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The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

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Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#61

Post by Goronmon »

onli wrote: post #57
Goronmon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's just so many new things to care about that it's impossible to not move on from old news. Especially when it's just about a game. I'm sure gamers will keep the Sim City fiasco in the back of their minds and pirate later games published by EA but for now, we're really just tired of hearing about old news. Yeah, I think this about sums it up. When it comes down to it, all that happened is that a company made a b…

You misrepresent what happened severely. It isn't the case that this is simply about a bad game. This is about a game which didn't work for the people buying it. Which got great previews and reviews(!) before the issues with their servers arised. And which wasn't even a good game, because it was fundamentally flawed, which at the beginning remained undiscovered. Furthermore, this is not even about the game at all. It…

You misrepresent what happened severely.

Whatever you need to tell yourself in order to maintain the level of anger you desire.

Nothing I saw from EA seemed out of the ordinary for a company trying to sell the game they made. Unless you expect companies to only promote games that meet certain quality standards when they are released.

I mean, look at Aliens: Colonial Marines. From my perspective, it was in much worse shape than SimCity upon release, and I don't see RPS coming out with stories about how the game has disappeared from the limelight.

Honestly, I feel like people got so angry about SimCity to deflect their own responsibility for the purchasing decision they made. No one forces people to buy games on release day, and everyone should know that the smartest thing to do is to sit on a new game for at least a couple of days to let any issues arise. That's the responsible thing to do as a customer, and obviously it was something many people chose not to do.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#62

Post by macspoofing »

belorn wrote: post #56
smutticus wrote: post #23

I'm quite glad the story went away. Some company released a crappy product and people got angry. Why? Just don't buy it. It's not as if EA has redeemed themselves in any way. SimCity still has a 1.9 score on Metacritic. The public still agrees this game is a failure and their sales will reflect that.

A glib remark of "Just don't buy it", simply won't cut it. This attitude is harmful, both to consumers and to developers/producers, and to a lesser degree, peoples health. First off, it harms consumers to not get what they pay for. This is simply wrong. Second off, it harms developers and producers because people view software purchases as high risk. Ever wondered why people dwell on buying a $3 app, but can impulse…

>A glib remark of "Just don't buy it", simply won't cut it. This attitude is harmful, both to consumers and to developers/producers, and to a lesser degree, peoples health.

There are many mediocre games out there. I bought a few over the years. Sometimes you get a bad game, it goes with the territory. I agree it's ok to voice your opinions and stick it to a bad developer on forums, but does the SimCity fiasco really needs to be talked about weeks after release? It's just a bad game, at the end of the day, what more is there to be said?

//

EA didn't get my money. I was never going to buy SimCity because it isn't my type of game, but even I knew ahead of time of its always-online component.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#63

Post by peacemaker »

jahabrewer wrote: post #52
ghshephard wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur absolutely with you - I am the worlds great sim fan, and I've lost countless thousands of hours watching my little guys (and gals) run around in Stronghold, Settlers 7, and Caesar 3. I also got a lot of fun in previous Sim City games. The Latest SimCity got about 6 hours out of me, before I just went, "meah." - I didn't really get the same sense of progress, or emergent features, or ownership of the process…

> But - EA scammed me out of the $60 before... Chargeback if you can't get a refund (like me, I bought on Origin). I called up Amex, identified the charge, told them EA misrepresented the product, and a day later I had a credit on my statement. Took three minutes.

EA made it quite clear if you were to do a chargeback they would cancel your Origin account. Fine if you only have SimCity on there but you could end up losing a lot more than $60 if you had a few of their games via Origin.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#66

Post by belorn »

macspoofing wrote: post #62
belorn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A glib remark of "Just don't buy it", simply won't cut it. This attitude is harmful, both to consumers and to developers/producers, and to a lesser degree, peoples health. First off, it harms consumers to not get what they pay for. This is simply wrong. Second off, it harms developers and producers because people view software purchases as high risk. Ever wondered why people dwell on buying a $3 app, but can impulse…

>A glib remark of "Just don't buy it", simply won't cut it. This attitude is harmful, both to consumers and to developers/producers, and to a lesser degree, peoples health. There are many mediocre games out there. I bought a few over the years. Sometimes you get a bad game, it goes with the territory. I agree it's ok to voice your opinions and stick it to a bad developer on forums, but does the SimCity fiasco really…

The reaction is good. I don't know for how long is suitable, but I would lean towards a similar time as if a physical object share its characteristics, for how long should the iphone map mess still be mentioned in polite discussion? What if the whole phone was also complete unusable (disabled) for a week after the release, and then had its features cut down for people who had already bought it. What if apple refused refunds? What if the issues was all brought because of a more intrusive DRM, intentionally put there to prevent people from copying content out of the phone.

What would a suitable time frame be when such a thing should no longer be discussed? I don't know, but I suspect it would still be mentioned years later. I also suspect that no other phone manufacturer would dare to put similar DRM in a phone because of it. We are not there yet with software, but I personally would encourage such outcry when ever it happen.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#67

Post by verbatim »

Tichy wrote: post #48
ghshephard wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue was more the fact that they had Always On DRM built into the game, and didn't tell the full truth about what it was there for.

You mean like every game on Steam.

Not all games sold on Steam use DRM.

See: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_st...

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#68

Post by tomphoolery »

I would be interested to know about "why" this whole debacle happened, but much later after I actually get to play the game. I love SimCity, loved almost every single version that Maxis has released, but this latest offering got me scared. So from others out there who play the game...is it even usable at this point?

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#69

Post by mseebach »

ghshephard wrote: post #29
bravura wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is burning a story still effective? HuffPo will run a story from a mid-tier news org (AFAIK), and then it will go viral. So it seems this might be a deprecated crisis PR strategy.

HuffPo doesn't rise to the level of "mid-tier" - they are definitely less Relevant (at least in the united States) than the mid-50 media outlets, and don't even compare to something like the Top Tier (NYT, WSJ, Tribute, LA Times). For example, from HN Search: Results 1-10 of 493 for http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ Results 1-10 of 12,273 for nytimes.com

So, my gut feeling says you're right, but your methodology here is wrong: HN aggressively encourages sharing the original story, cutting out any intermediates. HP, for all their reach in making stories go viral, don't actually produce a lot of original content. When something is on NYT, it is generally original.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#70

Post by ghshephard »

Tichy wrote: post #48
ghshephard wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue was more the fact that they had Always On DRM built into the game, and didn't tell the full truth about what it was there for.

You mean like every game on Steam.

Has Steam ever claimed that their DRM (where it's used) is either for (A) Offline compute, or (B) MMO use?

Personally, it's not so much the DRM that EA has infected their latest games with, or not even so much that it requires a constant internet connection (though, Sim City was one of the great play-alone games left) - but that they've been too cowardly too just come out and say, "Yes, we require you to be connected to the internet to play this game so that we can reduce piracy."

Lying (or not telling the truth) about this obvious situation only makes them look bad.

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