I played SimCity 2013 a few months after launch, and I quite liked it, especially the gorgeous visuals.<p>I've read TFA, and honestly they also failed to mention maybe the worse issue of SimCity 2013: how limited it was compared to the previous instalments. The playable area was tiny, so you quickly felt constrained by the border of your playable area. The fact that you could build multiple cities in the same region alleviated it a bit, but it really felt limiting compared to it's predecessors.<p>Another point, which I feel is a good representation of an 'EA'-fied game: I was a bit miffed to discover that you couldn't create a subway system, you were limited to roads (I don't even remember if you could create a bus system). A few months in, I see that there was a 'Subway' content pack, which got my hopes up... until I realized it was to add 'Subway' sandwich shop in your city.<p>Same, they had a cross-promotion with Nissan, so your Sims would feel happy when they recharged their electric car, and the charging station has the effect of a park in your neighborhood.<p>Add to that the server issues, the fact that they said it was because so much computation was offloaded to their servers (which was quickly disproved, and felt bogus to being with), and the whole affair had a vibe of "Don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining".<p>It was particularly sad, because it really still is an enjoyable game.<p>EDIT: After a bit of fact -checking, I realize that I've mis-remembered the "Subway" DLC story. It was instead the "Metro" content pack (metro is french for subway), which was for a newspaper distributed for free near French subway entrances. There is also a Subway sandwich mod, but for SC4 only.
> When SimCity launched on March 6, it required players to maintain an active online connection to the game's servers. If that connection dropped, they'd be booted from the game.<p>SimCity, at it's core, is an offline single player game. EA really fucked this one up.<p>Also EA already had the reputation of ruining every franchise they bought.<p>The series lives on through Theotown and City Skylines.
But it's death allowed for "Cities: Skylines" to come into existence and the world is better for it.<p><a href="https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines/about" rel="nofollow">https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines/abo...</a>
The interview snippets make it clear that SimCity 2013 was hopelessly compromised from minute one<p>If nothing else, consider the mandates from EA:<p><pre><code> 1. Make it "unpirateable" even if it compromises gameplay
2. Make it depend on EA's online service, b/c we need to sell that even more than we need the game to succeed
3. Make sure it can handle a steady trickle of "expansions" like The Sims
</code></pre>
If you are going to implement those mandates, you are gonna end up with something bad. Even if SimCity 2013 had not been <i>otherwise</i> brain-damaged or screwed up, just EA's <i>goals</i> for the product were damning.<p>(Of course, it is not JUST the mandates -- the game was screwed up in many <i>other</i> ways as well. But the mandates alone would have been bad.)
I think if SimCity wasn't such a complete disaster, City Skylines wouldn't have taken off how it did. The big misstep I think they made is hinging the gameplay around multiplayer. While SimCity thought that collaboration would be done through "neighborhoods" and "resource sharing", City Skylines took the opposite approach and introduced collaboration through Steam Workshop.<p>The developers of SimCity should have realized that people don't play sim building games to play with others, it's a very much a solo game. City Skylines navigated this beutifully by letting players still play the game alone but also letting them collaborate through assets rather than through gameplay.
Nowadays SimCity seems wholly replaced by City Skylines. I had to look up when that was released, but it turns out the release of City Skylines was directly caused by the failure of SimCity:<p>From <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities:_Skylines" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities:_Skylines</a> :<p>> "While the developers felt they had the technical expertise to expand to a full city simulation game, their publisher Paradox held off on the idea, fearing the market dominance of SimCity. After the critical failure of the 2013 SimCity game, however, Paradox greenlit the title."
I play SimCities since v1 and I awaited long this release. It was indeed beautifully designed and the gameplay was very fun and addictive.<p>Finally EA pushed the project too far and it imploded. Too bad, because Maxis didn’t reserve it.<p>I play sometimes Cities Skyline but - to me - CS misses the vibe of SimCity.
I recall playing on launch day and being shocked to discover that, aside from the internet connectivity requirement, the entire UI was written in HTML using WebKit [0].<p>[0] <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxisScott/status/310835756107177984" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/MaxisScott/status/310835756107177984</a>
I'd been looking forward to SC2013 for years and it was beyond disappointing.<p>I know I'm probably not a typical gamer in EA's eyes, but SC4 was such a solid release. It just needed playable regions (build multiple cities, join them together) and some more graphical polish. I'd buy that game in an instant.
Such a shame, I was very excited for this game and though hated it I did enjoy the graphic style, it looked great. (What a palava with the "online" simulation that was found out to be faked)<p>Cities Skylines really put a nail in the coffin of SimCity for me, the huge playable area, no faux online requirement, realistic cim routines and the amazing mod support (I've only used the steam workshop)<p>Now Colossal Order just need to make a sequel with more in depth mechanics akin to some of the mod tools made available (traffic management, I'm looking at you), also I don't know much about the Unity Engine but making the sequel more efficient on multicore CPU's is a must.
Yeah this was bad. The main problem was that the actual simulation was being done on the servers, rather than on the client…for a single player game.<p>I’m sure the development team knew everybody was going to hate that so it couldn’t have been a surprise.
I remember following every update to this game prior to launch. I hated that it required an Origins account and all that but I signed up regardless just to play this game. And I recall having a good time with this game... for a while.<p>Unfortunately EA's lack of support for the game was definitely felt by us consumers. It started off well enough but instead of becoming a better game they turned it into a brand-tie-in DLC-fest.<p>It's hard working at an organization on such a long, ambitious project that the leadership wasn't prepared to support and didn't really believe in to begin with. As a developer I've been on such projects and I recall being invested in the work itself, the project, and our users: but getting management on-board to give it the funding and direction it needed was always a struggle.
> "Every time they would unblock one pinch point, then they would just discover the next one," says Librande. "You were unblocking the dam and then the flood goes and hits the next dam. Then everybody scrambles, tears that one apart, ok, but it keeps going".<p>Apple hit this problem a lot too in the early days of the iTunes and App stores. Marketing wants a huge midnight release with all the hype but the scale just isn't there.<p>The only way to go imo for this sort of thing is a staggered release, an invite system, or an open beta.<p>And it also sucks that stupid management and marketing decisions killed such an important franchise in gaming history.
KSP2 seems like it might be like that.. It seems quite star-citizeny with final AAA graphics and audio, but the <i>core</i> mechanics and UX rather fucked. I reckon it could take them years to fix it if they do. Fixing the core core stuff in a game with final assets already done is like repairing an engine thats running.<p>There was so much dodgy slimy stuff going on with the publisher also,
<a href="https://wccftech.com/kerbal-space-program-2-dev-fired-employees-poached-take-two/" rel="nofollow">https://wccftech.com/kerbal-space-program-2-dev-fired-employ...</a> the fact that they kept development closed for years, then release garbage into early access and charge €50.. I think they might have no intention of fixing it and are just making a cash grab now while there is still so much goodwill floating around from KSP1.<p>Imo there is an opportunity here for a smart small indie team to scoop them and make the <i>real</i> successor to KSP faster than the KSP2 team can fix their crap.
Related:<p>"When SimCity got serious: the story of Maxis Business Simulations and SimRefinery"<p><a href="https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/" rel="nofollow">https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/</a>
Tbh this would be a good time for a remembrance of the companies/franchises ruined by EA and Ubisoft.<p>Maxis / SimCity<p>BioWare / need i say what?<p>Bullfrog / Populous, Dungeon Keeper<p>--<p>Blue Byte / Settlers, Battle Isle<p>New World Computing / Might and Magic and Heroes of...<p>And that's just what I remember off the top of my head.
this felt like the apex of the post facebook/zynga monetise everything always online era<p>ea have always ridden trends mercilessly. and ms with its bungled launch of always online xbox. the hubris of those executives is a staggering in hindsight.
It had so much promise. It was rocky to start for sure. The playable area was so annoyingly small and I felt like I wind up in the same pattern every time. I did play it again a few months ago. It has so much promise, still, as a base for the next level. Ultimately it feels like you have to graduate to using megatowers as the cities pretty much could only advance if you included them... and they were limited by count and eventually those would become stagnant.<p>If they could make the maps larger and improve things like homeless/park issues (I've placed parks like crazy, increase the property values and density, etc) but always wind up having to bulldoze and deal with homeless people which seems like it shouldn't happen based on my understanding.<p>Go the no man's sky route and give us an infinite world to build on.
One thing I think the article leaves out, that is critical, is the damage done to the franchise image by SimCity Societies (2007), SimCity 2013 was the second bad miss in a row for the franchise (and a big part of Societies problems—on top of radical and not well recieved changes to the basic concept—were performance/reliability problems, which IIRC, included a persistent connection requirement even though it was single player.)
How can a company be as bad as EA at managing computer game production? It’s absolutely mind blowing. You think they’d have learned by now, but this story has been repeated for the decade since Sim City. As an EA shareholder I’d be absolutely fuming if some EA exec believed that shipping an unfinished game on an arbitrary deadline would be more important than shipping a good game.
Upon launch, I was of course disappointed with the state of the server and the online only nature of it. But the larger problem for why this game was a failure was the simple problem of way to little space to build a city. The whole concept of a few 1km x 1km city patches in a shared world to build in was flawed from the start. I want to build gigantic cities with elaborate public infrastructure and rivers full of sewage. Cities: Skylines simply was a much better fit for what makes the city building genre appealing.<p>I find it a bit shortsighted to center the blame for a boring game on its launch date debacle. Many other games with similar problems at launch became hits.
I grew up playing Sim City 2k and 3k (never got around to the latest one, but wasn't really interested after reading reviews).<p>I'd like to see the entire city builder genre challenged by changing the perspective from city planner/god-mayor, to those whom they serve.<p>Imagine, instead of a birds eye view, you could only build from the perspective of a pedestrian.<p>Maybe in certain instances you'd have to see a wider swath of land for planning purposes (transit as an example), but it would be interesting to see how the forms of cities created by users change from this new perspective.
I moved to city skylines, which I like, but I miss something from SimCity. First CS forces roads everywhere, this is the biggest con to me, I would love to experiment with biking only neighborhood with mass transit. The other problem is that it's too easy. I love the constraint of having no money and struggling with public opinion. Like "You want to build a train line here? You will have major unhappiness from it". Skylines is good in sandbox mode, but misses a lot in "rogue like" mode. I would also like more terrain diversity.
Maxis had a really cool integration ecosystem for a period. I remember flying my sim copter in my sim city. Driving cars around Streets of Sim City - in my city.<p>SimCity was the worldbuilder and they let you play in that world in a variety of ways. I must have spent hundreds of hours playing these as a child: these were basically my Minecraft.<p>What happened to their vision? Was the EA acquisition the beginning of the end, or did the magic start disappearing earlier?
One of the final statements is rather telling of modern corporate culture: "We had already begged and pleaded to have more time, and at some point, as a public company, they have certain obligations to their shareholders. One of them was that SimCity would be shipping that quarter."<p>Torpedoed by one bad business decision after another, despite being a promising game.
Speaking on Sim City, is there a chance anyone has a collection of Japanese Sim City 4 bat files? I saved a bunch of bookmarks but link rot has destroyed most of them, hoping someone collected them all.
That release certainly marked the end of the SimCity line for me. Making it require the use of their servers when you only wanted to play it single-player was intolerable, but it was an inferior single-player game (compared to its predecessors) anyway.<p>I just keep playing the older versions instead.
The lead designer was heartbroken? He should have been ashamed of his dastardly creation.<p>I was heartbroken when I saw how they massacred and desecrated the Sim City franchise.<p>It was one of the early online-only cloud microtransaction trash games, like Diablo 3.
I still play SimCity 2013 today, and despite its flaws, I much prefer it over Cities Skylines. SimCity feels alive, with a great soundtrack, good looking visuals even today, and I love the futuristic expansion pack.<p>Skylines feels less like a game I want to play in my free time and more like a city planner tool. The graphics style also somehow feels much colder and more outdated in comparison.<p>I honestly think SimCity 6 with bigger cities and updated graphics would be a massive hit without changing much else - the multiplayer aspect of sharing resources, contributing to pollution, workers and students, etc is really unique and should be kept.
> We had already begged and pleaded to have more time, and at some point, as a public company, they have certain obligations to their shareholders. One of them was that SimCity would be shipping that quarter.<p>I get that games have to release at some point or else some devs will be perfecting forever. But I can't count the amount of times a game was a flop at launch (and never recovered) because they needed to hit an arbitrary date and it wasn't fully baked.<p>Wouldn't the best interests of the shareholders be having a financially successful game?
> EA was looking to justify the time and money it had already spent on Quigley and Willmot's experiment<p>If true (the whole article is unsourced), that is a classic failure of undergrad business 101.
In these days of 100GB games I’m still in awe of how much fun I had from a game stored in 128KB (SimCity on the ZX Spectrum in 1990). And it was perfectly playable in 48KB.
They contacted video games influencers/youtubers (in 2013, always ahead of their time in marketing, that's the only thing EA is good at), invited them to play the game at their HQ. At least one of them confessed he was threatened to not publish the video after sending them the script and refused to change major parts. He wasn't paid the thousand dollars either (at the time influencers were cheaper :))
Sim city is a phone game.<p>I want to build cool cities full stop. I think what was more the problem is that a LOT of studios realized that a sim city clone works better on mobile hardware, because that's where the target audience is at.<p>Since then they did realize it and I was playing it with my fiance for hours and hours on end. With the multiplayer with multiple cities.<p>Graphics and disasters where not so much the problem in 2013 but they more or less screwed the game by liming it so miuch
And while EA plummeted the franchise city skylines is getting a sequal
<a href="https://kotaku.com/cities-skylines-2-paradox-lamplighters-xcom-ck3-pc-new-1850194992" rel="nofollow">https://kotaku.com/cities-skylines-2-paradox-lamplighters-xc...</a>