This is an article I found: Paradox can do this the article has made it clear!
WHY CITIES: SKYLINES MIGHT SPAWN A COMPETITOR TO THE SIMS
Cast your minds back, dead readers, to the forlorn days of 2013. It was a time of elation – China was busy re-igniting the space race by landing its first rover on the moon – but also a time of darkness and fear. And I’m not talking about the complete shutdown of the entire US government. That year brought about one of the most tragic, and diabolical disappointments ever to hit the games industry.
The hype around the release of SimCity, the 2013 ‘reboot’ of the blockbuster city-building game was reaching fever pitch in the weeks leading up to release. Every teasing glimpse fuelled the fires of fandom, as the series’ first venture into the 3D realm looked set to send seismic shockwaves through the industry. Yet, upon release, people’s expectations began to topple faster than a skyscraper in a Godzilla movie.
The game was a complete and utter disaster. The map size was barely enough to house a hen coop, the AI was woefully erratic and unreliable, and the game was lacking in the deep complexity and detail which defined the series in the past. Of course, you could only experience these dire shortcomings if you actually found a way into the game itself. See, EA concluded that PC gamers were a bunch of dirty pirates who were hell-bent on illegally pirating games in order to circumnavigate the process of paying for them. So in order to combat this they decided to make SimCity always online.
A great idea, right? Being constantly connected to the World Wide Web, players could team up and help one another’s cities by sharing resources to further their expansion. Each ‘world space’ allowed for multiple cities to be established, all run by different players, and they could work together to build giant super-structures such as international airports to the benefit of all in the region. It sounded like a fantastic idea, bringing an element of co-operation to a previously singular experience. This was of course just the marketing spin churned out by EA to mask the anti-consumerism of their always-online DRM policy.
The result was a spectacular meltdown on release day. Servers were soon overwhelmed, with traffic numbers far exceeding those predicted by EA and Maxis, creating digital tailbacks longer than rush hour in Beijing. People were completely unable to play their newly purchased $60 title, and the issues extended into the weeks to follow. The backlash, as you can imagine, was extreme. Gamers felt victimised by EA’s antics, treated as criminals. The fallout no doubt brought about the closure of Maxis a few years later, and left the IP, and EA as a company, tarnished in the eyes of gamers the world over.
The city simulation genre looked doomed to languish in silence in the wake of
SimCity’s debacle. Thankfully, a small indie studio, by the name of Colossal Order, realised that there was a gaping city-sized hole in the industry just waiting to be filled by a full-flavoured city simulation game. The result was
Cities: Skylines. The game took the PC market by storm, succeeding in almost every way
SimCity failed: huge sprawling maps, not only-online, no DRM, only £30 in price, community modding and content actively promoted; it was a revelation in a genre previously squashed by greedy business practices.
Colossal Order pounced at a ripe opportunity, and have managed to capitalise on EA’s blunder, injecting some much needed competition into the genre. Competition is needed in all commercial fields, especially videogames, in order to foster innovation and high quality. Without it a genre can become stagnant, stuck in the same rut of rinse and repeat with minimal improvement. This is an issue which afflicts much of the industry, and especially EA. They hold commercial monopoly over the football, soccer and hockey sports franchises, and it’s resulting in a lack of new bright ideas and gameplay innovations. However, the company is still keeping fans of these genres happy. The games are still (generally speaking) of impeccable quality. The Sims franchise, on the other hand, is another story entirely.
The Sims is the bestselling PC series of all time, even surpassing
Myst. It has sold tens of millions of copies over the years since 2000, and has generated millions of dollars in profit. Strangely, there has never really been a direct competitor to
The Sims, even after sixteen years of existence. True, there have been attempts such as
Virtual Families, yet none have garnered the game mass-success that the Sims has. But this might soon change.
The Sims 4, the latest main iteration of the series, has been somewhat controversial among players and critics alike. While the game ushered in many improvements, such as a new game engine, improved emotional system, more believable Sims, deeper building tools; the game also cut out a lot of content which was present in previous base games. Swimming pools, cars, an open world, even toddlers were all missing from
The Sims 4 at launch, with many still absent. This is concerning. Sequels should improve upon their forebears and offer up more content, not cut some of the most fundamental and important aspects of the series.
It is painfully clear why this has happened. Since its inception,
The Sims revolved around the idea of offering players brand new content via paid expansion packs. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this practice. It keeps the game healthy and the fan base active well after the initial launch. Unfortunately, the omission of fundamental content in
The Sims 4 is down to the greedy practices of EA, and it is likely that many of these features will be added in later expansions, meaning that players will have to pay extra for what they once got as part of the base price. It’s unfair, and while the backlash has been in no way as extreme as with
SimCity, sales of the franchise have taken a substantial hit, as evidenced by the lack of official sales figures released by EA.
The community is beginning it to rather frosty, and thus there is a golden opportunity for a rival developer and publisher to combat the bloated, gangrenous beast The Sims has become. Taking a leaf out of Colossal Order’s book, someone has the chance to, not only make a mountain of cash, but also show up EA and The Sims Team.
By listening to the community, adding all the things EA wrenched out of The Sims 4, and providing new base game content such as weather without the need for countless expansions, a new lease of life can be injected into the genre. It will also, hopefully, force EA to respond in kind and give players the Sims game they truly deserve.
This is an article I found: Paradox can do this the article has made it clear!
WHY CITIES: SKYLINES MIGHT SPAWN A COMPETITOR TO THE SIMS
Cast your minds back, dead readers, to the forlorn days of 2013. It was a time of elation – China was busy re-igniting the space race by landing its first rover on the moon – but also a time of darkness and fear. And I’m not talking about the complete shutdown of the entire US government. That year brought about one of the most tragic, and diabolical disappointments ever to hit the games industry.
The hype around the release of SimCity, the 2013 ‘reboot’ of the blockbuster city-building game was reaching fever pitch in the weeks leading up to release. Every teasing glimpse fuelled the fires of fandom, as the series’ first venture into the 3D realm looked set to send seismic shockwaves through the industry. Yet, upon release, people’s expectations began to topple faster than a skyscraper in a Godzilla movie.
The game was a complete and utter disaster. The map size was barely enough to house a hen coop, the AI was woefully erratic and unreliable, and the game was lacking in the deep complexity and detail which defined the series in the past. Of course, you could only experience these dire shortcomings if you actually found a way into the game itself. See, EA concluded that PC gamers were a bunch of dirty pirates who were hell-bent on illegally pirating games in order to circumnavigate the process of paying for them. So in order to combat this they decided to make SimCity always online.
A great idea, right? Being constantly connected to the World Wide Web, players could team up and help one another’s cities by sharing resources to further their expansion. Each ‘world space’ allowed for multiple cities to be established, all run by different players, and they could work together to build giant super-structures such as international airports to the benefit of all in the region. It sounded like a fantastic idea, bringing an element of co-operation to a previously singular experience. This was of course just the marketing spin churned out by EA to mask the anti-consumerism of their always-online DRM policy.
The result was a spectacular meltdown on release day. Servers were soon overwhelmed, with traffic numbers far exceeding those predicted by EA and Maxis, creating digital tailbacks longer than rush hour in Beijing. People were completely unable to play their newly purchased $60 title, and the issues extended into the weeks to follow. The backlash, as you can imagine, was extreme. Gamers felt victimised by EA’s antics, treated as criminals. The fallout no doubt brought about the closure of Maxis a few years later, and left the IP, and EA as a company, tarnished in the eyes of gamers the world over.
The city simulation genre looked doomed to languish in silence in the wake of
SimCity’s debacle. Thankfully, a small indie studio, by the name of Colossal Order, realised that there was a gaping city-sized hole in the industry just waiting to be filled by a full-flavoured city simulation game. The result was
Cities: Skylines. The game took the PC market by storm, succeeding in almost every way
SimCity failed: huge sprawling maps, not only-online, no DRM, only £30 in price, community modding and content actively promoted; it was a revelation in a genre previously squashed by greedy business practices.
Colossal Order pounced at a ripe opportunity, and have managed to capitalise on EA’s blunder, injecting some much needed competition into the genre. Competition is needed in all commercial fields, especially videogames, in order to foster innovation and high quality. Without it a genre can become stagnant, stuck in the same rut of rinse and repeat with minimal improvement. This is an issue which afflicts much of the industry, and especially EA. They hold commercial monopoly over the football, soccer and hockey sports franchises, and it’s resulting in a lack of new bright ideas and gameplay innovations. However, the company is still keeping fans of these genres happy. The games are still (generally speaking) of impeccable quality. The Sims franchise, on the other hand, is another story entirely.
The Sims is the bestselling PC series of all time, even surpassing
Myst. It has sold tens of millions of copies over the years since 2000, and has generated millions of dollars in profit. Strangely, there has never really been a direct competitor to
The Sims, even after sixteen years of existence. True, there have been attempts such as
Virtual Families, yet none have garnered the game mass-success that the Sims has. But this might soon change.
The Sims 4, the latest main iteration of the series, has been somewhat controversial among players and critics alike. While the game ushered in many improvements, such as a new game engine, improved emotional system, more believable Sims, deeper building tools; the game also cut out a lot of content which was present in previous base games. Swimming pools, cars, an open world, even toddlers were all missing from
The Sims 4 at launch, with many still absent. This is concerning. Sequels should improve upon their forebears and offer up more content, not cut some of the most fundamental and important aspects of the series.
It is painfully clear why this has happened. Since its inception,
The Sims revolved around the idea of offering players brand new content via paid expansion packs. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this practice. It keeps the game healthy and the fan base active well after the initial launch. Unfortunately, the omission of fundamental content in
The Sims 4 is down to the greedy practices of EA, and it is likely that many of these features will be added in later expansions, meaning that players will have to pay extra for what they once got as part of the base price. It’s unfair, and while the backlash has been in no way as extreme as with
SimCity, sales of the franchise have taken a substantial hit, as evidenced by the lack of official sales figures released by EA.
The community is beginning it to rather frosty, and thus there is a golden opportunity for a rival developer and publisher to combat the bloated, gangrenous beast The Sims has become. Taking a leaf out of Colossal Order’s book, someone has the chance to, not only make a mountain of cash, but also show up EA and The Sims Team.
By listening to the community, adding all the things EA wrenched out of The Sims 4, and providing new base game content such as weather without the need for countless expansions, a new lease of life can be injected into the genre. It will also, hopefully, force EA to respond in kind and give players the Sims game they truly deserve.
The 10 biggest problems with The Sims 4
Gamecentral
As EA consolidate The Sims creators Maxis under their mobile label, a reader details her grievances with the Sims 4.
‘If Sims 4 doesn’t sell there won’t be a Sims 5’
– SimGuru Grant (aka producer Grant Rodiek)
That was the ultimatum given to the community in the first few days post release. Just after a year later let’s look at why there was criticism around The Sims 4, and why there continues to be.
1. Before launch there were controversies around The Sims 4
Earlier in 2014, a former EA employee who worked on The Sims 4 came out to discuss the creation of The Sims 4 as an online game project named ‘Olympus’ which was worked on from 2008-2012. Not only were there Q&a from this former staff member, there were screenshots and a concept video. All which match the ‘look’ of the The Sims 4 we see today very closely. Once the ‘leak’ was identified Electronic Arts quickly moved to stem the news. However, some community news outlets managed to keep track of the news and preserved this exchange for future reference.
25,000 simmers to delay the game
During production SimGuru Grant stated that the game would have all existing life stages as seen in The Sims 3, but just a month before release the development team announced that they had cut some major features from development in The Sims 4. The biggest feature cut was the toddler life stage, which has been a fundamental game staple since The Sims 2 and the inception of generational play in the The Sims franchise. There was a petition signed by 25,000 simmers to delay the game because of these issues.
However after the initial announcements of pools, ghosts and two extra careers to placate the community, the developers then zipped their lips in regards to toddlers. The thread ‘EA/Maxis Silence on Family play and Family players’ began in November 2014. It was written purely as a reminder to the team of how important this issue was to many. As I write this the thread is at 965 pages, 19.3K comments and 348.8K views. Despite this there has been no official word if thousands of requests for a finished base will ever materialise. We have also seen talk of how limiting the new technology is since release directly from developers, which contradicts the earlier statements.
2. The ‘Vision’
Since release this has often been used to explain away questions. However, this new ‘vision’ has never been shared with the customers. If you want to make fundamentally changes to a sequel then you need to be honest and let people know what your vision is. A vision should be able to inspire people to get behind you if it is wonderful. A vague vision is not enough to explain away criticism and resolve problems all by itself.
3. Giving funds from The Sims to Titanfall and other titles
Funds from The Sims were funnelled into Titanfall and Battlefield. Fair enough, however it is very unfair to then claim poverty and give customers of The Sims an inferior product. Developers have often claimed staples of predecessors are too expensive with their current budget.
4. ‘A truly stable base game’
Producers Graham Nardone and Ryan Vaughan both made assertions that The Sims 4 is a truly stable base game. There were so many cuts made that the stability was supposed to be the trade-off. Yet the game has been riddled with bugs since the day of release. Below are a few examples or the more serious bugs.
One major issue that has been brought to EA’s attention for months was the incest bug, which is an unacceptable bug for a Teen-rated game. This bug causes related sims to form romantic interests with their children and other relatives. This is a game-breaking issue for many players.
Culling is another issue that has been widely reported since release. Culling happens when the population of the town reaches 180 sims. At that point, the game deletes extra sims, even sims that your sims have formed relationships with and procreated with. Until recently, the development team has said this is ‘working as intended’. Now, however, they claim they are looking into fixing it. The problem has always been that the game generates sims each time you travel through a loading screen and you reach the 180 sim limit relatively quickly if you are anything other than a hermit. Players who modify the game have created mods to bypass or eliminate the 180 sim limit.
5. ‘We are listening’
This is the statement from the company to customers. However some have concerns whether this is completely accurate. With each interview given by the development team and senior figures at EA sometimes their answers show the complete opposite.
Peter Moore, COO at EA, recently
came out to say, when asked where everything is in Sims 4, that customers ‘forget’ that it takes years to get all the ‘stuff’ for Sims games, and that now they have expansions everything is starting to feel good. That simmers are ‘a hardcore bunch’, adding to finish ‘toddlers and pools – look at the furore that was’. Well, Mr Moore, you may find it is not a ‘was’ but very much an active request within the community.
Another example of this was Rachel Franklin’s assertion in the
Metro that removing Toddlers was the best decision she could of made for the game to date. When you have customers giving you the benefit of the doubt over a feature like that, the last thing you do is make it sound like you are trivialising their valid complaints.
6. It goes far beyond ‘just’ toddlers, Create a Style or the myriad of other missing content
Toddlers have become a symbol of something bigger. The way EA released the base unfinished, and appears to believe that the bare bones base is worth the AAA price tag on the game, is a huge issue. There has been no mitigation of the problems with a smaller price tag.
I have seen players amongst the community suggest that if this game had been marketed at a cheaper price or even as a ‘side’ game that they wouldn’t have been so frustrated by the apparent lack of action or slow progress towards finishing the base. What I mean by this is the staples seen in the game for the past 5-14 years. These include toddlers, terrain tools, and Create a Style – there was a
list of 82 features cut from development which includes no expansion pack content.
It has been suggested that some of the ‘new’ game features in the expansion packs were worked on pre-release. An example being
Windenburg. This is the new European-themed world about to be released with the expansion pack, The Sims 4: Get Together. The artwork for this was found in the game files
pre-release.
There is a precedent for cheaper sims games as side games – many sims fans have owned and played the console versions, or limited versions like The Sims Life Stories. The difference is with a Sims PC sequel indicated by the ‘4’ in the title it is advertising it to stand beside its predecessors in depth and content.
7. Simulation
The Sims series has made much technological advancement throughout the past 15 years, though The Sims 4 seems to have taken steps backwards or completely removed these. This is a game that is supposed to be a life simulation, yet it hardly has any simulations occurring within. The bustling neighbourhoods are an illusion and players that play with more than one family can easily find their immersion broken.
In the past, the simulation aspect has always recognised when sims should be at work or school and kept them from populating the background. That doesn’t happen in The Sims 4. You will likely see kids wandering the neighbourhood during school hours.
The simulation is also lacking in sim-to-sim interactions. Their reactions to everything are the same no matter what. Their traits don’t make them unique. Sims that are supposed to be ‘sloppy’ clean just like all the others, completely unprompted. Beyond idle animations, they’re all the same, which means that the game lacks depth.
8. ‘Modder friendly’
Player made mods have to be updated with each game patch. There have been sometimes twice monthly patches. For any player that uses those mods, they have to wait for the mod update or they risk corrupting their save file. This has put a lot of pressure on modders and some have given up and left the community.
In past titles in the ‘The Sims’ series, modders have fixed the game-breaking bugs that EA and Maxis continuously ignored. Without mods, some versions of the game would be completely unplayable. EA and Maxis have relied on the modding community to fix the game and now they seem to be packing up. How that will affect the game is yet to be determined.
9. All customers who give you feedback should be appreciated
Many of the people asking for better have been loyal to the series for up to 15 years. It is disingenuous to suggest they do not know their own minds or what to expect. Without the success of the predecessors fuelled by all your customers the chances are The Sims 4 would not have existed.
10. The legacy of SimCity 2013
Many of the fans of The Sims were also fans of SimCity. After the way this was handled -excuses which were proven to be wrong, blaming the customers and assertions that the game was ‘great’ despite the criticism – is very reminiscent of what is happening around The Sims 4. The forums and elsewhere on social media almost mirror what is going on now.
We all watched EA shut down SimCity 2013 with no warning, shutter Emeryville and hand developers their redundancy papers without even announcing to the fans what was going on. This is why customers are so passionate to ‘fight’ for their beloved Sims game – because as of now there isn’t any competition in the life simulation genre.
In the end EA and Maxis will do as they will. They will likely follow their same MO of silence, feigned ignorance, and unmitigated enthusiasm while complaints continue. People will reach over their own tolerance levels of hope for the future and slip away, and some customers who enjoy the game will, hopefully, do so for years to come.
However, by ignoring the issues they are letting themselves down most of all. Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson’s promise of ‘Player First’ will be seen as nothing but hot air by more and more customers, and these customers will continue discussing the poor reputation EA have. Eventually, even the biggest companies must realise that feedback comes from those who care and you can’t buy that sort of loyalty. Once it’s gone it is very hard to recapture.
It like for example developer only making arcade fantasy genres and a new developer comes on the scene to bring realism into the game! They will be skepticism all these negative feedback but with research you know it will succeed because others have done it!