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

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

#191

Post by stickfigure » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #186

mseebach wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about the game or how it failed, but what you describe reads like a classic caricature of an engineer's wet dream: lots of fancy tech that's fun to build but not very useful to the end user, while comparatively boring but useful features (autosave) gets passed over. Sure, management also failed (any failure is by definition a failure of management since they're supposed to be responsible for the…

Management letting engineers build whatever cool toys they want instead of features customers want and need sounds like it ought to be a textbook example of what not to do. Maybe you can't herd cats, but you can at least train them to use the litter box and not scratch your television.

Maxis (and EA in general) doesn't really work like that. The producers and game designers are in charge; engineers may have some input but there are professionals running the show. And those professionals screw up a lot. It's a hard business.

Maxis in particular suffered from the problem of having a bright, famous designer who produced two major hits. This gave him license to make dozens of failures. Unfortunately, Maxis started "betting the farm" on his last couple creations, with budgets into the high tens of millions. You don't get to roll the dice many times at that price.

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

#192

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #155

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spore was a disappointment Spore was a textbook example of bad management. They spent 80% of time, money and effort on creature designer - a feature that did not make up even 20% of game, closer to 5%. Game had complex and massive functionality for libraries, various downloadable creatures, even tunes for cities, outfits for citizens - all things that were not just unnecessary, but one might say even made game less…

I don't know anything about the game or how it failed, but what you describe reads like a classic caricature of an engineer's wet dream: lots of fancy tech that's fun to build but not very useful to the end user, while comparatively boring but useful features (autosave) gets passed over. Sure, management also failed (any failure is by definition a failure of management since they're supposed to be responsible for the…

pretty much explains Master of Orion III.

to expand on that, likely the person in charge of a feature which consumed so much resources was untouchable. Considered too good to fail or have, gasp, a bad idea

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

#193

Post by blumkvist » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #158

blumkvist wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I'm not an efficient market hypothesis proponent in the least, but nearly every study, simulation, etc does in fact show that it is nearly impossible to beat the market via stock picking. Also as an aside, commodities and foreign exchange are places where it is explicitly allowed to have non-public information...

The average retail investor does not have, nor seeks domain knowledge. He's 21-black type of guy. Of course indexing will beat him.

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

#194

Post by danudey » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #146

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…

> Spore was a disappointment Spore was a textbook example of bad management. They spent 80% of time, money and effort on creature designer - a feature that did not make up even 20% of game, closer to 5%. Game had complex and massive functionality for libraries, various downloadable creatures, even tunes for cities, outfits for citizens - all things that were not just unnecessary, but one might say even made game less…

My biggest complaint about Spore was that it was four or five different games, and just when you started getting the hang of one the game said "Evolution time!" and jerked you into the next one. By the time I was enjoying anything about the game, it took it away and gave me something else new to learn. By the time I got to the phase of the game I was going to spend more time on (cities and civilizations) I just didn't care anymore.

Like Doom 3, Spore was a game killed by pre-release piracy for the sole reason that people had fair warning about how terrible of a game it was.

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

#195

Post by kxo » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

codemod wrote: post #159

C&C - Red Alert 2 is the best RTS game I have played so far. The thing about EA is, its probably right. If a game does not perform well, its better to cut losses as the game industry is very unforgiving. But somehow all these studios closing down, does feel like the original theme or charisma of the game that they are associated with is lost.

Company of Heroes - 1500+ hours played. I miss it so.

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

#196

Post by chc » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:50 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #179

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…

>These laments are a bit overblown. Not to mention, a lot of these studios would have ended up bought by someone because, at the end of the day, they are investments geared and designed for an acquisition. Its not like EA came in there with machine guns and enslaved everyone. The point of these businesses is to make money first and make games second. There is no utopia where they aren't seeking buyers and a big paych…

Wouldn't a hypothetical multiplayer Sims game look basically like Second Life?

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

#197

Post by joeld42 » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:18 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #155

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spore was a disappointment Spore was a textbook example of bad management. They spent 80% of time, money and effort on creature designer - a feature that did not make up even 20% of game, closer to 5%. Game had complex and massive functionality for libraries, various downloadable creatures, even tunes for cities, outfits for citizens - all things that were not just unnecessary, but one might say even made game less…

I don't know anything about the game or how it failed, but what you describe reads like a classic caricature of an engineer's wet dream: lots of fancy tech that's fun to build but not very useful to the end user, while comparatively boring but useful features (autosave) gets passed over. Sure, management also failed (any failure is by definition a failure of management since they're supposed to be responsible for the…

There's some really cool prototypes from the making of of spore that got put online. It's fascinating stuff:

http://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes

I would say that every part of Spore was fun, or at least could be, but they never were able to get them to mesh together in a cohesive whole.

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

#198

Post by Pent » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 9:12 PM UTC

sesqu wrote: post #103

dkbrk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you expand on the idea of the third instalment syndrome?

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

#199

Post by m_mueller » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 1:54 PM UTC

warfangle wrote: post #171

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.

So cancer, then.

I like how it all just went worse and worse for EA - from virus to a predator shitting out bad games to a cancer of gaming.

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

#200

Post by frik » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 2:26 PM UTC

guncheck wrote: post #106

frik wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

> EA was named the worst company to work for in the US, but that was years and years ago

Apr 09, 2013: EA wins Consumerist's Worst Company in America poll for second year in a row

http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/9/4205402/ea-wins-consumerists...