SimCity is back, gaming is dead, RIP gaming.

[Paelos]

AI is hard to code. Cash shops and DRM are easy.

[tgr]

AI is hard, let's go shopping. Tee hee.

[Modern Angel]

I'll put down pretend money that the tracking of every single citizen's whole routine means they never, ever get larger city sizes to run acceptably.

[Samwise]

A lot of problems that are chalked up to stupid AI can be solved other ways, but if one of the big selling points of your game is that everything is dependent on your AIs doing their jobs efficiently, you better make them not stupid.  

[Morat20]

The autonomous AI is a selling point to me. Seriously. My inner geek goes "Fuck yeah!" and my inner spreadsheet geek drools over the data I can use.

OTOH, always online and, well....I'll wait a few months, get it on sale once they've patched some of the stupid out.

[rk47]

thread title change please.
EA rapes another corpse.

[Fabricated]

There you go.

[rk47]

There you go.

 

Also copied from another forum

Every other day EA announces or does something extremely stupid, like saying that all their future games will have Microtransactions, or when it came out that both Dead Space and Sim City will apparently have those.
Or they are forced to do something because their business strategies didn't exactly work out like cancel Medal of Honor or when they had to shut down Visceral Montreal just a week or so ago in the wake of less than the expected sales of Dead Space 3.

But making a new thread for every egregious thing they do or when every shit-sandwhich they've bitten off of delivers its sweet aftertaste seems like a waste of good thread place so I finally decided to open this, with the newest happenings for and from EA.

In todays issue:
The emerging shitstorm in wake of Sim City's release: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/05/gamers-line-up-to-play-simcity/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUl_Cj2_KWU

EA having to scrub Dead Space from their annual release schedules, because what comes as a surprise to absolutely everyone it didn't manage to sell 5 million units: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...s-following-poor-sales-of-dead-space-3-report

And finally, they closed "BioWare San Francisco": http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/05/ea-shuts-down-bioware-san-francisco/
The last external studio holding the "BioWare" brand, after "Bioware Victory" went back to being Victory Games, "BioWare Mythic" back to Mythic and "BioWare Ireland" was repurposed to a general EA support center. Only the main studios remain for “redundancies” now: Edmonton, Montreal and a severely weakened Austin that already had major cuts of over 200+ people after all that The Old Republic deal.

[Trippy]

He left off the shit storm related to all the fucking IAP* requirements in Real Racing 3.

IAP = In-app Purchase, Apple's term for microtrans (which aren't micro anymore)

[Miasma]

Been reading about all the problems with the launch of this.  Servers crashing, origin problems, roll backs of entire cities, cities just disappearing along with a host of other bugs and problems.  Seems to only take a couple hours to finish a city too, since they are so small.

[rk47]

Been reading about all the problems with the launch of this.  Servers crashing, origin problems, roll backs of entire cities, cities just disappearing along with a host of other bugs and problems.  Seems to only take a couple hours to finish a city too, since they are so small.

I call it Global Warming - a feature. 

[Sir T]

The last Command and Conqeur game didn't work on release day either because the servers were overwhelmed.

Ah well, Sim City 4 is a pretty decent game...

[Quinton]

Waiting for the Steam release!

[rk47]

this is what paradox shd be too.
online only - crusader kings online would've been the best shit ever.
with micro trans to claim de jure counties and shit.
Max Demense capped at 1 till u buy the package...
cause that's how the old empire works: whoever has the most wealth has power.

[tgr]

this is what paradox shd be too.
online only - crusader kings online would've been the best shit ever.
with micro trans to claim de jure counties and shit.
Max Demense capped at 1 till u buy the package...
cause that's how the old empire works: whoever has the most wealth has power.

[rk47]

[koro]

"When you are sixty hours into playing Crusader Kings and your best heir has an assassin breathing down his neck, and we ask you for a dollar to encourage that assassin to slip on a banana peel instead, you're really not very price sensitive at that point in time. We're not gouging, but we're charging."

[rk47]

"When you are sixty hours into playing Crusader Kings and your best heir has an assassin breathing down his neck, and we ask you for a dollar to encourage that assassin to slip on a banana peel instead, you're really not very price sensitive at that point in time. We're not gouging, but we're charging."

Considering the competitive nature of Crusader Kings Online, it is no surprise that the more people pay the Assassins (Hashasshin Pack 1 Week Pack @ $4.99 introduced in the Feb 2013 patch update) to slay you, the more likely their plot will succeed.

But we will never make it a one-sided advantage, you too, can hire additional help in form of the Royal Guards Pack ($4.99) to protect your liege better. If you are unable to afford this, you may attempt to request aid from your allies over Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Bring in 2-3 friends and receive a free temporary Intrigue bonus for a day!

See you in Jerusalem!

[tgr]

"When you are sixty hours into playing Crusader Kings and your best heir has an assassin breathing down his neck, and we ask you for a dollar to encourage that assassin to slip on a banana peel instead, you're really not very price sensitive at that point in time. We're not gouging, but we're charging."

Considering the competitive nature of Crusader Kings Online, it is no surprise that the more people pay the Assassins (Hashasshin Pack 1 Week Pack @ $4.99 introduced in the Feb 2013 patch update) to slay you, the more likely their plot will succeed.

But we will never make it a one-sided advantage, you too, can hire additional help in form of the Royal Guards Pack ($4.99) to protect your liege better. If you are unable to afford this, you may attempt to request aid from your allies over Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Bring in 2-3 friends and receive a free temporary Intrigue bonus for a day!

See you in Jerusalem!

[Bzalthek]

God damn I'm depressed now.  I'll go find a bridge.

[Khaldun]

Actually, I love the idea of a SimCity built entirely on autonomous agents--that's an approach a lot of "artificial society" simulation research has been turning to and it is both interesting and fun. But the EA DRM/always-online junk is a huge barrier to this thing not sucking.

The geek in me loves this idea.  The cynical gamer in me hates the idea of babysitting dumb AI.

If the dumb AI was dumb in ways that resembled actual dumb human agents it would make for an interesting simulation, and maybe in some ways a fun one too. Some of my favorite moments in some games are when certain kinds of emergent effects or glitches make AIs do something that is dumb in a life-like or unpredictable way--say, in a strat game when the AI does something you've never seen before just because there's a weird terrain layout or an unusual confluence of events, etc. Some of my colleagues do work with neural-net programming and robot mobility and they've occasionally come across really cool emergent behaviors that are initially a total surprise and in some ways kind of entertaingly stupid--I could see building a game AI that's trying to create circumstances that produce similar outcomes.

[Gets]

[Morat20]

If the dumb AI was dumb in ways that resembled actual dumb human agents it would make for an interesting simulation, and maybe in some ways a fun one too. Some of my favorite moments in some games are when certain kinds of emergent effects or glitches make AIs do something that is dumb in a life-like or unpredictable way--say, in a strat game when the AI does something you've never seen before just because there's a weird terrain layout or an unusual confluence of events, etc. Some of my colleagues do work with neural-net programming and robot mobility and they've occasionally come across really cool emergent behaviors that are initially a total surprise and in some ways kind of entertaingly stupid--I could see building a game AI that's trying to create circumstances that produce similar outcomes.

The possibilities of emergent behavior was why I really wanted the game. (The possibility of a neighboring city quitting the game and leaving me fucked up the ass made me NOT want to buy the game. WTF, no offline only mode?)

Intellectually, individual Sim AI (which doesn't need to be much more than a pair of sliders --- coupled with a routing algorithm for when they want to eat or go to work) is a big step forward. In game terms, it seems to really limit their city size (which isn't bad per se, but it's obnoxious to people used to cities of 20 million. They might have been better off simulating larger groupings or had each 'sim' represent 10 or a 100 people) and there seems to be a real lag between changes and adjusting the individual Sims.

I understand making the sliders 'sticky' (real people have lag time) but some stuff? Like bitching about crime rates when the rate is zero?

Also, with emergent behavior -- some behaviors are DUMB and have to be weeded out. Like the reports of police patrols that are 40 cars following the same path, etc.

I just wish they'd, I dunno, make a GUI for Dwarf Fortress. :) Their GUI's tend to be allright. :)

[tazelbain]

*Imagines open-source Simcity clone where you and your friends can cluster your computers to create as large and as detailed city as you have resources for*

[luckton]

Query: Has anyone here actually picked this up and played it?  Thoughts?

[Khaldun]

Sounds like even if you had picked it up, you can't be playing it.

[Rendakor]

I bought it, played it for an hour or so the night of launch. Didn't have any server problems, lag, queues, etc. but didn't like it very much either. I'm not sure if you can make private regions, but I don't really like gaming with internet strangers so that was a big turn off. I ended up having to mute the sound effects because I can't stand that stupid Sims speak and you can't disable it individually. Honestly haven't played it long enough to give a fair review because I bought two other games at the same time and have been busy with other things.

[Malakili]

You can make private regions.  So you can play them all yourself, or just invite friends to join.

[Sky]

I bought it, played it for an hour or so the night of launch. Didn't have any server problems, lag, queues, etc.

Shhh...don't muddle the meme with actual facts.

[jakonovski]

[sickrubik]

https://twitter.com/GOGcom/status/309328842345050112

Server problems? DRM-free SimCity 2000 needs no internet to play AND it's only $5.99 http://j.mp/WuweEO  #simcity

 

[Quinton]

So, apparently not only does it *only* save your games online, save games are specific to the server you played on... so if your server is busy or offline or whatever when you next want to play... even if another server is available, oh too bad, can't load your game.   Wow.

[rk47]

Thank you for the public service announcement Quinton, now get back in the queue, you're scaring the sheep.

[Xanthippe]

How is it possible that games in 2013 suck more than 10 or 20 years ago?

[Yegolev]

You can make private regions.