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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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: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: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: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.