EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis • Hacker News Board

Re: EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis

#91

Post by pandaman » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 5:43 AM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #25

delinka wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliminating competition.

Pretty good strategy from a financial perspective if you consider game purchasing to be a zero-sum game. If your average consumer is willing to spend $XX on games, and $YY is going to solid competitor ZZ, then acquiring and shutting down ZZ, removing them from the game industry, frees up that $YY to be spent on EA games. What I don't understand about that strategy is what prevents the acquired employees from re-formi…

>What I don't understand about that strategy is what prevents the acquired employees from re-forming as a new company?

Nothing prevents this, there had been many studios by former employees of a shut down studio (e.g. Ensemble -> Robot, Pandemic -> Killzone, Incognito -> Lightbox, Big Huge Games -> Impossible etc. etc). However, usually the reason a studio had been shut down was its poor performance and not some evil marketing plan so the respawned studios inherit the problems of the original studio complicated with the talent drain that happens during such a transition.

Re: EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis

#92

Post by pyrrhotech » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 5:52 AM UTC

kenrikm wrote: post #15

This is just my opinion, though semi-backed by conversations I've had with people who work at EA. EA Gameplan in a nutshell. 1) Force studio to make changes to a game that benefit the EA but have no tangible (or very little) benefit to the customers (Forcing use of Origin, Sims being online only, etc..) 2) Act surprised when the proverbial shit hits the fan with angry customers. 3) Let said customers know that "you'r…

except that it's working very well for them. Have you taken a look at the stock price recently? Apparently customers opinions aren't bothering them too much

Re: EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis

#93

Post by Qwertious » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 5:54 AM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #6

Westwood, Origin, Bullfrog, Maxis.... EA's strategy seems to be "Buy studio, make them shovel a couple incomplete games out of the door, close studio, repeat." Okay, they're asshats. What I don't get is, how does this make them any money? They're basically strip-mining the games industry, is this really more profitable than actually making good games?

Some people think this is happening to Bioware, too. See: http://i.imgur.com/e8Wp0yZ.jpg

Re: EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis

#94

Post by johansch » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 5:58 AM UTC

iamartnez wrote: post #45

kenrikm wrote: post #15

This is just my opinion, though semi-backed by conversations I've had with people who work at EA. EA Gameplan in a nutshell. 1) Force studio to make changes to a game that benefit the EA but have no tangible (or very little) benefit to the customers (Forcing use of Origin, Sims being online only, etc..) 2) Act surprised when the proverbial shit hits the fan with angry customers. 3) Let said customers know that "you'r…

What about DICE? And BioWare? I wonder if DICE came to the negotiation table more prepared and/or with something up their sleeve. It could be that EA is hands off so long as a studio produces highly profitable titles. As soon as there's a dip, snip snip.

Interestingly, one of the DICE founders (Patrick Söderlund) now runs both EA Games and EA Sports - meaning most of the game franchises except for the mobile and casual stuff.

Re: EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis

#95

Post by pkinsky » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:02 AM UTC

m_mueller wrote: post #84

pkinsky wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really: in this case the games sold by an infected game studio aren't copies of the original entity that go on to infect other game studios. They're more of a waste product. EA consumes game studios for sustenance and excretes a steady stream of sub-par sequels as it slowly digests its prey.

Apparently I haven't been clear enough, so let me rephrase: What DNA is to a virus, money is to EA. Selling games is how they get their money, which is then used to infect more games and destroying them all in the process. Well that's at least how my analogy was supposed to work.

I understood you, but your analogy doesn't work. Viruses are replicators, they infect cells to spawn new generations. EA is a monolithic entity that consumes studios to sustain itself, all without creating a single copy of itself. Money is food, not DNA.

Re: EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis

#96

Post by comrh » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:13 AM UTC

I played so much SimCity, SimTower, SimAnt and SimGolf. They always had quality games in the beginning.

Re: EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis

#97

Post by eropple » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:16 AM UTC

angersock wrote: post #55

YOU CAN'T REDUCE FUNDING TO MAXIS YOU'LL REGRET THIS

Yeah, yeah, yeah, HN has no sense of humor and all, but angersock owes me a new keyboard. Thanks for that.

Re: EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis

#98

Post by KVFinn » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:19 AM UTC

I wonder if sales were down since they started making the games exclusive on 'Origin'.

Re: EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis

#99

Post by flomo » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:25 AM UTC

kenrikm wrote: post #15

This is just my opinion, though semi-backed by conversations I've had with people who work at EA. EA Gameplan in a nutshell. 1) Force studio to make changes to a game that benefit the EA but have no tangible (or very little) benefit to the customers (Forcing use of Origin, Sims being online only, etc..) 2) Act surprised when the proverbial shit hits the fan with angry customers. 3) Let said customers know that "you'r…

> Forcing use of Origin, Sims being online only

So much smoke has been blown about these things, it has almost been overlooked that SimCity apparently just wasn't a very fun game. Tiny cities, bugs, overly-complicated simulator that was never really taken advantage of, etc.

Had they just delivered something like SC3 with snazzy graphics, I think the silent majority (such as myself) would have purchased and played the hell out of it without a second thought to the Origin/online issues.

Re: EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis

#100

Post by politician » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:34 AM UTC

pyrrhotech wrote: post #92

kenrikm wrote: post #15

This is just my opinion, though semi-backed by conversations I've had with people who work at EA. EA Gameplan in a nutshell. 1) Force studio to make changes to a game that benefit the EA but have no tangible (or very little) benefit to the customers (Forcing use of Origin, Sims being online only, etc..) 2) Act surprised when the proverbial shit hits the fan with angry customers. 3) Let said customers know that "you'r…

except that it's working very well for them. Have you taken a look at the stock price recently? Apparently customers opinions aren't bothering them too much

It doesn't matter. They aren't selling deodorant -- their customers in 10 years aren't going to be the same group of people as their customers today. See also: Hasbro, Disney.