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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

#71

Post by crazy1van »

I think the power of silence depends on the severity of the crisis. If your product is physically harming people or cost someone a lot of money, the controversy probably isn't going away after a few weeks of silence. People will not forget about a loved one being seriously physically or financially harmed.

However, if the issue is a buggy piece of software that costs $60, that is going to be quickly forgotten. People don't have the energy to stay upset about something that in the grand scheme of things is so minor. If this is still registering on your personal radar a month later as a serious problem, consider yourself lucky.

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

#72

Post by PakG1 »

venomsnake wrote: post #44
PakG1 wrote: post #32

When I looked at the big hubbub about Yahoo's decision to end telecommuting, I couldn't help but think that Mayer was making the right decision by not commenting. She was hired to turn around a company in crisis, there were major problems, and she based her decision on data (seeing that many people who were supposed to work via VPN weren't even logging in according to their VPN records). It was clearly a unique decis…

Nothing boosts the morale of a company in crisis than having a boss that rules with decrees instead of leading.

I'd love to hear a confirmed insider's view. Because I've ONLY heard good buzz about what they've been up to. Everything has been anonymous sources only (albeit many from journalists who promised anonymity), but I've yet to see any anonymous upset sources. It really seems like Yahoo's got swagger back. So I'd love to hear a confirmed insider's view.

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

#73

Post by acdha »

sjtgraham wrote: post #50

This reminds me of the Instagram TOS fiasco. Instagram essentially was burned very badly by doing the right thing, i.e. by being extraordinarily forthright about changing their terms. Usually TOS provide the company the ability to change their terms without any notice whatsoever; we are somewhat unreasonably expected to regularly check back ourselves and try to find changes. Instagram tried to do right by their users…

Instagram was burned for telling a story about their ToS which didn't match what they wanted to claim and then tried a classic non-apology apology rather than admitting overreach. If the new ToS had only claimed what they said they wanted this never would have blown up.

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

#74

Post by wnight »

Goronmon wrote: post #61
onli wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you expect me to use a valid credit card when I pay? Because I expect a game that works as well.

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

#75

Post by vor_ »

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.

Many games on Steam can be played in offline modes. Maxis claimed there was extensive server-side processing that required SimCity's online connectivity, but this was proven to be an exaggeration. In addition to a lack of local saving/loading, players have been losing their cities due to processing errors.

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

#76

Post by bane »

georgemcbay wrote: post #17

I can't speak to the media/publishing side of things, but personally I stopped talking about SimCity because I stopped playing it. Looking back at the whole fiasco, I'm positive that the always-online requirement and server overload will forever define the game, but there was a much bigger problem lurking below that issue, which is that the game sucks anyway even if you disregard the early technical issues and the po…

Agreed. Bought it after they started offering a second game for free. I know that the only thing I kept thinking of when playing it was "I wish this were SC4000".

Really I would have been happy as a clam with something like SC4000, with curved roads, mixed-use zoning and an enhanced transport system. Gladly would have paid $60 for it.

The new SimCity completely failed to capture the "perfect garden" feeling that the previous Sim Cities managed to capture. Growing a city was like growing a garden, zoning was planting seeds.

The new one is just some set of administration abstractions over a social simulation. It just doesn't feel like SimCity, it feels like some totally different game.

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

#77

Post by saraid216 »

buro9 wrote: post #34
rmc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on the burn thing for those of us who don't know much about pr? Is it just because hard hitting journalists don't like to be second?

Pretty much. All journalists don't like to be second, but most don't get a say (they work in quantity not quality). Journalists need exclusives, just re-hashing an existing story doesn't offer a compelling reason to the reader to choose your news outlet. So the top-tier outlets will only want to spend their column inches and reader attention on the stories that give a compelling reason for them to continue returning.…

To expand on it a little,

People are naturally averse to being redundant when they're conscious of it. If the work has been done, why repeat? As a writer, I dislike writing things that have been written: if I don't have something new to say, why say it?

(There are good reasons to repeat, e.g. practice, but that doesn't apply here.)

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

#78

Post by saraid216 »

Goronmon wrote: post #61
onli wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

If that were true, no one would buy anything ever.

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

#80

Post by tempaccount9473 »

tomphoolery wrote: post #68

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?

Usually I'd say pirate it, put 10 hours into it, and buy it to support the authors if you like it.

But right now, you can't play the new Simcity without shovelling dollars into EA's pocket, and reward them for producing a fundementally broken game.

You just have to decide for yourself which is more important to you. Providing feedback to bad corporate behavior by refusing to give EA your money, or your curiosity to play (and ultimately be disappointed by) a shitty sim with all depth and complexity removed in favor of "social" interaction and microtransactions (buy packs of 2 buildings for $5, i.e. http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-German-City-Online-Game/dp/B00...).

However, if you care about the future of games, please don't give EA money.

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