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Electronics Arts CEO Ousted In Wake of SimCity Launch Disaster
mozumder writes "The disastrous launch of SimCity took its first major toll, with EA CEO John Riccitiello being fired from his position and removed from the Board of Directors. It is unknown what effect this may have on the SimCity franchise or any future DRM of EA games, but clearly someone didn't think their cunning plan all the way through when they decided to implement always-on connections for single-player gaming."
Someone at a high level paying the price for DRM-incurred failure. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, asshole.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
The press release doesn't mention anything about SimCity. Could it be other causes and you're just trying to bend the message to your own personal fantasies? In any case, I doubt it'll have any real effect on the user of DRM.
SimCity was the tipping point.
Remember, EA was recently ranked as the Worst Company in America. Gamers have been complaining about EA way before SimCity. Like when EA negotiated an exclusive rights deal on all NFL games and then churned out the worst NFL games for years and years to come. They have ruined many, many franchises.
Good riddance. Now kindly proceed rolling heads throughout all upper and middle management, until you get to the first employee who indicated that the always-online feature was an indescribably bad idea. He or she is new CEO.
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus
While it's nice to speculate that the guy was fired for reasons that suit the average slashdotter's predilection's about DRM, there is no evidence that this is the case.
When a board member calls up the CEO and says that it's unanimous, it's time for you to leave, the CEO can either save face and "resign", or let the board officially vote them out. Regardless of what they're calling it, "fired" is probably an accurate description.
Better known as 318230.
It may have more to do with the fact EA stock went from $40 to $20 since he took office and there are plenty within and without the company that want to move into mobile gaming more and he's in the way. The board may also believe fresh blood will bring in a new way of doing things in the gaming sphere. I hope they take this opportunity to actually do some worthwhile changes; first being getting rid of or at least finding a better DRM mechanism (since I'm sure there are some dinosaurs who think DRM is still a workable system) and branch out.
They should learn a lesson from Atari. Inheritence isn't how you hold on to the throne. If blood must be spilled, then so be it.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
Serious question... is this the first time an exec was ousted for a mistake with DRM?
If memory serves, one of the more plausible reasons posited for SimCity's ill-conceived launch was that it was right before EA's financial year wrapped up. I don't think that anybody who mattered gave a damn about DRM; but mangling the DRM-induced server hooks so badly that total non-techie rags like Forbes were writing articles about it... That just doesn't look competent.
If anything, DRM(as a lock-in and market segmentation strategy) is something that team management would probably earn points for; but only if they can pull it off well enough to win more than it costs them. People like Apple and Valve, yes. EA, not so much.
He wasn't ousted for DRM, but failing to execute the DRM properly.
If the servers had been even REMOTELY close to sufficient for a day 1 load, the manager would still be onboard and the DRM would be proven successful. As that was not the case, the problem is the manager failing to properly plan for launch day activities. The DRM is still successful and will be implemented in subsequent EA releases.
This signature is false.
First, it wasn't necessarily the failure of SimCity that caused the job change. Second, the existence of the DRM wasn't the reason SimCity is a disaster.
SimCity is a disaster because of the implementation of the DRM, the PR surrounding the DRM, and then the fact that it's just a completely broken non-simulation.
Implementation failure.
Just having an account sign-on for DRM authentication is a thumbs-down, for sure, but it isn't a guaranteed game killer. Case in point, StarCraft 2. I do not like having to sign on to play the single player campaigns, but I've never had a problem logging in, even on day 1 of Wings of Liberty or day 1 of Heart of the Swarm.
With SimCity, however, I was unable to log on and play for 3 days after launch. After that I never had server problems, but there are many people who are still unable to stay connected or who are having their cities (which are saved on EA's computers) erased or rolled back.
The lesson is, if you're going to force people to sign on to play a single-player game, you better fucking make sure they can sign on to play their single-player game.
PR failure
I don't think Blizzard ever lied to people about why they had to sign on to battle.net for StarCraft. "It's 'cause DRMs." Lucy Bradshaw, the Maxis spokesweasal has stated that SimCity just had to be always connected because EA's servers are performing "significant computations" that just have to be done by their servers. Their terrible "sims go the nearest house to sleep" AI has gotta be run on their Beowulf cluster of HAL 9000s. The beast of a gaming rig under my desk clearly isn't up to the task.
Of course this is a monstrously stupid lie, and obvious to anyone who has any experience with video games or computers or breathing. This falls into the "pissing on me and telling me it's raining" category. If you're going to piss on me, at least be honest about it. And don't eat asparagus first.
Game failure
Despite all that, the real problem with SimCity is once you actually are able to get in and play, you find that they did not actually make a city simulation game, they just made a pretty city drawing program.
You lay out reasonable street designs, but they get snarled with traffic because the sims do not know where they're going to end up when they leave their homes for work in the morning or when they come home at night. They pick as their destination the nearest place that meets their need and go there first via the shortest path. If when they get there they find the place is already filled up, they go to the next closest place. So imagine if all 400 people who live in your neighborhood were coming home from work at the same time, but instead of going to their actual homes (or whatever place they're going to end up sleeping) they all came to your house first. And after 2 of them crash on your floor, the remaining 398 go next door and all knock there. And then the remaining 396 go to the next house after that, etc etc.
Next, the whole RCI balance mechanic has been the core of SimCity forever, and that's completely gone. Residential areas are supposed to need Commercial areas so people have a place to buy things (or work). Commercial needs shoppers, workers, and goods. Industry provides jobs for residents and goods for Commerce. They broke all of that, because sims, it seems, can live on love. All they need to not move out of their homes is "happiness," which can be obtained from shopping (commerce) but can also be obtained from city parks. So people have made 400k+ population cities that are absolutely nothing but residential high rises and parks. The people have no jobs and no money and no food, but they can still live in gleaming skyscrapers because I guess they're urban foraging in the parks.
So, yeah, you can "solve the puzzle" and make cities that don't collapse, but they're completely ridiculous, so it's not a city simulation game. It'd be like having a flight simulator where the rudder has no effect on y
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Whether or not that asshole got sacked, or how he got sacked, isn't important
What's more important is if EA gonna let users enjoy SC5 without been unnecessarily burdened by the online DRM ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I highly doubt EA's quarterly report includes Sim City already. More likely it was every game except for Sim City--and had nothing to do with DRM in the slightest.
Maybe it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back? After coming in below target on multiple projects, they may have been considering it, but seeing how this latest one completely cratered to the point they're having to give away their product in an attempt to maintain credibility with their customers while warding off massive amounts of bad PR... the board may simply have said enough is enough. SimCity may not be on the ledger, but when your latest failure in a string of them is by far the worst, and most publicized, it's foolish to think it wasn't given serious weight in the decision.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Allow me to say that this is further proof that VOTING WITH YOUR DOLLARS WORKS and it works VERY well, its just not magical or instant.
Remember folks this is NOT just about SImcity, its about how under his watch sales have gone down as he ran off more and more customers with douchebag behavior, from gouging on DLC to bad DRM schemes to bad services like Origin John Riccitiello has done for EA what Steve Ballmer has done for MSFT, run it into the ground. And I'm proud to say many folks have voted with their wallets and refused to buy these "DRMapaloza" games that treat the customer as a criminal, just look at how hard Activision and Ubisoft had their sales hit for this kind of shit, with Ubisoft going so far as to remove it from their games and apologize for it.
So just don't buy products that treat you like crap, vote with your wallet and you CAN change things, just not overnight. EA under John Riccitiello has been widely derided for bad behavior so its really no surprise that people voted with their wallets, we need to continue to refuse to buy products that treat us like crap. As long as D3 is always online I won't have it, i instead bought my friends and family Torchlight II instead, I refuse to buy any game that treats me badly and encourage everyone to do the same as we CAN make a difference, it just takes time.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
He was fired. At the CEO level, they don't hand you a check and take your key and have the security droid escort you out of the building. He's being paid what his contract says he will be paid when he is terminated, and the face-saving fiction is that he is allowed to resign effective March 30. However, make no mistake; he was fired.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Lighten up, will you? This is no place for picking on newbies. Or, for treating old timers as newbies. Or for recycling lame jokes.
No, but it is THE place where sarcasm is interpreted literally, to the great amusement of those whose sense of humor hasn't been surgically removed. Also, every joke has been recycled. I mean, they've made entire TV series out of recycled jokes. Like The Big Bang Theory (vomits in mouth)...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Having worked in a company that big, there's nothing the CEO could have done about it. Everyone would have lied to him "oh, it's going good, it'll be great" if he asked, and he'd be so far out of development, he'd have no way of knowing that something was buggy or not ready. Just have to shuffle CEOs around so that they look like they are worth $100,000,000 per year, when they outsource on the basis of "supply and demand" and any of a million people would take his job, and apparently, not many could do it worse.
Learn to love Alaska
One bloke intent on building a game so deep that it takes sixteen materials and four different crafts to create a metal bucket (then measures individual happiness on how pretty it is) is modelling individual actors right down to the loss of an arm, the saving that makes in gloves, the work that individual can now do and how upset his family are about it.
And EA with a budget in the tens of millions can't even work out basics such as 'works here, earns that, lives there, wants food/entertainment/job/sleep'..
Hell, the Tropico series manages it, and they depict all of the individuals. Crunching the numbers in the background without displaying each person is easier, and should scale up to SimCity levels. Certainly for the first few hundred thousand.