EA Caves: SimCity Offline Mode Coming

iONiUM writes "After EA staunchly denied any offline mode, it would seem the disastrous SimCity launch and continual gamer community anger (as well as a CEO firing), EA finally caved and has now going to make an offline mode. However, the obvious question still remains: is it too little too late?"

Comments

too little too late?

[Culture20]

Why buy an EA game unless you're a masochist?

Re:too little too late?

[erroneus]

Gamers are picture perfect examples of addiction. Not "all gamers" but there is a subset of gamers significant enough to predict that no matter how bad things get, they will wait in line to spend lots of money so they can "earn achievements." And why? Because they can't get them in real life as easily or as well. That sense of achievement is addicting and even necessary.

But it's not just gamers who suffer from this. How about all those football fans who rejoice when their team wins or gets sad when their team loses? How about those soccer fans? Have they decapitated and dismembered anyone lately? There's no end to the lunacy. None. And because of that business out there sees unlimited potential for exploitaiton.

Re:too little too late?

[Cryacin]

But that argument would indicate that EA and its subsidiaries behave just like drug dealers and pimps! Oh, right... Carry on!

Re:too little too late?

[Skarecrow77]

Because games aren't created by the publishers, and sometimes a publisher contracts/purchases a development studio that actually knows it's shit?

Re:too little too late?

[girlintraining]

But that argument would indicate that EA and its subsidiaries behave just like drug dealers and pimps! Oh, right... Carry on!

Please don't compare EA with drug dealers and pimps. Both usually provide exactly what is promised; drugs, or sex. EA can't meet that standard, not by a long shot. When you buy drugs, or a girl for the night, you usually get to do what you want... not guilted at every turn and told you can't be trusted, and that instead of forking over $50 you'll be forked over for about $500,000 and a 7 year jail sentence for "piracy" because your DVD got scratched and you used a backup copy... for shame.

Re:too little too late?

[JoeMerchant]

It's never too late to start doing the right thing.

If the new SimCity adds an offline mode, and you're a SimCity gamer, you should support it, and shun other games that are needlessly connected.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're telling me that you've never been robbed by a drug dealer? I'm not racist in most ways, but I will never, EVER buy from a black dealer. Who needs a gun to rob someone for 30$? And all I wanted was an eighth. Fuck.

not guilted at every turn and told you can't be trusted,

What? There are pimps and gangsters watching you the whole time, ready to beat and\or kill you if you don't pay. You clearly have never been a lowlife before.

Re:too little too late?

[houstonbofh]

When you buy drugs, or a girl for the night, you usually get to do what you want... not guilted at every turn and told you can't be trusted, and that instead of forking over $50 you'll be forked over for about $500,000 and a 7 year jail sentence for "piracy" because your DVD got scratched and you used a backup copy...

Something tells me that when you finally save up and buy that girl for the night, you will be very disappointed...

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Drug dealers and pimps are HONEST compared to the likes of EA. Drug dealers and pimps rely on a good reputation for their business.

EA on the other hand has won worst company of the year twice. And looking to win a 3rd time so far.

Re:too little too late?

[artor3]

But they're not fixing other issues, like the minuscule city size. They're probably only doing the "right" thing here so that they can save on server costs.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

A solution is worthless if it isn't completely perfect?

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's not a complete solution. At best, it's a step in the right direction (though probably too late...).

Re:too little too late?

[Common Joe]

It's never too late to start doing the right thing.

If the new SimCity adds an offline mode, and you're a SimCity gamer, you should support it, and shun other games that are needlessly connected.

Disagree for two reasons. 1) Once I despise a company so much that I boycott them, then I'm boycotting them until they proved to me they have made real changes to their management structure and their attitude. How many times have companies suddenly "wised up" only to do something worse on their next game? EA is among the worst of those offenders. Even if they did a 180 tomorrow, I'll be watching for years before I buy anything from EA. I know there will always be people who think like you so most companies with this crap attitude do have the chance to redeem themselves. Even if EA went under, I wouldn't feel bad for the management at all. I'm not even sure I'd feel bad for the programmers and artists... which brings me to point 2.

2) EA has treated their employees so bad, a wife got online and wrote a very shaming letter back in 2004. They aren't the only guilty company either. Has it gotten better? I haven't heard anything saying how things have improved. In fact, I generally keep reading how bad it is to work in the AAA gaming industry. I even know someone personally who works in the AAA gaming industry and he recently mentioned something about mold issues in the office where he was expected to work and it caused him to get very sick. (It wasn't EA.)

You're entitled to your opinion, but I think you should not support SimCity until EA cleans up its act. If the company goes under, let it be a message to the other companies to clean up their acts. If they all go under, then that gives the little companies an opportunity to thrive -- something which I think is badly needed.

Re:too little too late?

[rhodium_mir]

Between The Erotic Review and TNA Board it's generally pretty easy to get what you paid for as long as you go with a reputable provider.

Re:too little too late?

[Redmancometh]

^ what this guy said
On a side note that's the only place I'm racist...most white dealers are 19 year olds from the burbs..and they're afraid of ME.

EA actually acts the opposite of most dealers and pimps. Most of them (as long as you pay and don't say stupid shit) are umcomfortably proud of having "the best product, " and even ask for feedback!

They also take corrective action. You better believe if a dude doesn't get anal and tells upgrayyd cinammon is gonna have a black eye.

Re:too little too late?

[sjames]

But once you pay the money, the drugs are yours. They no longer care what you do with them. Share, do it all yourself, whatever. They don't show up at your door demanding to see your license when you try to open the package. They actually prefer that you DON'T call them and ask for permission each time you want to use some of the drugs they sold you.

Re:too little too late?

[artor3]

Sometimes, yes. For example, if my arm gets chopped off, a perfect solution would be to reattach it and make it good as new. An imperfect but acceptable solution would be to clean up the wound and give me a prosthetic. What EA is doing is offering to move my watch to my remaining wrist. It's nice and all, but it doesn't solve the problem I'm actually concerned with.

SimCity is still a huge disappointment to fans of the franchise. A dull, buggy, pared-down game that works offline isn't much better than one that requires the internet.

Re:too little too late?

[viperidaenz]

They'll come asking for a cut if they find you're on-selling their drugs for a profit though.

Re:too little too late?

[bloodhawk]

If it truly is a proper offline mode then I will buy it. I really really wanted SimCity as it is something I play in airports and while travelling to pass the time. The online only mode while I could have still enjoyed it in a more limited use scenario, I refused to buy it as I don't want them to think this sort of shit is ok.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why buy an EA game unless you're a masochist?

Fine then I guess I am a masochist!! And who needs to buy the games when you can get them by other means!!

There sports games suck, but some of the games they sell [or you can obtain thru other means] aren't bad.

And again everyone bad mouths the console makers for implementing DRM when EA is living proof of publishers/game makers forcing this upon everyone. If you think indie games are going to be any better they will be implementing it as well, when they create a games that become a mainstream success.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gamers are picture perfect examples of addiction. Not "all gamers" but there is a subset of gamers significant enough to predict that no matter how bad things get, they will wait in line to spend lots of money so they can "earn achievements." And why? Because they can't get them in real life as easily or as well. That sense of achievement is addicting and even necessary.

But it's not just gamers who suffer from this. How about all those football fans who rejoice when their team wins or gets sad when their team loses? How about those soccer fans? Have they decapitated and dismembered anyone lately? There's no end to the lunacy. None. And because of that business out there sees unlimited potential for exploitaiton.

Should be modded for "Funny". This has nothing to do with addiction, unless your a loner with no friends. These "online" games are strictly to limit a players abilities so publishers/makers can suck as much money out of a game as possible. Before these "online" games players could go thru a game at there own pace [they still do the same thing with online] and achieve the necessary items to go to the next level.

The fact that there is a backlash against online "pay as you go' or 'pay to cheat' gaming shows how little there is an addiction.

For the web games like Zygna it is the same, you can acquire items thru friends or earn them, but if you want to cheat and jump in levels quickly you can just buy [cheat] your way up. It becomes a competition, to see who can out do who on the scoreboard.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason a lot of people play games is because they provide a challenge that's fun to overcome. There's a certain satisfaction that comes with solving the obstacles presented in a game, and the harder the obstacle, the greater the level of satisfaction. Don't be a sourpuss by extrapolating this to mean their real life lacks any means of gaining satisfaction.

But even if that's indeed true, it's also harsh to have a go at the gamer because let's face it, life sucks for a LOT of people. They go to a dead-end job doing something they hate, then go home in their shitty car because they can't afford anything better, then sit at home worried about whether they'll have a job to come home to the next day. Gaming is a form of escapism and a means of achieving satisfaction from accomplishment, and is increasingly popular precisely BECAUSE society itself is fucked. Given the pressures companies put on their employees these days, no wonder people have no sense of achievement anywhere except in gaming, which readily rewards the player for successes that their efforts in real life tend to go unacknowledged, or worse, continually berated for.

For a lot of (most?) people, life is just about existing because the alternative (death) is not particularly desirable. So they end up becoming addicts as you say because games provide the satisfaction of accomplishment they don't get in real life, because real life is a harsh mistress. It's not always the fault of the gamer, and you need to understand this.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's never too late to start doing the right thing.

If the new SimCity adds an offline mode, and you're a SimCity gamer, you should support it, and shun other games that are needlessly connected.

Why? It is still a horribly bad game.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

In real life, mastering a skill will probably involve long stretches of hard work and practice, with insignificant, if any, immediate visible improvements in between. Video games are mostly designed to offer incremental visible progress toward a goal. Grinding to the next level may take hours or days, but the experience points pool provides the comfort that you are closer to your goal. Getting a perfect ranking on a stage in an action game requires time and practice, and usually getting perfect rankings in smaller sub-'stages'. But the game usually offers more than enough information to provide a sense of improvement, whether it's faster times, higher scores, better rankings in sub-stages, etc.

Re:too little too late?

[VortexCortex]

Why buy an EA game unless you're a masochist?

Perhaps you missed the headline? EA Caves: SimCity Offline Mode Coming

Why buy a game with Offline Mode made in EA's Caves?!
You'd have to be a Sadist AND a Masochist...
Hmm, or suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never too late? Bullshit.

I would have potentially cared about the game at launch. But they fucked it up.

I would have considered it for a few months after but the bugs were hilarious.

I would have considered buying it when it was on sale on Steam over the christmas holidays. But they moved way too slow with this always on restriction.

Right now? Got other shit to play. I may look into their crap if I see it on sale for a couple bucks one day, but beyond that I'm no longer interested in the latest SimCity.

So yes, too late.

Re:too little too late?

[RogueyWon]

Because, aside from the high profile cock-ups, EA still develops and publishes quite a lot of good games. Crysis 3 and Need for Speed: Rivals are recent EA-published games which I have bought, played, enjoyed and had value for money from.

EA is a vast company. Some parts of it are completely disfunctional, while others work just fine. Pointing at a broken game like SimCity and saying "I am not going to buy that game" is a good and sensible thing to do. Pointing at a broken game like SimCity and saying "I will not purchase any EA games" is cutting off your nose to spite your face (and carries a whiff of zealotry).

Re:too little too late?

[wildstoo]

Oblig. Gordon Ramsay EA meme.

Re:too little too late?

[Bertie]

But it's still a shit game.

Re:too little too late?

[Digital Vomit]

You better believe if a dude doesn't get anal and tells upgrayyd cinammon is gonna have a black eye.

That's Upgraydd.

Remember: the extra 'd' is for a double dose of his pimping.

Re: too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why it's important to set a series of fine-grained goals on the path to your main goal. As each stepping-stone goal is reached, you'll feel that levelling-up boost - you'll be strengthening the feedback loop which pushes you towards your goal.

Re:too little too late?

[GameMaster]

A pimp's love is different from a square's...or so I've heard.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

too little..... dump origin account requirement, too, unless someone actually wants to run game online.

and.....

too late..... besides the online requirement since launch, there are numerous other issues with the game that will keep me from buying even with an offline mode available.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

*Carter and Peter sell some drugs to Meg*
*Carter beats up Meg and takes the drugs*
Peter: "What'd you do that for?"
Carter: "Now we have the money _and_ the drugs"
JUST SAY NO TO DRM

Re:too little too late?

[Chris Mattern]

EA made Sim City in a *cave*! With a *box of scraps*!

Re:too little too late?

[Quirkz]

Yeah, for a brief moment I thought they'd created a spelunking game. Which actually sounds kind of fun. I could do with something like the old Atari Adventure, just spruced up a bit (i.e., not pointless and completely infuriating). Crystal caverns, rope swinging, rattlesnake jumping, fully destructible/cave-in-able 3D environment. Maybe an easter egg bonus cave with ravenous semi-human predators, just for fun.

Re:too little too late?

[SleazyRidr]

Actually, pimps are probably closer to the "licencing" model game companies want to use. Except you agree to the terms up front before you hand over your cash: You want to do X for Y minutes? That'll be $Z. The people complaining are usually the ones who didn't set the terms before they started, just like with games.

You properly own drugs, the dealer gives you your packet, then leaves. If you snort it, stick it up your ass, flush it down the toilet or give it to a homeless person, she won't come back and tell you that you weren't licensed for that use and you owe her extra $$$.

Re:too little too late?

[Bobfrankly1]

EA made Sim City in a *cave*! With a *box of scraps*!

Actually, that WOULD explain the quality of quite a few of their games...

Re:too little too late?

[BancBoy]

When you buy ... a girl for the night, you usually get to do what you want... not guilted at every turn and told you can't be trusted,

Unless you pay for the Real Girlfriend Experience. In which case, it's pretty much as you described ;)

Re:too little too late?

[TangoMargarine]

Ah, but which message gets conveyed:

1) If your game is shit, people won't buy it. If you fix it, people will start buying it.
2) We can release a shit game but people will still buy it if we get somebody to fix it later.

Re:too little too late?

[Ravaldy]

I don't know. You don't really know what you're getting when you buy drugs and who know what diseases the girl on the corner has.

Re:too little too late?

[oreiasecaman]

But I can guarantee you they didn't have Tony Stark on their team!

Re:too little too late?

[Windwraith]

It is too late for them to get me to buy it. Then again I don't buy EA or Ubisoft games. I don't play them either. I don't even pirate them. They just aren't my thing.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, buying one game isn't a commitment that I would hold a company hostage over for long periods of time.

However, I agree with your sentiment with respect to longer term commitments, like Sony and the PSx, or AT&T with a contract.

I just got "slammed" by the sales person at the T-Mobile store, he loaded up all 3 lines on our plan with unlimited data (hell of a deal, if you need it, which I told him we don't) - he claims it's necessary to be sure we get our early termination rebate for switching from Verizon - I think he's full of it, but it really doesn't matter, as soon as the ETF thing is clear, we switch our plans to what we want - no biggie. On the other hand, when dealing with Verizon and 2 year commitments, that magnifies any little monthly fee slipped in there by 24x....

Re:too little too late?

[Darby]

Yeah, hey, dealer...I was gonna pack another bowl...of that stuff...you hooked me up with.

Are you saying....wait back up a second...are you saying that's not the optimal approach to things?

Mind blown....I'm totally going to start showing up on your doorstep whenever I get high even though I didn't get it from you...just to run it by you...you'd totally like that, right?!?!

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

That more than just a bit of over-generalization. I know a lot of people who are gamers because it's a fun way to pass time. How about the moms who play PC games while rocking small babies for hours while they refuse to sleep? It's all well and good to say you should be paying attention to the kid, but there are a lot of times you can only talk to a two-month-old for so long before you need to do something at the same time just else to stay awake. My family plays games on long car trips. I know lots of people who watch sports purely as a form of social connection. Taking advantage of an available market is not exploitation, it's smart business practice.

Re:too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know. You don't really know what you're getting when you buy drugs and who know what diseases the girl on the corner has.

So, I take it you have never heard of SecureROM? Your comment only reinforced the analogy.

Might actually buy it now.

[_Shorty-dammit]

I might actually buy it now. That was a ridiculous policy.

Re:Might actually buy it now.

[dingen]

It's still a terrible game. The maps are way too small to create something that even comes close to a city. Even building a midsized town isn't possible, it's really a neighborhood at most.

And then there's the bugs, which are still plentiful. And the general lack of fun. It's just a waste of time and money, this game.

Re:Might actually buy it now.

[TyFoN]

I agreed until I shelled out for the expansion which should have been in the game from the start.

The city area is still small, but you can add some towers that make up for it. And it's actually quite fun.

Re:Might actually buy it now.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah i hate to shillout for content that should have been in the game from start.

Not for me

[aussiedood]

Lack of offline play kept me away. I'll likely purchase a copy now.

Re:Not for me

[Anonymous Coward]

its EA they'll find another way to fuck you over soon enough

i can't believe a company as terrible to their customers as EA still exists in a free market

Re:Not for me

[tepples]

The market is not free for several reasons, two directly related to EA and one not so directly.

• EA holds the exclusive license to several major sport leagues' rosters.
• EA has claimed in a lawsuit (EA v. Zynga) that its copyright in The Sims Mobile extends to ownership of gameplay elements. This lawsuit was settled out of court, but it still contributes to a chilling effect on development of video games in the same genres as certain flagship EA titles.
• Currently, there are three companies, whose names start with M, N, and S, with effective veto power over playing a video game on a television. I'm told only a commercially insignificant fraction of game buyers use a television as a a desktop PC's monitor, and this will remain true unless and until Steam Machines become popular.

Re:Not for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother, the cities are too tiny. The "multi-city" concept is a failure. Just mod up Sim City 4.

Re:Not for me

[Daniel Hoffmann]

"EA has claimed in a lawsuit (EA v. Zynga) that its copyright in The Sims Mobile extends to ownership of gameplay elements."

I don't agree with that, even if EA won in court I believe they would have won in plagiarism charges. There are some the sims clones out there but they are not being sued into oblivion

Re:Not for me

[zifn4b]

The market is not free for several reasons, two directly related to EA and one not so directly.

It's free in the sense that everyone can vote with their wallet. Lack of sales will put market pressure on EA to change if they are interested in their bottom line which, as we all know, is the only thing that really matters to them. Hit them where it hurts and they will change.

Re:Not for me

[Digital Vomit]

It's free in the sense that everyone can vote with their wallet

But that's not "free" as in "free market", as the parent just explained. You can't have a free market and copyright law at the same time. Copyright prevents you from "voting with your wallet" in the free market sense because it reduces the number of competitors to zero.

Re:Not for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. That's why copyright was invented in the first place, to give limited time monopoly to someone for coming up with something creative. Exactly the same as patents. The basic idea behind them is ok, it's the current implementations that suck donkey balls. First of all, the protection time on copyright is totally insane. Secondly, companies should be forced to decide if they sell licenses of copies. Thirdly, patents should not cover business practices or ideas, only specific execution and technical details of that execution of an idea.

Fix those and you have a good start. Might be just easier to just drop the protections alltogether. Would be fair, as that would surely level the playfield.

Re:Not for me

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]You can't have a free market and copyright law at the same time.[/quote]

Yes you can. It's a matter of how copyright is used. Copyright shouldn't cover generic gameplay elements. It shouldn't last longer than 50 years.

It's kind of the same problem of good regulation versus bad regulation. It's a matter of subtle differences.

Maybe next time

[starX]

I tend to agree it's probably too little too late for SimCity, but hopefully EA and other game companies will learn a lesson from this disaster. The fact that they are willing to release an offline mode hints that such hope is not completely unrealistic.

Re:Maybe next time

[PsychoSlashDot]

Not a chance. I predict there will be relatively few sales because of the "too little, too late" status, and EA will simply conclude that they were right all along... offline mode doesn't matter.

Re:Maybe next time

[jd2112]

I tend to agree it's probably too little too late for SimCity, but hopefully EA and other game companies will learn a lesson from this disaster. The fact that they are willing to release an offline mode hints that such hope is not completely unrealistic.

Or more likely, "Hey, we've made about all the money we can off of Sim City but it's costing money to run those servers for online play. We had better release a fix for offline play before we shut them down to avoid a nasty class-action suit."

Re:Maybe next time

[pspahn]

And just wait until they start yelling about how once they allowed offline mode, piracy skyrocketed.

See! They were right!

Re:Maybe next time

[Anonymous Coward]

EA will just blame it on piracy and their next title's DRM will require you take photo ID and a stat dec into the police office before you're permitted to play the game you just bought but still don't own.

Re:Maybe next time

[Patch86]

My alternative hypothesis- sales of the game sucked, and the revenue they're making isn't enough to cover the cost of running the server.

Malice / stupidity etc.

Re:Maybe next time

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, offline mode doesn't matter if the game is poorly conceived and coded to begin with (see complaints about the size of the cities in other comments). They flubbed things up from the beginning with this iteration of SimCity because they thought they could get a continuous revenue stream out of it by making adequate gameplay and hooking it into required servers. They thought that would be "good enough". Apparently not. If the game is crappy, whether it is offline or online doesn't really matter.

Re:Maybe next time

[Culture20]

EA will just blame it on piracy and their next title's DRM will require you take photo ID and a stat dec into the police office before you're permitted to play the game you just bought but still don't own.

Why not skip a step? You're only allowed to play the game from the comfort of an EA sponsored jail cell while EA market researchers watch from behind mirrored glass.

Late?

[Groo Wanderer]

You mean there was someone EA hadn't terminally pissed off before this debacle? Could have fooled me.

          -Charlie

Community Wins....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and by the way.... haha.

Not sure this is a "Cave"

[Ksevio]

With offline mode, EA can now shut down the servers that were once required while still selling the game. Since SimCity isn't subscription based, the servers are just a drain of money for them at this point since the hype died down and not many are going to pirate it.

Come a few months they'll be announcing that the online portion will be shuttered, but look forward to the next great EA release!

Re:Not sure this is a "Cave"

[JoeMerchant]

I can't express how disillusioned I was when GT5 Prologue killed their (lame, stuttery) online racing servers. For me, $60 is a damn investment, and I didn't expect to be losing features a couple of years after making that investment.

Re:Not sure this is a "Cave"

[camperdave]

When I read the headline, I assumed Electronic Arts was producing a fully immersive environment console in which to play SIM City. After all, what else could EA Caves: SimCity Offline Mode Coming mean?

Re:Not sure this is a "Cave"

[interkin3tic]

It is a cave though: they tried to claim it wasn't possible to run the game offline.

Re:Not sure this is a "Cave"

[guises]

Agreed. I suspect that they never got the sales that they needed to make Farmville-style paid DLC to be viable.

Re:Not sure this is a "Cave"

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see where you went wrong there. You forgot that this is EA. The "Cave" here could be labelled fully immersive if you accept that it means they will cram the game DVD so far up your ass you can see it spinning in front of your face.

Rebranding Opportunity

[gregor-e]

Since they're not going to increase the city size, perhaps EA should consider rebranding it as "Sim Village".

Re:Rebranding Opportunity

[GrahamCox]

Village? Hamlet more like. How about calling it "Shamlet". Sound appropriate.

Re:Rebranding Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

I would assume that once an offline version is provided, it opens up the floodgates for the hacker/modder community to provide a version that greatly expands city sizes. The Simcity community has a long history of workarounds with SC4, and frankly some of the stuff they accomplished in it amazes me. If EA doesn't provide it, expect the community itself to create a region creation tool, editing the city lot size, etc.

Re:Rebranding Opportunity

[lgw]

A better name would be Sim Town: at least then it would be old-school (a friend of mine was a dev on that - wow, that was a long time ago).

And by "too little"...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You mean the size of the city plots, right?

I don't buy any game that's "On-line only"

[BringsApples]

And I can't see why anyone else would.

EA who?

[Yahooti]

They're still in business? I walked away and never looked back. Don't see any reason to do so now either.

What would EA have to do?

[TsuruchiBrian]

What would EA have to do to get me to ever buy another EA game again?

1. Atonement: They could become a nonprofit organization and only come out with open source games that ran on linux with all profits going to charities to help children in 3rd world countries learn to program.

2. Deception: Change their name, and payoff every website that I visit and everyone I know not to tell me that they changed their name.

3. Coercion: Kidnap someone I care about and threaten to kill them if I don;t buy one of their games.

4. Temptation: Start some crazy PR stunt where if EA sells X copies of a game, the CEO will literally eat the collectors edition of the game (the disc, the box, the manuals, the collectible miniatures, and any cancer causing chemicals, etc), and by some arcane loophole in the law this turns out to be enforceable by by the courts.

Re:What would EA have to do?

[phantomfive]

5. Make a game you really want to play.

That's how it is with games. And if you happen to be one of the few principled enough to follow through with what you said (despite really wanting to play it), EA won't care because there will be plenty of other gamers to take your place.

Re:What would EA have to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

6. Give me a woman.

God, I hope I am marked insightful for this post.

Re:What would EA have to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

EA is incapable of making a game I want to play at this point.
I'm a fan of sim city, and of the C&C series, but I haven't bothered buying all the latest versions because EA is shitting all over it.
Besides, their games aren't on steam, and I'm not going to create some BS EA account just so I can buy their expensive games.

Re:What would EA have to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

5. Make a game you really want to play.

Come on, man. GP was trying to stick to realistic possibilities.

Re:What would EA have to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Less likely than the CEO eating Mirror's Edge 2: Now With Nothing That Made The Original Game Good: Special Collector's Ultimate Edition. Unfortunately, publishing a decent game may be another matter.

Re:What would EA have to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about if EA donated more than $1 million to the American Cancer Society? that'd be really cool, IMO. ...and that's just what they did this past December.

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2013/12/05/ea-donates-15-million-humble-origin-bundle-american-cancer-society

For all the bashing on EA for their crappy business practices, this one time they did something right. One can only hope this won't be a one-time thing.

Re:What would EA have to do?

[Cley Faye]

Yeah, no.
Is donating a large sum of money to a charity a good thing? Of course!
And the fact that they did it to buy themselves a better public opinion doesn't make it less than a good thing, but it's certainly not helping their reputation: "hey, we screw up big time, so we douse money left and right to fix it" usually don't works by itself.

Re:What would EA have to do?

[twocows]

That's nice. I don't give a shit whether they care or not, I'm going to continue not buying from them. I started after the clusterfuck that was Spore and I haven't lapsed once. And I play (and buy) a LOT of games, so it's not like I'm not their target audience. I think there were only one or two games that actually tempted me but in hindsight, it looks like my decision to refrain was for the best. The Battlefield games that came out after that apparently weren't very good and I hear Mass Effect really went downhill after the first one.

Re:What would EA have to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that woman would let you sit around playing games all day when you could be paying attention to her and you've got chores to do?

Re:What would EA have to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

They also get that $1 million as a tax write-off.

Re:What would EA have to do?

[TangoMargarine]

Is this a "any of" or "all of" list? Time to whip out the <ul>'s.

Re:What would EA have to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that woman would let you sit around playing games all day when you could be paying attention to her and you've got chores to do?

Who cares, the question was about buying the game, not playing it.

Errr ...

[TrollstonButterbeans]

"hopefully EA and other game companies will learn a lesson from this disaster"

Keep it in Pandora's box dude!

If EA was gonna learn, it would have happened a LONG time ago.

They are essentially a holding company of intellectual property, not an actual game maker, and their management will always be "holding company" type of executives that manage brands. Like a magazine holding company.

yes...

[jddeluxe]

too late...

"EA Caves"?

[Michael Woodhams]

Here was I thinking they'd released a Minecraft clone.

Re:"EA Caves"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here was I thinking they'd released a Minecraft clone.

Quick, somebody file a lawsuit!
He's leaking corporate secrets!

Re:"EA Caves"?

[Anonymous Coward]

DON'T GIVE THEM IDEAS!
God forbid that happens!

What's that thing in the wall?
Buy this DLC and find out!

And instead of Chickens running around everywhere, it is huge "Chicken DLC" posters 5x the size of a chicken. And it has physics.
So a chicken can block you with its poster-mass.

Re:"EA Caves"?

[SleazyRidr]

I was all excited, like EA Caves was going to be like SimCity, but in a cave, so you're not affected by the cities around you...

Re:"EA Caves"?

[steelfood]

You can only mine about 10 blocks back. And then you need to go find a new cave.

Too little too late?

[Kuroji]

Day late and a dollar short is an understatement here.

Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

I might buy it if I remember. I definitely would have bought it a few weeks ago to play on the plane during Christmas travel season.

EA Sports: It's in the game

[tepples]

Because EA owns exclusive rights to professional and collegiate football. Last time I checked, EA was the exclusive licensee of NFL, NCAA, and FIFA rosters.

Re:EA Sports: It's in the game

[geminidomino]

Honestly, if someone's willing to subject themselves to EA's bullshit for the sake of playing "Giants @ Broncos" instead of "Ogres @ Stallions," then they deserve everything they get.

Probably doesn't hurt that they're already nice and warmed up by the NFL already. EA doesn't seem the type to mind sloppy seconds.

Re:EA Sports: It's in the game

[i kan reed]

Yes, but those people "getting what they deserve" also keeps the company afloat and lets their ill-gotten hoard of IPs sit locked away forever.

Too late, still a bad game

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with offline mode, you're still limited to a small city and forced to make multiple cities in order to meet the needs of one bigger city...

Pandora's box

[tepples]

Keep it in Pandora's box dude!

What makes Pandora's box any better than, say, Spotify's box?

</groan>

Re:Pandora's box

[viperidaenz]

Who's Pandora and why are we putting things in her box?

Re:Pandora's box

[wonkey_monkey]

I knew a girl at school called Pandora. Never got to see her box, though.

Yes

[atari2600a]

Yes it is. Even on Android their game development is just....sad. You turn on The Simpsons: Timehole or whatever & it spends the first 10 minutes updating (what's the point of using Google Play package management if you pull shit like this?) & you spend the next 30 minutes trying to get your phone to charge after dropping from 50% to 2% before the opening cutscene finishes. It's sad & it's fucking disgusting.

Sim Crossing

[tepples]

Since they're not going to increase the city size

The original Micropolis-based SimCity limited cities to 120 cells by 100 cells, where each cell is the size of one house in an R zone, one patch of road, etc. Are cities in the new SimCity even smaller than that?

perhaps EA should consider rebranding it as "Sim Village".

Except that concept is taken. Nintendo calls it Animal Crossing.

Re:Sim Crossing

[Mashiki]

No they're larger than 120x100 cells, the problem is people are used to the massive cityscapes they could create in SC3/4 and rightfully expected the same.

Re:Sim Crossing

[Opportunist]

The original Sim City was like a quarter century ago. Now, my expectations for EA games and how innovative they are are very, very low, but that's ridiculous.

Hint: A few years passed since the original SC. A few versions of the game did so, too.

Re:Sim Crossing

[Mashiki]

Odd how it seems that long ago, and damned if I can still remember playing it in school. Now if only we could get a simearth, simant, and simfarm again I could relive the years I wasted playing them.

Re:Sim Crossing

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine how the culture in today's game companies would screw up Sim Ant. They'd be giant robotic monsters of doom.

Now need network Addon Mod, and bigger maps

[Joe_Dragon]

Now need network Addon Mod and bigger maps as a start to maybe make me want to buy this game. also simcity 4 zoning as well.

now what about giving out the source code for simcity 4?

Micropolis

[tepples]

Atonement: They could become a nonprofit organization and only come out with open source games that ran on linux

EA has taken one step toward that, donating the original Micropolis-based SimCity to One Laptop Per Child under a free software license.

Re:Micropolis

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fucking tool if you think that's an example of any kind of virtue.

Re:Micropolis

[Thanshin]

Sometimes it's not bad to be considered a fucking tool.

Re:Micropolis

[TangoMargarine]

There are worse things to be than a dildo.

50 MB limit

[tepples]

You turn on The Simpsons: Timehole or whatever & it spends the first 10 minutes updating (what's the point of using Google Play package management if you pull shit like this?)

Let me explain: Google Play can distribute APKs up to 50 MB. This is big enough for the executable but not big enough for the graphical and audio assets of any game bigger than an N64 game, and a lot of games download these assets from the publisher's server to the game's private folder on first run.

Re:50 MB limit

[Shados]

google play allows expansion files at 2gb each (I think it lets you have up to two, for a total of 4gb).

Re:50 MB limit

[atari2600a]

Tapped Out can't be more complex than, say, that pokemon tetris-jewel-whatever game on N64, let alone Ocarina of Time (which really saw the engine exploited w/ Majoras Mask because of the extra 4MB of VRAM). That pokemon game had roughly the same full-motion video quality & as far as I give 2 shits to care, it probably had just as much content as well. Ocarina of Time takes 2 hours of time just to meet the princess not because of complexity, but because of the 1 1/2hr of cutscenes. Even w/o the asset files, that initial 30MB download is way too much for the executable.

Challenge Everything

[hduff]

Including this.

Re:Challenge Everything

[Opportunist]

Challenged by everything is a more apt slogan for them.

Re:Challenge Everything

[__aatgod8309]

I think you mean "Monetize everything"

i'll buy it if

[issicus]

they put it on steam for 5 bucks and it has offline play.

Re:i'll buy it if

[bloodhawk]

Geez they finally do the right thing after people yelled and screamed at how badly they fucked up and make it offline capable and you beg for it to be tied back into an online DRM system. Why for gods sake?

Re:i'll buy it if

[drinkypoo]

Geez they finally do the right thing after people yelled and screamed at how badly they fucked up and make it offline capable and you beg for it to be tied back into an online DRM system. Why for gods sake?

They're not taking it out of Origin. It's still going to have DRM. HTH, HAND.

Re:i'll buy it if

[Anonymous Coward]

Hating on Steam is sooo last decade..

Re:i'll buy it if

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam can provide non-DRM games which you just download from their service and then you can play offline, without logging in to Steam.

Re:i'll buy it if

[issicus]

I don't really care about DRM unless i'm trying to pirate something.

"Caved in"?- what a cretinous spin

[Anonymous Coward]

The most desirable single-player games from big publishers have a history of suffering such DRM schemes on initial release- and a history of the torturous DRM being removed later in the game's life, when further sales need more consumer friendly incentives. The ONLY thing that would dissuade EA from doing the same thing all over again with their next similar title would be if THIS SimCity had flopped, but actually it did very well indeed. So well, that its secondary and tertiary sales periods expect great sales too- hence this puff piece on Slashdot.

Here's a clue for the clueless. When a blockbusting Hollywood movie hits the big screen, the industry moves heaven and Earth to try to minimise piracy. Three years later, the SAME product is playing for free on broadcast TV, and Hollywood couldn't care less about what people are doing with it.

TO LITTLE TOO LATE!

[Anonymous Coward]

EA GAMES - we fuckup everything

Seriously. They killed a giant cash cow with the death of simcity. 2k and 4 are still in the most popular games of all time catagory. How they managed to fuck that up is simply amazing. That took serious work and skill to fuckup so completely! They even had the perfect model handed to them with all the custom mods out there for simcity4. All they had to do was grab a few of those. Slap it on a new compile that plays happy and nice with vista+. Upgrade the graphics some. And bam. Continue to rake in millions for another decade or more!

The fact they could not do this is astounding.

And now? Fuckem.. Simcity is dead to me.. (anything after 4 anyway) A game i have paid for a total of 9 times because i LIKED it and wanted it everywhere.
Dead. Not one cent will they ever get again from me.

Hopefully a bunch of stupid fuck managers get fired over all the monumentally stupid things that killed the simcity cash cow. Because they deserve it.

(still blows my mind how they managed to fuckup something so completely like that. when they had how many years of past code and experience and customer feedback to build upon)

Re:TO LITTLE TOO LATE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally Agree, my most played games were Sim City and Sim Tower. Since they decided not to make any version that works on any PC , they are losting money on Sim Tower, totally most awesome game ever invented ever. Now they kill Sim City and then they dont know whey gamers stop playing their games.

Totally stupid incompetant retarded management ever recorded since the beginning of time.
Stupid Stupid Stupid.

Not to mention the theft of gaming culture by those stupid companys, and the loss of the possible future games we could have played and all been all the better for.

Re:TO LITTLE TOO LATE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sim tower lives! Simtower2.0 It's called yoot tower. And you can download it for free.
It's a completely rebuilt and improved/expanded simtower 1.

Just google up yoot tower abandonware.

As for sim city. well. We'll always have 2000, 3000, and 4. So long as we can make them run on modern machines.
Beyond that sim city is dead.

Now if only simearth lived on... And ran on a modern machine/os.

Re:TO LITTLE TOO LATE!

[Anonymous Coward]

How they managed to fuck that up is simply amazing

See also: Command and Conquer 4.

The REAL cash cow is the Sims 3 (and soon to be the Sims 4). If they screw that up, EA may actually go bankrupt.

Sweet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet, now I can pirate it. Suckers.

Re:Sweet.

[danknight48]

Most pirates stay away from dogshit.

Freudian Slip

[Roger W Moore]

sometimes a publisher contracts/purchases a development studio that actually knows it's shit?

Well that would be the case for EA. I imagine most development studios "know it is shit" by now. You did mean to include that apostrophe right?

Re:Freudian Slip

[r0ball]

Know your shit, or know you're shit.

Re:Freudian Slip

[Anonymous Coward]

> You did mean to include that apostrophe right?

Apostrophes have rights? You did mean to leave out that comma, right?

Well, let's see...

[Opportunist]

First, how did you make that miracle happen? I was told time and again by your spin department that it is utterly, hopelessly impossible to even fathom thinking about pondering creating something that could resemble something akin to an offline mode, and now you simply snapped your fingers and it comes into existence? You definitely are geniuses, the wizards of software development. Just outta curiosity, did you hire off the miracle workers from MS that managed to untie IE and the underlying OS?

Second, did the plot size grow? Or will we still be limited to towns, erh, villages the size of the average Texas backyard?

And finally, will you have the audacity to try to charge premium price again for that ancient piece of software or will we find it priced for the bargain bin, i.e. where we should've found it in the first place?

piracy

[NickeZ]

The only ones affected by offline mode are the guys who bought the game...

Alternatives, if you like the game consept.

[fjin]

To play city building game, you don't have to rely to products of EA. There is few free alternatives aroud.

• Rebranded original SimCity - Micropolis
• Lincity and Lincity-NG
• Opencity

Re:Alternatives, if you like the game consept.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lincity? Opencity?

Sounds more like "shitty city" ...

Re:Alternatives, if you like the game consept.

[Anonymous Coward]

All 3 look like ass. Sorry. The original SimCity was acceptable at the time back when I was still using my Amiga 500, but times have changed.

Re:Alternatives, if you like the game consept.

[seinman]

"Sim Shitty" was the obvious joke here. You really blew that one.

Re:Alternatives, if you like the game consept.

[drinkypoo]

All three of those games, plus every other Open sim game like OpenTTD and FreeCol (with the exception of FreeCiv, which is only bad) have complete shit interfaces that prove that no one gives a fuck about them. This ruins more Open games than anything else. What's sad is that people cook up their own fancy interfaces instead of just copying the original game and using normal OS widgets, and they make them uglier than they need to be. Stop trying to be creative if you have no sense of style!

Re:Alternatives, if you like the game consept.

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenTTDs interface is actually very nice. It's way better than the original anyways(almost the same actually, with added . Agree with you on every other game on the list though. Although I do concider FreeCivs interface as pure shit also.

Re:Alternatives, if you like the game consept.

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, the OpenTTD interface is just an expanded version of Transport Tycoon's original interface. It's not like the OpenTTD (or TTDPatch) developers went out of their way to design a crappy interface.

Could the interface use an update? Yes. Oh hell yes. Is it a dealbreaker? Not really. OpenTTD is quite enjoyable, though horribly imbalanced and not much of a game (money flows too easily once you set up a couple of coal runs), making it more of a traffic simulator than anything. Attempts at making it balanced have always come in the form of NewGRF's, which is a horrible, horrible abomination of a mod format. As a rule, I always avoid those, despite some very interesting additions being available.

Re:Alternatives, if you like the game consept.

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenTTD has the original TTD game interface, which works pretty well for me (being an original TTD player) why would they change the interface from the game they came from?

Ya that is near as big a problem

[Sycraft-fu]

The limit in the new Sim City is 2km x 2km. That is pathetic. Literally all you can create is a couple city blocks, or a very tiny small town. I mean I live close enough to work to bike in, and I live a good deal further than that (8km).

While there are always limits as to what you can do reasonably in a game, this limit is way too small to be fun. It isn't a matter of being able to create a "big city" it is a matter that almost all small towns are far larger than that.

Apparently they aren't fixing it either. They say the performance isn't good on larger cities, which translates to "We fucked our engine up bad so it can't scale at all."

Unless that is fixed as well, I wouldn't get it. Offline mode is a requisite for sure, but if gameplay is still broken then it isn't worth money.

Re:Ya that is near as big a problem

[ultranova]

Apparently they aren't fixing it either. They say the performance isn't good on larger cities, which translates to "We fucked our engine up bad so it can't scale at all."

If, as EA claimed, every resident - and everything else to the last spark of electricity - actually gets simulated individually at the level of walking on street, then the engine likely scales linearly (twice the residents require twice the computing power); it's just that even a small town requires route-finding for tens of thousands of agents in realtime, which is not feasible.

Not that this should had been a surprise to anyone, given that other games that simulate individuals at this level - such as Tropico - aim for a few thousand residents tops.

Re:Ya that is near as big a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't require route finding for tens of thousands of agents. Once an agent has a route from his home to his place of work, then unless he moves house, moves job, new roads are built or destroyed, or his internal 'pissed off at traffic jams' counter exceeds his 'tolerance' statistic, he can continue to use that route. Exactly as real people do. You don't recalculate your route to work every morning. You use the same one until you move house, job, or get sufficiently pissed at traffic.

Re:Ya that is near as big a problem

[segin]

or his internal 'pissed off at traffic jams' counter exceeds his 'tolerance' statistic

Except that's not how they're doing things anymore. They're more-or-less simulating that virtual person's commute in the sense of actually simulating the car he drives, it's position on the road, etc. They even threw in random variations in the commute start times. Each auto is being independently simulated to a similar degree as each and every individual unit in an RTS.

If you send 50 Zerglings or 5 Zerglings down a narrow pass, who gets through first and at what speed? The new SimCity doesn't apply some statistical model and show you procedurally-generated local traffic based on the model's result. It actually throws fifty Zerglings down the pass and shows you what happens.

Re:Ya that is near as big a problem

[Rockoon]

They're more-or-less simulating that virtual person's commute in the sense of actually simulating the car he drives, it's position on the road, etc.

Thats O(n) .. in other words, a modern computer could handle literally millions in real-time.

..and before you suggest that its an N-body problem.. it isn't. A hierarchical grid makes the types of interactions necessary here linear, so its still millions in real-time.

Re:Ya that is near as big a problem

[billyswong]

You don't know what's path finding, period. We are talking about the route a car is taking or planning to take. It should be calculated only once per road-change/serious-traffic-jam for each driver.

Re: Kids can access P0RN sites while playing SimCi

[Anonymous Coward]

You take life way too seriously.

PS, gay males cannot get pregnant, thus males in such a state has, quite literally, nothing to do with homosexuality.

CEO Firing

[gsslay]

Are we still on this fantasy?

If you think that the CEO of EA was fired due to SimCity teething problems, then you are suffering from delusions regarding the nature of the business.

Not just the video game business. Any business.

Re:CEO Firing

[Anonymous Coward]

The firing wasn't just because of SimCity, it may very well have been in the works leading up to the release of SimCity but an additional horribly botched product release doesn't do anything to assure the board that you are turning the company in the right direction or that you deserve more time. Any backers he may have had on the board would have lost whatever leverage they had remaining.

With the SimCity launch being on of the more prominent and widely covered (it was covered on CNN, Forbes, Huffington Post, etc. not just gaming sites) failure it may not have been the only reason to replace the CEO but it very likely was a factor in the timing.

Re:CEO Firing

[gsslay]

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Maybe he wasn't fired but chose to leave. I don't recall EA struggling to make money while he was in charge, and that's the bottom line. Was there anything to suggest he was running out leverage?

The whole "Simcity disaster prompts CEO firing" angle was, and still is, speculation founded on nothing concrete, and no-one remotely involved has even hinted the two events are related. Some gamers just liked the idea that their terrible pain had, eventually, cost someone their job.

Trust?

[Torp]

If anyone is willing to give any money to EA... i've got a bridge i wanna sell to you.
I don't care how many donations they make to charities, most of their games, especially Sim City, are shit - and not only because of the always online mode. Remember the old Bioware RPGs? Now they're cover based linear erm... something. Not shooter, not RPG, less than either.
And those games somewhat worth playing are tied into their useless online service, for which I can't be bothered to sign up.

Re:Kids can access P0RN sites while playing SimCit

[geminidomino]

My son's sim (male) got pregnant and had a baby (he told me that it was with aliens).

It wouldn't get them off my no-buy list, but Sims: Alien Nation Ed. does sound intriguing.

Might even buy it, if they put it on GoG.

Ya that is near as big a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how this game would actually scale on multiple cores if they increased city size. Mostly everything mentioned from electrcity, to water to traffic all sound like they can be split across multiple CPU Cores. I feel that it is actually possible to have a larger city size. The question truly is "Is it possible with how poorly EA programmed the engine?"

New Sim city is garbage regardless

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing but a complete re-working of this game can fix it.

Honestly EA, the task before you was not that big. Basically:

Sim City 4 + Remove the Grid = Greatest Game Ever.

Mass Effect 4

[DarthVain]

Sure it was Bioware before they go bought out, but I'll be getting that as soon as it comes out. Not a huge fan of EA, but I am a huge fan of Mass Effect, so there you go.

Re:Mass Effect 4

[Anonymous Coward]

i laugh at your pretears

Re:Kids can access P0RN sites while playing SimCit

[Lord Kano]

Why do you think your kids would care?

Homophobia is well on the way to being consigned to the dustbin of history where it belongs.

See the 'race mixing' protests of 50 years ago for an example.

Please stop with the "gay is the new black" assertions. They're offensive.

LK

Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll give them my money if they let me play it offline.

Now...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only Blizzard will follow suit and give D3 an offline mode.

Re:Kids can access P0RN sites while playing SimCit

[Anonymous Coward]

Because racism has been consigned to the "dustbin of history"?

Re:Kids can access P0RN sites while playing SimCit

[AdamColley]

Well, perhaps not

But there's a lot less of it these days, here in the UK at least.

Mind you, we don't have a government/(in)justice system that seems to lock far more blacks up than whites and is someting like 8 times more likely to execute blacks for identical crimes, so YMMV, particularly in the USA

Re:Kids can access P0RN sites while playing SimCit

[AdamColley]

That isn't exactly what I said and your strawmandering is offensive.

Also, there is no gay propaganda, grow the fuck up, what is it, american southern hick day on here or something?

A bigger display needs bigger textures to match

[tepples]

Cartridges for game consoles are measured in "megabits" (128 KiB). Downloadable games for Nintendo consoles are measured in "blocks" (also 128 Kbit according to GameFAQs). Downloadable games on the original Wii were limited to about 340 blocks, roughly comparable to the 330-megabit limit of the Neo Geo platform before the "Giga Power" mapper chip was introduced.

Tapped Out can't be more complex than, say, that pokemon tetris-jewel-whatever game on N64

Pokemon Trozei (DS): 128 Mbit.

let alone Ocarina of Time

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64): 256 Mbit. Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS): 3646 blocks.

That pokemon game had roughly the same full-motion video quality

The DS display is two 256x192 pixel screens with an 88px gap between them. It roughly compares to a WQVGA (240x400 to 240x432) phone display. But phones nowadays have displays at least twice as fine as that: WVGA is 480x800 to 480x864, iPhone is 640x960 to 640x1136, and HD phones are 720x1280 to 800x1280. Tablets have become as big as 1536x2048 (iPad) or 1600x2560 (Nexus 10). A bigger display needs bigger textures to match.

Besides, I thought of another reason for updates. Often these games are released in parallel on Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. It takes a lot longer for Apple to approve updates then for EA to self-publish its own updates. So I guess EA might be pushing asset updates as a separate download because it can push asset updates faster than Apple's reviewers can push executable updates.

Re:A bigger display needs bigger textures to match

[atari2600a]

You're implying the screen resolution is a limit of the cartridge storage capacity, not volatile memory (AKA a hardware constraint). &, it doesn't matter what you're measuring in. 50MB is still 50MB (is still 400Mb).

Re:A bigger display needs bigger textures to match

[tepples]

If I implied that, I phrased something imperfectly. What I meant was that textures that look acceptable on a 240p-class display won't look quite as good on a bigger-than-1080p display. A larger screen size requires more detailed data to fill it, and barring procedural decompression tricks like those used in certain Farbrausch demos, more detailed data is larger data. Even though 16 MB was enough for Pokemon Trozei when it was released, that doesn't necessarily imply that 16 MB is enough for a similarly complex game nowadays.

Why thank you

[tepples]

If I'm a tool then that means someone must think I'm useful.

SimFarm alternatives

[tepples]

I heard other companies were working on alternatives to SimFarm. Marvelous+Natsume has Harvest Moon, Slashkey has Farm Town, Zynga has FarmVille, and Goodgame has Big Farm.

Re:Kids can access P0RN sites while playing SimCit

[TangoMargarine]

Stop bullying gay people?

Ambiguous English for the win! :D

Re:Kids can access P0RN sites while playing SimCit

[Lord Kano]

I'm, happily, from the north.

Your attempt to juxtapose gay rights with civil rights is offensive.

I'm all for equality for everyone. Just argue your position on its own merits.

LK

What's this, now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Offline play and offline saving has been available via a mod for quite some time.

Pirate yourself a copy and try it out.

I was a gamer once.

[Anonymous Coward]

And then I got a shitty netbook that couldn't play any games more demanding than NetHack, found out in a third world country what real hardship was like, learned programming, improved my station, and acquired a deep and abiding disgust for gamers as a class.

Yes, life sucks. You have all your limbs, all the teeth in your head? You haven't had your skin eaten away by MRSA, don't know what the petechiae of a hemorrhagic fever look like, and your biggest danger in life is diabetes from your fast food diet? Oh, I'm sympathetic. What a miserable existence you must have, poor lost lonely son of the first world!

Sure, if rural Alaska counts as the first world, I get that card too. You want to complain about your McJob, put down the goddamn game controller first, jackass. You have all the music and art and literature from a thousand generations past at your fingertips, gratis. You are scion of an unprecedented empire, and you're unhappy? unfulfilled? inactive to remedy such? Stop trying to fill your vacuity with video games, and take two strong doses of perspective. If your symptoms don't improve, end your existence.

why did this take so long?

[serenity.city]

I don't understand how this took an entire studio 6.5 months of engineering work? I'm probably oversimplifying but, start by running a local instance of the server, then point all queries to 127.0.0.1. Is it working? Great. Now make changes to the server or client as necessary to suit a single player mode. Like allow mods and such. Sounds like they are not keeping things simple, if that's the best explanation they have.