SimCity 2013 - Oh how you sucker punched me in Love!

[Mr. Analog]

People were still willing to fork out money to use this, so as long as they are still out there EA is more than happy to take advantage of them.

But that's the real problem these days, and why I think we may be headed toward another bubble, you have these big publishers throwing large wads of cash at games that people are less happy about paying big bux to play. By all rights this client-server based game should have been free to play or at least subscription based to keep the lights on, but it isn't. How many more titles like this can EA support, particularly if people start catching on that this model isn't in their best interest.

How much longer can this go on I wonder? And will independent publishers take advantage of it?

[Melbosa]

Here is a look at the game from the Up-At-Noon host Greg Miller (IGN): http://ca.ign.com/videos/2013/03/06/simcity-why-stadiums-matter-colleges-suck-simeditors-episode-1

But you are right Mr. Analog, people like me will spend money because we love the game, and not boycott because the implementation is ass!  This however would be doubly a problem if the game was ass too ( Duke Nukem, Aliens: Colonial Marines ) - I really should stop buying games based on titles and video and wait for games to come out and be played through

[Mr. Analog]

I think there is a direct correlation between that feeling of getting @%&#ed over from buying a bad game on faith and the rise in popularity of shoot-from-the-hip first impressions vlogs (a la TotalBiscuit, Yogscast, et al).

Honestly there are some games I would have otherwise passed up based on either their crappy marketing or obscurity conversely there are some games that I would have normally bought in a pinch had I not seen what was actually going to be delivered (came awfully close to both Colonial Marines AND SimCity *shudder*).

I'm also a bit wary of pre-ordering now, like at the moment I am likely to buy Bioshock Infinite but I will wait until I see some actual hands-on-swearing-at-it gameplay because what has been presented so far has not been indicative of the final game, but I'm not going to pre-order just to get a free TF2 hat or something (been there, done that lol)

I fully expect it to be a great game but a lot of the gameplay elements presented so far make me wonder how it will actually work, if I knew previous Bioshock games had great FPS controls I wouldn't worry so much however I have played a lot of the previous titles and being able to pull of complex manoeuvres has not been a strong suit of the series.

That's the main thing I get from these first impressions videos, is a sense of what to expect, what I might like and what might annoy the piss out of me.

[Thorin]

A disturbing thought...



source: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/03/06

[Mr. Analog]

So yeah, the saga continues apparently people have been losing their progress (and in some extreme cases their whole cities). This is even worse than the worst case scenario presented by people prior to launch.

There ain't enough popcorn

[Melbosa]

Yeah I've read that, but I haven't experienced it myself 

[Darren Dirt]

On the subject of DLC, freemium business model, etc:

?Free to play? aka ?Free to spend 4 grand on it? is here to stay, like it or not.

I'm going to come right out and say it. I'm tired of EA being seen as "the bad guy." I think it's bull@%&# that EA has the "scumbag EA" memes on Reddit and that Good Guy Valve can Do No Wrong.

guys, I hate to break it to you, as awesome as Valve is they're also a company that seeks to make as much money as possible.



vs.



They're just way better at their image control.

Every console game MUST have a steady stream of DLC because, otherwise, guess what? It becomes traded in, or it's just rented. In the console space you need to do anything to make sure that that disc stays in the tray.

Remember, if everyone bought their games used there would be no more games. I don't mean to knock you if you're cash strapped -- hell, when I was a kid and I had my paper route I would have bought the hell out of used games. But understand that when faced with this issue those that fund and produce those games you love have to come up with all sorts of creative ways for the business to remain viable and yes, profitable.

Do Zynga's practices often feel sleazy? Sure. Don't like it? Don't play it. Don't like pay to win? You have the freedom to opt out and not even touch the product.

People like to act like we should go back to "the good ol' days" before microtransactions but they forget that arcades were the original change munchers. Those games were designed to make you lose so that you had to keep spending money on them. Ask any of the old Midway vets about their design techniques. The second to last boss in Mortal Kombat 2 was harder than the last boss, because when you see the last boss that's sometimes enough for a gamer. The Pleasure Dome didn't really exist in the original Total Carnage. Donkey Kong was hard as hell on purpose. ("Kill screen coming up!")

...my main point. If you don't like the games, or the sales techniques, don't spend your money on them.

You vote with your dollars.

via http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/03/01

[Mr. Analog]

This is a tangential conversation as we were talking about software as a service on fully priced games vs this which is discussing the "free to play" vs "pay to win" angle:

Some revisionist history in the quoted post (or EA astroturfing, you decide), when TF2 launched it was a stand alone game, designed with complete class balance, no extra items period. It became an immediate hit and was a big seller for Valve.

That "encapsulation" first changed with the Gold Rush Pack six months later in 2008 ( http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/April_29,_2008_Patch ) where you could earn items by acquiring achievements. This continued through 2008 with the Pyro and Heavy Update (again, adding weapons you could earn by playing the game). Maybe getting new items was part of the game plan from day one, but after the initial 6 months it was already a highly successful game!

Item drops and cosmetic items (aka hats) didn't make an appearance until 2009.

Again, none of this stuff you had to pay for, you just bought the game and if you played it enough you got things that slightly modified your experience.

In fact it wasn't until September 30th 2010, almost THREE YEARS after launch, that Valve added a store (the Mann-Conomy Update http://www.teamfortress.com/mannconomy/ ) where you could just buy the stuff you wanted rather than earning it. EVEN THEN it wasn't until almost a year later that TF2 went free to play.

Even after all this time the items you can pay for are either non-game-changing cosmetic items or weapons that are carefully crafted to include cons with whatever pros they infer.

EA has taken a different approach with titles like Battlefield Heroes, they had designed from inception a game that included a store, a store where you CAN buy superior weapons upon loading the game.

They designed it as a Free to Play game however to make their money they offer game-altering options right out of the gate changes it from merely "free to play" to "pay to win". This is a known quantity to EA, this is what they know gamers are going to spend money on in order to stay competitive, this has nothing to do with adding more fun to the game for the player or giving people bonuses, this is a meticulously thought out business practise where you get people playing a "free" game and then entice them through the very nature of the game to spend money on upgrades.

This gets worse when you are paying full price for what should be a fully featured game only to find out that it was designed with a business model that creates inequity between players on launch.

So yes, there are similarities between what Valve and EA are doing but there are some significant differences that cannot be ignored.

[Darren Dirt]

Yeah, what Valve does and EA does apen't even close to the same thing.

I just thought it timely to the discussion of EA housing a game on their servers that, arguably, does not require their servers to run it. For [future] profits, no doubt.

[Mr. Analog]

If you buy a game on Steam you are intrinsically tied to it, as you would be using Origin, as a gamer you know this, is it evil? Maybe. That's where YOU have to decide what is right for you.

Can you play you single player games you bought through Steam without an internet connection? Yes.

Can you play SimCity without an internet connection? No.

Can you play an MMO without an internet connection? No.

Can you play Team Fortress 2 without an internet connection? Yes.

Can you play Battlefield Heroes without an internet connection? No.

Now which of these seems more "evil"

[Melbosa]

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/03/07/ea-disables-non-critical-features-in-simcity-to-ease-server-problems?abthid=5138c96188275d4048000008

The SimCity server difficulties continue, but EA has taken steps to put things right. The publisher has taken the decision to disable some of the game's non-essential features to soothe some of the server problems.

On the game's EA Forum, the community manager gave details about what was being done. ?We are continuing to do everything we can to address the server issues,? the post explained. ?In the meantime, so that we can give you as good an experience as possible, we are in the process of deploying a hotfix to all servers. This includes various improvements and also disables a few non-critical gameplay features (leaderboards, achievements and region filters). Disabling these features will in no way affect your core gameplay experience.

"We will continue to let you know as we have more information. We know it has been said before, but we do appreciate your patience as we complete this latest update. Getting you playing is our absolute highest priority."

Ouch its like they've never done this before...

[Mr. Analog]

It's no secret that EA is in damage control mode at the moment.

I will be surprised if they patch it so you can play single player without logging on.

Maybe there's still hope for a non-pirated LAN option for their FPSs? (yeah right, but still a man can dream).

[Mr. Analog]

Amazon pulls SimCity due to poor reviews:

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/following-800-poor-reviews-amazon-stops-selling-download-copies-of-simcity-2013037/

[Melbosa]

LOL I like how it was pulled because of "reviews", but none of the reviews are on the content of the game cause all 740ish complaints were about stability, login servers, queues, etc.  The game itself as a game reviews quite high

[Mr. Analog]

I think it's a fair complaint for many of them "I bought the game and I can't play it therefore it's defective by design"

The message is clear though, gamers won't put up with this crap.