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

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

#101

Post by iamartnez »

johansch wrote: post #94
iamartnez wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is where my curiosity lies. I wonder if the DICE founders were very sharp, knew what they were getting into, and had the leverage to set the kind of terms that would maximize their chances of success.

For example, I think they decided to keep the studio in Stockholm. That might have went a long way to keep the EA influence down and letting them focus on building blockbuster titles.

Perhaps EA is a sink or swim kind of organization (on that level)? In a harsh kind of way. In reality most franchises do eventually sink.

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

#102

Post by rwallace »

lmkg wrote: post #33
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?

As a strategy, it's better than being profitable: it's predictable. The forecasts for the upcoming financial quarters are much more likely to be accurate when you only work with known IP. The CEO is more beholden to analysts and stockholders than to customers. He has more to lose by failing expectations than he has to gain by exceeding expectations. Therefore, EA adopts a strategy that minimizes variance rather than…

The way I figure it, when value is being knowingly and unnecessarily destroyed, someone somewhere in the chain is being irrational. Given that EA is a public company, the obvious candidate for that somewhere is Wall Street. Your analysis seems to confirm that.

But the stock market is supposed to be hyper efficient nowadays such that it's practically impossible to outperform it even for the experts, let alone for random punters on the Internet.

What's the resolution to this paradox? Not a rhetorical question; I'm actually curious.

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

#103

Post by sesqu »

dkbrk wrote: post #86
eropple wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling Mass Effect 2 and 3 "exceedingly mediocre" puts you in a camp that is, by pretty much any metric, very fair from the mainstream. And I wonder who these "many gamers" are who think BioWare is a laughingstock. Do elaborate, please.

I, for one, was extremely disappointed in Mass Effect 2 as compared to the original. As a result, I didn't buy the third. Mass Effect, was, in my opinion, truly inimitable. While the sequels may have kept the setting and had very high production values, at their core they were little more than a sequence of cover-based setpieces and cutscenes. Dragon Age 2 was even more of regression from Dragon Age: Origins. Origins…

Mass effect 2 was perhaps the best game in the series, but it was a very different game than mass effect 1. While the core mechanics were the same, it was extremely episodic and the plot was flimsy. I recall ME3 reeled it back a bit, doing away with some of the annoying exploration stuff, but suffered from third installment syndrome.

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

#104

Post by skuhn »

kenrikm wrote: post #77
iamartnez wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lets not forgot that EA took the BioWare name slapped it on a completely different studio and released mediocre games with it. DICE is in fact the exception, though they are like the golden goose, then consistently produce quality titles, I expect that if that were to change EA would attempt to terminate them as well.

DICE has barely been able to release a non-Battlefield game since EA bought them, despite a much more varied output before acquisition. I imagine that isn't too great for employees at the time who didn't want to make pew pew simulators for all eternity.

Exceptions to the rule:

  - Mirror's Edge
  - Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (w/ Criterion)
  - Medal of Honor (multiplayer only)
And that's it. That they weren't allowed to make a straight up sequel to Mirror's Edge, and only now are coming out with a "reboot" says a lot to me about EA's control over their output: crank out Battlefield games or lose funding.

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

#106

Post by guncheck »

frik wrote: post #88
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?

The SimCity reboot and The Sims 4 were a bad joke. So it's not surprising. It was definitely EA's fault to guide SimCity and Sims 4 in the wrong direction. Less content, fake simulation, even more DLCs, always-on-DRM, smaller game worlds, more casual gameplay. EA was also named the worst company to work for in the U.S.

EA did a fairly poor job with SimCity, I agree. A very, very poor job. EA was named the worst company to work for in the US, but that was years and years ago. They've really done a better job at keeping their developers happy (I worked there two years ago as a dev). I mean sure, Alpha and Beta can still be brutal, but what game studio isn't like this? Overall, I enjoyed working at EA and would work there again if they didn't offer me such a shitty salary. A shitty, shitty salary. Pretty much the only thing I can complain about. Oh, and no free food.

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

#108

Post by venomsnake »

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.

Bioware peak was 1998-2006 with NWN, BG 1&2, DA:O, KOTOR and JE. After that it was mediocrity all the way.

ME combat mechanics brought the whole franchise down, SW:TOR was pointless (and not bioware). And Dragon Age II and Inquisition were plain boring.

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

#109

Post by mjn »

davidgay wrote: post #71
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?

EA bought Maxis in 1997. The Sims was released in 2000. We're now in 2015. I don't think that timeline is compatible with your theory.

My second-hand understanding of the arrangement is that from 1997 until roughly the mid 2000s, Maxis's autonomy was mostly protected by Will Wright's personal clout (plus possibly some terms around the acquisition, if there were any). He was high-profile, a charismatic media figure, and very against moving to EA's main campus in Redwood City—partly to retain Maxis's autonomy, and partly just because he lived in the East Bay and didn't want to commute to the Peninsula.

It helped that the first post-acquisition new title from Maxis was The Sims, a massive financial success, which allowed EA to feel comfortable taking a hands-off approach and allowing the studio to do weird things, so long as the weird things brought in piles of revenue.

From the mid-2000s, though, EA started merging bits of Maxis in, closing the Walnut Creek office and moving those staff to Redwood City, but still leaving a smaller Maxis remaining in Emeryville, which continued to be headed by Wright, with considerable autonomy. He used that autonomy to lead the Spore (2008) development, an ambitious concept that was not a financial success (though it arguably kicked off the current resurgence of procedural content generation in games). And then he left the company in 2009. At that point I think many people in the industry considered it inevitable that the remaining Maxis would be moved to the main EA campus sooner or later.

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

#110

Post by guncheck »

I was talking to a friend who works at EA and said most of them were just being moved to EA Redwood Shores. The Maxis studio was a satellite studio out of Emeryville and teams were being migrated to Redwood Shores. "Nothing has changed, Sims 4 and such are still being made" -EA Employee

The internet has made this seem blown way out of proportion.

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