> I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity,
All 12 of you who can actually play
> but I’d like to offer some straight answers on the topic: Always-Connected and why SimCity is not an offline experience.
I'm going to spend exactly one word answering this question.
> Always-Connected is a big change from SimCities of the past.
We at Maxis used to care about our customers, games, and integrity
> It didn’t come down as an order from corporate and it isn’t a clandestine strategy to control players.
We don't care about controlling you, any more than we care about whether or not you have any fun. We just want to make more money. But we noticed we were making less money than we predicted, then found out that you're mad, so here comes the best rationalization we could come up with on short notice.
> It’s fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity.
Making more money
> From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.
We took a look at Zynga, and they seemed to be making money at the time.
> We put a ton of effort into making our simulation and graphics engines more detailed than ever and to give players lively and responsive cities.
Here's a completely irrelevant anecdote to butter you up before we lie to you again.
> We also made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation into the cloud to support region play and social features. Here’s just a few:
Again, by innovative, we mean for our bottom line.
> We keep the simulation state of the region up to date for all players. Even when playing solo, this keeps the interactions between cities up to date in a shared view of the world.
We don't know how to design distributed systems.
> Players who want to reach the peak of each specialization can count on surrounding cities to provide services or resources, even workers. As other players build, your city can draw on their resources.
Our engineers told us there was no technical excuse we could hide behind, so we altered the game mechanics instead.
> Our Great Works rely on contributions from multiple cities in a region. Connected services keep each player’s contributions updated and the progression on Great Works moving ahead.
We know we could have built a game with mechanics that work offline, but then we wouldn't have much to hide behind, would we?
> All of our social world features - world challenges, world events, world leaderboards and world achievements - use our servers to update the status of all cities.
We thought of calling it SimCityVille, but that just didn't have the same ring to it.
> Our servers handle gifts between players. We’ve created a dynamic supply and demand model for trading by keeping a Global Market updated with changing demands on key resources.
We update each city’s visual representation as well. If you visit another player’s city, you’ll see the most up to date visual status.
Here are some more examples of "features" we came up with that are plausibly related to a game about simulating a city. We know they're a stretch, but we've already used up all the good ones.
> We even check to make sure that all the cities saved are legit, so that the region play, leaderboards, challenges and achievements rewards and status have integrity.
We might lack integrity, but we'll be damned if we let you.
> Cloud-based saves and easy access from any computer are another advantage of our connected features. You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available to you anywhere.
Thin, we know, but this was the least contrived use case we could come up with to justify removing your ability to save.
> Almost all of our players play with connected cities. But some chose to play alone – running the cities themselves. But whether they play solo or multiplayer, they are drawn to the connected city experience.
Altering the game mechanics to support our business needs appears to have successfully influenced their behavior.
> And Always-Connected provides a platform for future social features that will play out over regions and servers. The game we launched is only the beginning for us – it’s not final and it never will be.
Until we decide to sunset the game.
> In many ways, we built an MMO.
We heard those make more money.
> So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes.
Remember, by subset we mean subset of the things important to us, not you.
> But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision. We did not focus on the “single city in isolation” that we have delivered in past SimCities. We recognize that there are fans – people who love the original SimCity – who want that. But we’re also hearing from thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality.
We get that you don't like it. But we don't really care.
> The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology.
We did our best to maintain a superficial resemblance to the game you knew and loved. Hopefully this will fool a few people who have been living under a rock into purchasing it.
> So I’ll finish with another HUGE thanks to everyone who stuck with us through this launch. Hundreds of thousands are building and sharing cities online now. And what you’re creating just blows us away. SimCity is a special game, with a very special community of players, and we’re proud to be a part of it.
Thank you for playing SimCity.
Remember, it's not your game, it's ours.
PS We're not sorry we lied