SimCity is back, gaming is dead, RIP gaming.

[sickrubik]

I love it when that shit happens.

[Modern Angel]

Jesus. When even EA stops whoring its own game, you know shit just got REAL.

I'd say this confirms my belief that this is the worst major launch of any game, ever.

[Mithas]

Is there something wrong with me because I am enjoying this debacle? This is one of my favorite franchises, played the shit out of it through my childhood and now I think it is hilarious that it is going down in flames. Am I broken?

[tgr]

Jesus. When even EA stops whoring its own game, you know shit just got REAL.

I'd say this confirms my belief that this is the worst major launch of any game, ever.

Best worst major launch?

[murdoc]

I'm all for piling on EA for this - but Simcity UK is not an EA page, it's a fan page that was created yesterday.

[Phred]

Jesus. When even EA stops whoring its own game, you know shit just got REAL.

I'd say this confirms my belief that this is the worst major launch of any game, ever.

Remember when Anet stopped selling gw2 to cut the server load when it was launched? This looks like a badly handled version of that.

[Modern Angel]

Is there something wrong with me because I am enjoying this debacle? This is one of my favorite franchises, played the shit out of it through my childhood and now I think it is hilarious that it is going down in flames. Am I broken?

If you are then I am, too.

For me, though, I think this is important. Not because it's automatically going to change things or anything but because it's shining a brighter spotlight on issues of DRM and just how much abuse gamers are willing to take (hint: it's a lot). EA won't change, ever, but it might cause a mid-sized company to rethink a DRM strategy, for instance, or drive more serious business journalism when it comes to the industry. It's shocking how little "real" journalism takes place given how much money changes hands. The gaming industry is terrible. It has terrible business practices and worse labor practices but nobody in the "real" world pays attention because GAMING. That should change and I hope this is one of the things that chips away at that mainstream reticence to look at things closely.

[Yoru]

Opened the launcher. Waited five minutes to "authenticate". Launched. Five minutes of blackscreen doing god knows what. Intro movie. Title screen. "The SimCity servers are down. Your request cannot be processed at this time."

Quit, open Minecraft. It works fine.

The funny part is that people are pretending that all online launches are disasters, and yet City of Heroes managed to not melt its servers down in 2003. All this debacle proves is that you really can cash in on nostalgia, because EA did that and is probably back to swimming in vats of platinum.

Not because it's automatically going to change things or anything but because it's shining a brighter spotlight on issues of DRM and just how much abuse gamers are willing to take (hint: it's a lot).

Pretty much this.

[Hutch]

In rubbernecking news, EA have told affiliates to stop trying to sell their game: http://www.slashgear.com/ea-tells-affiliates-to-stop-actively-promoting-simcity-08273116/

You know things are really bad when Electronic Arts is actively suspending all of its marketing efforts on SimCity. The publisher has sent an email to its marketing affiliate partners asking them to “please stop actively promoting the game” until further notice. Specifically, EA’s Origin says they have “deactivated all SimCity text links and creative,” and they’re asking affiliates to remove all promotional material from their websites.

What next for SimCities of our lives I wonder!

Hmm. As X approaches Y, stop trying to sell our game.
Where X is the number of people not buying + number demanding refunds, because of the DRMs.
And Y is the number of people we predicted would pirate the game if we didn't have the DRMs.

[Miasma]

While I'm greatly enjoying reading about the crashing and burning, because I'm a terrible person, all this talk has got me really itching for a city sim type game.  Has anyone ever tried that Anno 2070 game?  I wouldn't buy it at full price, which it still is on steam, but would pick it up on a sale if people think it's halway decent.

I'd buy Tropico4 but I hear it's just a slightly upgraded Tropico3, which I've already played a bunch of.

Edit: Hmm, coincidentally, Tropico4 is on sale for $7.50 on steam right now, maybe I'll just do that.  Still interested in first hand Anno 2070 impressions though.

Edit2: Bought Tropico4 with a bunch of dlc bundled in for ten bucks.

[tgr]

Keep in mind tropico 4 requires a kalypso account, and anno 2070 has solidshield tages with 3 machine activations.

[luckton]

2070's alright.  Don't pay full price.  Also, its still chock full of Ubi DRM; it came out shortly before Ubi said they were going to relax the DRM to death thing.

Honestly, I really would like to play THIS city manager game.  Maybe in a few weeks they'll have the fire sale to bring people scared away back.

[Modern Angel]

How did CitiesXL shake out? I remember hearing it was a disaster at launch but that it got its act together eventually.

[Jeff Kelly]

Chris Kluwe reviews Sim City in a spot on and hilarious fashion.

[Miasma]

How did CitiesXL shake out? I remember hearing it was a disaster at launch but that it got its act together eventually.

I hear it's very pretty but not actually a sim.  More of a "place very pretty stuff on a grid and take screen shots" type of thing.

Keep in mind tropico 4 requires a kalypso account, and anno 2070 has solidshield tages with 3 machine activations.

Hmm, I did not know that but it only took a second using my spamcentric email alt compared to the simcity debacle.

[K9]

Chris Kluwe reviews Sim City in a spot on and hilarious fashion.

That is fantastic.

I enjoy TB, think he's a bit of a dork and a total drama queen, but getting into a fight on an internet forum isn't really indicative of much.

It's a bit more than being a kooky internet celeb. I don't have my helldumpish log of stuff on him at my fingertips but he's pretty much a complete prick.

This is just coming from seeing the guy interact with people elsewhere on the internet besides his youtube channel though, so I guess if you just watch his videos you don't need to care. I kinda don't touch anything involving the guy anymore because I think he's an asshole.

Meh, I enjoy his schtick enough to watch a fair few of his videos. His style doesn't bother me so much, the fact that he's fairly terrible at games does. He has some very valid criticisms to make that perhaps sometime get lost in the froth of is personality. I haven't found many other youtube reviewers who I enjoy more.

[luckton]

The Tropico devs are going on the offensive.



I played Tropico 1 a looooong time ago.  I think it's time to return.  Fucking sold.

[Paelos]

Keep in mind tropico 4 requires a kalypso account, and anno 2070 has solidshield tages with 3 machine activations.

The kalypso thing is just something you sign in once to launch the game, it's not very intrusive at all. I actually play Tropico 4 a lot and like it.

[luckton]

From Destructoid: EA: "SimCity's broken because it's just too much fun!"

In what has to be the most incredible display of PR spin seen in a videogame crisis, an Electronic Arts spokesperson has claimed SimCity's notoriously awful DRM setbacks are a result of the game being just too gosh-darn enjoyable to quit! No, this isn't an Onion article.

"What we saw was that players were having such a good time they didn't want to leave the game, which kept our servers packed and made it difficult for new players to join," explained senior producer Kip Katsarelis on EA's forums.

The remark has already led to SimCity being renamed to SpinCity (thanks to Hollander Cooper!) in celebration of an almost impressive bit of damage control. SimCity is now the game too fun to work, and it's all your fault for wanting to play it so badly.

Amazing.

This goes great with their review they debuted today: 4/10.  

GameTrailers was more "understanding", with an 8/10.

This has now also lowered the MetaCritic to 76.

[Hammond]

Anno 2070 is alright but the DRM is really annoying even though it does kinda sorta work...  Its got some bugs and the cities are fairly simple although the underwater aspect is interesting.  For the price its not bad all said and done. I bought Tropico and this is the first one I have played. I am far preferring it over Anno 2070 right now.

I was actually looking forwards to simcity until I have watched this debacle unfold. I am curious what this is going to do to EA's stock price. Maybe if their stock takes a dump someone will notice what idiotic decisions they have been making.  Although I am not going to hold my breath on that one.

[Sir T]

EA's stock price has actually risen by 50 cents over the last 5 days 

[Nightblade]

Nevermind!

[tgr]

Hilarious though it is, that's already in the thread.

[Phred]

  Still interested in first hand Anno 2070 impressions though.

I have it and enjoy the heck out of it. Even bought the expansion. Got it for half price and it logs you into uplay every time you play but you can play it in offline mode if you want.

[Paelos]

EA's stock price has actually risen by 50 cents over the last 5 days 

Pretty much everything has.

[Samwise]

Hilarious though it is, that's already in the thread.

Did someone post the "loading" review for the third time?   

[Phred]

Keep in mind tropico 4 requires a kalypso account, and anno 2070 has solidshield tages with 3 machine activations.

The kalypso thing is just something you sign in once to launch the game, it's not very intrusive at all. I actually play Tropico 4 a lot and like it.

You sure about this? I have Omerta and it logs in every time I launch the game. Doesnt matter much as I registered from a disposable GMail account. For all the fuss about Uplay it basically works the same for me.

[UnSub]

The first impression they ever gave was an incredibly shitty one. The Polygon website initially existed for months as a blank page of almost nothing except a pretentious-as-fuck masturbatory "documentary" about their development and launch of the site. They were rendered a laughing stock for months, but of course, that's long forgotten now. Oh, and despite all their crowing about integrity and being free from influence, they received a hefty sum of money from Microsoft in order to even launch the site, staining their rep from the word "go".

There's a number of unintentionally funny things in that Press Reset documentary (e.g. the first company they show Polygon presenting themselves to is EA's PR department, Russ Pitts' has an interview with someone who lives on the same street as he does) but overall it's very dull. You can't make people working on websites look exciting.

Regarding SimCity: it's almost the perfect case for game journalists writers playing the game under manufactured conditions and forgiving the faults, then the game crashing into reality. Polygon got to run early with their very friendly review and now they're being bashed with it.

Reviews encourage people to buy a title. Polygon told people they should buy this game. They were wrong. 

[luckton]

Maxis: Free game for SimCity owners

“…to get us back in your good graces, we’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio. On March 18, SimCity players who have activated their game will receive an email telling them how to redeem their free game. I know that’s a little contrived,” Bradshaw admits, “kind of like buying a present for a friend after you did something crummy. But we feel bad about what happened. We’re hoping you won’t stay mad and that we’ll be friends again when SimCity is running at 100 percent.”

“Hang in there,” she concludes here note, “we’ll be providing more updates throughout the weekend.”

So...free copies of Madden '04 for everyone?  

Fake edit: Forbes: The return of disgruntled anonymous employees ranting about EA's failures!

[jakonovski]

The free game is another delicious opportunity to fail. They could show believable remorse and offer new games like Crysis 3, or they could flip the bird and offer, well, Madden '04.

[Hutch]

"Hey Peter. Whaaaat's happening."

"Oh, hi, Mr. Lumburgh, I was just finishing up my TPS report. I'll get that cover sheet put on it this time."

"Yeah, Peter. That's not why I'm here this time."

"Oh?"

"Peter, I see you have an EA corporate logo coffee mug on your desk."

"Yes, sir, that's my coffee mug."

"Can I take a look see? I just want to see something here ..."

*turns mug around in his hands*

"Yeah, Peter, this says Act with Integrity."

"So?"

"Well Peter, you think you're anonymous, but it turns out, this is the only coffee mug with this particular slogan on it."

"Oh."

"And this little smudge on the bottom? Yeah. That's an RFID chip."

"I see."

"Peter, these gentlemen are named Hor-hay and ... Jamaal, is it? Yeah. These nice men are going to escort you to the front door. Have a good day. Buh bye."

[luckton]

EA Maxis head honcho'ete Lucy Bradshaw will be gracing the SimCity Twitter feed today from 1200 PM PST to 1245.  She also made some comments to Polygon regarding offline mode, which basically surmounted to her saying "Nope".

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/9/4081464/simcity-interview-ea-maxis-lucy-bradshaw

"An online interconnected world has been part of our design philosophy since day one," she said. "It's the game that we've been wanting to create since SimCity 4 as we've wanted to explore the dynamics between cities as they exist within regions. Real cities don't exist in bubbles; they specialize and trade resources, workers and more.

"With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud. It wouldn't be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team."

[tgr]

Let's just see how much "computation" is "in the cloud" (god, I wish I could smack her right in the face for saying those 3 words) when/if someone makes a proxy EA server emulation thingy.

[jakonovski]

Real cities don't exist in bubbles

Indeed, they exist in 2 sqkm rectangles.

However I must admit that EA has made the game playable for me today. It's definitely Simcity lite, but so streamline that it's really enjoyable to play. The disabled social features do drag it down somewhat, and there's a whole dimension of intercity trading that doesn't seem to work much atm.

[Soln]

we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud

The smoking gun of incompetence.  

They really don't trust their customers.  I could somehow understand it in an MMO, but this is single-player sim game.  I guess all the juicy MT $ they wanted got in the way of delivering to customers.