Bout time the simcity fans strike back!!

[TheJerseyDevil73 13]

This game is a sham. What a waste of $50 and the game takes up to much room in my house for what it is worth. I can not wait until Cities XL comes along.

I am one of the most loyal and proud fans of Sim City but Societies has abolished any further inclination of that.

[Red1530 1]

I think SimCity 4 fans will send a message to EA about our opinions about the the current state of the franchise by having Cities XL outselling the SimCity: Societies.

[Hahayoudied 3]

Actually, EA is never going to give a crap about us. The only way is to boycott EA game products and hit them hard in EA's checkbook.

[Deep Thought 0]

Okay, maybe SCS wasn't the best city builder ever made, but it wasn't just sugar cane lampposts. Societies introduced to me cryo prisons, holodecks, alien labs, genetic labs and crimedetecting AI. Hooray for Sci-Fi cities. There we're no highways, but it wasn't really needed. As long as you constantly plopped down subway stations, you didn't actually need roads. Pretty unrealistic, but a utopia for me, who hate cars.

[mrbombit 1]

One word MADDEN. EA doesnt need to make profit off other games. It has the number one selling piece of media of all time. Which comes out with a new version, that is bought right up, every year. Truly a cash cow.

They owe it to the gaming community to develop a new sim city that real fans will enjoy. They do not need to be driven by pure profits. As far as a business model goes one can look at their stock and see they need to do some long term adjusting of their model to sustain a market share outside of sport and movie games.

[Da-V-Man 1]

I have a feeling Cities XL will be a the true (and spiritual) successor to the simcity series. EA and Maxis now have The Sims series and now Spore to keep their coffers full. Oh well. Cities XL will continue where SC4 left off.

[Evillions 552]

Well its bussiness. Yes I know I'm angry but it is what it is. Plus the only thing that Maxis would do to improve simcity is more buildings, less repitive buildings, more styles, and anti grid buidlings and roads, and most of all Module zoos, parks, airports, seaports, you name it! And mrbombit is right about Madden, it's a ture cash planet (cow).

[mal7798 1]

Originally posted by: mrbombit One word MADDEN. EA doesnt need to make profit off other games. It has the number one selling piece of media of all time. Which comes out with a new version, that is bought right up, every year. Truly a cash cow.

They owe it to the gaming community to develop a new sim city that real fans will enjoy. They do not need to be driven by pure profits. As far as a business model goes one can look at their stock and see they need to do some long term adjusting of their model to sustain a market share outside of sport and movie games.quote>

 

That's interesting, because when I first read about SCS, I thought of Madden; not that it is EA's flagship (which it is), but with it they are constantly improving a game that works, giving their fans something that works, while SCS is a complete abandonment of something that worked for so long for a brand new game.  Imagine if EA released the next Madden as a soccer game.  It could be the most realistic, accurate, beautiful soccer game imaginable, but it's completely not what Madden fans would want.  They could rationalize it to the end of the world by asserting that soccer may be increasing in popularity, but the fans will not appreciate a different game.  But this is exactly what they did with the Sim City franchise.  SCS has much more impressive graphics than the previous game in the series, and it may be a decent, playable, and fun game, but the fans wanted the next generation of Sim City, not a new game altogether.  It's disappointing to be abandoned like this, so I am grateful for Monte Cristo's attempt to pick up the ball on this one.

[WC_EEND 9]

Originally posted by: Hahayoudied Actually, EA is never going to give a crap about us. The only way is to boycott EA game products and hit them hard in EA's checkbook.quote>

I totally agree with you, and can someone delete these spam posts? ~yup~

[darth irule 0]

EA is a very very bad company. the only reason why they are popular is becuase they are the only ones to make games in certain area. EX:sports simcity ect.

[ruennsheng 0]

Societies... I played it... but it just doesn't appeal to me like SimCity does.

I'd love to buy Sim Cities XL though.

[Hahayoudied 3]

You mean Cities XL.

[josefmayor 8]

EA has ruined every game they've ever taken over.

Anyone play Ultima Online pre-EA days? Best game ever. When EA Took over? WORST GAME EVER.

They are the worst game makers in non-sports related games.

[ratsportrm 0]

Had been lurking around this thread and just wanted to chime in with some quick thoughts.

I certainly sympathize with those who watched SC4 get followed up with SCS. What really seems to be the problem is that EA tried to make a SimCity that was more friendly to newcomers to the series, but then the problem was they made it _too_ easy.

I bought the SC Box to get SC4 and out of curiosity about SCS. After looking at the SCS manual, I doubt I'll ever try it because it just didn't look like fun, but I'm enjoying SC4 for the most part.

That being said, I can see why some newcomers to SC might seem turned off by SC4... the region concept is a good idea, but I wonder if some newcomers might feel overwhelmed by having to develop an entire region when they may prefer to just develop one city. Also, the new "wealth" system might be a bit complicated for some people, especially since it doesn't have much correlation with land value, and the land value concept might be easier for newcomers to understand how to control and manipulate.

I look at the Civilization series and each one has added complexity without being too overwhelming, at least IMO. Certain tactics players used in one Civ game didn't always work in the next game, but that's because developers want to force veteran players to concentrate on new strategies. But at the same time, the concepts each one introduced are easy enough for new players to understand without feeling overwhelmed.

Well, that's how I see it, YMMV. But that being said, whatever Cities XL ends up, I hope it's something that will satisfy both SC veterans and newcomers to city building games alike. Appealing to a core group is fine, but you also want to expand on it to ensure the most success with a game.

[ruennsheng 0]

So in the end... will EA buy Cities XL to maintain a monopoly on city-building games?

[Patricius Maximus 236]

I bought the SC Box to get SC4 and out of curiosity about SCS. After looking at the SCS manual, I doubt I'll ever try it because it just didn't look like fun, but I'm enjoying SC4 for the most part.quote>

In another thread, I said that the Box's only niche would be people like you -- who want to sample both games and pick the one they want.

I'm glad you're enjoying SC4.

[wozzar 154]

Originally posted by: deathtopumpkins Well, there have been countless petitions and letters to EA. I've signed 'em. I've sent 'em. Did it help? No. EA doesn't care about loyal fans anymore, because they know that they make all (or at least most) of their money off of people who see the game in the store and think "Ooh... that looks cool," but then bring it home and not have it work on their computer. EA doesn't care if we actually play it as long as we buy it! I bet most people here bought SCS when it came out to see how bad it was, even if they haven't played it since.

And anybody remember "You killed SimCity!"?

It's not really Will Wright's fault though. EA bought the rights to the whole sim franchise from him before even SC4. Look at the credits. The only time his name is listed is as "Special Thanks to Will Wright for making the original SimCity." Maxis still exists as an independent company though. Will Wright created Spore under it's name, EA's just the publisher.

~You will not be using this site as a platform for hate mail, no matter how angry you are at someone behind a silly video game.~

EDIT: What hate mail? I don't even remember what I said there, but I'm not typing any hate mail at anybody. That was not my intention.

As much as I hate to admit it, I think we should give up on the SC franchise, and just look forward to CXL. If Will Wright decided to make another city builder, it couldn't be branded as SC, since EA owns the franchise. Thus, any future games in the SC series will be produced by EA's Sims Division.quote>

I think we have gone past sending letters to EA. They have stopped listening a long time ago. And i do think EA has been punished by the community because of SCS. SCS was a failure and EA know this. And EA will be further punished when City XL comes out.

[wozzar 154]

Originally posted by: Ntq$310 mabey with the competion from citiesxl and the huge possiblity that that game is going to kill scs sales wise, EA may try to improve simcity to a point what we wanted it to be. But that's just being hopefullquote>

Forget it. It will be too late for EA to fix the game. They have lost there fan base and they will never get it back. MC will make sure of that.

[wozzar 154]

Originally posted by: ruennsheng So in the end... will EA buy Cities XL to maintain a monopoly on city-building games?quote>

I wouldnt put it past EA. There nose is really out of joint because they are not the biggest gaming company anymore. So they will be on the hunt to buy some one else. The only problem is no one wants to sell out to EA. EA tried to buy UBI and 2K but failed.

But i hope MC never sells out to EA because if that happens it is bye bye City XL.

[thepokemaniac 18]

Societies was a waste of my time. I think EA needs to come out with another game like SC4. Societies defeated the point of Sim City. Seriously, whats the fun of just getting a building because your 'Education Gets to 25!'? There is barely a challenge involved. Overall, it is a very bad game. Ihate how there is no zoning and all the buildings are just ploppables. I don't mean to get political here but, I also don't like the fact that all the power plants have BP on them( even the clean ones), when BP is one of the causes of green hose gasses! Will this be the end of quality city building as we know it?!? CITIES XL IS THE FUTURE

[Doofenshmirtz 0]

I hate the direction they're going in... but i doubt we've much influence amidst a world of gamers who want fast paced action packed games and not city simulations with realistic gameplay

[TekindusT 3,809]

Originally posted by: thepokemaniac

Societies was a waste of my time. I think EA needs to come out with another game like SC4. Societies defeated the point of Sim City. Seriously, whats the fun of just getting a building because your 'Education Gets to 25!'? There is barely a challenge involved. Overall, it is a very bad game. Ihate how there is no zoning and all the buildings are just ploppables. I don't mean to get political here but, I also don't like the fact that all the power plants have BP on them( even the clean ones), when BP is one of the causes of green hose gasses! Will this be the end of quality city building as we know it?!? CITIES XL IS THE FUTUREquote>

The answer is simple guys. When SC4 was released, we bought it as a city-building simulator. OK, this game was targeted to a small group of gamers, the ones who like good simulators. Now, when EA releases SCS thinks: "We needn't have to waste our time developing a better videogame than SC4 (it must be difficult) because if we develop a casual game, an easy game, a bunch of casual gamers will buy our SCS". It's simple.

¿Can you imagine how difficult could be SC4 for a casual gamer? I was overwhelmed when I started playing SC4 and I had played before with SC3000 so for a casual it must be a tough job.

Because there are much more casual gamers out there than gamers like us, who like realistic videogames like SC4 and before, SC3000. Add to this that casual gamers are much less selective about what they buy and they play and there is more chance for SCS to be chosen.

Simply money, like always happens.

[Patricius Maximus 236]

Yes, but even casual gamers and 13-year-olds, the people who others said would like it, even they don't like it. So, even if a game's target group doesn't like it, it's probably a bad game.

[Trinsan 0]

Looking at the amount of plopable buildings in SC4, where even airports and seaports are no longer zones, and looking at the amount of fixed graphics having been developed for SC4, I understand why EA took the SCS approach. SC4 is mostly plopable and hardly a development over the original game.

If anything, rci zoning should be expanded with educational zones, security zones, power zones etc for the game to evolve thse similarly to RCI rather than the player having to plop every building, which is true for both SC4 and SCS, albeit SCS being horribly less complex.

[Mystrelia 57]

I started playing SCS a good while after it came out because I read how disappointed SC fans were with it, so it didn't seem to me like it would be worth the initial $50 price, and that if I held out for a short while I could pick up a copy on the cheap. Ultimately that's exactly what I did: paid less than $10 for a used copy.

Don't hate me for this, but I actually do enjoy playing it. I don't enjoy it, though, in the same manner as I enjoy playing a good old-fashioned drag and zone SC game. I enjoy it for different reasons all together. It's cool being able to plop down all the buildings and decide exactly what I want to put where without worrying about a bunch of other stuff in a city building game like Sierra's City Building Series (which I also love and have played every one of them). It's also a lot of fun building up a city based on a particular ideal or mix of ideals. This makes each city that I build completely unique.

At the same time, SCS is not, by any stretch of the word, a SimCity game. At the very best it is a superbly souped up, revved up, more awesome model of SimTown, which I also absolutely loved years and years ago.

Ever since EA swallowed up Maxis, I have seen a recurring pattern. Maxis always listened to the fans and made improvements accordingly. EA actually does that a bit better than Maxis did. The problem is, EA seems not to have a clue most of the time which ideas the fans put out that the majority of the players will love to death. Sometimes they hit the nail on the head, but most of the time not. And at the very core of all their new ideas they seem to have one thing in mind, which is bringing in more players by changing things up a bit. After all, you can't expect players who don't like something about a previous game to buy the next installment if it doesn't change a few things at the core of gameplay.

I really think with SCS, EA listened all too much to the players who wanted to be able to build ploppable cities. Shoot, I have read countless posts on this very site by people who wanted to be able to plop buildings wherever they wanted to put them and build a city that way. Ironically, all they would have needed to do to deliver that simple feature would have been to build a SKURK tool for SC4.

But yeah, I know that if I had been as excited about SCS being released as so many avid SC players are, I also would have felt like SCS was a complete slap in the face. In the end, though, EA will only listen to the players so far, and then they decide what's best for their bottom line. I guess as long as it's making them money, it's good for them, but seriously, just how much money did they lose by turning SCS into a remake of SimTown instead of a remake of SimCity?

[chris0101 8]

Lets think about this for a moment:

1. Societies was a failure. End of discussion almost.

2. Other EA games have not been great. Look at the releases of Spore (too simplistic and overhyped), Sims 2 (too many stuff/expansion packs and Sims 3 is likely to go down the same path), Red Alert 3 (a game intended for kids or something; actually, I had gotten my hopes up with Command and Conquer 3, which was a pretty good game actually), along with their sports line, it really says a lot about their company.

3. EA has been in the news in the past for its poor treatment of workers and making them work excessive hours.

4. EA has only had a few successes such as Dead Space (2008).

5. EA has recently attempted a hostile takeover of Take Two. It has absorbed many companies into itself aggressively in the past, frequently transforming otherwise good titles into crappy successors.

6. EA uses DRM in almost all of its games. (I hear that the fans had to mass petition to get rid of the worst DRM on the Sims 3, but it still has DRM). It's DRM is largely ineffective (if not entirely so) against pirating.

7. Game quality is excessively simplistic by EA and often lacks depth.

8. Some games published under EA have good graphics and all, but are very buggy. (think Crysis - the quality of graphics is just one factor; another one that Crytek has been eager to avoid talking about is the poor quality of its code which is said to be very buggy and inefficient).

9. Like ExxonMobil, EA has attempted to edit sites like Wikipedia to improve its rather poor image.

Put this all together and what do you have? Well, this is a for-profit company, which in a capitalistic world is expected. However, the company does not care whether it loses its best fans in the process to get its profit margin up, how well it treats its workers, the fans, etc. Boycotting this company could prove hard, as the sheer number of games published means that the company effectively holds monopolies in many areas. We now have a coming trying to become the Microsoft of PC games. There are other companies like Stardock that do great stuff, but the question is how to stop a juggernaut like EA?

[speed12345 2]

when i got simcity society's at first it was fun but after 5 days i said this game is a piece of crap.

[punkologist4 2]

Originally posted by: Robstersfive

well i never buy EA games anymore, stopped buying need for speed as pro street demo was terrible, thankgod for codemasters grid, simcity will go the same way CitiesXL will distroy latest simcity. Really cant see EA repuation lasting long like this, they are killing to many franchises

C&C, Simcity, Need for Speed....im sure there more!!quote>

C&C is still good. I loved the last one. (c&c 3 that is not red alert)

[madman_564323 0]

Originally posted by: punkologist4

Originally posted by: Robstersfive

well i never buy EA games anymore, stopped buying need for speed as pro street demo was terrible, thankgod for codemasters grid, simcity will go the same way CitiesXL will distroy latest simcity. Really cant see EA repuation lasting long like this, they are killing to many franchises

C&C, Simcity, Need for Speed....im sure there more!!quote>

C&C is still good. I loved the last one. (c&c 3 that is not red alert)

quote>

True, C&C 3 was good, but that doesnt make up for Renegade and Generals.

[Cob92 360]

Originally posted by: madman_564323

Originally posted by: punkologist4

Originally posted by: Robstersfive

well i never buy EA games anymore, stopped buying need for speed as pro street demo was terrible, thankgod for codemasters grid, simcity will go the same way CitiesXL will distroy latest simcity. Really cant see EA repuation lasting long like this, they are killing to many franchises

C&C, Simcity, Need for Speed....im sure there more!!quote>

C&C is still good. I loved the last one. (c&c 3 that is not red alert)

quote>

True, C&C 3 was good, but that doesnt make up for Renegade and Generals.

quote>

C&C and Battlefield are the only EA games I still would buy. However, the last C&C game was mediocre in comparison to the ones before it, and EA seems to be using the SCS strategy on Battlefield, although at least Battlefield 3 is confirmed, whereas SC5 probably will never come.