapist.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122654-Maxis-Developer-Denies-Need-For-Single-Player-SimCity-Servers

But it is ever so sweet when a jackass publisher like EA gets caught lieing.

Ah, great. I do prefer to link original sources though (perhaps my college days hammered that into me), but this is the Escapist after all and that is a good write up. Thanks for the link!

It is often that we "think" or "believe" that they're lying to us. But usually we don't get to catch them redhanded where we can so obviously point at the lie and say, "Look, it's a lie and this is why".

 

[Cpt. Slow]

The only thing the video is missing is a Guy Fawkes mask. http://youtu.be/KKvvOFIHs4k

 

[Tony2077]

i hope it does crash teach gamers a lesson about the industary

 

[Frostbite3789]

Could have sworn Jim said he didn't condone piracy but could understand it's Origin.

So...something users get banned for, contributors can now condone in their videos? Seems legit.