EA gets even stupider.

[fix-the-spade]

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

The truly sad part will be the class action suit that gets launched when a server(s) go down and everyone loses their save.

It'll happen, either the hackers will land or there'll be some glitch.

I particularly love this little gem.
"We will allow you to play for as long as we can preserve your game state,"


Oh, you will allow me? As long as you deem me worthy right?

Sentences like that make want to hunt down John Riccitiello and run him over with a bus, filled with phd students all studying common sense. He's clearly learned nothing at all from Spore.

On the plus side, when the hackers run rough shod over this thing it will give us all a good laugh.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I actually believe this will hurt sales for the game and rightfully so. I'd say the main fanbase of Sim City games are not exactly your casual gamer and would be well informed as to what is happening here.

 

[Rawne1980]

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

The truly sad part will be the class action suit that gets launched when a server(s) go down and everyone loses their save.

It'll happen, either the hackers will land or there'll be some glitch.

I particularly love this little gem.
"We will allow you to play for as long as we can preserve your game state,"


Oh, you will allow me? As long as you deem me worthy right?

Sentences like that make want to hunt down John Riccitiello and run him over with a bus, filled with phd students all studying common sense. He's clearly learned nothing at all from Spore.

On the plus side, when the hackers run rough shod over this thing it will give us all a good laugh.

While I don't particularly WANT a game to flop, no-one wants to see people in a position to lose their jobs, I do like it when stupid ideas get laughed out of sales by the community.

I want to see it go down in flames so people stop coming up with these amazingly daft concepts and just concentrate on making games worth buying to put people off pirating.

It comes to something when a person who pirates gets a far better deal than someone who paid for it.

 

[fix-the-spade]

It comes to something when a person who pirates gets a far better deal than someone who paid for it.

To be honest we've been in that situation since the releases of Bioshock, Mass Effect and Crysis. The joys of single use CD keys and limited install rights.

As far as losing jobs goes, a person has to do their job. If they're going to set out against the very people they rely on to keep food on the table, I'm quite happy to laugh at them as they trudge out to the bread line. If nothing else they can serve as a warning to others, also, their monetary destruction/humiliation is good for us as consumers, no product at all is better than a bad one, you get to keep the $60.

 

[FalloutJack]

*Whistles while he works*

Ah, here we go... EA in a nutshell.

This concludes the educational portion of the thread.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

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?

I dont remember calling anyone stupid.

Also I got to understand through Errant Signal and his videos.
http://www.youtube.com/user/campster

Thou seeing the EC video did make me read the the documentation the mentioned at the beginning
https://sakai.rutgers.edu/access/content/group/af43d59b-528f-42d0-b8e5-70af85c439dc/reading/hunicke_2004.pdf

I do believe I tried going to great lengths to explain what I was going on about

No you didn't, but the tone was pretty impatient and... eh whatever. Cheers for the links, those videos are quite good.

Enjoyed the one on photorealism particularly.

 

[RicoADF]

*Whistles while he works*

Ah, here we go... EA in a nutshell.

This concludes the educational portion of the thread.

That's funny, sad and so so true all in one. No wonder good games are getting harder to find.

 

[The_Waspman]

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

Actually, EA is more like Cassidy, no? Destroying all the lives (or developers) it touches, and royally fucking you over, no matter how 'friendly' it appears to be.

 

[Worgen]

Looks like the new simcity game requires always online connection, the save files aren't even hosted locally they are hosted on EA's cloud.

http://www.destructoid.com/simcity-cranks-the-always-online-drm-up-to-eleven-240898.phtml

Which means if you disconnect for any amount of time the game will shut you out, plus it also means that you can only play the game until ea gets tired of paying for the servers, which will probably be sooner rather than later, I think they have shutdown the multi on games that were just a year old before.

I like it! and I like Simcity. And I like EA. In fact, I'm probably the antithesis to your entire argument, the bane of your entire existence.

All jokes aside, I am also very serious. I don't really have a problem with DRM, I have several games on origin and to be honest with you, it's LESS of a pain that Steam has been with it's online connection stuff, and this just goes along with EA's emphasis on creating a social experience with Simcity - a social experience that ISN'T necessary but also sounds very much fun... and one that I think will attract newcomers to the series.

But let's be honest here, I don't think EA's target demographic are teenagers... probably mid 20 people who always use internet/facebook and are getting into more "relaxed" forms of games.

Idk... this just isn't the worst thing to me. The whole "it won't store locally" thing is dumb though. I won't argue with you there. But considering I have a good internet connection that's always on, I'm not concerned. I also don't lose it often, so whateves.

Ahh, one of the ones that wont be happy until we give up all illusions of ownership to our games. Ok, its probably not that far but what I know ea eventually wants is to host all its games remotely and only allow players to to play them over the internet but it still wants to charge 60 bucks for each game. This is just another method of going about it, taking as much of the game away from the player as they can. This is just another way that ea shows distain for their customers, remember, your a pirate until proven otherwise.

 

[McMullen]

Darn it, I'd been really looking forward to this...hopefully the inevitable backlash will convince them otherwise, like it did with Ubi and their DRM and supposedly Capcom and their on-disc DLC.

I expect the actual outcome will be that the sales will be subpar, perhaps because of this, but instead of recognizing it as a flaw in their business model they'll say that the franchise isn't popular enough anymore, and SimCity will be consigned to the vault of franchises EA sits on and does nothing with.

 

[crazyrabbits]

Actually, EA is more like Cassidy, no? Destroying all the lives (or developers) it touches, and royally fucking you over, no matter how 'friendly' it appears to be.

Pretty much. Maxis has been the bastard child of EA since the mid-90's.

A brief history lesson: once EA acquired Maxis in the 90's ('97, I think it was), they had planned to close down the entire studio after the release of their next game. When said game - Simcity 3000 - sold like gangbusters, Maxis' original offices were closed and the dev team was moved to EA's offices. There, they began work on The Sims. That product, as time (and expansions) went on, saw the developer's logo get superceded by EA on almost all branding and packaging. Not only that, but their release of Sims 2 was hampered by executives asking them to put more "particle effects" (like green belching or body odor) so they could put it as a bullet point on the back of the box.

Then there's the legendary case of Spore - how quickly we forget that the Securom DRM caused it to become one of the most pirated video games in history (more than half-a-million times, at last count).

This is nothing new - just more garbage from EA. All of Maxis' games have, to date, been largely single-player experiences. I'd love to know what Will Wright thinks about all of this.

 

[Auron]

Well that prevents piracy... Until some Russian finds a way to simulate EA's server. Diablo apparently didn't stop them and if Blizzard can't do it EA can't either.

 

[LoLife]

While being "another nail in EA's coffin" the problem is "EA's coffin" is all made out of nails from all the other times =/

 

[OldNewNewOld]

I know I'm gonna get flamed for this but...
There is always to popular option of "pirating" the game. Buy the game, download a crack. Play it offline.
Tho I'm against this. Rather pirate it fully than support this shit that EA is doing.

 

[Auron]

It's (ironically perhaps) a rather effective, but not perfect, anti-piracy move. To be fair I don't know what the problem is, people moaned a LOT about Diablo but it played fine here.

 

[Vault101]

Actually, EA is more like Cassidy, no? Destroying all the lives (or developers) it touches, and royally fucking you over, no matter how 'friendly' it appears to be.

true..but EA doesnt think its your freind

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!

I was eating beef jerky at the time 0_0

 

[Andrew_C]

Like I already said I have no problem with using the old game as a comparison. I take issue with the idea that because that someone played the old game and like it makes their opinion of the new game more relevant. Opinions are and will always be personal.

As for your last thought.
I dont know how long EA intends to keep the servers up, but knowing their history I am not hopeful. However your Idea that offline games doesn't involve potential risk for loss of game is absurd. I have bought 2 copis of Warcraft 3:Frozen Throne because the old disk broke. That is over a 9 year period. On a similar account I have had my savegames saved of Kingdoms of Amalur when they were on the cloud and my HDD died. HDD's die. Servers get turned off. CD break or get stolen or other whatever. The idea that your games are safer in your house is an illusion.

We have already agreed that all opinions are valid, but I will just point out that a lot of people will think that the opinion of someone who has experience with similar games is of more relevance than that of someone who has just watched a couple of promotional gameplay videos from EA.

Of course you will always get blinkered fanboys who reject any change, but in my opinion this is generally not the case here. In my limited experience of the community, city builder fans are generally always eager to try out a new game in the genre and were overjoyed when this game was announced. It was only when it became clear that Maxis/EA wouldn't change things like the always online requirement that people became negative about SimCity 2013.

I actually think cooperative region play is a great idea for Simcity. I don't think it should be the central conceit of the game, however. Especially not to the point where there is no offline mode.

I have to disagree totally with your response to my last point. Disks get broken or lost, savegames get lost, but you can always find another copy of the game (unless it's KOTOR II, that is), and it is your statutory right in most places to make a backup copy of the game, which you should (even if you have to use a crack to do so). And if they stop making the computer or system that the game is for, there are emulators. When EA switch off the servers SimCity 2013 is gone forever (unless someone loves the game enough to reverse engineer the server part).

Anyway, it's pretty obvious were never going to come to further agreement. Shall we agree to disagree?