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EA Caves: SimCity Offline Mode Coming

Posted by Unknown on from the a-bit-late dept.

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?"

50 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. too little too late? by Culture20 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:too little too late? by erroneus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:too little too late? by Cryacin · · Score: 4, Funny

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

      --
      Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
    3. Re:too little too late? by Skarecrow77 · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    4. Re:too little too late? by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    5. Re:too little too late? by JoeMerchant · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:too little too late? by artor3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:too little too late? by Common+Joe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    8. Re:too little too late? by rhodium_mir · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
    9. Re:too little too late? by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    10. Re:too little too late? by artor3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    11. Re:too little too late? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    12. Re:too little too late? by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.

      --
      Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
    13. Re:too little too late? by SleazyRidr · · Score: 2

      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 $$$.

      --
      Is 1563649 a prime number?
  2. Maybe next time by starX · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Maybe next time by PsychoSlashDot · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      "Oh no... he found the .sig setting."
    2. Re:Maybe next time by jd2112 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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."

      --
      Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
    3. Re:Maybe next time by pspahn · · Score: 3, Funny

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

      See! They were right!

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    4. Re:Maybe next time by Patch86 · · Score: 2

      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.

  3. Not sure this is a "Cave" by Ksevio · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

    1. Re:Not sure this is a "Cave" by JoeMerchant · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Not sure this is a "Cave" by camperdave · · Score: 2

      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?

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  4. Rebranding Opportunity by gregor-e · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  5. What would EA have to do? by TsuruchiBrian · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:What would EA have to do? by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:What would EA have to do? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      6. Give me a woman.

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

  6. Errr ... by TrollstonButterbeans · · Score: 2

    "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.

    --
    Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
  7. "EA Caves"? by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    --
    Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
  8. EA Sports: It's in the game by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:EA Sports: It's in the game by geminidomino · · Score: 2

      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.

  9. Re:Not for me by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.
  10. Pandora's box by tepples · · Score: 2

    Keep it in Pandora's box dude!

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

    </groan>

    1. Re:Pandora's box by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

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

    2. Re:Pandora's box by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

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

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  11. Yes by atari2600a · · Score: 2

    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.

  12. 50 MB limit by tepples · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:50 MB limit by Shados · · Score: 4, Informative

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

  13. Challenge Everything by hduff · · Score: 2

    Including this.

    --
    "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
  14. TO LITTLE TOO LATE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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)

  15. Re:Sim Crossing by Mashiki · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  16. Freudian Slip by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

  17. Re:Sim Crossing by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  18. Well, let's see... by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    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?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  19. Re:Sweet. by danknight48 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Most pirates stay away from dogshit.

  20. piracy by NickeZ · · Score: 2

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

  21. Alternatives, if you like the game consept. by fjin · · Score: 5, Informative
    To play city building game, you don't have to rely to products of EA. There is few free alternatives aroud.
  22. Ya that is near as big a problem by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Ya that is near as big a problem by ultranova · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    2. Re:Ya that is near as big a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:Ya that is near as big a problem by Rockoon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."