Further evidence that SimCity has been designed for games who don't want to be able to fail.

[mcallisterw 41]

The following quote:

 

An early version of the SimCity power station, for example, featured multiple add-ons and a variety of upgrades that performed in various ways, but the designers discovered that it was possible to upgrade the station in such a way as to break it, causing it to overheat or explode.

 

 

from this article http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/29/4161422/simcity-pedestrians-teleport

 

I don't want to obsess over the details of it, as though I really want to be able to micromanage my power station. It's the reason they gave as to why they simplified this that bothers me. It seems to suggest that the possibility of being able to do something incorrectly is seen as a negative feature of a game.

 

[Ardandy 28]

The game is designed for people, not just hard core SC4 fans.

[Turjan 1,048]

The game is designed for people, not just hard core SC4 fans.

 

So, SC4 fans are not people? What do you think they are then?

[CocoJones 7]

So, SC4 fans are not people? What do you think they are then?

 

Abberations, genetic misfits... mutant and proud! 

In a way it's our (the gamers) own fault. In the early games of the 70s and 80s you had perma-death. You died, you started the game from the beginning.

Casual gamers complained because it was too frustrating so they introduced check points and save games. They complained that it was too difficult, so they introduced difficulty levels.

They complained they kept getting stuck at puzzles they couldn't figure out in less than 5 min so they dumbed them down or left them out entirely. This list goes on and on.

 

Of course if you keep catering to the lowest common denominator, you'll end up making games for toddlers...welcome to Sim Kindergarten

[perafilozof 143]

You can't make a profit by limiting your market.

 

If any developer and publisher tried to make a game that would be a fit for a single type of players that are only a small % of the market they would surely go out of business. 

 

I consider my self a hardcore gamer, and someone who enjoys a challenge but I could never be ok with having to do something in games over and over and over again, because I would make 1 mistake in a 1000 actions required to go to the "next level". The fact that games are based on math introduces most often a 0 % tolerance for mistakes. I am just a humble human being.

[CocoJones 7]

I'm not saying I want games to go back 40 years, I'm just explaining why they get dumbed down so much. Back then they didn't have a choice seeing there were no hard drives or even diskettes to save game progress. The problem is they're going too far in trying to please the masses to get as much money out of us. If you make a game where you click a few times, draw a few roads and then watch a video of the simulation for half an hour it might be interesting and fun, but in no way challenging. (okay I'm exaggerating now but it's just to make a point)

The further you take this, the less of the original game concept will remain and you might as well call it something else (which of course they don't because a well-known name sells better).

[Midyin 0]

They should add more complex features, but have a way to turn them on and off, so people that want the game to be more complicated, allow you to micro manage more stuff, and be harder can have what they want, and the people that enjoy the simpler verson of the game can keep playing their way...

Everyone wins the elietest get bragging rights, and the simple get a simple city builder..

[mcallisterw 41]

Sure there are games that are so esoteric in what you have to do to succeed at a particular task that you give up, but the whole point of a game is that there is some legitimate challenge. I'm not saying SimCity2013 poses no challenge whatsoever but I was a little worried by the suggestion that the reason for removing something from the game was that it was possible to get it wrong.

[Griffon 19]

I remember that video where the city "blows a fuse" and completely goes out of power when he added the hotels to the casino, I was kinda wondering what happened to that

 

I like the idea of a hard mode for SimCity, basically adding more concepts that make the game harder (like the city blowing a fuse) and also add extra achievements for the hard mode for bragging rights (I usually don't stop playing a game until I get all the achievements or just get tired of it)

 

speaking of achievements I think they should carry over on all the servers because I play on a lot of servers and every time I join a new server I unlock all the easy achievements again and if I want certain disasters I must unlock them again 

[Turjan 1,048]

You can't make a profit by limiting your market.

 

If any developer and publisher tried to make a game that would be a fit for a single type of players that are only a small % of the market they would surely go out of business.

 

That's not really true. What you describe is the conundrum of the AAA game market, where hundreds of people work on one game, which means immense costs that need huge sales figures of more than 5 million games (Square Enix seems to be the last company to have run into that trap) to just break even. On the other end is the indie market. Just look at Notch. 4 people working on the game (actually less, but I counted the composer), 10 million copies sold on PC alone (more than 20 million counting ports). Of course, not everyone can be a Notch, but there are enough people living off their niche games. Let's see how the Kickstarter games turn out. There's also some market in between, with less fanciful graphics and less people working on it, which means they need lower sales figures.

 

So, no, the sentence you wrote there describes the dead end the big game companies seem to march into. There's the real fear that, by making a game suit everyone, it will in the end suit no one.

[Sunfighter 186]

Make a good game and the market comes to you.

[Panos 29]

Not true. 

 

A niche game it will not sell. It might sell to the hardcore people, but not enough to justify the investment. 

 

I know people who play the latest SC and never touch SC4. And they say is fun. 

 

That people want from a game. FUN. That EA/MAXIS etc sell. A simple wrapped Sim City without 100000000000 options. But complicated enough to the people who want to delve deeper. 

 

But not for the little % of the extreme hard cores, who will bash it. Because their sale market is tiny fraction that don't bother them. 

[AshTym 31]

Not true. 

 

A niche game it will not sell. It might sell to the hardcore people, but not enough to justify the investment. 

 

Not true. See Kerbal Space Program as an example.

[Srafty 7]

its a city builder, taking away the possibility of making bad choices that may lead to disasters was silly.... City builders should have real depth, those "people" as you call them would still have fun playing, but those "fans" would love it even more.

 

This is just another quick push thru game; that is, get the game out asap to help our shares afloat... thats the main issue with games for the past 5 years, companys simply dont have the time (money) to make them to standards, they are only just managing to keep their shares up... Tbh i see a window here for an unknown company to step up and make a real city builder... a true pitty XL never did fix that performance issue or equilibrium problem.

[johndoh4 13]

You can't make a profit by limiting your market.

 

If any developer and publisher tried to make a game that would be a fit for a single type of players that are only a small % of the market they would surely go out of business.

 

That's not really true. What you describe is the conundrum of the AAA game market, where hundreds of people work on one game, which means immense costs that need huge sales figures of more than 5 million games (Square Enix seems to be the last company to have run into that trap) to just break even. On the other end is the indie market. Just look at Notch. 4 people working on the game (actually less, but I counted the composer), 10 million copies sold on PC alone (more than 20 million counting ports). Of course, not everyone can be a Notch, but there are enough people living off their niche games. Let's see how the Kickstarter games turn out. There's also some market in between, with less fanciful graphics and less people working on it, which means they need lower sales figures.

 

So, no, the sentence you wrote there describes the dead end the big game companies seem to march into. There's the real fear that, by making a game suit everyone, it will in the end suit no one.

 

 

I think this is a theory that the Video Game Industry (mainly the big players) have not grasped yet. There are real proven examples of this though, it's not a crackpot concept.

[hondaciv 5]

Not true. 

 

A niche game it will not sell. It might sell to the hardcore people, but not enough to justify the investment. 

 

I know people who play the latest SC and never touch SC4. And they say is fun. 

 

That people want from a game. FUN. That EA/MAXIS etc sell. A simple wrapped Sim City without 100000000000 options. But complicated enough to the people who want to delve deeper. 

 

But not for the little % of the extreme hard cores, who will bash it. Because their sale market is tiny fraction that don't bother them. 

 

 

I'm actually exactly the opposite.

 

Simcity 5 was the fist Simcity game I'd ever played.  After finding it not challenging and full of bugs, and lacking features, I started looking into all the stuff previous simcity games had.  The more I read what Simcity 4 had that simcity 5 DIDN'T have, the more I got mad.

 

And after reading that last article about how all they could think about  was what to take out of the game, I then realized simcity 5 was broken _by design_, and would never be fixed.

 

I bought simcity 4, and havent played simcity 5 since.

[JimCityBuilder 14]

Let's take Grand Theft Auto as an example for a famous game, this game was started by a few people (DMA Design Ltd) who got together and had fun making the game with no idea what the overall consequences of the game would be, but they went ahead in all innocence and put the game out there with very little money in their pockets and just a dream it might break even.

 

When it was first released it was considered great for its time, however it had all the usual features of games of that period in that you could not save and the driving around with little to no idea where you actually were but it was still fun and could be played through again and again as you learned the maps and challenges. Then before you knew it the politicians around the world were up in arms about the graphic violent content and how a game like this would send the youth of our society out in to the streets on killing sprees, there have also been many court cases where people have blamed the game for the criminal acts they committed and have tried to sue Rockstar Games for the things they had done because they had played the game.

 

But here is a company that continually reinvested in its product and strived to make the content and gameplay even better and the graphics even more spectacular and as a consequence almost every launch of this game GTA had been put back until a finished product was ready for release ever since GTA 3 from GTA Vice City to the present day GTA 5 which was to have a spring release but has been put back to 17th september for here in the UK.

 

My point is that not one of these games Rockstar games has released has ever dissappointed its players in anyway whatsoever; this game has always delivered on its promises and for those of us that have played it it has been a fun ride with great adventures and ever increasing difficultly in overall gameplay but his has not stopped the masses going out and buying this game. If you have been in a shop on launch day you'll even see parents buying this game for their kids even though they are younger that the gameplay age but hat does not stop its sales does it ? Does anyone even know just how much money Rockstar Games and their creators Dan and Sam Houser actually make ?

 

Sim City through Sim City 2000 and beyond and all its spin offs such as the Sims, Sim City Societies, etc had its humble beginnings back in1989 (and incidently I wonder if anyone still has their Nintendo and the game to still play it on ?). This game was started as a side project to another game called Raid on Bungling Bay which I had for my Commodore 64 which I still have the tape for but not a working Commodore 64 and was developed by the creator Will Wright and mostly because he was having fun making the maps and building these little cities. Now the first games we all played where very basic compared to today but they have all given us lots of hours of fun and distraction over many many years; and with the development of Sim City 4 which opened up all those modding options has been keeping this game going and being available for sale for nearly ten years now, and it even prompted Maxis to release further additions to the game such as the Rush Hour package.

 

Yet here we are in 2013 with a successful franchise being brought out and promising even more in depth simulation and game play and by watching all the trailer videos as well as reading all the hype being put out through Twitter and Facebook to name a couple of sources as well as EA/Maxis websites I personally was ready to get my hands on this game install it onto my laptop and forever after have a brilliant Sim game available at my fingertips whenever i can get the free time to play it through. However this was not to be the case; it took me three days before I could even get to play more than one hour of the game and since then there has been nothing but a plethora of bugs glitches and i must say it out load but dissappointing gameplay, graphics, tile size, failed multi-player, hackers, trollers, and an assortment of other problems too many to mention here.

 

The answer from EA/Maxis it seems is that it can fix these problems as it goes along and we should all be quiet and patient while they do so and not to complain either, after all if you read these game producers and designers blogs you'd be lead to believe that there is actually nothing wrong at all with the game and surely it must be just your computer or laptop !

 

In my opinion they just released this game as soon as they possibly could under the illusion (or is that delusion ?) that as loyal fans we would all rush out and buy it which in all honesty is exactly what we all did ! Their obvious contempt for us their loyal fans as merely just a source of initial revenue is to kick start their need for a financial return on what is beyond doubt an unfinished game is contemptible to say the least, I for one feel cheated by all this yet here I am still hoping beyond hope that the game itself would be redeemable by that wonderful band of modders out there that made SC4 such the success it is, and now we are being informed that any outside interference to the game through modding or otherwise will lead to players being banded from the servers even though you have purchased a product for yourself because of this always online aspect of the game they will be able to do this and quite frankly get away with it as well. Then lo and behold we begin to see the reason why they are doing what they have with the release of the first DLC which is a blatant advertising ploy which will allow EA/Maxis to generate more revenue for themselves and at the same time will not remain a free option for these type of DLC's for long but time will tell how this will play out.

 

At the moment i have purchased Cities In Motion 2 on Steam and having great fun with this game while I am awaiting further developments of SIm City 2013, and to be honest I just don't see how they could not have introduced the simulation from CIM 2 into Sim City 2013's mass transit it certainlt would have made sense to do so !

 

Anyway, enough from me ... discuss/berate !!!

 

Jim

[mcallisterw 41]

I certainly don't think that those of use who want a more involved and complex game are some tiny niche, we make up a sizable (if no longer the majority) number of the gaming community. The same goes for 'hardcore' gamers the world over. Well not even hardcore, I certainly don't consider myself a hardcore gamer, I will play a game for, at most an hour at a time, but I would still prefer something more challenging and with more scope for creative solutions to problems.

 

Even though we no longer form a majority of the market for games, we are less fickle, the danger the companies like EA make in abandoning the 'persevere and innovate' model of gaming preferred by this market in order to chase the larger social gaming market who want to 'collect and share' is that the people they are going hell-for-leather to court are people who might not be customers for very long. All it would take is for someone to design a game from the ground up to appeal to the social market, something like a beefed up downloadable version of a Facebook game, like CafeWorld with more options for customising your cafe and sharing it, and better graphics but still intertwined with Facebook, and EA's imagined market for the DLC they are planning to release will be gone.

[FourWinds 29]

 

Not true. 

 

A niche game it will not sell. It might sell to the hardcore people, but not enough to justify the investment. 

 

Not true. See Kerbal Space Program as an example.

 

 

I like a challenge, and I think that sc2013 is as challenging as one makes it; reading posts around this forum changed my first opinion that it was too easy as I could make heaps of cash and keep all my peeps whilst drunk! Basically one can tell if one's doing a good job or a half arsed one. Perhaps there should be a hardcore mode; maybe there will be down the line.

 

Like I said, I like a challenge and don't mind failure, but Kerbal Space Program gave me too much failure so I didn't buy it...sad but true.

[khac2956 0]

 

I like a challenge, and I think that sc2013 is as challenging as one makes it;

I like to increase the challenge by tying both hands behind my back :-)

[Xenocity 343]

Make a good game and the market comes to you.

Not true!

 

If that was the case F-Zero GX would have sold more than 500k worldwide.

Eternal Darkness being a good game failed to sell 250k worldwide.

Xenoblade Chronicles failed to sell well in all three major markets.

Bayonetta struggled to sell beyond 100k worldwide

 

On the other hand:

Aliens Colonial Marines sold over 600k in March in the U.S. despite being  a horrible game with horrible reviews (it is close to 1M in the U.S.)

 

If people wanted a game that allowed for full micromanagement, they would have bought Simcity 4 hand over fist.

 

Sadly that was not the case, because Simcity 4 has sold about 2 million total to date, which is about the same as Simcity 1 on the PC.

[Hoipus 292]

You can't make a profit by limiting your market.

 

If any developer and publisher tried to make a game that would be a fit for a single type of players that are only a small % of the market they would surely go out of business. 

 

What is Demon's/Dark Souls?

 

 

 

Make a good game and the market comes to you.

Not true!

 

If that was the case F-Zero GX would have sold more than 500k worldwide.

Eternal Darkness being a good game failed to sell 250k worldwide.

Xenoblade Chronicles failed to sell well in all three major markets.

Bayonetta struggled to sell beyond 100k worldwide

 

On the other hand:

Aliens Colonial Marines sold over 600k in March in the U.S. despite being  a horrible game with horrible reviews (it is close to 1M in the U.S.)

 

If people wanted a game that allowed for full micromanagement, they would have bought Simcity 4 hand over fist.

 

Sadly that was not the case, because Simcity 4 has sold about 2 million total to date, which is about the same as Simcity 1 on the PC.

 

I think it's a bigger problem that sales of that much aren't considered satisfactory or are considered unprofitable. Maybe some fat needs to be trimmed?

[perafilozof 143]

 

You can't make a profit by limiting your market.

 

If any developer and publisher tried to make a game that would be a fit for a single type of players that are only a small % of the market they would surely go out of business. 

 

What is Demon's/Dark Souls?

 

Do you have any idea how much money those japanese publishers have? And how big their target market is? Their parent companies are worth billions upon billions. EA is a brick in a wall when compared.

[Xenocity 343]

 

You can't make a profit by limiting your market.

 

If any developer and publisher tried to make a game that would be a fit for a single type of players that are only a small % of the market they would surely go out of business. 

 

What is Demon's/Dark Souls?

 

 

 

Make a good game and the market comes to you.

Not true!

 

If that was the case F-Zero GX would have sold more than 500k worldwide.

Eternal Darkness being a good game failed to sell 250k worldwide.

Xenoblade Chronicles failed to sell well in all three major markets.

Bayonetta struggled to sell beyond 100k worldwide

 

On the other hand:

Aliens Colonial Marines sold over 600k in March in the U.S. despite being  a horrible game with horrible reviews (it is close to 1M in the U.S.)

 

If people wanted a game that allowed for full micromanagement, they would have bought Simcity 4 hand over fist.

 

Sadly that was not the case, because Simcity 4 has sold about 2 million total to date, which is about the same as Simcity 1 on the PC.

 

I think it's a bigger problem that sales of that much aren't considered satisfactory or are considered unprofitable. Maybe some fat needs to be trimmed?

 

Game development has become substantially more expensive each passing generation.

 

This means you need to sell more copies to breakeven.

Simcity 4 struggled to breakeven at 2M, causing Maxis to cancel all the remaining expansion packs they had planned.

 

To make it worse the market has changed a lot as well, as where mainly established names sell well while most others fail!

 

Gamers fall into two main categories:

1. "hardcore" gamers - those who play Call of Duty, EA sports, GTA, realistc racers, violent games etc...
2. "casuals" gamers - those who play Nintendo games, most Japanese games, simulators, most RPGs, Simcity Series, Facebook games, Angry birds, most PC games etc...

 

F-Zero GX was one of the hardest games ever made, thus caused nearly everyone to ignore it (Yes I own it and that was in 2003)

Eternal Darkness suffered from being a new IP.

Xenoblade suffered from being a 60+ hour RPG on top of being a new Nintendo IP.

[macscfan 117]

Game development has become substantially more expensive each passing generation.

 

This means you need to sell more copies to breakeven.

 

 

Yes and no.  Yes, in that developer's salaries are higher (but there are ways to counteract that).  No, in that it is cheaper and easier to make your game available to tens of millions of people than it has ever been in the history of video games, and there are more potential customers for games than there has ever been in the history of video games.

 

Right now, you and I could spend $2,500 on a couple of Mac minis and displays, some graphics software, and a couple of iPhones or iPads, and start working on a game that we can distribute through Apple's iTunes store, that will be available to tens and even hundreds of millions of people.  We don't have to involve any publishers like EA or Activision or Zynga, and we get %66 of all revenue from the game.  I know this because I've been involved in a few such endeavors, and I've watched friends who have found success through this.

 

If we want to do desktop games, we can take those same computers, download the Unity engine (for free), maybe toss in another $1,000 on more graphics software (add in more if you want it on platforms outside of Windows and Mac, such as consoles), and we can then push a game out through Apple's Mac App Store, Amazon.com's downloads, and Steam (just a few of the digital distributors), and said game will reach 10s of millions of potential customers.  Again, we get %60+ of the revenue through those services.

 

If you want to bring up AAA titles, they still don't require massive teams, unless you have shoddy management.  Skyrim, for the most part, was developed with around 90 developers and it has a massive open world.

 

While developers' salaries may cost more, the cost of the required software and hardware is ridiculously low compared to 10 or 20 years ago.  Plus, many companies creating large titles are outsourcing a lot of artwork to China, and EA is such a huge proponent of this that they have setup EA Shanghai and one or two other studios just to coordinate this.  So you can have a few dozen developers, and some art leads, and then for not too much, have access to dozens, if not hundreds of animators working in China at much lower wages.  That easily offsets the increase in wages for US developers over the years.

 

Going back to the distribution and revenue system, 10 years ago when SimCity 4 was out, the vast majority of sales were physical copies through Amazon and Walmart and Best Buy and Circuit City and Target and so on (here in the US).  If EA sold 2 million copies of SimCity 4 at $50 apiece, that was potentially $100 million in revenue, but EA probably only saw $25 - $35 million (if they were lucky) after all was said and done.

 

Here in 2013, if EA sells 2 million copies of SimCity 5 at $50 (just for comparison's sake, I know it's $60) through digital distribution instead of physical retailers as was the case with SC4, instead of $25 - $35 million, EA could see $50 - $60 million from those same 2 million copies.  In the case of Origin.com sales, EA gets 100% of the revenue.  Now obviously EA still sold a lot of physical copies of SC5, but they most likely generated much more revenue overall given how many were buying and downloading the game.

 

So while developers' salaries went up, they were offset by the game development tools and hardware becoming cheaper and more accessible, as well as access to numerous outsourced studios overseas.  More importantly, game companies take in more revenue through digital distribution than they did through traditional brick and mortar sales.

 

And it should be noted that eventually EA games will only be obtained through Origin.com.  That is their stated goal and they are working towards that, and have already tested the waters by pulling some content from Steam and making it only available through Origin.

[Xenocity 343]

 

And it should be noted that eventually EA games will only be obtained through Origin.com.  That is their stated goal and they are working towards that, and have already tested the waters by pulling some content from Steam and making it only available through Origin.

 

 

Actually EA has a deal with Ubisoft that allows for EA's games on U-Play and vice versa.

 

It literally took Simcity 4 - 8 years and 4 rereleases (including the Steam release) to hit 2M.

Simcity 4 is a niche game for a niche audience

 

Epic the creators of the UE engines says Next Gen budgets will double for full console and PC games at the very least.

Most developers are preparing themselves for the doubling if not more.

 

Bethesda was able to get Skyrim from concept to completion in 5 years with 100 people, because they reused the Fall Out engine.

If Bethesda wasn't so cheap, Skyrim would have cost more and been graphically better.

Also Bethesda is held by a private company and can get away with more because they don't have to deal with shareholders.

 

 

Gamers expect sequels/iterations to be out in 2 years or less with state of the art graphics, which requires more man power to due.

Shareholders are also active in forcing most developers to speed up development to ensure maximum profits.

 

Developer wages haven't budget much since the late 90s and developers work more hours than before.

Most of the profits gaming companies make go to their management and shareholders.

 

in short shareholders and gamers are driving the industry these days.