SimCity is back, gaming is dead, RIP gaming.

[Fabricated]

I'd say there's a difference between making a game with an ending that no one liked and making a game that literally didn't fucking work.

[tgr]

No, no, you must stop being an entitled gamer and just accept what the gods of gaming give us, because it's art!

[Yegolev]

Sure, I'd draw some similarities to a jar of piss.

[Paelos]

No, no, you must stop being an entitled gamer and just accept what the gods of gaming give us, because it's art!

I'd really like to know if people that use that logic know anything about the history of art, and the relationship of patron/commissioner and artist.

[Sjofn]

The thing is, as far as I can tell the annoyance is not so much EA refusing to make the game single player (which is dumb on its own) but that they pretty blatantly lied about why. Like they were swearing up and down that it was basically impossible. And that is lying, regardless of EA's "obligations" or what the fuck ever.

[Miasma]

EA just announced John Riccitiello is stepping down as CEO.  Probably not directly tied to something as small as sim city but eh.

[tgr]

I don't know about you, but I'm annoyed at 1) no steam copy, 2) always on, 3) lies, even in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary, about how offline mode would be impossible.

Actually, that last bit isn't so much annoyed at, but more vicious bemusement at how far into their mouth they can stick that foot before they'll just fess up and go "okay, okay, it was a blatent attempt at just luring players into buying our always-on DRM".

[tgr]

http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=749234 announcement
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/03/18/following-sim-city-meltdown-eas-ceo-has-stepped-down-and-the-company-is-forecasting-weak-earnings/ one article with some details around this, including:

The company’s share price is up more than 7% in after-hours trading, indicating that investors are content with the change.

[Sjofn]

I don't know about you, but I'm annoyed at 1) no steam copy, 2) always on, 3) lies, even in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary, about how offline mode would be impossible.

I'm personally just annoyed that the game is, it seems, a buggy awful mess, as I have accepted Origin existing for some games I want long ago (although I do think it's dumb) and always on doesn't bug me in theory, although it has yet to not be annoying in some way in practice. And the lying, of course. I just meant the complaints I've seen at large about the always online thing seem mostly focused on yes, being irritated that it exists, but the blatant fucking lying about why and how hard it would be to make otherwise is the part that seems to have most people going "Dude! Come the fuck on!" So the blogger being all "Stop saying they're lying" rings pretty goddamn hollow when that is exactly what EA has done.

[Sir T]

I'd really like to know if people that use that logic know anything about the history of art, and the relationship of patron/commissioner and artist.

But but but Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel for free and was not forced to do it at all!!!

[tgr]

So the blogger being all "Stop saying they're lying" rings pretty goddamn hollow when that is exactly what EA has done.

You'll hear nothing to the contrary on this part, but at this point it's just to be expected that someone, somewhere, will whiteknight the fuck out of $company, regardless of how badly they fuck up on every level.

I don't rightly understand the why of this myself, it's like some people just completely and utterly lose the capacity for logical reasoning. Then again, we see this time and time again in politics.

[Ingmar]

No, no, you must stop being an entitled gamer and just accept what the gods of gaming give us, because it's art!

I'd really like to know if people that use that logic know anything about the history of art, and the relationship of patron/commissioner and artist.

That history is pretty irrelevant to how things work now, though. The advent of mass media, and in the last decade or so, the feasibility of self-promotion, has changed the model entirely. I think you would be really hard pressed to draw any kind of convincing parallels that affect the 'art' argument one way or the other.

A better argument is that artistic though the content may be, you shouldn't be comparing the output of a team of hundreds of people in a commercial enterprise to the theoretical lone "pure" artist.

[Paelos]

My point was that people spout it as some defensible truth, yet have no understanding of art, historical or otherwise. The statement always rings hollow to me as a copout.

Also, EA losing their CEO speaks more to the point I was making earlier about Q1 earnings, and most likely Q2, being complete shit due to the failures of DeadSpace 3 (the fact this was offered for free for the Simcity screwup speaks volumes), Crysis 3 (which was very underwhelming), and the SimCity boondoggle. Investors don't want to see EA rest on traditional laurels of Madden and FIFA 20XX, with absolutely no inroads in other markets. You can't make money that way in the model they've projected.

[Mithas]

Maybe it is just the entitled gamer in me, but I feel like I should be angry. This is a series that has a large following and has played the game and its sequels for 20+ years. The game has been roughly the same game throughout its lifetime. It seems to me that I should be allowed to be angry when the game has changed so much in this iteration. This is not SimCity in the traditional sense, they just slapped that title on it. I know this is a bad analogy, but wouldn't James Bond fans be up in arms if they completely changed the Bond 'theme'?

[tgr]

They would, and they would  have a bunch of people telling you that you shouldn't be angry, because it's more modern now.

[Sjofn]

And it's not like they haven't been pissed before over something similar, SimCity Societies got pretty well raked over the coals for not being SimCity IV, only newer. And at least that game fucking worked the way it said it worked.


(Supposedly Tilted Mill really, really wanted them to take the SimCity part off of the title, for pretty much that reason, but EA said no. I imagine a lot of Tilted Mill people are going right about now.)

[Hutch]

EA just announced John Riccitiello is stepping down as CEO.  Probably not directly tied to something as small as sim city but eh.

RPS Article

From the comments:

I just hope they locked him out of his office and made him buy back all his personal effects piece by piece through microtransactions.

[Ingmar]

Maybe it is just the entitled gamer in me, but I feel like I should be angry. This is a series that has a large following and has played the game and its sequels for 20+ years. The game has been roughly the same game throughout its lifetime. It seems to me that I should be allowed to be angry when the game has changed so much in this iteration. This is not SimCity in the traditional sense, they just slapped that title on it. I know this is a bad analogy, but wouldn't James Bond fans be up in arms if they completely changed the Bond 'theme'?

Who is telling you you can't be angry?

[Mithas]

They would, and they would  have a bunch of people telling you that you shouldn't be angry, because it's more modern now.

Maybe I am getting too old. This whole thing just strikes me as a bunch of idiots in a board room throwing out things like "everyone is into social media now" and "everyone wants to play games with their Facebook friends" so lets have a game that emulates that in some form.

I guess I should just start yelling at kids to get off my lawn because I want to play a single player game. Alone.

[Mithas]

Maybe it is just the entitled gamer in me, but I feel like I should be angry. This is a series that has a large following and has played the game and its sequels for 20+ years. The game has been roughly the same game throughout its lifetime. It seems to me that I should be allowed to be angry when the game has changed so much in this iteration. This is not SimCity in the traditional sense, they just slapped that title on it. I know this is a bad analogy, but wouldn't James Bond fans be up in arms if they completely changed the Bond 'theme'?

Who is telling you you can't be angry?

I was just referencing the yahoo article. Really it is more about the whole idea that we should just accept the drivel that is coming out because it's art.

[Kitsune]

Voting with one's wallet works best when one can actually get refunds when they find out they've bought a turd.  The PC game market stands alone among other forms of entertainment in the amount of struggle one has to go to in order to get their money back after finding out the thing they bought doesn't function.

[Fabricated]

Voting with one's wallet works best when one can actually get refunds when they find out they've bought a turd.  The PC game market stands alone among other forms of entertainment in the amount of struggle one has to go to in order to get their money back after finding out the thing they bought doesn't function.

This is why I haven't bought Mass Effect 3 despite the fact I looked forward to it so much. I very rarely pre-order anything.

I imagine I'll buy ME3 somewhere down the line, but only for a price that meets my expectations of it. Right now that sits at a $40 GOTY edition with all the DLC. Anything more than that and I'm afraid I'll never own it.

[Ingmar]

The multiplayer alone has been worth $40 to me. Just sayin'. 

[Maledict]

I've spent more time on ME3 multiplayer than any other game this last year. Scary amounts of time - 150 or so hours last time I checked.

Would never in a million years have thought it would be that good, but hats off to them - easily the best multiplayer game I have played in *years*.

[Sjofn]

I'm going to play some right now. 

[Hoax]

Voting with one's wallet works best when one can actually get refunds when they find out they've bought a turd.  The PC game market stands alone among other forms of entertainment in the amount of struggle one has to go to in order to get their money back after finding out the thing they bought doesn't function.

This is why I haven't bought Mass Effect 3 despite the fact I looked forward to it so much. I very rarely pre-order anything.

I imagine I'll buy ME3 somewhere down the line, but only for a price that meets my expectations of it. Right now that sits at a $40 GOTY edition with all the DLC. Anything more than that and I'm afraid I'll never own it.

I'll never buy it off Origin. I'll never buy anything off Origin. That system is a piece of fucking shit and EA just isn't worth it.

[Khaldun]

http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=749234 announcement
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/03/18/following-sim-city-meltdown-eas-ceo-has-stepped-down-and-the-company-is-forecasting-weak-earnings/ one article with some details around this, including:

The company’s share price is up more than 7% in after-hours trading, indicating that investors are content with the change.

Every single dimwit business journalist who says that what investors are doing has fuck all to do with the company's actual status or prospects needs to quit and go do something worthy of their talents, like giving hand jobs to lepers. At this point the market is entirely about what the investors think is going to happen to a stock due to what other investors think investors are going to do about what they think investors are going to do. It has as much to do with the actual company or actual events as my guessing whether my opponent is holding a wired pair or two overcards in Texas Hold'em does.

[CmdrSlack]

EA just announced John Riccitiello is stepping down as CEO.  Probably not directly tied to something as small as sim city but eh.

RPS Article

From the comments:

I just hope they locked him out of his office and made him buy back all his personal effects piece by piece through microtransactions.

This Reuters article uses some fun phrases like, "track record of mis-executions." Most of the reasons why he was let go are attributed to various analysts, so take it for what it's worth, I guess.

[Simond]

I'll never buy it off Origin. I'll never buy anything off Origin. That system is a piece of fucking shit and EA just isn't worth it.

C'mon, how bad could it be?

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/03/bug-on-eas-origin-game-platform-allows-attackers-to-hijack-player-pcs/

More than 40 million people could be affected by a vulnerability researchers uncovered in EA's Origin online game platform allowing attackers to remotely execute malicious code on players' computers.

The attack, demonstrated on Friday at the Black Hat security conference in Amsterdam, takes just seconds to execute. In some cases, it requires no interaction by victims, researchers from Malta-based ReVuln (@revuln) told Ars. It works by manipulating the uniform resource identifiers EA's site uses to automatically start games on an end user's machine. By exploiting flaws in the Origin application available for both Macs and PCs, the technique turns EA's popular game store into an attack platform that can covertly install malware on customers' computers.

Oh.

[Paelos]

Every single dimwit business journalist who says that what investors are doing has fuck all to do with the company's actual status or prospects needs to quit and go do something worthy of their talents, like giving hand jobs to lepers. At this point the market is entirely about what the investors think is going to happen to a stock due to what other investors think investors are going to do about what they think investors are going to do. It has as much to do with the actual company or actual events as my guessing whether my opponent is holding a wired pair or two overcards in Texas Hold'em does.

Short run, yes. Long run, that doesn't apply at all.

[Ingmar]

I'll never buy it off Origin. I'll never buy anything off Origin. That system is a piece of fucking shit and EA just isn't worth it.

C'mon, how bad could it be?

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/03/bug-on-eas-origin-game-platform-allows-attackers-to-hijack-player-pcs/

More than 40 million people could be affected by a vulnerability researchers uncovered in EA's Origin online game platform allowing attackers to remotely execute malicious code on players' computers.

The attack, demonstrated on Friday at the Black Hat security conference in Amsterdam, takes just seconds to execute. In some cases, it requires no interaction by victims, researchers from Malta-based ReVuln (@revuln) told Ars. It works by manipulating the uniform resource identifiers EA's site uses to automatically start games on an end user's machine. By exploiting flaws in the Origin application available for both Macs and PCs, the technique turns EA's popular game store into an attack platform that can covertly install malware on customers' computers.

Oh.

Steam has had a bunch of similar vulnerabilities over the years, exploiting steam:// links, etc. - one example here http://vimeo.com/51438866 found by the same group, ReVuln - so they're hardly alone here. A little Googling will find more of them.

[Simond]

Valve fixed theirs. 

[Ingmar]

This one was just publically demonstrated on Friday. I think it might be a little soon to leap to conclusions about whether or not it will be fixed.

Sometimes Valve drags their feet as well; an earlier one took them over 3 months:

http://www.highseverity.com/2012/03/valve-fixes-https-vulnerability-in.html

[Paelos]

We like Valve. We hate EA. Your points are moot.

[goishen]

Every single dimwit business journalist who says that what investors are doing has fuck all to do with the company's actual status or prospects needs to quit and go do something worthy of their talents, like giving hand jobs to lepers. At this point the market is entirely about what the investors think is going to happen to a stock due to what other investors think investors are going to do about what they think investors are going to do. It has as much to do with the actual company or actual events as my guessing whether my opponent is holding a wired pair or two overcards in Texas Hold'em does.

Thank you.  That needed to be said.

Short run, yes. Long run, that doesn't apply at all.

Maybe it's just my ignorance speaking here, but how does one determine out of the 7% which are long run investors and which are short run investors?  I'm not being a smart ass here, I really wanna know.  I keep hearing people spouting off figures like, "Oh, they're up today by 4%!"  And I just think of what the previous guy said.

I understand that this is derailing the conversation, so please feel free to pm me.