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Diablo 3 was pretty horrible at first too for the same reason. I don't know if you will call that a success or failure though.
I've had Diablo 3 since day one and played successfully to level 60 with two characters, never had any problems with connection. And SimCity doesn't work sometimes - it just doesn't work at all.
You know, it's not rocket science to create a program that creates say 10000 connections to the server, does some prerecorded game actions using a minimal implementation of the protocol, and run it on 1000 Amazon EC2 instances simultaneously... et voila, 10 million client connections just like real launch!
Hopefully they'll get sued for this.
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Isn't this just a technical error (bug) that is a game dev's (or infrastructure engineer's) responsibility? I understand the frustration at the DRM concept, but you can't blame this on the larger entity as a whole when it was likely just a bug in some code or a small oversight. Things were clearly working when it was in beta.
No, its not that simple. Isn't this just a technical error (bug) that is a game dev's (or infrastructure engineer's) responsibility? Isn't mandating the constant involvement of otherwise unnecessary tech that is known to be error prone and unreliable just the result of a poorly thought out buisness requirement? No, its not that simple either. Because they probably did think it out, knew they were choosing the riskier…
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I don't think you're adding clarity here. People are upset about the lack of a single player offline mode, which absolutely is about preventing unlicensed copies. There is no technical reason for its absence. The cloud based stuff sounds great, and if it were an optional extra that was unavailable at launch due to technical difficulties, I doubt you'd see a hundredth as much bad PR.
We lack the internal knowledge to know whether an offline mode would have been a good experience for most customers. I have no idea whether Maxis+EA tested this, and how well it worked. That said, you can imagine a situation where doing these computations locally did compromise the experience for a certain spec of machines. Maxis has already explained that city size limits were imposed because the simulation didn't r…
I find it hard to believe the game is so complicated a laptop will struggle, but EA can efficiently load it onto servers? That sounds pretty hard to believe. Even if the target player is using a crappy Netbook, you're talking about a dedicated compute server for every 4-20 players. That's insane.
Not surprised. EA is a failure of a company being run into the ground by greedy and paranoid CEO's who essentially treat their customers like criminals. I feel sorry for the developers who obviously did an amazing job, the new Simcity seems like a well-built game with smart AI developed by no doubt some of the smartest minds in development, such a shame most people will never get a chance to play the game before demanding refunds.
The uninformed will blame the developers but it's the fault of EA itself, not the developers who did an amazing job. I want to play this game, but I'm going to download the cracked version when it's released instead because it'll actually work.
I feel bad for the game devs who got to see their hard work turn into something they don't intend. I suppose this is a great advertising technique for small firms, startups, indie shops, etc. "Don't want this[ http://amazon-pulls-sim-city ] to happen? Work for our small team. We won't destroy your work." I know it's standard to say "you get a part in the decisionmaking process!" That's part of it. But a lot of people…
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No, it actually doesn't sound like some random MBAs.Are you one of those guys that blame MBAs for everything?The truth is we don't know what actually happened there.We'll have to wait for EA's reply on this one.It will be hard for them to recover after a huge mistake/strategy like this.
>We'll have to wait for EA's reply on this one. If EA's usual response to criticism means anything, we'll be waiting a loooooong time... >It will be hard for them to recover after a huge mistake/strategy like this. You're kidding, right? They'll just release Call of Modern Madden 5: Battlefield Part 2 and the fanboys will eat it up, horrid DRM and microtransactions and all.
This could be a very big moment. EA is selling a completely broken product - and I mean that from the perspective of the average consumer, not the nerd who thinks all DRM is broken - and they're doing it for absolutely no reason . If this lasts long enough and gets enough press, it could actually be a turning point against DRM like this. That would be so wonderful.
That would probably be wonderful but it's not going to happen. They'll take a look at what went wrong "this time" and be convinced they will not make the same mistakes next time. Then they'll try again. Too their credit, that's the definition of good business and, chances are, it will work better next time. Some companies are just better than others at getting it right the first time (or second, or third). I just wis…
EA needs to pivot this game, fast. Even in the best case scenario, where the servers all get fixed this evening and the game works flawlessly for everyone for a month straight, the damage to the game's name has been done. The meme is hatched: SimCity 2013 has a highly brittle dependency on poorly-planned cloud infrastructure. There's a private region mode in the game (that you nonetheless can't use offline in the cur…
Remember EA is a business, not an offshoot of Reddit/HN. Imagine you're the SimCity product manager and the choice was between a massive refactor or provisioning a bunch of new servers. Which would you choose? I'd love to agree with you, but I just dont think its plausible.
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Remember EA is a business, not an offshoot of Reddit/HN. Imagine you're the SimCity product manager and the choice was between a massive refactor or provisioning a bunch of new servers. Which would you choose? I'd love to agree with you, but I just dont think its plausible.
One-time cost vs. ongoing cost for years to come? It's not as simple as you make it out to be.