I just don't get it. I've not heard one person say they are happy about the state of the game. Yet EA / Maxis continue to ignore the customers. (And they will continue to for the foreseeable future, I'm sure).
I have several friends that picked it up on launch day and a few of them haven't even tried to play it yet. I can't understand the need to have the latest game for the compulsive gamers. To shell out money just to have it perpetuates this cycle of EA selling anything they want and the masses buying it anyway.
I went to play NHL '10 a couple weeks ago on xbox and was greeted with a nice message that the game servers are shut down. At least I can still play the game. What are the odds there will be an end-of-life patch that enables offline, single city game play when EA pulls the plugs on the SimCity servers?
In any case, it's clear that EA will laugh all the way to the bank with everyone's money. I'll keep voting with my wallet.
> I've not heard one person say they are happy about the state of the game.
People rarely take the time to communicate "X is OK." That information is of no use to the person communicating. They're happy with the status quo and don't want any change. So there's little incentive to go out of your way to say that.
Often the only time people will chime in to say "I like X" is when it appears that X may be about to change.
This is a generalization, of course. People do sometimes go out of their way to give praise. This can be out of altruism ("I want others to know how awesome X is" or "I want the people who made X to get more business because they're awesome"). Others enjoy the process of critiquing. Some when confronted with negative feedback feel it's important to do justice by providing an alternate viewpoint.
Nobody says they're happy, yet people keep buying it. You vote with your wallet, but as long as nobody else does, EA doesn't have to care what a few angry people on the Internet think.
The negative blowback didn't hurt this Simcity launch (yet anyway) for a few reasons. First, so many people had pre-ordered it. Second it was massively hyped up by so many of the gaming sites that bow to the big publishers. Third, it's the next version of the game that will take the big hit from this reputation damage (and EA's brand in general).
By the time it was revealed to be a crappy game, inertia had carried the sales a very far distance.
I've seen this concept play out with eg NBA Live. EA produced a few decent versions of it in the early 2000's, and then produced a few really bad versions of it in a row. The first bad version sold fine, then the next releases sold less and less and the reviews were harsher and harsher.
EA had an opportunity to widen its Simcity base, that's a cost you don't see right now. More people than ever before have powerful desktop PC's. Today I can get a great PC for $600 to $800. Ten years ago, that money didn't go nearly as far (and these are less valuable dollars to boot). EA just burned a lot of casual gamers.
There is definitely a cost but it's hard to calculate so it gets ignored. Certainly the rise of indie game developers has been aided in part by the continuing fuck-ups of AAA publishers, though.
I went to the grocery store with my grandma back in 1980's, and she told me she wasn't buying steak because she and everyone she knew where boycotting a manufacturer. That was the first time I heard of the concept. I asked her if it worked and she said yes, they had successfully boycotted several products in the past. I always think of that when I hear talk of boycotting -- that it could work if people were serious about it and actually closed ranks around something.
I tend to think it's more that the majority of the people buying these games are casual users who will try to play, get frustrated and toss it in a drawer and never complain.
And won't think twice about buying the next one that looks appealing.
it's not that they don't care, but more like there isn't enough of an investment on their part to get worked up about it.
Just about everyone I've heard/talked to about this launch are people who care about gaming and/or game dev.
That only counts for a small fraction of the audience and customer base
Debuted at #2 in the charts. Development time costs money, and the game doesn't need 'fixing' to sell any copies. Despite the negative press in the tech community, most gamers don't actuall care about the always online requirement. I don't see the big deal myself either - most PC games from big publishers actually install malware and rootkits onto your machine! That seems infinitely worse than always-online, but no-one cares about that either.
That's only a concern when continuing your behavior results in a decrease of revenue. EA has been acting like this for a long time. If driving off these kinds of customers was going to create future pain for them, it would have by now.
Agreed. The only reason some people know that EA publishes the Madden games is that it's right in your face when you start ("EA Sports. It's in the game."). Other than that, I doubt many people would even make the connection.
Much of EA's target audience could care less about what they've done to the gaming industry. They don't give a crap about reviews or DRM or always-online gameplay. It's just how their game works.
The SimCity franchise, I'm inclined to believe, is a much smaller, geekier segment of the gaming market, and these broad strokes made from the executives at EA tend to ruffle our feathers considerably more.
In that case, they've been doing this same kind of stuff with their other brands for quite a while and either are ignoring the pain it generates or aren't feeling it.
Haven't they been been posting pretty shitty quarterly statements for a few years now? They have a lot of money in the bank, so to speak, I'm sure, but it will catch up with them eventually.
Absolutely. I've sworn off the Football Manager series after the debacle that was FM2013. They've abandoned the current edition of their game in a buggy and unfinished state, and now they won't be getting any more of money in the future.
I haven't knowingly bought anything Sony since their rootkit fiasco and subsequent PR mess. I'm sure there's probably some media content I've consumed that came through them - but hardware? Absolutely nothing since 2005.
I dont know anything about the guardians chart here but certainly the charts in shops like Game are not based on any data at all, they're advertising slots, if you pay for the number 1 slot, you get it.
I know this because i had some interaction with a company that checked to make sure retails stores were putting the games in the right shelves that the game companies had paid for.
Anyway, just as a note, this guardian article doesnt provide any data, so it could simply be a paid for placement.
Or, many of the people who would see this in a store and be excited might even be aware of the problems until they bring the game home and it bites them in the rear.
The ability to play is the problem causing the outrage, it is not the outrage itself. It doesn't matter how justified the outrage is if people keep buying it, which they are.
Don't see how glib it is to point out the truth: internet outrage isn't translating to poor sales.
> most PC games from big publishers actually install malware and rootkits onto your machine! That seems infinitely worse than always-online, but no-one cares about that either.
If you define "most gamers" as the people that bought the products you are talking about it is certainly easier to say that those people don't care about those things.
This is the fundamental problem of the business of making and distributing art, whether it's TV, movies, music, or games. It's not a commodity, it's not, generally speaking, fungible so it takes a much more principled stand to force change. If you don't like, say, the way a certain bank or grocery store or gas company or what-have-you does business you can just switch to a competing product. Even if that requires compromises generally there will be alternatives which are suitable substitutes. But that's not the case with artistic works. There is only one The Beatles, only one Veronica Mars, only one Citizen Cane, and there's only one SimCity series. You can decide to avoid playing the new version, and you can decide to play some other game, but these are all wholly inadequate substitutes.
And this is how game makers and publishers have managed to get away not only with astoundingly bad DRM but also in releasing quite broken and incomplete games in some cases. It's because gamers continue to let them get away with it.
I will say I am happy with the game. I don't think it's delivered on the experience that was being sold, but I'd argue that the potential is there.
The angry mob on reddit fueled by RPS and other places hungry for pageviews has literally killed the last remaining desire I had to read reddit. Some people just don't seem to be grounded in reality and act surprised about things that were known months ago.
The game is fun, it's broken in spots and the launch was poorly done but I'm hopeful they'll fix it. You are 100% right about people ranting about it yet still buying it but we have to keep in mind that even "communities" as big as reddit are only a fraction of the people who actually buy games.
> The angry mob on reddit fueled by RPS and other places hungry for pageviews
This seems to imply that Rock Paper Shotgun is printing sensationalized fluff. I don't think that's a fair characterization at all. As gaming news sites go, I'd say Rock Paper Shotgun is generally pretty thoughtful and reasonable, and thus it's built up a lot of credibility with a lot of people. Is it really being "hungry for pageviews" to report that important statements made about a game's underlying technology are patently false? Because to me that just sounds like good journalism — the kind that the gaming industry could use more of.
A year ago RPS did an interview where they talked about how the simulation was going to be done.
“It’s not like each Sim has a specific job that’s his, and a specific house that’s his,” says lead designer Stone Librande, like this knowledge might mitigate the situation. Instead, each Sim that will inhabit your thriving metropolis (or crime-ridden housing project, as the case may be) will wake up each morning and start the day by looking for a new job – if they’re not sick, that is, in which case they’ll look for a hospital. And every evening, that same Sim will leave work and take a moment to look for a new place to live. Filling out employment applications and being interviewed by already-unbearable roommates every single day. Oh, the humanity!
Then when they realize how much everyone hates the game they talk about how the simulation was nothing like they were promised.
These are reports, of course, and we’re not experts when it comes to AI. But what we’re seeing people say is rather than each Sim having a unique life, they’re instead operating on the same sort of systems that control the sewage and traffic. Which seems rude. It also explains why there appear to be lots of rather odd behaviours found in the game, with distribution of jobs, buses, and the like feeling a touch odd.
...
But where it gets even weirder is when their work day is through. They don’t trundle off back to their well-loved home, as you might imagine a Sim would do. They, just as with work, move into the nearest available house. There’s no consistency to their lives, no permanence.
I don't think "how much everyone hates it" has anything to do with the reporting, in fact, just like the rest of us, they were probably operating on information provided to them by the developers, and just like the rest of us, are slowly finding out mechanics of the game are not what they were said to be at all.
some people just see what they want to see, though, I suppose.
If you read the comment you replied to, you would see that at least on one occasion, RPS were supplied exactly the same information by developers that they are now complaining about in the final game, seemingly because there are angry mob page views to be had from reddit by feigning indignation.
Eh, that quote from a year ago isn't entirely clear on how they will look for a new job. I'm sure if the implications of the AI behavior were clear then, there would have been at least some raised eyebrows.
The servers have gotten a lot more stable and I've been able to play consistently. The new problem is: I'm bored already. The game isn't as deep as I first thought it was. Not sure if I'll buy the inevitable DLCs to make it more fleshed out.
In offline mode, since it doesn't save my city... maybe it'll offer a different way of playing. Sort of like old school games that didn't have any save points :)
There are some major issues. One of them being the traffic problems that were posted on HN yesterday. Traffic is supposed to be somewhat challenging, but there is really no way to fix it unless you remove all intersections. There are also other bugs such as not being able to plop the sign for the trade HQ. Also I built the trade building with the rail road tracks (forgot the name) and it will take deliveries of items like oil but it will never hold the oil or ship it out. It just disappears.
The budget controls don't go as deep as SimCity3000/4. In the past I could shave a couple dollars of the road budget, but that would result in pot holes and less repairs. Can't do that now.
The cities are also very small. I'm waiting for EA to release some "awesome" DLC that gives you a decent sized city. The more I play this game the more I like SC4.
That was also my impression. I think that, more than anything else, is the reason why deep gameplay has a hard time developing. Ironically, I also have a hunch they did it in order to prevent overload issues. Which they're currently experiencing regardless of the limit.
I only played SC2k, but even back then I wished you could have much larger cities - which is why the "more than one city on the map" feature intrigued me. But seeing how limited that is and how limited the cities themselves are... Quite a shame.
The cities are just small enough that doing anything to get the high-level trade buildings requires 100% dedicating your city to that purpose. e.g. oil/refining, etc.
Sim City 4 leaned towards this as well. You certainly didn't have to do it, but it was a major boost to have a city dedicated to just trash and heavy industry and a city dedicated to making power and a city dedicated to high tech jobs and a city dedicated to living.
Cities XL is another game between Sim City 4 and SimCity where the land your city is build on will not have all of the resources your town needs, forcing you to juggle two or more towns. Some locations in that game are only good for resorts, some are only good for oil, etc.
This whole thing is starting to feel like a case of "no such things as bad publicity" - I kinda really want to check it out now that it's appeared here 10 times.
My brain first parsed 'TPB' as 'Trade Paperback.' SimCity: The Novel sounds like a horrible idea, but I wouldn't put it past EA to try and milk the franchise that way.
You'll probably be disappointed. Ignoring the fuss of DRM/offline-play the game just wasn't very good IMO. Perhaps if you like watching little Sims and feeling connected on the micro-scale to a city it's interesting. If you're into Macro city management simulation, don't bother.
They added some interesting new features, it showed some creativity. But the implementation is poor IMO.
Even if they enabled an offline mode I still wouldn't be playing it. Course that's all subjective so I guess there will be those who disagree. I think most of the yelling and screaming for an offline mode is the gaming community making a Custers' Last Stand on the issue. People are mostly upset about the concept of not "owning" the game and that at some point in the future they might not be able to play this game. I doubt very many of those upset would actually want to play this game in 10 years time. Course I do agree with the fundamentals of that argument, but unfortunately I don't think we'll win.
Guess what I'm trying to get at, is the passion surrounding this game is more due to principles than enjoyment or zealous fandom of the game itself. Well perhaps some of the outrage is over how EA has destroyed a classic series like SimCity. But that doesn't mean the game is good and you should buy it for the playing experience.
I think they redesigned the game to be a bit easier.
I've played the previous sim city games, but I never really liked them. Looking at the videos of the new one, it seems like they made it a bit more accessible, such as not requiring players to build power lines or water pipes. It's more of a game that I would play casually for half an hour here and there and still find it fun.
The fuss is that it's a fascinating train wreck on so many fronts. It's a game that has deep nostalgic roots for many folks and everyone was hoping to experience that 'wow' from years ago. But if has failed to live up to that expectation.
The only reason it shows up here on HN is because there are a lot of interesting technical flaws which we enjoy analyzing. Things such as scalability issues, backend architecture, DRM, leaked client-side code, etc.
I suggest you hold off until they fix the most crucial issues: players may lose their cities (some have lost days of playtime), or get stuck in rollback loops. Have a look at the top stickied threads here:
I wouldn't be shocked if a bnetd [1] like situation arose. What's stopping a clever hacker from coming up with a local proxy that just saves everything on the user's PC? From what it sounds like, the server infrastructure isn't doing anything crazy complicated.
Changing a certificate check in a binary is just finger exercise for anyone serious about reverse engineering. "Hard-coded" does not mean what you (seem to) think it means...
True, but this is probably enough to stop quite a bit of piracy. Any program that has the capability to modify the binary of an installed program runs with quite a lot of permissions. Since it is also illegal, average joes don't have a trusted source for the patcher. This means that the only way to break the game is in the form of an executable that is functionally indistinguishable from malware. That alone will stop a good fraction of piracy -- plenty of people who would be willing to rewrite some hosts file to point to a fake server are unwilling to run a crack program that came from PirateBay and probably has keyloggers, spyware, or a rootkit.
I doubt it'll stop any piracy, at all, versus say, an activation check like other games. People willing to install a crack will install a crack.
Also, TPB has trusted uploaders, so you can be reasonably sure you aren't installing malware. I'd wager many of the cracking groups have a higher reputation than EA.
The question is whether hard-coding a trusted CA will reduce piracy in the case that someone reverse engineers the server code.
If you will install a crack, you will install a crack, no questions there. But if don't hard-code a CA then people who might otherwise be hesitant to pirate because it involves a crack program would be perfectly happy to follow a couple steps they find in a blog post.
you know nearly every cracked executable runs in a similar fashion?
they are already nearly indistinguishable from malware.
your average anti-virus program will flag a cracked executable every time, and you can routinely spot the less savvy users by viewing any torrent comment section and looking for "AVG FLAG AS TROJAN DO NOT DOWNLOAD"
That's less because all cracks run in some similar fashion, and more because a lot of antivirus programs flag all cracks / key generators / etc as a matter of policy as "potentially undesirable software".
toblaso means that rather than finding/changing the certificate, someone patching the game could either replace the certificate with a self-signed/generated one (for your local server instance), or completely bypass the usage of SSL entirely.
Some games do more interesting keys to try to hide the certificate. Spread it in the binary, encrypt it with a key spread in a similar way, etc.
Of course none of that is impossible to break, and there is a point of diminishing returns (when it's easier to try to change the certificate loading code).
If this were a security product, I would hope so, but I would imagine that they'd just be using a standard HTTPS certificate that uses the system certificate store. I wouldn't be surprised if they were ignoring HTTPS certificate failures as well, like many applications do.
It is quite common practice for online games to use a hard-coded certificate issued by the publisher's CA, largely to prevent cheating.
Seeing how much effort EA have put into preventing piracy of this game (to the extent that it hurts their paying customers a great deal), I would be very surprised if they made so silly a mistake.
It would gain being easier to write. I'm assuming that the OS defaults to checking system certificates, and requires customization to do otherwise. Maybe that's not the case on Windows.
Without a doubt you could eventually patch and replace all of SimCity. The question becomes when it's more work than just building a brand new game yourself.
Still, it's a useful mod for people who have unstable connections. You can also mod the UI to link a rarely button used button to "Sync", so that you save at will.
Not true. The actual Reddit[1,2] posts the article pulls this from says they have been able to sync their game to the servers. It seems that when offline, it saves it locally and uploads upon reconnect. He was able to remove the 20 minute timeout disconnect, but it still saves things locally and uploads upon reconnect.
Can you list some of those? I've always wanted to implement a "Save State" driver for Windows, but since I use Linux now, it's nice to know such things already exist.
Then you still have to hope that the program doesn't have any minor resource leaks that become big leaks when the process has run for a hundred hours...
Even once all the online/etc. issues are resolved, it's just not a very good game. I'm not angry enough to push Amazon for a refund, but it's not something I'd ever pay full price for. It's actually inferior to CitiesXL Platinum (although broken in different ways; between the two, you could have one decent game).
Civ V wasn't great, either, but Civ V:G+K turned it into a decent and worthy successor. Maybe the same thing will happen with SimCity 5.
I play on NA East 2 mostly and I have not had any issues with the server in a while. Not like the start. There are still lots of bugs in the game but what release like this is ever flawless? Simcity as a game is evolving and trying to become more connected. I agree that they shouldn't have lied about all the work require for offline mode when the game continues to function without a connection. I think offline wouldn't be that bad to add if they felt like the mechanics of the game still worked. TBH if it wasn't for the online mode I wouldn't still be playing. As I play mostly social games with friends. For me it is a plus. I have played other games such as LOL that have had several DAYS of no service but yet there is not much of an uproar about it. It seems like most the people commenting in this thread haven't had very much experience with SimCity 5.
The funniest thing is that the whole thing is not true. Yeah, you can disable the first DRM layer in JavaScript but after 30 minutes you will get always thrown back to the main menu.
>Region searching is currently broken! When it is fixed, the task you are trying to do will be easy. Until then, the best you can do is invite through the friend system.
How is it that every single thing in this game is broken? I tried playing multiplayer as well once I got bored playing alone and got just as bored except faster because I was still playing singleplayer because nobody will ever join.
I have several friends that picked it up on launch day and a few of them haven't even tried to play it yet. I can't understand the need to have the latest game for the compulsive gamers. To shell out money just to have it perpetuates this cycle of EA selling anything they want and the masses buying it anyway.
I went to play NHL '10 a couple weeks ago on xbox and was greeted with a nice message that the game servers are shut down. At least I can still play the game. What are the odds there will be an end-of-life patch that enables offline, single city game play when EA pulls the plugs on the SimCity servers?
In any case, it's clear that EA will laugh all the way to the bank with everyone's money. I'll keep voting with my wallet.