EA gets even stupider.

[Andrew_C]

Yes it is the online multiplayer you said was the problem.

No wait it was this.

Sorry I can only deal with what you write after you write it.

Nice case of selective editing, here is the whole post

This is old news if you've been paying attention to the development. They confirmed it months ago at that trade show in Germany. And hard core SimCity fans have been bitching for months about it. But this game is not aimed at SimCity fans, it's aimed at The Sims fans.

Maybe they'll change things now that Reddit has taken notice, but I doubt it because the game has a Client/Server architecture like Diablo 3, everything important happens or is stored on the server. No-way they can redesign the game this late.

Some of the things this games lacks:
1) No offline mode
2) No terraforming, so you can't create the region you want, be it a real-life area or something from your imagination
3) No subways
4) You can't place city connections where you want them.
5) Stupid border area between cities, so you can't create a sprawling megapolis out of a region.

So basically the things that make SimCiy great and creative have been ripped out. But they've simulated every shit your sims take with their Glassbox Engine?. Whoop de doo.

Notice where I say

This is old news if you've been paying attention to the development. They confirmed it months ago at that trade show in Germany. And hard core SimCity fans have been bitching for months about it.

(Not that I consider myself a hardcore fan)

And the first point in the list of things I don't like about the new game?

1) No offline mode

 

[Worgen]

Well, that's going to go about as well as selling ice to Eskimo's.

The truly sad part is people will still throw money at it.

Well, at least my wife can be safe in the knowledge that I won't be spending our money on that game .... ever.

I doubt people will be throwing that much money at it, back in the day simcity was pretty popular but its not like diablo or starcraft where people will bend over and take whatever stupid drm method they want to use. City building games are more of a niche genre then blizzard games are, meaning that doing something like this could really end up hurting ea, I mean they kinda pulled something similar with C&C 4 and that game was a total flop despite being part of a rather strong even at that point, brand.

Back in the day games were a lot less refined than they are today.

The barrier of entry has lowered significantly and games like Minecraft and Farmville does try to cater to the same aesthetics that Sim City caters to.

In the end the price is in the pudding.

C&C 4 failed despite being a established brand on a combination of deviation from original series, poor design and technical incompetence (if you have a game that forces you online at least have the servers up reliably). I highly doubt that C&C 4 would have been a smashing success if only it had been offline.

If they deliver a good game that utilizes the online element to a point where an offline game seems like the lesser game, then they will succeed.

The difference between simcity and farmville, not touching your minecraft comparison. Is that farmville plays itself and is intended to be something you jump onto for a little while then leave, simcity has always been about managing the city and actually doing things that might not end well, in short its a game you can lose unlike farmville, unless they changed it to the city building formula of all those crummy lil games on tablets/phones.

I think it would have been much more successful if it wasn't online required since that would have forced them to reign in some of their stupider decisions, like forcing the player to level up to get access to new units and probably would have let a player control more than one walker at a time or given the walkers more flexibility.

You need to understand what is meant by aesthetic and you will understand why Minecraft is there as well.

It is the creative expression aesthetic (with challenge. See resource management). Large amounts of games are catering to it these days.

Furthermore last time SimCity tried going the "Simulation route" that you are suggesting is the core aesthetic) it failed do to do well (simcity 3000). So it is pretty obvious that moving in this direction is in an effort to do better.

Your still not making much sense, resource management has been with games since the beginning and has never gone away, you find it in almost every single game out there... if not everygame.

I don't know how simulation focused 3000 was since I didn't play it but one that went the opposite route was simcity societies and it was a dud also.

Let me see if I can put it in a way that makes you understand it.

It is creative expression with a small degree of challenge in the form of resource management.

Like Minecraft survival.

However you can go full creative expression with no challenge

Like Minecraft Creative.

Thou minecraft will deliver on more aesthetics that just challenge and expression, but those are the one I am focusing on here.

The whole point is to hit this aesthetic as it is popular (for now at least).

Traditionally simcity isn't about that like the games like farmville are. Farmville is about specificity setting up everything, simcity is more of setting the foundation and then the game builds itself based on the foundation you setup. I doubt they will deviate too much.... ok scratch that, its ea so the only thing you can bet on is that they will do something stupid. If they do deviate too much from that then it will come back to bite them, we saw it happen with the syndicate wars fps and with C&C 4. Plus, this is being released as a $60 game, not some free to play thing like farmville.

You are still not getting it.

I am talking aesthetics not mechanics.

What you just said is mechanically different, but aesthetically the same.

You note at knocking at EA is noted, but completely irrelevant to what I have been saying so far making me think you havn't understood a single word.

You mean the graphical style of the game? Because that does bear some resemblance to games like farmville. I got the impression you were mostly talking about how the game played and the flow of the game.

Aesthetics are the reasons you come to play the game. What it is that is appealing to you, but not in such a basic for as graphics, Sound or gameplay.

I dont think I can cut it out any further.

For example creative would be everything from deciding what your char should look like in an RPG to choosing choosing where and how to build your city in Simcity.

The core aesthetics of the new Simcity that they are going for are the same as Farmville. The ability to design your own ANYTHING and see the results. It doesn't matter that you do it passively or actively. The core aesthetic off the game is still expression. The ability and desire to create.

So when you in your second post argued that they wouldn't get enough of an audience with the changes I argued that the audience is bigger with the changes, because a larger audience that desires this core aesthetics exists today as a result of games like farmville and minecraft.

Still sounds like your talking mechanics.
Anyway I would argue that the audience is still small considering this isn't a free to play game, its an over priced $60 game which means its audience isn't the casual market of a free to play game.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play
Should point out the differences in a fairly basic manner.

You are still equating a to b here.

It is not a free to play issue here. To argue that people who likes expression as an aesthetic only plays Free to play games are ridicules. A game like Skyrim has the aesthetic of Expression as well thou not as a core. The whole Heartfire DLC had Expression at its core.

Free to play isn't just 1 group of people or aesthetic. Whether or not free to play is right for SimCity is a completely different question.

Ahh, ok, well you should have just said that to begin with. Ok, so now I get your point a bit better, so why does it matter?

 

[Andrew_C]

Yes it is the online multiplayer you said was the problem.

No wait it was this.

Sorry I can only deal with what you write after you write it.

Nice case of selective editing, here is the whole post

This is old news if you've been paying attention to the development. They confirmed it months ago at that trade show in Germany. And hard core SimCity fans have been bitching for months about it. But this game is not aimed at SimCity fans, it's aimed at The Sims fans.

Maybe they'll change things now that Reddit has taken notice, but I doubt it because the game has a Client/Server architecture like Diablo 3, everything important happens or is stored on the server. No-way they can redesign the game this late.

Some of the things this games lacks:
1) No offline mode
2) No terraforming, so you can't create the region you want, be it a real-life area or something from your imagination
3) No subways
4) You can't place city connections where you want them.
5) Stupid border area between cities, so you can't create a sprawling megapolis out of a region.

So basically the things that make SimCiy great and creative have been ripped out. But they've simulated every shit your sims take with their Glassbox Engine?. Whoop de doo.

Notice where I say

This is old news if you've been paying attention to the development. They confirmed it months ago at that trade show in Germany. And hard core SimCity fans have been bitching for months about it.

(Not that I consider myself a hardcore fan)

And the first point in the list of things I don't like about the new game?

1) No offline mode

You going to ignore 80% of the points you put in there. Besides online Multiplayer and No offline mode isn't the same thing by a long shot. If you are having a hard time properly expressing youself fine, but dont try to make me look like its my fault.

I was not aware this was some sort of debating society. I do have problems expressing myself, but that doesn't make my opinions any less valid. I could (probably) live with the other problems with the game if there was a proper offline singleplayer mode, but there is not, so EA is not getting my money. On the other hand, I would be seriously tempted to play it online if it weren't for the other problems.

Is that stated clearly enough for you?

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

I'm surprised people keep buying them. The price for DLC for the recent Sims games is insane even on Steam

 

[Andrew_C]

I was not aware this was some sort of debating society. I do have problems expressing myself, but that doesn't make my opinions any less valid. I could live with the other problems with the game if there was a proper offline singleplayer mode, but there is not, so EA is not getting my money. Is that stated clearly enough for you?

I didn't say you opinion was any less valid (thou I did argue it wasn't any more either), I didn't even insinuate it.

I was saying you cant expect me to know what your opinion is when it isn't what you have expressed earlier, or rather in this case expressed something different earlier.

Now I am not here to argue with how you spend your hard earned cash either. By all means they are yours spend em on hookers and blow for all I care.

I just dont like the attitude of "They dared change the formula from the original and still call it simcity". Usually brought about a inflated sense of self importance by "Hardcore fans".

Why do you consider it inflated self importance to criticise EA for abandoning a winning formula? It's not like SimCity fans are flooding every online forum and whining about it like Mass Effect fans did about the finale of Mass Effect 3. Although maybe we should, that seems to be the only way to get EA to do anything.

 

[Worgen]

Well, that's going to go about as well as selling ice to Eskimo's.

The truly sad part is people will still throw money at it.

Well, at least my wife can be safe in the knowledge that I won't be spending our money on that game .... ever.

I doubt people will be throwing that much money at it, back in the day simcity was pretty popular but its not like diablo or starcraft where people will bend over and take whatever stupid drm method they want to use. City building games are more of a niche genre then blizzard games are, meaning that doing something like this could really end up hurting ea, I mean they kinda pulled something similar with C&C 4 and that game was a total flop despite being part of a rather strong even at that point, brand.

Back in the day games were a lot less refined than they are today.

The barrier of entry has lowered significantly and games like Minecraft and Farmville does try to cater to the same aesthetics that Sim City caters to.

In the end the price is in the pudding.

C&C 4 failed despite being a established brand on a combination of deviation from original series, poor design and technical incompetence (if you have a game that forces you online at least have the servers up reliably). I highly doubt that C&C 4 would have been a smashing success if only it had been offline.

If they deliver a good game that utilizes the online element to a point where an offline game seems like the lesser game, then they will succeed.

The difference between simcity and farmville, not touching your minecraft comparison. Is that farmville plays itself and is intended to be something you jump onto for a little while then leave, simcity has always been about managing the city and actually doing things that might not end well, in short its a game you can lose unlike farmville, unless they changed it to the city building formula of all those crummy lil games on tablets/phones.

I think it would have been much more successful if it wasn't online required since that would have forced them to reign in some of their stupider decisions, like forcing the player to level up to get access to new units and probably would have let a player control more than one walker at a time or given the walkers more flexibility.

You need to understand what is meant by aesthetic and you will understand why Minecraft is there as well.

It is the creative expression aesthetic (with challenge. See resource management). Large amounts of games are catering to it these days.

Furthermore last time SimCity tried going the "Simulation route" that you are suggesting is the core aesthetic) it failed do to do well (simcity 3000). So it is pretty obvious that moving in this direction is in an effort to do better.

Your still not making much sense, resource management has been with games since the beginning and has never gone away, you find it in almost every single game out there... if not everygame.

I don't know how simulation focused 3000 was since I didn't play it but one that went the opposite route was simcity societies and it was a dud also.

Let me see if I can put it in a way that makes you understand it.

It is creative expression with a small degree of challenge in the form of resource management.

Like Minecraft survival.

However you can go full creative expression with no challenge

Like Minecraft Creative.

Thou minecraft will deliver on more aesthetics that just challenge and expression, but those are the one I am focusing on here.

The whole point is to hit this aesthetic as it is popular (for now at least).

Traditionally simcity isn't about that like the games like farmville are. Farmville is about specificity setting up everything, simcity is more of setting the foundation and then the game builds itself based on the foundation you setup. I doubt they will deviate too much.... ok scratch that, its ea so the only thing you can bet on is that they will do something stupid. If they do deviate too much from that then it will come back to bite them, we saw it happen with the syndicate wars fps and with C&C 4. Plus, this is being released as a $60 game, not some free to play thing like farmville.

You are still not getting it.

I am talking aesthetics not mechanics.

What you just said is mechanically different, but aesthetically the same.

You note at knocking at EA is noted, but completely irrelevant to what I have been saying so far making me think you havn't understood a single word.

You mean the graphical style of the game? Because that does bear some resemblance to games like farmville. I got the impression you were mostly talking about how the game played and the flow of the game.

Aesthetics are the reasons you come to play the game. What it is that is appealing to you, but not in such a basic for as graphics, Sound or gameplay.

I dont think I can cut it out any further.

For example creative would be everything from deciding what your char should look like in an RPG to choosing choosing where and how to build your city in Simcity.

The core aesthetics of the new Simcity that they are going for are the same as Farmville. The ability to design your own ANYTHING and see the results. It doesn't matter that you do it passively or actively. The core aesthetic off the game is still expression. The ability and desire to create.

So when you in your second post argued that they wouldn't get enough of an audience with the changes I argued that the audience is bigger with the changes, because a larger audience that desires this core aesthetics exists today as a result of games like farmville and minecraft.

Still sounds like your talking mechanics.
Anyway I would argue that the audience is still small considering this isn't a free to play game, its an over priced $60 game which means its audience isn't the casual market of a free to play game.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play
Should point out the differences in a fairly basic manner.

You are still equating a to b here.

It is not a free to play issue here. To argue that people who likes expression as an aesthetic only plays Free to play games are ridicules. A game like Skyrim has the aesthetic of Expression as well thou not as a core. The whole Heartfire DLC had Expression at its core.

Free to play isn't just 1 group of people or aesthetic. Whether or not free to play is right for SimCity is a completely different question.

Ahh, ok, well you should have just said that to begin with. Ok, so now I get your point a bit better, so why does it matter?

It matters only in relation to you pointing to how "Citybuilders are more of a niece genre" Compared to other very highly successful titles.

The I made the point that the old school City builders are indeed a niece genre because they rely on a simulation (fantasy) and challenge core aesthetic, but plenty of games today have great success appealing to creative expression.

The end result will be decided in how well they capture those aesthetics. If they manage to make a game that captures those aesthetics well then their potential audience is very large. Again like you touched on, how well they tap into that audience depends on how they intend to profit from the game. Its all very complicated, but I was just making the point that "Citybuilders" has core aesthetics that arn't a niece in 2012.

I think your wrong, creative games are quite popular but games that are like simcity have always been a niche genre. Minecraft gives you almost complete control and farmville is just a game made of skinner box mechanics with a cute art style. It doesn't mean that they cant be popular or make money but considering what it is and how it is being sold, it will never achieve the number of ppl playing farmville or minecraft.

 

[Souplex]

has anyone read the comicbook Preacher? (if not go do so...NOW)

theease days EA are eather the allfather (the "pope" who is so fat he consumes and makes himself vomit so he can consume more) or the child (the "saviour" a kid so in-bred he's retarded) I have trouble deciding which

I did!
That bit in the meat plant made me want to be a vegetarian for about three hours after reading it!

 

[Worgen]

Well, that's going to go about as well as selling ice to Eskimo's.

The truly sad part is people will still throw money at it.

Well, at least my wife can be safe in the knowledge that I won't be spending our money on that game .... ever.

I doubt people will be throwing that much money at it, back in the day simcity was pretty popular but its not like diablo or starcraft where people will bend over and take whatever stupid drm method they want to use. City building games are more of a niche genre then blizzard games are, meaning that doing something like this could really end up hurting ea, I mean they kinda pulled something similar with C&C 4 and that game was a total flop despite being part of a rather strong even at that point, brand.

Back in the day games were a lot less refined than they are today.

The barrier of entry has lowered significantly and games like Minecraft and Farmville does try to cater to the same aesthetics that Sim City caters to.

In the end the price is in the pudding.

C&C 4 failed despite being a established brand on a combination of deviation from original series, poor design and technical incompetence (if you have a game that forces you online at least have the servers up reliably). I highly doubt that C&C 4 would have been a smashing success if only it had been offline.

If they deliver a good game that utilizes the online element to a point where an offline game seems like the lesser game, then they will succeed.

The difference between simcity and farmville, not touching your minecraft comparison. Is that farmville plays itself and is intended to be something you jump onto for a little while then leave, simcity has always been about managing the city and actually doing things that might not end well, in short its a game you can lose unlike farmville, unless they changed it to the city building formula of all those crummy lil games on tablets/phones.

I think it would have been much more successful if it wasn't online required since that would have forced them to reign in some of their stupider decisions, like forcing the player to level up to get access to new units and probably would have let a player control more than one walker at a time or given the walkers more flexibility.

You need to understand what is meant by aesthetic and you will understand why Minecraft is there as well.

It is the creative expression aesthetic (with challenge. See resource management). Large amounts of games are catering to it these days.

Furthermore last time SimCity tried going the "Simulation route" that you are suggesting is the core aesthetic) it failed do to do well (simcity 3000). So it is pretty obvious that moving in this direction is in an effort to do better.

Your still not making much sense, resource management has been with games since the beginning and has never gone away, you find it in almost every single game out there... if not everygame.

I don't know how simulation focused 3000 was since I didn't play it but one that went the opposite route was simcity societies and it was a dud also.

Let me see if I can put it in a way that makes you understand it.

It is creative expression with a small degree of challenge in the form of resource management.

Like Minecraft survival.

However you can go full creative expression with no challenge

Like Minecraft Creative.

Thou minecraft will deliver on more aesthetics that just challenge and expression, but those are the one I am focusing on here.

The whole point is to hit this aesthetic as it is popular (for now at least).

Traditionally simcity isn't about that like the games like farmville are. Farmville is about specificity setting up everything, simcity is more of setting the foundation and then the game builds itself based on the foundation you setup. I doubt they will deviate too much.... ok scratch that, its ea so the only thing you can bet on is that they will do something stupid. If they do deviate too much from that then it will come back to bite them, we saw it happen with the syndicate wars fps and with C&C 4. Plus, this is being released as a $60 game, not some free to play thing like farmville.

You are still not getting it.

I am talking aesthetics not mechanics.

What you just said is mechanically different, but aesthetically the same.

You note at knocking at EA is noted, but completely irrelevant to what I have been saying so far making me think you havn't understood a single word.

You mean the graphical style of the game? Because that does bear some resemblance to games like farmville. I got the impression you were mostly talking about how the game played and the flow of the game.

Aesthetics are the reasons you come to play the game. What it is that is appealing to you, but not in such a basic for as graphics, Sound or gameplay.

I dont think I can cut it out any further.

For example creative would be everything from deciding what your char should look like in an RPG to choosing choosing where and how to build your city in Simcity.

The core aesthetics of the new Simcity that they are going for are the same as Farmville. The ability to design your own ANYTHING and see the results. It doesn't matter that you do it passively or actively. The core aesthetic off the game is still expression. The ability and desire to create.

So when you in your second post argued that they wouldn't get enough of an audience with the changes I argued that the audience is bigger with the changes, because a larger audience that desires this core aesthetics exists today as a result of games like farmville and minecraft.

Still sounds like your talking mechanics.
Anyway I would argue that the audience is still small considering this isn't a free to play game, its an over priced $60 game which means its audience isn't the casual market of a free to play game.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play
Should point out the differences in a fairly basic manner.

You are still equating a to b here.

It is not a free to play issue here. To argue that people who likes expression as an aesthetic only plays Free to play games are ridicules. A game like Skyrim has the aesthetic of Expression as well thou not as a core. The whole Heartfire DLC had Expression at its core.

Free to play isn't just 1 group of people or aesthetic. Whether or not free to play is right for SimCity is a completely different question.

Ahh, ok, well you should have just said that to begin with. Ok, so now I get your point a bit better, so why does it matter?

It matters only in relation to you pointing to how "Citybuilders are more of a niece genre" Compared to other very highly successful titles.

The I made the point that the old school City builders are indeed a niece genre because they rely on a simulation (fantasy) and challenge core aesthetic, but plenty of games today have great success appealing to creative expression.

The end result will be decided in how well they capture those aesthetics. If they manage to make a game that captures those aesthetics well then their potential audience is very large. Again like you touched on, how well they tap into that audience depends on how they intend to profit from the game. Its all very complicated, but I was just making the point that "Citybuilders" has core aesthetics that arn't a niece in 2012.

I think your wrong, creative games are quite popular but games that are like simcity have always been a niche genre. Minecraft gives you almost complete control and farmville is just a game made of skinner box mechanics with a cute art style. It doesn't mean that they cant be popular or make money but considering what it is and how it is being sold, it will never achieve the number of ppl playing farmville or minecraft.

Now I agree with you on Simcity not being able to hit minecraft/farmville numbers, but for different reasons.

My argument wasn't that they would hit those numbers, but that the potential audience for a game like Simcity has grown as a result of those games and it isn't a niche aesthetic anymore.

I don't think it really has grown much, otherwise we would see games like Tropico being much more popular than they are.

 

[Andrew_C]

I was not aware this was some sort of debating society. I do have problems expressing myself, but that doesn't make my opinions any less valid. I could live with the other problems with the game if there was a proper offline singleplayer mode, but there is not, so EA is not getting my money. Is that stated clearly enough for you?

I didn't say you opinion was any less valid (thou I did argue it wasn't any more either), I didn't even insinuate it.

I was saying you cant expect me to know what your opinion is when it isn't what you have expressed earlier, or rather in this case expressed something different earlier.

Now I am not here to argue with how you spend your hard earned cash either. By all means they are yours spend em on hookers and blow for all I care.

I just dont like the attitude of "They dared change the formula from the original and still call it simcity". Usually brought about a inflated sense of self importance by "Hardcore fans".

Why do you consider it inflated self importance to criticise EA for abandoning a winning formula? It's not like simcity fans are flooding every online forum and whining about it like mass Effect fans did about the finale of Mass Effect 3.

The inflated self importance does come from the criticism, but from "and still call it Simcity". It portrays the idea that an original fans opinion of the game now weighs more than the opinion of a newer fans. As if their the name Simcity depends on their approval.

I am naturally wary of anyone one who will call upon "gaming cred" in order make their argument. Not someone who is calling back older formula as a comparison to analyse the new.

Whole idea of "change through massive whine" is detestable.

I'll agree with you about disliking "change through massive whine". But sometimes it works.

To argue from absurdity, would you still be OK if EA released a brown cover based bro-shooter and called it SimCity?

I could argue that when it comes to the merits of the upcoming game the opinion of someone who has played a SimCity game has more weight than that of someone who has just seen a few gameplay videos, but as I have already stated that all opinions have validity, I won't.

And if you feel that comparing the new SimCity to the old games is wrong, what should we compare it to?


I'll leave you with one last thought. I can still play SimCity 4 almost 10 years after release. Will the servers for SimCity 2013 still be up in 10 years time?

Anyway I have a Caribbean republic to oppress, so I'm off for now.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Still sounds like your talking mechanics.
Anyway I would argue that the audience is still small considering this isn't a free to play game, its an over priced $60 game which means its audience isn't the casual market of a free to play game.

Just watch this:

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play

Seriously, I've been skimming your argument and if he'd linked that from the get-go it would all have been unnecessary.

 

[Worgen]

Well, that's going to go about as well as selling ice to Eskimo's.

The truly sad part is people will still throw money at it.

Well, at least my wife can be safe in the knowledge that I won't be spending our money on that game .... ever.

I doubt people will be throwing that much money at it, back in the day simcity was pretty popular but its not like diablo or starcraft where people will bend over and take whatever stupid drm method they want to use. City building games are more of a niche genre then blizzard games are, meaning that doing something like this could really end up hurting ea, I mean they kinda pulled something similar with C&C 4 and that game was a total flop despite being part of a rather strong even at that point, brand.

Back in the day games were a lot less refined than they are today.

The barrier of entry has lowered significantly and games like Minecraft and Farmville does try to cater to the same aesthetics that Sim City caters to.

In the end the price is in the pudding.

C&C 4 failed despite being a established brand on a combination of deviation from original series, poor design and technical incompetence (if you have a game that forces you online at least have the servers up reliably). I highly doubt that C&C 4 would have been a smashing success if only it had been offline.

If they deliver a good game that utilizes the online element to a point where an offline game seems like the lesser game, then they will succeed.

The difference between simcity and farmville, not touching your minecraft comparison. Is that farmville plays itself and is intended to be something you jump onto for a little while then leave, simcity has always been about managing the city and actually doing things that might not end well, in short its a game you can lose unlike farmville, unless they changed it to the city building formula of all those crummy lil games on tablets/phones.

I think it would have been much more successful if it wasn't online required since that would have forced them to reign in some of their stupider decisions, like forcing the player to level up to get access to new units and probably would have let a player control more than one walker at a time or given the walkers more flexibility.

You need to understand what is meant by aesthetic and you will understand why Minecraft is there as well.

It is the creative expression aesthetic (with challenge. See resource management). Large amounts of games are catering to it these days.

Furthermore last time SimCity tried going the "Simulation route" that you are suggesting is the core aesthetic) it failed do to do well (simcity 3000). So it is pretty obvious that moving in this direction is in an effort to do better.

Your still not making much sense, resource management has been with games since the beginning and has never gone away, you find it in almost every single game out there... if not everygame.

I don't know how simulation focused 3000 was since I didn't play it but one that went the opposite route was simcity societies and it was a dud also.

Let me see if I can put it in a way that makes you understand it.

It is creative expression with a small degree of challenge in the form of resource management.

Like Minecraft survival.

However you can go full creative expression with no challenge

Like Minecraft Creative.

Thou minecraft will deliver on more aesthetics that just challenge and expression, but those are the one I am focusing on here.

The whole point is to hit this aesthetic as it is popular (for now at least).

Traditionally simcity isn't about that like the games like farmville are. Farmville is about specificity setting up everything, simcity is more of setting the foundation and then the game builds itself based on the foundation you setup. I doubt they will deviate too much.... ok scratch that, its ea so the only thing you can bet on is that they will do something stupid. If they do deviate too much from that then it will come back to bite them, we saw it happen with the syndicate wars fps and with C&C 4. Plus, this is being released as a $60 game, not some free to play thing like farmville.

You are still not getting it.

I am talking aesthetics not mechanics.

What you just said is mechanically different, but aesthetically the same.

You note at knocking at EA is noted, but completely irrelevant to what I have been saying so far making me think you havn't understood a single word.

You mean the graphical style of the game? Because that does bear some resemblance to games like farmville. I got the impression you were mostly talking about how the game played and the flow of the game.

Aesthetics are the reasons you come to play the game. What it is that is appealing to you, but not in such a basic for as graphics, Sound or gameplay.

I dont think I can cut it out any further.

For example creative would be everything from deciding what your char should look like in an RPG to choosing choosing where and how to build your city in Simcity.

The core aesthetics of the new Simcity that they are going for are the same as Farmville. The ability to design your own ANYTHING and see the results. It doesn't matter that you do it passively or actively. The core aesthetic off the game is still expression. The ability and desire to create.

So when you in your second post argued that they wouldn't get enough of an audience with the changes I argued that the audience is bigger with the changes, because a larger audience that desires this core aesthetics exists today as a result of games like farmville and minecraft.

Still sounds like your talking mechanics.
Anyway I would argue that the audience is still small considering this isn't a free to play game, its an over priced $60 game which means its audience isn't the casual market of a free to play game.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play
Should point out the differences in a fairly basic manner.

You are still equating a to b here.

It is not a free to play issue here. To argue that people who likes expression as an aesthetic only plays Free to play games are ridicules. A game like Skyrim has the aesthetic of Expression as well thou not as a core. The whole Heartfire DLC had Expression at its core.

Free to play isn't just 1 group of people or aesthetic. Whether or not free to play is right for SimCity is a completely different question.

Ahh, ok, well you should have just said that to begin with. Ok, so now I get your point a bit better, so why does it matter?

It matters only in relation to you pointing to how "Citybuilders are more of a niece genre" Compared to other very highly successful titles.

The I made the point that the old school City builders are indeed a niece genre because they rely on a simulation (fantasy) and challenge core aesthetic, but plenty of games today have great success appealing to creative expression.

The end result will be decided in how well they capture those aesthetics. If they manage to make a game that captures those aesthetics well then their potential audience is very large. Again like you touched on, how well they tap into that audience depends on how they intend to profit from the game. Its all very complicated, but I was just making the point that "Citybuilders" has core aesthetics that arn't a niece in 2012.

I think your wrong, creative games are quite popular but games that are like simcity have always been a niche genre. Minecraft gives you almost complete control and farmville is just a game made of skinner box mechanics with a cute art style. It doesn't mean that they cant be popular or make money but considering what it is and how it is being sold, it will never achieve the number of ppl playing farmville or minecraft.

Now I agree with you on Simcity not being able to hit minecraft/farmville numbers, but for different reasons.

My argument wasn't that they would hit those numbers, but that the potential audience for a game like Simcity has grown as a result of those games and it isn't a niche aesthetic anymore.

I don't think it really has grown much, otherwise we would see games like Tropico being much more popular than they are.

Tropico s a good comparison example, but then again so is The sims.

In the end I think the difference between their lies in accessibility (or dumbed down if you are feeling vindictive) and brand recognition. Now EA has a very strong Marketing arm so they will do a lot better on the Brand recognition part and I think we can agree that the accessibility of the new Simcity is a point of very heated arguments.

Either way there are still to many variables to come with a conclusion here.

The sims is a bad comparison because the reason people play it and are hooked into it are diffrent, the sims has a much more human face to it, simcity has the face of city management.

 

[Worgen]

Still sounds like your talking mechanics.
Anyway I would argue that the audience is still small considering this isn't a free to play game, its an over priced $60 game which means its audience isn't the casual market of a free to play game.

Just watch this:

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play

Seriously, I've been skimming your argument and if he'd linked that from the get-go it would all have been unnecessary.

He eventually did link that.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Just watch this:

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play

Seriously, I've been skimming your argument and if he'd linked that from the get-go it would all have been unnecessary.

He eventually did link that.

Ah okay. So, in other words he was calling you stupid for not getting it when he probably only knows about it from EC? -.- errff. Did it help?