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Topic Starter Topic: How to Fuck Up a Beloved Franchise
mjrpes
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PostPosted: 03-05-2013 10:16 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Well done EA, well done.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/s ... -for-this/
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Whiskey 7
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PostPosted: 03-05-2013 10:19 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Good read :up:

Like this bit :olo:

Quote:
Peter: Damn. My schools are overfull. So now my nuclear power plant is being run by morons. Which means it might blow up. Shit. Melted down.
Fucking hell, it's going to blow up again.
I don't understand. They have stopped enrolling in high school. So my education level is falling. So my nuclear power station keeps blowing up. But nothing is telling me WHY they're not enrolled at school. I have plenty of school buses. Well placed bus stops.
Man. Once things start going wrong, they go seriously wrong.



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MKJ
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PostPosted: 03-06-2013 12:23 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


third day now; servers down yet again.
http://kotaku.com/5988784/hope-you-were ... ty-tonight
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 03-06-2013 01:04 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Are they seriously requiring people to log in to play a single player game? Or are the online features an integral part of the gameplay?
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PostPosted: 03-06-2013 01:52 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Cities are stored on the EA cloud; you have to ping their servers to launch the game, load saves, or change regions. :(



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MKJ
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PostPosted: 03-06-2013 02:05 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


that and online features are an integral part of the gameplay.
griefercity.
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GONNAFISTYA
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PostPosted: 03-06-2013 07:10 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I've been saying for years that City Life is a nicer looking and better balanced game, particularly with managing the different society classes. There's no zombie invasions or meteorite strikes, but it's much better looking and more free-form city planning than SimCity ever was. And it comes with a building editor to create your own skyscrapers with the ability to tweak every small detail about it, including who can work/live there. :up:
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MKJ
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PostPosted: 03-07-2013 01:22 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


http://www.jonathancresswell.co.uk/2013 ... w-simcity/
olo
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 03-07-2013 02:08 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


rofl, look at the dumbwits posting that the review doesn't load for them :olo:
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Captain
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PostPosted: 03-07-2013 02:40 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


:olo: excellent
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Don Carlos
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PostPosted: 03-07-2013 03:02 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


:olo:
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plained
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PostPosted: 03-07-2013 07:10 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Kentucky fried chicken used to be good and now its total shit!



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GONNAFISTYA
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PostPosted: 03-07-2013 07:18 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


lol
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mjrpes
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PostPosted: 03-07-2013 08:02 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


When amazon stops selling your product you know you have fucked up in some fundamental way

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/foll ... y-2013037/

LOL
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PostPosted: 03-07-2013 09:34 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


EB Games in Australia is accepting refunds for SimCity. So much for that Beta stress testing they did.

I feel bad for Maxis. :(



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Captain
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PostPosted: 03-07-2013 09:41 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


lol yeah, Will Wright must really be having a bad time with his millions of dollars.
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MKJ
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PostPosted: 03-07-2013 11:27 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Lol, EA now disabled some online game features in hopes of relieving the servers of stress.
Hey guys this shit is not working, let's turn off some advertised options and tell the public they were not meant to be in the final code anyway.
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mjrpes
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PostPosted: 03-07-2013 11:52 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Me 10 years ago:

http://www.simphoni.net/forums/lofivers ... t4135.html

What was once a joke :(
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MKJ
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 12:59 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


(fyi, the autoroad feature was something you could always turn off.. holding shift or ctrl while zoning I tihnk. noobs mad)
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Ryoki
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 01:06 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Lols, friend of mine has been talking about how he was going to play the shit out of the new Sim City for the last couple of months - can't wait to hear his lengthy bitter complaints :)



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Transient
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 01:13 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


MKJ wrote:
Lol, EA now disabled some online game features in hopes of relieving the servers of stress.
Hey guys this shit is not working, let's turn off some advertised options and tell the public they were not meant to be in the final code anyway.

Which includes achievements, leaderboards, and... the fastest of the 3 speed settings? WTF? :dork:

Also, this: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/08/ ... online-drm



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MKJ
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 01:23 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


well at least something good will come out of this.

hey remember when EA slagged off Blizzard for the Diablo3 launch debacle? lollings
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Don Carlos
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 01:36 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Yeah fingers crossed other publishers and developers make sure all the games they produce can be played offline
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 03:44 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


lol, and here's EA Korea's community manager making things worse:

Quote:
[...]a commenter wrote, "Asia has one of the highest populations. Why aren't there any servers?"

The EA Korea Facebook manager replied: "There is a lot of piracy in Asia, so it would be difficult for the time being."

This, of course, set Korean gamers off.

The EA rep has apologized for the comments, saying this was just an unfortunate result of trying to be more proactive as Facebook users were complaining about the lack of communication from EA.

What's more, the Facebook page manager admitted ignorance on how EA's Origin service worked


What a mong :olo:

http://kotaku.com/5989385/why-south-kor ... ut-simcity
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obsidian
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 07:20 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I really feel sorry for Maxis, they're going to lose a shitton of money (maybe even land in financial trouble) because their publisher are complete morons.

My hope is that this is the end of traditional video game publishing companies. With digital distribution, alternative solutions might prove more valuable: self publishing, crowd funding, etc.



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MKJ
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 07:24 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


EA is refusing refunds now, for a product that doesn't work.
http://penny-arcade.com/report/editoria ... nd-refusin

Pretty sure that's against the consumer law, at least here in Euroland.
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Psyche911
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 07:57 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


obsidian wrote:
I really feel sorry for Maxis, they're going to lose a shitton of money (maybe even land in financial trouble) because their publisher are complete morons.

My hope is that this is the end of traditional video game publishing companies. With digital distribution, alternative solutions might prove more valuable: self publishing, crowd funding, etc.


It sucks they got bought up by EA (back in 1997, mind you), but I can't say I really feel sorry for them over the systems they designed failing. Maxis isn't just some studio with EA as a publisher who forced them to add these "features" at the last minute. EA owns Maxis in its entirety. Maxis works out of EA's building, FFS. The designers and programmers may not have had a say in the matter but this is far from some DRM slapped on before the game goes to market.
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GONNAFISTYA
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 08:02 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


MKJ wrote:
EA is refusing refunds now, for a product that doesn't work.
http://penny-arcade.com/report/editoria ... nd-refusin

Pretty sure that's against the consumer law, at least here in Euroland.


Quote:
SimCity’s next big problem: EA is selling a game that may not work, and is refusing refunds


Serious question: is this the future of gaming? When the industry realized that sell-unfinished-games-to-patch-them-later was acceptable to their customers and that they could still charge full price for the product (effectively having your customers pay money to be beta testers) they made no efforts to improve quality before release. The opposite happened.

Now that EA has effectively taken people's money for something that doesn't work and are refusing refunds (something I've always hated about software and IP law) there's no motivation for them to stop, because the profits won't stop, because people will blindly give money to franchises they recognize without putting any thought into it or even finding out if it's worth the money. Unless there is a true boycott of their broken products (as in NOBODY buys it) then it'll never change. And guess what? Consumers - who are STILL BUYING this broken game - are too apathetic and too stupid to help themselves....much like the idiots who keep giving Hollywood money for making remakes/reboots/sequels and other "broken or sub-par" products.

I mean this sincerely: the reason we can't have nice things is because of stupid.




Last edited by GONNAFISTYA on 03-08-2013 08:34 AM, edited 1 time in total.
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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 08:05 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


MKJ wrote:
EA is refusing refunds now, for a product that doesn't work.
http://penny-arcade.com/report/editoria ... nd-refusin

Pretty sure that's against the consumer law, at least here in Euroland.


Well they're not really refusing them. Just banning your Origin account if you insist on getting your money back. You know, your account that holds more than just your Sim City gam... er, I mean license.
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GONNAFISTYA
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 08:06 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


obsidian wrote:
My hope is that this is the end of traditional video game publishing companies. With digital distribution, alternative solutions might prove more valuable: self publishing, crowd funding, etc.


Not a chance. Promoting a game costs as much as making it or distributing it and big publishers (from any media) have the funds. Digital distribution is nothing but pop-up ads in Steam or Origin or gaming-related websites and cannot touch television adverts, which reach the most people and have the biggest impact on product awareness.
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obsidian
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 09:47 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Hey no problem, dude.... stomp on my optimism with your big black boots of reality. It's not like I needed that last faintest glimmer of hope even though it may be placed in fantasy. :owned:



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GONNAFISTYA
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 09:53 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Sorry.

But yeah...the promotional part of creating and selling games and the increasing cost of doing it never gets mentioned with these "new-fangled business approaches".

In short: a game that costs $5 million to create at the developer level ultimately costs at least $15 million after all is said and done to get it into customer's hands....and I don't foresee anyone paying out of pocket to have someone else tell their friends that "GameX" is cool.
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obsidian
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 10:33 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Aren't you getting paid to tell us about how Watch_Dogs™ is cool? :)

(not really, but I reject your reality because mine is more lulzy)



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GONNAFISTYA
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 10:57 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I only do that for projects I believe in. I'm almost positive I never even mentioned WET when it was released...except to bash it.
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PostPosted: 03-08-2013 02:38 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


LOL



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