SimCity Update: Straight Answers from Lucy | Hacker News Reader

SimCity Update: Straight Answers from Lucy

ea.com

50 pointsdanso64 comments

This was dreadful and embarrassing to read through. Zero new information, no apologies, just dodging.

> You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available to you anywhere.

"Anywhere" there's an internet connection, "anytime" their servers are up.

You want to claim its an MMO? You want to claim game-as-a-service? Fine. But sell it as that, charge me $15 a month for an ephemeral product. Not $60 for something I can't even use on my own time.

edit: The point of the last statement isn't to compare it to an MMO, the point is that EA are not upfront about the odds of the game itself being very ephemeral. I'm not sad I can't buy it for $15. I'm sad that its quite possible in just 2 years time that no one can.

If they charged you $15 per month, they'd have to refund you for the fact it's been down a significant portion of the month; I mean, can you imagine the shitshow if WoW were down for a week and Blizzard just kept charging people (and gave no credit)?

This way they can pretend they aren't just taking your money and completely failing to deliver a viable product on the timing promised.

Funny you should mention WoW: its launch was arguably much worse than SimCity's, lasting far longer (it took a good month or two to settle down). If you do a search for "wow launch disaster" or "wow launch 2004", you'll find a number of message boards with the same type of anger and frustration demonstrated with the SimCity launch.

And they did that not only charging full retail price, but a $15/month subscription fee. Of course, "first month free" is the standard practice in the MMORPG market, allowing for some leeway, but they did give a few days credit here and there.

Blizzard, however, did have a fair amount of social capital that EA may not have and got through it moving into 2005. Social media wasn't anything near it is today, either: no Reddit, no Hacker News, no Twitter, and Facebook was just getting off the ground being open to colleges only.

You are going to compare a launch 9 years ago to what is acceptable today? Besides, the whole point of WoW was that it wasn't going to be single-player. Sims could avoid the server meltdowns by having a single player mode.

Where did I comment on or compare the acceptability of either? GGP mentioned the hypothetical outrage that would occur if WoW was unavailable for a week: well, surprise, it actually did fail, repeatedly, and not just for a week—but for weeks on end—during its launch. And just like SimCity, there was a large amount of justified outrage. It's simply historical context: we don't need to imagine the so-called "shitshow" because it actually happened.

Guild Wars 2 sells an actual MMO as a one-time fee, and they're doing just swell. I've heard most people claim that as one of its benefits, not a downside. Not sure what that means, just wanted to point out that people often do enjoy single-fee game-as-a-services.

Also, when you say "$60 for something I can't even use on my own time" are you claiming that the game doesn't even work, as all of the hyped up gaming articles are claiming? I've been watching someone stream the game for the past week and a half, and he's been doing just fine, playing consistently for about 8 hours a day, each day since the release. So, sure, there are some problems with it, but it's not like the game is so horribly broken that you can't use it.

Guild Wars 2 fan here.

It's worth noting that GW2 has a substantial amount of non-trivial in-game purchases to subsidize the persistent costs of maintaining the servers in lieu of an online fee, and some game design is specifically tailored to provide incentives for players to make these purchases.

That is a good point. I've avoided it, so I forgot that it can be a large part of the game.

However, one could argue that Maxis will likely be releasing DLC/Expansion packs for Sim City (seeing as they've done this for every other Sim game they've made) so those can be a substitute for the online fee as well. I guess time will tell.

They were planning to (there's already lots of stuff in the Collector's Edition that's also available as DLC). But they were planning to do that with Spore too, and that didn't turn out so well.

"It works for this one guy I know" is not really data.

I think the real problem, though, is that EA has been treating this as a boxed product launch, not a service, and then acting shocked when they have service-type problems. If they had really treated it as a service, internally, they would have done things that might have prevented this, like doing a soft-launch, actual beta stress testing, having transparently scalable servers, etc.

I think it is data. People are claiming that the game _does not work_, so if it's working for somebody, then the servers must be doing something. People are claiming that the servers have literally been down for the past week and a half, when this is simply not true. I'll agree that it hasn't been the smoothest of gameplay all the time, but it's not as extreme as some people are claiming it is.

I agree with all your other points though.

It is data, you're right. It's anecdotal evidence, and should only be used as a burden of proof if there is no other substantial evidence.

Tell me, If I go to the SimCity forums will I see hundreds of people complaining about a game that doesn't work? If I go to YouTube will I see videos of buggy behavior and reviewers irate about the state of the game?

That too, is anecdotal evidence. But, since you're only worried about data, I guess the larger amount wins out. So, clearly, the data indicates the game has issues.

Again, I'm not saying "the game is working fine", I'm saying "I know that the servers are not completely shut down because there is at least one person who is able to play consistently". I agree, the game has issues (of which some have been sorta resolved), just not as serious as some people are claiming.

Well if "it works for this one guy" counts as data I'll add "it simply doesn't work for this guy." Well, didn't anyways.

For about a week, the game simply wouldn't connect to varying degrees. The really frustrating thing was "connecting" happens like 5 times before you actually get to game play which means you can fail at the launch screen, the play button in the second launch screen, or the "claim city" button in create a city mode. It also just might die mid game or your city might be "corrupted" and become unplayed (happened to me). If you're unfortunate enough to have this happen and need to switch "servers" you not only lose your city (it's tied to the other server) but you also have to play or at least start and exit the tutorial. Which btw, introduces a few other points of "unable to connect" possibilities.

I've spent more time trying to get past each of these connection barriers than I have playing the game.

That's a really big problem

Guild Wars 2 is a game that was designed from the beginning to be a cooperative, online experience, though. SimCity is an iteration on a previously offline design, with no marketing or design data shared with those looking to buy the game to indicate that it's an entirely different game (to justify online-only) than the previous SimCity games. There's also a big difference between a game where all of the computation takes place on the gameservers and a game where you simply replicate your state up to the server. I think that we're at a point in technology where the public, at least core gamers, understand the difference and can make judgment about this themselves without relying on marketing material or other-party commentary.

Edit: For example, there is similar drama* regarding Diablo 2 to Diablo 3 and StarCraft to StarCraft 2 given the former games had offline+LAN support and the latter require a persistent online connection. Guild Wars required a persistent online connection, so Guild Wars 2 requiring the same thing was practically a given.

[*] I can elaborate on this, if you'd like.

I'll agree that EA did a terrible job of explaining to people why the new game was different than the old ones (i.e. why it might require always-online). I think the key point comes from this (taken from the OP):

> Players who want to reach the peak of each specialization can count on surrounding cities to provide services or resources, even workers. As other players build, your city can draw on their resources.

What some people may not realize is that the cities in this new game are pitifully small (probably so that a computer can handle trying to update 20k sims at a time), so in order to actually do anything of significance, you usually have to draw from surrounding cities for materials, people, etc. This is the part of the game that requires online-only, because unless you want to be simulating all of the cities in your region (which I'm assuming you don't, but I don't really know whether the computation costs would be that high), you need some sort of server to handle that for you.

People claim that they came out with an "offline patch" that allows you to play offline, and while that is true, you then miss out on all the city-sharing features, and thus your cities end up crappy, because it is impossible to manage all the resources within a single city.

I'm not saying that what EA/Maxis is doing is necessary, but people seem to be missing that this is the main reason that the cities are always online, not just for the city saving features or anything.

Also, I do know about the StarCraft to StarCraft 2 drama, and from what I can tell, people don't really care any more, and people have gotten over the fact that they need internet to play their game. Sure, sometimes the internet drops in the middle of a tournament, and people get riled up about it again, but it seems to have died down very much since the launch.

> What some people may not realize is that the cities in this new game are pitifully small (probably so that a computer can handle trying to update 20k sims at a time), so in order to actually do anything of significance, you usually have to draw from surrounding cities for materials, people, etc. This is the part of the game that requires online-only, because unless you want to be simulating all of the cities in your region (which I'm assuming you don't, but I don't really know whether the computation costs would be that high), you need some sort of server to handle that for you.

I don't think anyone is debating this. What people are upset about is that Maxis seems to be making the argument that introducing such a mechanic was done for the "vision" of the game. Perhaps they are genuine. But if they are, it leads one to question what exactly their vision was focused on.

>But if they are, it leads one to question what exactly their vision was focused on.

I think it's pretty clear that their vision is focused on the "social" aspects, and with that comes the idea of having all of your friends build a single small city in your region, and you all interact with each other and stuff. I've seen some examples of this happening, it looks pretty fun. I'm sure people would like the option to build single huge cities, but Sim City 3 still works just fine for that.

> I don't think anyone is debating this.

Have you been reading the same news that I have? I hear a lot of people complaining that the servers are basically doing nothing but saving cities to the cloud, so everything should be able to be run client side, and either don't realize or refuse to acknowledge that the servers might be doing other things/useful. I dunno. Maybe things will clear up in the next week or so, when server issues will hopefully get better, and we can stop having front page posts about a company who doesn't know how to scale an online game.

Do you honestly believe that the primary motivation for this evolution to SimCityVille has anything to do with how much fun the new version is?

Moreover, the game is so unintuitive at a mechanical level such that you can build a successful city of 200k+ sims with only residential zoning.

dye44 on twitch.tv has a map of 1.1 Million sims on a res only map. It seems likely he can go much higher then that.

He also has a map that has a 'taxi-splosion' one taxi spawns hundreds of taxi's until all the streets are deadlocked with taxi's. He has to log off and back on for the map to work again.

Lastly are the insane, inane, and wacky workarounds he does to have a playable game. EA got too ambitious and couldn't manage all the WTF's they have made with the new engine.

Your point makes no sense. If they charged you a monthly amount, you'd be ok with it?

They did say it would be online-only long before launch, so anyone who paid for it knew what they were getting in to.

Yeah that doesn't make much sense, because most MMO's are going to run you at least $50 initially, and then you pay the monthly fee in addition. I highly doubt that's what anyone would want at least with the game in its current form -- it'd need regular content updates, which I'm not even sure if they could add anything else of substantive value to a game like SimCity.

I actually don't understand why they would release a statement like this. It does nothing but stoke the flames.

EA should clean house on their PR team. What disastrous responses. To starting this post with, "I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity," is so gross, self congratulatory, and not contrite. That plus doubling down on the dishonesty instead of really offering straight answers is just going to fuel the fires.

> "I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity,"

I really cannot believe they actually started the post with that line. The very reason they are in this PR nightmare is because people have been unable to play the game.

Too soon Lucy, too soon!

They might as well have said "we can't hear your complaints over the sound of money rolling in".

"Oozing high fructose corn syrup" is what first came to my mind when I read that.

There's a subtle piece here that a lot of folks are missing: it's not just EA, but also Maxis, independently responding to the community. Maxis being the developer, EA being the publisher. That's why part of this is a shitstorm, Maxis and EA are sharing contrary words with the community, so the community sees double-speak and stops trusting anything from EA or Maxis.

Because Maxis is a wholly owned subsidiary, I assume what is said by Lucy Bradshaw is actually filter and vetted, if not scripted, by EA corporate PR. If not, shame on Lucy for being so tin eared. If so, shame on Lucy for letting it happen.

There is no Maxis, only EA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxis#Acquisition_by_EA

Relevant: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-bosss-str...

Compares her current 'straight answers' with previous statements from Lucy (and other EA reps) along with the truth. She doesn't do too great.

> We even check to make sure that all the cities saved are legit, so that the region play, leaderboards, challenges and achievements rewards and status have integrity.

Wait, didn't someone demonstrate that a modified client can edit the region as well as their own cities? There's obviously no sanity checking going on with the data the clients return, much less server-side simulation.

Despite harsh words from players and critics alike, EA has stayed true to their guiding principle: "No refunds".

Almost: http://consumerist.com/2013/03/12/using-the-eecb-gets-me-a-s...

Still no answer to the important question, "When will you turn off the servers and what happens then?"

Or why they were unprepared for the launch demand.

Or why it took so long to scale up to manage the "unexpected" demand.

After reading the RPS link[1] posted here[2], it seems to me that the multiplayer-is-required aspect probably was bolted on towards the end of development. While this doesn't preclude the possibility of fully preparing their servers for the launch, it does hint that a lack of direction could have led to confusion and/or a lack of planning for these issues. (Though this is really just shooting in the dark because we can only go on what public statements they make)

[1] http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-bosss-str... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5384314

They've been making a lot of public statements about how the simulation works and their plans over the course of development (For example: [1]). Most of it nitty-gritty stuff has been in industry conferences and publications, but there is a fair amount of information out there. Probably not enough to absolutely pin down their mistakes, but there is some information.

[1] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/164870/gdc_2012_breaking_...

If they consider this "Straight Answers" their disconnect from reality explains why they thought an always online Sim City was a good idea.

This week many of the stability issues were mitigated, and I began to enjoy my game. To be honest, while I didn't ask for the multiplayer features, they were a bonus when they worked. I could even ignore the DRM if the game worked.

But posts such as this can only make my blood boil. What I read is neither "straight" in a sense of honesty nor an "answer" of any sort to the downtime/mismanagement they've done.

Shame on you, Lucy. The next time you want to lie, at least don't claim it's "straight". Only there won't be a next time.

I feel as though I just read the political equivalent of watching paint dry, atrocious. No apologies, no explanations, just justification and dodging the real issues. They could have made it all somewhat right by coming out and admitting they made bad choices, instead we get dribble about how they've always had an always online vision, etc.

How about we get some questions about the horrible path-finding AI and what they plan on doing about it?

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-update-8

Their research for the vision they have developed for the new SimCity had quite a different result from the basic Facebook poll I did earlier this week amongst my friends.

Self-selected responders replied to my post asking if they were interested in playing the new game as SP, MP or both, along with how many have purchased and how many would like to or will.

Of sixty responses, two chose MP only. Fifty-three both SP & MP(including sandbox option I hadn't initially mentioned), and five SP only. Three had purchased the game, all wanting refunds because a lack of SP and server issues (which had to do with their own connection issue in one case).

Over fifty had played one of the previous versions of SimCity. Almost none now wanted to buy/license this version, because of the issues, connectivity, and lack of SP gameplay.

Granted it was a small sample, not scientifically done, and self-selecting responders, but I very much doubt the sincerity of EA's reply that the "vision" they have developed for this new version is based on actual user feedback, or the users are an EA selected group designed to give that them the response they want.

I strongly feel that EA suffers from a big company, we-are-never-wrong syndrome, and instead of a sincere apology, the fans get PR copy

" We recognize that there are fans – people who love the original SimCity – who want [single player experience]. "

I suspect those people far outnumber those who want a messy online experience

> I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity,

All 12 of you who can actually play

> but I’d like to offer some straight answers on the topic: Always-Connected and why SimCity is not an offline experience.

I'm going to spend exactly one word answering this question.

> Always-Connected is a big change from SimCities of the past.

We at Maxis used to care about our customers, games, and integrity

> It didn’t come down as an order from corporate and it isn’t a clandestine strategy to control players.

We don't care about controlling you, any more than we care about whether or not you have any fun. We just want to make more money. But we noticed we were making less money than we predicted, then found out that you're mad, so here comes the best rationalization we could come up with on short notice.

> It’s fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity.

Making more money

> From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.

We took a look at Zynga, and they seemed to be making money at the time.

> We put a ton of effort into making our simulation and graphics engines more detailed than ever and to give players lively and responsive cities.

Here's a completely irrelevant anecdote to butter you up before we lie to you again.

> We also made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation into the cloud to support region play and social features. Here’s just a few:

Again, by innovative, we mean for our bottom line.

> We keep the simulation state of the region up to date for all players. Even when playing solo, this keeps the interactions between cities up to date in a shared view of the world.

We don't know how to design distributed systems.

Our engineers told us there was no technical excuse we could hide behind, so we altered the game mechanics instead.

> Our Great Works rely on contributions from multiple cities in a region. Connected services keep each player’s contributions updated and the progression on Great Works moving ahead.

We know we could have built a game with mechanics that work offline, but then we wouldn't have much to hide behind, would we?

> All of our social world features - world challenges, world events, world leaderboards and world achievements - use our servers to update the status of all cities.

We thought of calling it SimCityVille, but that just didn't have the same ring to it.

> Our servers handle gifts between players. We’ve created a dynamic supply and demand model for trading by keeping a Global Market updated with changing demands on key resources. We update each city’s visual representation as well. If you visit another player’s city, you’ll see the most up to date visual status.

Here are some more examples of "features" we came up with that are plausibly related to a game about simulating a city. We know they're a stretch, but we've already used up all the good ones.

> We even check to make sure that all the cities saved are legit, so that the region play, leaderboards, challenges and achievements rewards and status have integrity.

We might lack integrity, but we'll be damned if we let you.

> Cloud-based saves and easy access from any computer are another advantage of our connected features. You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available to you anywhere.

Thin, we know, but this was the least contrived use case we could come up with to justify removing your ability to save.

> Almost all of our players play with connected cities. But some chose to play alone – running the cities themselves. But whether they play solo or multiplayer, they are drawn to the connected city experience.

Altering the game mechanics to support our business needs appears to have successfully influenced their behavior.

> And Always-Connected provides a platform for future social features that will play out over regions and servers. The game we launched is only the beginning for us – it’s not final and it never will be.

Until we decide to sunset the game.

> In many ways, we built an MMO.

We heard those make more money.

> So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes.

Remember, by subset we mean subset of the things important to us, not you.

> But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision. We did not focus on the “single city in isolation” that we have delivered in past SimCities. We recognize that there are fans – people who love the original SimCity – who want that. But we’re also hearing from thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality.

We get that you don't like it. But we don't really care.

> The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology.

We did our best to maintain a superficial resemblance to the game you knew and loved. Hopefully this will fool a few people who have been living under a rock into purchasing it.

> So I’ll finish with another HUGE thanks to everyone who stuck with us through this launch. Hundreds of thousands are building and sharing cities online now. And what you’re creating just blows us away. SimCity is a special game, with a very special community of players, and we’re proud to be a part of it.

Thank you for playing SimCity. Remember, it's not your game, it's ours.

PS We're not sorry we lied

You should slap this into a nicely formatted HTML page and put it up on "honestmaxis.com" (or something less susceptible to a lawsuit).

In the best case someone at Maxis reads it and gets a clue (sadly unlikely). In the worst case it puts a smile on the face of every Sim City player who stumbles over it.

Either way, thanks from me, I enjoyed this translation.

Thanks! I'm glad I could make you laugh. I'm not that great at html but I do know markdown, so... here you go: http://straighteranswers.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws....

whenever gandi gets around to it, http://straighteranswers.com will point there too

Awesome!

>> From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world. >We took a look at Zynga, and they seemed to be making money at the time.

Sounds so true that I almost spat out my drink.

The sad thing is, Zynga knows how to run a game as a service. They have the engineering down to a science, and a launch like this would never happen for them. For starters, they would have done continuous internal beta testing, had a soft launch that would have caught these issues, and have actually engineered their cloud servers to scale, rather than act like individual WOW shards. Actual WOW shards are run across on multiple scalable servers, I should add. Blizzard also knows what they are doing.

> We thought of calling it SimCityVille, but that just didn't have the same ring to it.

Amusingly, EA also has SimCity Social, a Facebook game, launched last June. It doesn't have server problems.

>PS We're not sorry we lied

Now you are a bit unfair to her! There is no place where she ever said or wrote such a thing like that she would be sorry!

I think what they actually meant was: 'answers straight from Lucy'.

Hah, I doubt they didn't spin and edit it first, so probably the title should be just "answers", with the quotation marks even.

Previously I had implemented a project that needed to be always-connected, and in order to take network outage into account, we would write to a buffer (a sqlite database actually) if we couldn't detect network. We will sync with server once online and sync the related information as necessary. Simcity can use similar technique because I don't see there is any hard real-time interactions between players or the server. In offline mode, the simulation will run with a default parameter set, or the data from the previous sync, until the next sync happens. In fact, my gut feeling tells me the simulation engine should have an offline switch to let it run stand-alone, or else it would be hell to debug a system that keeps on changing states.

So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision.

Hindsight is 20/20 indeed.

Heck, they could still do it easily. The game periodically does make encrypted/obfuscated local 'saves' which are automatically deleted over time.

If a release group (against all odds) beats them to it then all the better.

Summary:

If you're still thinking of buying SimCity, don't, we're not going to change a thing. To those of you who bought it already, thanks for your money.

Could the hacker news post title at the least remove the word "straight"?

This is actually a better point than you might think, because the state of game journalism means that most journalists and reviewers are both overworked and dependent on publishers, and this the publisher's spin doctoring. Many have just reposted the press releases without context or commentary.

Here's what EA really means by 'straight answers'

  I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity, but I’d like to offer
  some straight answers on the topic: Always-Connected and why SimCity is not
  an offline experience.

We're super pretentious!

  Always-Connected is a big change from SimCities of the past.  It didn’t
  come down as an order from corporate and it isn’t a clandestine strategy to
  control players.  It’s fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity.
  From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind –
  using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to
  create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a
  global, ever-changing, social world.

Which not many SimCity fans actually care about! Of course it didn't come down from corporate, it came from General Managers like you! That isn't corporate...no!

  We put a ton of effort into making our simulation and graphics engines more
  detailed than ever and to give players lively and responsive cities. We
  also made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation into
  the cloud to support region play and social features. Here.s just a few:

Let me just insert arbitrary features we had 'envisioned' and reinforce the idea that this isn't DRM right here.

  Cloud-based saves and easy access from any computer are another advantage
  of our connected features. You can pop from work to home, play the game and
  have your cities available to you anywhere.

Guess what, Lucy? Steam Cloud provides the exact same thing and not all of them involve DRM. -shock-

  Almost all of our players play with connected cities. But some chose to
  play alone . running the cities themselves.   But whether they play solo or
  multiplayer, they are drawn to the connected city experience. And
  Always-Connected provides a platform for future social features that will
  play out over regions and servers.

Let me be pretty clear about what SimCity was and always has been. The basement dweller's dream of creating the life and the feel that they were never able to partake in. Social? You're out of your brains...

  The game we launched is only the beginning for us – it’s not final
  and it never will be.  In many ways, we built an MMO.

No. No you did not. You marketed it as a once off game to buy and play. MMO's have a very distinct feel about when they're released. They have alpha and beta releases, news releases all up until 'official' launch date. You had an official launch date. You failed. This is not an MMO. Please don't try to spin the wording.

  So, could we have built a subset offline mode?  Yes.  But we rejected that
  idea because it didn't fit with our vision.  We did not focus on the
  'single city in isolation' that we have delivered in past SimCities.  We
  recognize that there are fans - people who love the original SimCity - who
  want that.  But we.re also hearing from thousands of people who are playing
  across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected
  functionality.   The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its
  heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology.

Really? Where have you heard these reports from? Please, do tell.

  So I'll finish with another HUGE thanks to everyone who stuck with us
  through this launch.  Hundreds of thousands are building and sharing cities
  online now.  And what you.re creating just blows us away.  SimCity is a
  special game, with a very special community of players, and we're proud to
  be a part of it.

'Please be kindly understanding in our most insincere apologies as we give out some lame excuses and reiterate that this was all part of the plan.'

And as one commenter said on the article:

  With all due respect, to write an article about why the new SimCity has to
  be always online and not to mention DRM or the anti-piracy measure even
  once, is dishonest and down right disrespectful.

Fuck you Lucy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com