EA Admits SimCity Could Have Run Offline | Hacker News Reader

EA Admits SimCity Could Have Run Offline

forbes.com

26 pointsCub39 comments

Maxis, not EA. And this isn't "admits it could have run offline" but "tells us they changed conceptual direction from single player to multiplayer at the design stage".

Why is this on HN?

Except that it's already been modded and aside from being unable to save (for obvious reasons), it works fine offline.

It doesn't, because in order to min/max your city (and when it gets down to it, this is essentially the point of the game), you need to trade with neighboring cities, otherwise you're limited by what your (arbitrarily small) city can provide.

It's a broken game design in single player because it is based around a multiplayer requirement. In terms of being able to play offline, you would need something to simulate cities from other players.

Not that it isn't easily fixable if EA wanted to, but it's not exactly playable as designed when offline.

I was merely speaking from the "we perform special calculations on the server" excuse. As you note, that's a design limitation, and also something that could be (and I thought was in progress of being) modded.

>Why is this on HN?

Because it is in our industry - and people on HN often follow all aspects of issues and stories related to our industry.

(Our industry being high-tech and computers in general - get the fark off your "only-hacker"-related-news-that-exactly-matches-my-ego-should-actually-be-posted-here horse)

Dude, dont be that way. You could have made your counter-argument without the nastiness.

How is stating that one is on a high-horse nasty?

Too often, people say "why is this on HN" without actually thinking about how some of the stories and information may actually be of interest to people of this community.

Further, it appears that such statements are more often coming from a sense of superiority and its really annoying.

Old news is so exciting! (And, yes, two days in this day and age is an eternity as far as the news cycle is concerned)

http://www.ea.com/news/simcity-update-straight-answers-from-...

"The game we didn't envision, design and build, the game that doesn't exist, could have run offline"

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