Did SC2013 kill off SIMCITY?

[Essex 322]

With all the problems, revised reviews and refunds demanded. Does this kill off any future SIMCITY?

 

Has a stigma been created around the franchise that cannot be fixed?

EA is getting punished for it's deeds, but so are we.

[Sunfighter 186]

With all the problems, revised reviews and refunds demanded. Does this kill off any future SIMCITY?

 

Has a stigma been created around the franchise that cannot be fixed?

EA gets punished for it's deeds, but so are we.

 

Depends how much people enjoy it once they get the servers to actually work reliably. The few hours ive gotten tonight..i dunno..I fairly enjoy the game..but its not a creative sandbox toy anymore for sure..its more of a...i dunno what..ant farm?

 

Tonight I spent a while watching a garbage truck go around trying to figure out the traffic AI, because I have an area of the city..with 1 traffic intersection light...yet a back up every day at 5pm that goes the length of the entire map almost

 

Edit: See...look at that traffic jam...what the heck is going on there lol. The only traffic light is that section just before the bridge. The traffic then loops around the entire island...ending at that bridge just behind the Oil HQ. I cant figure out how one traffic light does that..its almost like the agent system suffers from a herding instinct.

 

[cirugo 1,889]

I don't think so but hopefully it may have dealt a very serious blow to always-online DRM

[snick25 384]

That depends. After the servers are fixed, how will people react? Will they remember the inconvenience, incompetence, and outright absurdity of launch day? Or will the game's supposed virtues be able to win enough people (and reviewers) over to save some face?

 

In any case, there's no doubt in my mind that this game, as much of a trainwreck as it is, was still a financial success for EA. In the end, it doesn't really matter what the consumer thinks about the product, as it's already been sold. Of course, then the question is, does the consumer have a good enough memory to avoid making the same mistake again and purchasing from the same company?

 

Bottom line, this was likely a financial victory and PR disaster for EA. What comes next for the franchise itself, only time can tell.

[Hamish 1,369]

If simcity was going to die, then this game, no matter how it turned out, would be the one to do it.

I don't think it will though.

Its only been a couple of days. There have been server issues, but these will be gone very soon. The reviews were intially good, but have only been reduced because of launch problems.

Give it a few months, I'm sure by then we can say if it was sucessful or not.

[AIX 270]

EA has offered a chance to get refunds. I recommend that anyone who feels angry enough to request a refund and consider re-purchasing in the future once issues are resolved. If EA refuses to make good on its offer, dispute the charge on your bank cards.

 

edit: spelling and grammar.

[packersfan 666]

So much hype for this game and so much negativity. Piss off a hardcore community of fans and your flaws will be mercilessly exposed. Send out a game with even more fundamental flaws that make the game unplayable for even the casual gamer, you've got a ton of trouble.

[VazFox 48]

With all the problems, revised reviews and refunds demanded. Does this kill off any future SIMCITY?

 

Has a stigma been created around the franchise that cannot be fixed?

EA gets punished for it's deeds, but so are we.

 

Depends how much people enjoy it once they get the servers to actually work reliably. The few hours ive gotten tonight..i dunno..I fairly enjoy the game..but its not a creative sandbox toy anymore for sure..its more of a...i dunno what..ant farm?

 

Tonight I spent a while watching a garbage truck go around trying to figure out the traffic AI, because I have an area of the city..with 1 traffic intersection light...yet a back up every day at 5pm that goes the length of the entire map almost

 

Edit: See...look at that traffic jam...what the heck is going on there lol. The only traffic light is that section just before the bridge. The traffic then loops around the entire island...ending at that bridge just behind the Oil HQ. I cant figure out how one traffic light does that..its almost like the agent system suffers from a herding instinct.

 

That screenshot there just sums up a huge example of what bothers me the most about the new game here.. Just in that small spot you have 96,000 people... but yet its a really small city in realistic terms, but yet there are skyscrappers everywhere.... It's horrendously unrealistic... I mean i know you cant be super realistic in SimCity 4 (though some people have with mods of course) but you can make some pretty damn good looking cities, And I love that in SC4... I mean that city there is about the size of my old town (in literal size, not population) and that town had 15,000 people living there. Milwaukee has almsot 2,000,000 people living there and has lest skyscrappers.. It just... gah... painfully bothers me.. mainly why im going back to SC4... 

[Sunfighter 186]

Yea, I understand, I hate the city sizes too. I hope once things get worked out, they can increase the size. They are afraid to though, because then people might find out that population number is inflated due to the small sizes and the scaling is laughable..... That city says it has 96K, but in reality..there are only 21K being simulated via agents..the rest is just a fake number added into the buildings.

 

It also will make you feel worse to know that more than half that map is water..and as you can see almost one entire island is industrial. This is a stand alone city (I have neighbors, but they are empty mayor towns, they cant play server issues). So its full of services, R,C, and I..and has no additional demand being met elseware...if it was, i could easily get at least 300K on that basically 1x1km map

[elektrichead22 10]

ea bought the rights to the name and lucy bradshaw( who is a hottie) but will wright has been a consultant at most since sc2.  A new $20 game will pop up on steam that will take the city simulator scene by storm but it is apparent that with ea at the helm the brand that we knew is over..... I mean come on it is human nature to destroy and to have more than 4 people agree to not make chaos in a region for a set amount of time is just plain stupid!!!! I mean even as a 30 yo male I will admit i play the sims and the first thing I do is check to see if there are any new ways to kill my sims.... god i miss the reindeer from the sims 2

[PsiBorg6 3]

This whole thing is reminding me of the release of Civilization V. It was released to tremendous backlash, especially from online fans. Even now, after a couple of years and an expansion pack, there is still a regulalrly updated Civ V rants thread sitting in the top 20 threads on CivFanatics. Civilization V was divisive to say the least, and time has solidified that division, not weakened it.

 

I feel the same will happen here. The server problems will get fixed, updates and/or expansions will add things we want (bigger cities and so on, perhaps offline play), but it will still be divisive. There will still be a large number of people who see SimCity 2013 as a scab on the franchise along with Societies, and that SimCity 4 was definitive (which it is IMHO).

 

I for one, have not played it yet (hoping to tonight once Amazon have delivered it), so I can't comment on the game itself, it's just that the trend is very familiar with what happened in the Civilization community.

 

I for one hated Civilization 5 by the way, and Gods & Kings did little to improve it for me, and I'm back on Civilization 4 and its' many, many great mods. However, there are a lot of people who love Civilization 5 and I expect in a couple of years, the trend will be very similar for SimCity 2013 and SimCity 4.

 

JM2C

 

Oh, and hello by the way!

[shorty2 94]

Hopefully the anger will be directed towards EA and not Maxis, which seems generally to be the case at the moment. You know the peeps at Maxis would probably love to put out a wicked game but they're being ball strangled by the iron fist of EA.

[Essex 322]

This whole thing is reminding me of the release of Civilization V. It was released to tremendous backlash, especially from online fans. Even now, after a couple of years and an expansion pack, there is still a regulalrly updated Civ V rants thread sitting in the top 20 threads on CivFanatics. Civilization V was divisive to say the least, and time has solidified that division, not weakened it.

 

I feel the same will happen here. The server problems will get fixed, updates and/or expansions will add things we want (bigger cities and so on, perhaps offline play), but it will still be divisive. There will still be a large number of people who see SimCity 2013 as a scab on the franchise along with Societies, and that SimCity 4 was definitive (which it is IMHO).

 

I for one, have not played it yet (hoping to tonight once Amazon have delivered it), so I can't comment on the game itself, it's just that the trend is very familiar with what happened in the Civilization community.

 

I for one hated Civilization 5 by the way, and Gods & Kings did little to improve it for me, and I'm back on Civilization 4 and its' many, many great mods. However, there are a lot of people who love Civilization 5 and I expect in a couple of years, the trend will be very similar for SimCity 2013 and SimCity 4.

 

JM2C

 

Oh, and hello by the way!

 

I really appreciate your comment, this is also how I feel but the DRM issue won't make me buy the new one. Also, Civ5 is definitely not as good as Civ4 even tho I thought it was until I caught myself getting bored with it very quickly and going back to Civ4 or SC4.

[GenXisT 127]

I don't think so.  Not at all, actually.  If anything, this is a lesson for Maxim to "always listen to your fanbase."

It was stated to them early on that they were making some drastic errors.  But they paid no attention.  Now this is the result.

We may not be game designers, but we know how to play.  And playing is much more dynamic than designing, if you can grasp what I'm saying.

 

I was playing again last night and rinsed about 4 hours.  Finally started to get loads of people in my town, some high rises etc.

For the mistakes that have been made and the items omitted (farms!!!!), it's still Sim City.  It really is.

And it really is GORGEOUS.  When you zoom down close to street level, you can get a better scope of how big the tile is.  It's no where the size of SC4, and the roads are really big which takes up too much space, but it's still fairly decent size. I can't be too critical of that.  I still find myself scrolling all over the place looking for problems or what have you.

 

I've also realized that there are ways you can limit the growth of the city, if you're going for that and don't just want skyscrapers all over.  Just don't update the road.

While that's lame and pretty obvious, it has to be what they were going for.  You can still get really nice looking "suburban" areas and not have them overrun with high-rise apts or other big buildings.

 

If you are a fan of the franchise, you will stick through this.  It was a debacle, no doubt about it.  But just like cities, game development doesn't exist  in a vacuum.

They will make patches, they will offer DLC. Things will get better.  I know that i won't stop playing this because it's just too damn addicting, despite the flaws.

This game really is fun.  I'm happy to wait.  Wish I didn't have to, but nothing is perfect.  (And no, i'm NOT defending EA or Maxis for the poor showing, just so we're all clear)

[metarvo 710]

I would answer this question with a resounding "yes."  EA's being downright adversarial about this whole thing IMHO.  Of course, there was all the tension over the beta.  In addition, I read elsewhere that they're acting really funny about people uploading SC4 videos to Youtube.  I've also heard that SimCity 1 (SNES) has been removed from the Wii Virtual Console.  Did Nintendo choose to do this, or did EA force them to?  Is EA afraid of any SimCity game that might be better than SC 2013, ranging from Classic all the way up to SC4?  It looks to me like they're trying to remove all traces of the prior SC games.  If so, that's bad, bad, bad IMHO.

 

[Randall_Lind 19]

The anger should be held on both. Why should Maxis get a free ride? They were the cheerleaders for the pass month, Maxis is no long the Maixs of Will Wright. This is like Apple without Steve Jobs yea they may make some money but, not the same.

[sstorebo 8]

Altough i like the game, it feesl to much simplifield. I got to play a couple of hours last night and it didn't have the same feeling as SC4, it just felt strange in a way.

 

The game isn't bad, but the small city size definitly bothers me.

 

 

After playing Cities XL 12/13 for a while with all the details you can put into that game, like one laned roads for example, i was really looking forward to this. And their large maps feels more real in a way. I could create a suburb, and have the industries far away from the cities, with train tracks and motorway inbetween. In this game i soon realized that puttin in a train system on the outskirts of my city became impossible, cause of the small size, if you hadn't planned ahead.

 

The population also always complained and said that the needed trains.....TRAIN for a 1 x 1 km city...are they mad!

 

And i don't think they haved killed it off yet, but feels more like simcity, the sims eidition.

[nats 99]

It's certainly one of the biggest factors in putting me off buying the new game. I wasnt keen to begin with due to all the obvious concens, then I got a bit caught up with the hype and expectations and preordered, then I thought better of it and cancelled it. And now I am .. meh! No way. Constant online DRM = no sale for me. The server issues seen here have only strengthened my resolve never to buy a constant connection game.

 

Yes we very rarely see a new Simcity game come out and that was what caught me up the most plus the developers dedication. But recently we have seen some terrible remakes Civ 5, Simcity, XCOM - its as if nobody can actually design decent games anymore. Its as if all these developers are just following the numbers and expecting to create a fantastic game

 

Better graphics and fancy blur - check

DRM - check

Microsales - check

Frenetic action - check

Very difficult to get anywhere without buying addons - check

Notional multiplayer provision - check

Back hander to the review mags - check

 

Games used to be about passion for quality and varied gameplay above anything else, not any more though. Thank god we have some developers who are actually still producing brilliant games, but EA definitely isnt one of them.

[Tameron 8]

With all the problems, revised reviews and refunds demanded. Does this kill off any future SIMCITY?

 

Has a stigma been created around the franchise that cannot be fixed?

EA gets punished for it's deeds, but so are we.

 

Depends how much people enjoy it once they get the servers to actually work reliably. The few hours ive gotten tonight..i dunno..I fairly enjoy the game..but its not a creative sandbox toy anymore for sure..its more of a...i dunno what..ant farm?

 

Tonight I spent a while watching a garbage truck go around trying to figure out the traffic AI, because I have an area of the city..with 1 traffic intersection light...yet a back up every day at 5pm that goes the length of the entire map almost

 

Edit: See...look at that traffic jam...what the heck is going on there lol. The only traffic light is that section just before the bridge. The traffic then loops around the entire island...ending at that bridge just behind the Oil HQ. I cant figure out how one traffic light does that..its almost like the agent system suffers from a herding instinct.

 

 

Maybe it's because there's only one road leading to the other part of your city? I may be wrong, but it looks like there's only one avenue going around the island and it's the only viable option for transportation, so it causes traffic jams.

[metarvo 710]

And i don't think they haved killed it off yet, but feels more like simcity, the sims eidition.

 

I was actually playing SC Classic SNES the other day in honor of EA trying to start over with SimCity, and I saw a disturbing prophecy in that game.  In a fully developed city without any parks or gifts, the Land Value map resembles a lime green diamond.  Now, what do we know of pertaining to EA these days that looks like that?

 

SimCity (and any other game) is for the players.  Without players, no games would be sold, unless people were just collecting them or something.  As a result, said developers would be bankrupt, and you know what happens when you go bankrupt in SimCity.

[Dirktator 2,311]

This whole thing is reminding me of the release of Civilization V. It was released to tremendous backlash, especially from online fans. Even now, after a couple of years and an expansion pack, there is still a regulalrly updated Civ V rants thread sitting in the top 20 threads on CivFanatics. Civilization V was divisive to say the least, and time has solidified that division, not weakened it.

 

I feel the same will happen here. The server problems will get fixed, updates and/or expansions will add things we want (bigger cities and so on, perhaps offline play), but it will still be divisive. There will still be a large number of people who see SimCity 2013 as a scab on the franchise along with Societies, and that SimCity 4 was definitive (which it is IMHO).

 

I for one, have not played it yet (hoping to tonight once Amazon have delivered it), so I can't comment on the game itself, it's just that the trend is very familiar with what happened in the Civilization community.

 

I for one hated Civilization 5 by the way, and Gods & Kings did little to improve it for me, and I'm back on Civilization 4 and its' many, many great mods. However, there are a lot of people who love Civilization 5 and I expect in a couple of years, the trend will be very similar for SimCity 2013 and SimCity 4.

 

JM2C

 

Oh, and hello by the way!

 

I'd agree with this comparison. As a long-time Civ 3 and 4 player, I loved the improvements of Civ 5 in (on paper), like 1 unit per tile, hex grids, etc. But over all, in execution, once played, the game design (not only the aesthetics) had changed so much that - for me - it went too far from the original mechanic that I found it difficult to enjoy like I once did previous versions.

 

I think SC2013 will sit on that fence between players for a long while much like Civ 5 still does, and that's even after a major expansion like Gods & Kings.

 

There's a lot I do like about the new SimCity, so what makes this a little different from the Civ 5 situation is that the original team from Maxis will continue to mold and "improve" on the title, whereas in Civ 5, the lead designer reins got handed off I think a couple of times.  I  believe Maxis knows what should be at the core of SimCity, and they've mostly captured it -- server issues aside.

 

If they can work on that underlying technology, improve realism as mentioned above (96k pop with a NYC skyline?), give us more space to play in on a per city basis (sorry, it doesn't feel intimate, it feels limited), solve or remove the server DRM mess (a punitive measure for your most loyal fans), and there's a good chance this could be a real gem of a game one day.

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

This whole thing is reminding me of the release of Civilization V. It was released to tremendous backlash, especially from online fans. Even now, after a couple of years and an expansion pack, there is still a regulalrly updated Civ V rants thread sitting in the top 20 threads on CivFanatics. Civilization V was divisive to say the least, and time has solidified that division, not weakened it.

 

I feel the same will happen here. The server problems will get fixed, updates and/or expansions will add things we want (bigger cities and so on, perhaps offline play), but it will still be divisive. There will still be a large number of people who see SimCity 2013 as a scab on the franchise along with Societies, and that SimCity 4 was definitive (which it is IMHO).

 

I for one, have not played it yet (hoping to tonight once Amazon have delivered it), so I can't comment on the game itself, it's just that the trend is very familiar with what happened in the Civilization community.

 

I for one hated Civilization 5 by the way, and Gods & Kings did little to improve it for me, and I'm back on Civilization 4 and its' many, many great mods. However, there are a lot of people who love Civilization 5 and I expect in a couple of years, the trend will be very similar for SimCity 2013 and SimCity 4.

 

JM2C

 

Oh, and hello by the way!

 

I'd agree with this comparison. As a long-time Civ 3 and 4 player, I loved the improvements of Civ 5 in (on paper), like 1 unit per tile, hex grids, etc. But over all, in execution, once played, the game design (not only the aesthetics) had changed so much that - for me - it went too far from the original mechanic that I found it difficult to enjoy like I once did previous versions.

 

I think SC2013 will sit on that fence between players for a long while much like Civ 5 still does, and that's even after a major expansion like Gods & Kings.

 

There's a lot I do like about the new SimCity, so what makes this a little different from the Civ 5 situation is that the original team from Maxis will continue to mold and "improve" on the title, whereas in Civ 5, the lead designer reins got handed off I think a couple of times.  I  believe Maxis knows what should be at the core of SimCity, and they've mostly captured it -- server issues aside.

 

If they can work on that underlying technology, improve realism as mentioned above (96k pop with a NYC skyline?), give us more space to play in on a per city basis (sorry, it doesn't feel intimate, it feels limited), solve or remove the server DRM mess (a punitive measure for your most loyal fans), and there's a good chance this could be a real gem of a game one day.

Good post I agree, they made some bad choices, focusing on each sim is a waste of time and resources, we need bigger spaces and mopre realistic control over regions. Each villiage has 1 road coming into it, how is that realistic, and the player cannot change it as regions are prebuilt. Really poor decisions.

[PsiBorg6 3]

There's a lot I do like about the new SimCity, so what makes this a little different from the Civ 5 situation is that the original team from Maxis will continue to mold and "improve" on the title, whereas in Civ 5, the lead designer reins got handed off I think a couple of times.  I  believe Maxis knows what should be at the core of SimCity, and they've mostly captured it -- server issues aside.

 

Agreed, and I think that's the main difference between the two. Maxis do know what should make SimCity a great game and (again, not played it yet) the underlying game mechanics should be sound. Fixing bugs, tweaking the formulas and adding features to a sound game foundation will improve it much more than what is arguably the flawed foundation of Civ 5, which kind of lost the message of being a 'civilization' builder as opposed to the rather ropey war game it has actually become.

[Cobraroll 138]

I think that while the flaws in the game might be fixed eventually, it will take something akin to a miracle to get the average user ratings back up on the game review sites. With a score of 1.6/100 at MetaCritic, the average is set so low that even a massive surge of good reviews will barely put the number back in double digits. Those 1000 one-star ratings on Amazon won't be outnumbered any time soon either, even if the flaws are fixed. The game will forever be blemished by the terrible condition it was in during its most critical period - game release. After all, people and journalists are more likely to review games when they are released, not many months (and patches) later. It will definitely get its maximum attention and press coverage during its first few days/weeks on the market.

 

Also, wherever SimCity2013 is talked about around the Net, the draconian DRM is bound to be mentioned. What's worse, wherever draconian DRM is discussed, people will use SimCity as an example. I'm not that into the history of games, but I'm pretty sure SimCity2013 is the biggest release-screw-up ever by EA. Until they manage to fail even bigger on an even more high-profiled game, SimCity will stand as EA's shining example of a game done wrong. The game will be linked to failure for quite some time. Even better, the game actually got pretty good reviews as long as it worked. SimCity isn't that bad as a game, but it's a terrible product. A decent game, wrapped in crappy DRM and inconvenient Online solutions it clearly never needed in the first place. The SimCity series enjoys status as a great way to kill time, for example while travelling. It was remembered for being games to spend an afternoon on, gradually improving your city until everything went well or you got tired. You could even unleash disasters on your city to the point of total destruction, then quit without saving so no lasting harm was done. SimCity2013 changed and removed those aspects of the series, and in such a way it completely broke the game. People will remember that. It's clear to everybody who pays attention that the changes EA brought to the series, and the way they presented the game, both was uncalled for and screwed up the release. And as we know from earlier SimCity games, it didn't have to be that way. It will be remembered as a bookmark example of unnecessary corporate design decisions screwing up what would otherwise be a rather good game.

 

Not to mention how it affected those gamers who didn't buy it. Those of you who never played Diablo 3, or even saw somebody play it, you still have some vague connotations when you hear the name, right? Would you say those are positive? Myself, I'm not even sure if I can explain what the Diablo series is all about, and I don't have the slightest clue on its gameplay, but I sure remember how terribly bad it launched, as well as the debate it sparked on always-online DRM. I never played it, but I still have memories of it. And those are not good. I wonder how many people are in the same situation about SimCity nowadays. You don't have to spend many minutes on a game news site to form an opinion on it, even if you never plan to play it.

 

TL;DR: I think SimCity2013 showed players that those games can be awfully fun, if handled otherwise than EA did. I'd say the SimCity series won't suffer because of it, instead EA will have to take most of the blow.

[GirlsDeadMonster 17]

It may not kill off Simcity but it will definately be in intensive care and need rehab for a while to get back on its collective feet. From the limited play time I've had I can say that yes it has nice graphics but I really loved the terraforming and I miss that. I love to create my own valleys and mountains and rivers. City sizes are small and even if I was able to control my region, which I couldn't, I can't have one city depend on the other for fire or police. These would need to be in every city. It just doesn't make much sense to me. They took a great game and made it impossible to play and enjoy.

[GenXisT 127]

It may not kill off Simcity but it will definately be in intensive care and need rehab for a while to get back on its collective feet. From the limited play time I've had I can say that yes it has nice graphics but I really loved the terraforming and I miss that. I love to create my own valleys and mountains and rivers. City sizes are small and even if I was able to control my region, which I couldn't, I can't have one city depend on the other for fire or police. These would need to be in every city. It just doesn't make much sense to me. They took a great game and made it impossible to play and enjoy.

 

To that point, people would spend hours and hours or even days, weeks just on terraforming, before dropping a single bit of functionality in a city.

Why take this out of the game?

[arcology 224]

With all the problems, revised reviews and refunds demanded. Does this kill off any future SIMCITY?

 

Has a stigma been created around the franchise that cannot be fixed?

EA is getting punished for it's deeds, but so are we.

 

 

I don't think it will ever be the end of this series.  There are too many fans, as evidenced by the longevity of SC4, without any help from EA.  You probably are already aware of so many city building startups, even one on this site. 

[Sunfighter 186]

It may not kill off Simcity but it will definately be in intensive care and need rehab for a while to get back on its collective feet. From the limited play time I've had I can say that yes it has nice graphics but I really loved the terraforming and I miss that. I love to create my own valleys and mountains and rivers. City sizes are small and even if I was able to control my region, which I couldn't, I can't have one city depend on the other for fire or police. These would need to be in every city. It just doesn't make much sense to me. They took a great game and made it impossible to play and enjoy.

 

To that point, people would spend hours and hours or even days, weeks just on terraforming, before dropping a single bit of functionality in a city.

Why take this out of the game?

 

You never realize how important terraforming was till you find yourself one pixel short of adding an addition to your water plant, meanwhile your city is screaming for water..and you realize you have to spend a ton of money destroying and moving your water plant to plop it down on top of your skyscrapers because you have no more room anywhere, spend the money to rebuild said water plant, and all its additions again.......and ALL BECAUSE YOU CANT RAISE ONE PIXEL LAND.

[shorty2 94]

I think most people understand that this is primarily the fault of EA and not of Maxis, so I think there is room for a better version to be released in a few years. The guys at Maxis just need to make it clear to EA, right now, that this is what happens when you make the money and anti-piracy component more important than the actual game itself. They need to grow some balls and just make it clear.. "listen you suit wearing potato gamer CEO, we can make an awesome game, that will make a profit too.. but not if you're squeezing our nuts with your iron fist of corporate nonsense!".

 

If they polished the game and spent more time refining things they could produce an absolutely stunning game. But they need to nail the gameplay first and foremost. If it takes twice as long to develop, so be it. If you make a game that has amazing gameplay people will buy it and play it for years to come. It works out better in the long run. Instead EA is only interested in reaping short term profits.. they are why corporations suck.. stupid CEO's and suit wearing idiots who don't know the first thing about the industry they're involved in.. just interested in turning profits in any way possible.

 

Perhaps they should wait a few more years now so that "dad's PC" has at least 8gb of RAM and a top notch graphics card anyway.. it would give them time to make an awesome game instead of a half baked product.

[zorkman 25]

If anything, in the short term the failure of this game will reignite interest in SC4 (It has done for me) and even Cities XL, so that must be positive. Longer term, who knows. Hopefully,  a modern city builder will be made by someone, without the online all the time part that is.