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

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

#121

Post by TwoBit » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:54 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #117

These laments are a bit overblown. I worked for Maxis during the big closure in 2004, when the company was in Walnut Creek. A small group moved to Emeryville, many people (including the Sims teams) moved to Redwood Shores, and some some people didn't make the transition. Think of it like layoffs, following on the colossal failure that was The Sims Online (although, ironically, what's left of that team had already mov…

Yep. And what people don't understand here is that EA isn't killing Maxis, they're shutting down the Emeryville studio. Half of Maxis was already at the Ears studio on the Sims and other work. Sim City will be maintained and probably be a slow but steady seller for the next 7 years. All the best developers from that studio will simply be moved to jobs in other studios.

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

#122

Post by TwoBit » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:01 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #112

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maxis Emeryville is Maxis. The Will Wright Maxis, the Sims , SimCity and Spore Maxis. The real Maxis, if you will. There are some other things EA does under the Maxis brand, but that's just rebranded EA Play stuff. The Maxis people cared about is dead. (Though The Sims isn't, that was spun off into its own studio before Spore was made.)

Maxis split up when they closed the Walnut Creek office in 2004, with SimCity and Spore (and Will Wright) going to Emeryville, everyone else going to Redwood Shores. Will Wright left in 2009. There is no "real Maxis", and if there was, some Maxis expat older than me would tell you it died back in the 90s or whatnot. Maxis had a few big hits and a lot of colossal failures. Including some that never made it to the publ…

The modern version of what Maxis used to be is Minecraft. Developing those games is risky though. For every minecraft there are ten failures.

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

#123

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:14 AM UTC

TwoBit wrote: post #121

stickfigure wrote: post #117

These laments are a bit overblown. I worked for Maxis during the big closure in 2004, when the company was in Walnut Creek. A small group moved to Emeryville, many people (including the Sims teams) moved to Redwood Shores, and some some people didn't make the transition. Think of it like layoffs, following on the colossal failure that was The Sims Online (although, ironically, what's left of that team had already mov…

Yep. And what people don't understand here is that EA isn't killing Maxis, they're shutting down the Emeryville studio. Half of Maxis was already at the Ears studio on the Sims and other work. Sim City will be maintained and probably be a slow but steady seller for the next 7 years. All the best developers from that studio will simply be moved to jobs in other studios.

[deleted]

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

#124

Post by fragsworth » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:17 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #69

AndyKelley wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is nonsense

Excellent rebuttal. I like how you clearly outlined and explained your counterpoints.

There isn't much to outline or explain, because the original comment (creating an analogy between EA and a virus?) simply doesn't make any sense...

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

#125

Post by flomo » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:20 AM UTC

sorenbs wrote: post #120

flomo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I played it on a slow 3g connection in Bangladesh, and it mostly worked. What really killed it for me was the feeling that the feedback you got from the game wasn't consistent with the internal state of the simulation leading you to take counterproductive actions.

It certainly wasn't ideal and a legitimate issue for a lot of people. But at the same time there was a group of huge loudmouths who went on the warpath because piracy/paranoia/EA hatred/whatever.

The whole SC incident bothers me because there was so much screaming about the online stuff. Yet it took two weeks before you started seeing gameplay reviews which finally started admitting "Hey, this just isn't very fun..."

EA brought this on themselves, so they deserve it. But I think a good game would have survived the furor. SimCity4 was a very long-tail title. (And it was pretty broken out-of-the-box, and only really playable with mods.)

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

#126

Post by lqdc13 » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:42 AM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #108

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.

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.

Completely agree, but I think we're in the minority. Most people seem to enjoy the streamlined style of their new titles.

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

#127

Post by blumkvist » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:47 AM UTC

rwallace wrote: post #102

lmkg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rand…

>But the stock market is supposed to be hyper efficient nowadays such that it's practically impossible to outperform it even for the experts

That's not true at all. Maybe in commodities, or foreign exchange or indexing, where algos can trade solely based on prices and public information it is true. But definitely not in individual stock picking. Domain knowledge is king here.

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

#128

Post by blumkvist » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:50 AM UTC

SixSigma wrote: post #119

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?

Business says "we exist to make a profit". People don't tend to be profit maximisers in their actual work. I don't know many workers who think "which one of these choices is most profitable for the company"

Is this a joke?

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

#129

Post by Paul_S » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:56 AM UTC

People always make EA out as some comic book villains but they're not doing this to spite gamers or against the wishes of the previous company owners. The creators go into these deals willingly and sometimes it's either that or bankruptcy. What I'm saying is EA are less like lions hunting studios in their prime and more like hyena's going for the weak and wounded, or ones who just want out. My analogies are worse than EA.

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

#130

Post by louhike » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:57 AM UTC

serf wrote: post #90

neolefty wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when a company dies, no people actually die. They can go on and create new games and new companies.

>Except when a company dies, no people actually die. except that isn't always true. [0] Suicide Rates Rising for Older U.S. Adults - Rates for 40-64 year-olds may be increasing due to financial circumstances, according to American Journal of Preventive Medicine [0] : http://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-jo...

Are we really talking about suicide in a discussion about a company unsurprisingly shutting down? It is not because it is EA, which have a really bad reputation (which they partly deserve), than we should have a discussion of such a low quality.