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A quick sneak peek of the new Turbo Roundabouts for the NAM , fresh from the presses. Here's a proof of concept in-game. Video preview made by NAM Team member Mandelsoft.

Simtropolis has grown by over 100k members in the last 10 months! Is a lot of this growth due to SimCity (2013), or perhaps due to a SimCity 4 resurgence post-SimCity (2013)? Perhaps both! I wonder if we'll ever reach a million...

For the first time ever, the NAM Team has decided to surprise people . . . by not surprising them. The 31st Network Addon Mod release will be made available to the public on March 1st, 2013. Mark your calendars, as this will be one you don't want to miss.

Banished is a city-building strategy game that charges you with the task of starting a small town, growing population, managing crops. Place buildings to harvest resources and convert them into goods. There is no mass transit, or any kind of transportation network, but the small rural town simulator might appeal to some looking for a change of pace. The game is very near release with a 2013 ship date. More details at the site, and support the developer if you like it. More videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/ShiningRockSoftware?feature=watch Welcome to the world of Banished! In this city-building strategy game, you control a group of exiled travelers who decide to restart their lives in a new land. They have only the clothes on their backs and a cart filled with supplies from their homeland. The objective of the game is to keep the population alive and grow it into a successful culture. Options for feeding the people include hunting and gathering, agriculture, trade, and fishing. However, sustainable practices must be considered to survive in the long term.

NAM 31.1 is a full package, which improves upon the initial "open beta" that was NAM 31. It fixes about 100 issues that had been reported since the NAM 31 release in March 2013, improving overall stability and performance. Crash-to-desktop (CTD) on save and related performance issues from NAM 31 are largely solved: A number of users, particularly those with newer Intel Core Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPUs (e.g. i7, etc.) had experienced issues with the game crashing to desktop (CTDing) when trying to save, with NAM 31 in their plugins. This was tied to the much larger NAM Controller build that was contained in NAM 31, which also caused the game to use considerably more memory. The increase in size was largely due an attempt to "ultra-stabilize" some NAM override networks, including some RealHighway widths/heights and the Street Addon Mod variants (SAM ultra-stability had been in place in NAM 30). The code on these override networks has been whittled down for this release, eliminating stability for situations that users were much less likely to build. In order to address a wide variety of scenarios, the NAM Team is now providing two different controller packages--the smaller "standard" (or "s-series") package, and the larger "extreme" (or "e-series"). The difference between the s-series and e-series is that the s-series disables SAM ultra-stability, and the higher elevated RealHighway networks (Level 3/22.5m and Level 4/30m). The s-series is installed by default. Users who desire the larger e-series controller can select the option from the installer, using the Custom Installation option. It is recommended that if you are using the e-series controller on one of the crash-prone processors, such as a Sandy Bridge Core i7, and especially if you have a large plugins folder (at least 3GB), that you should patch your SimCity 4.exe file to be Large Address Aware. A suitable Large Access Aware patch can be found here. You should have more than 4GB of RAM if using Large Access Aware modde. Road Turning Lanes: As with NAM 31, the Road Turning Lanes are no longer automatically generated when a Road x Road intersection is built. The auto-build functionality was causing considerable complications with the functionality of the Network Widening Mod and new Draggable Fractional Angle Roads, and as the NWM and Draggable FAR have a greater impact on game functionality (adding capacity and new build angles, as opposed to mere eyecandy), the Road Turning Lanes Plugin has been redesigned to function in an "optional" manner, which doesn't interfere with other features and allows the user more freedom in turn lane placement, without resorting to Turn Lane Extension Pieces (TuLEPs). To add turn lanes to a Road x Road intersection, simply click the intersection with the Rail tool. As with all previous releases, the Road Turning Lanes only apply to Road x Road intersections. If you desire turning lanes on Road x Avenue intersections, you will need to use Turn Lane Extension Pieces (TuLEPs). New Street network functionality: Some new draggable wide-radius curves, and intersections along wide-radius curves, are now possible with the Street network. Credit for this new feature goes to Swordmaster from the NAM Team. Transit stations: After the first release of transit stations in NAM 31, a number of bug reports were received about these stations. As a result, all of the stations included with the NAM have gone through extensive retesting, and have been modified when necessary. Many of the modifications fix major bugs, while some of them simply improve the performance of the station. For PC users, any stations plopped in your cities from NAM 31 will automatically be upgraded when you install NAM 31.1.For Mac users, the replacement set of basic Maxis stations had to be modified, along with the Modern El Train Station by Brenda Xne. These fixes were necessary due to a bug in the Mac version of SC4. If you're a Mac user and you plopped any of these stations from the NAM using version 31, you will have to bulldoze them and replop them once you have installed NAM 31.1.NAM 31.1 also includes a number of new stations, which have gone through the same extensive testing as the stations listed above. Most of the new stations are optional, meaning that they are not automatically installed with the Complete Standard Installation; instead, you must select the Custom Installation and select these new stations on the Components page. RealHighway Filler Pieces: The RHW Fillers have been, at long last, restored and expanded for NAM 31.1. They were previously in such a broken state, that they had been disabled for NAM 31. Mac users: The separate NAM for Mac OS package has been discontinued as of NAM 31. It is recommended that you access a Windows machine or Windows installation (or use WINE), run the installer, and transfer the two installation directories (Plugins\Network Addon Mod and Plugins\z___NAM) to your Mac system. Alternatively, use Keka (http://www.kekaosx.com) to open the executable like a .zip file. If you are planning on using cosmetic additions, like the Euro Textures or the Maxis Highway Override (AKA "Project Symphony"), they are contained in the "$[65]" folder, which you should rename to "z____NAM" upon extraction. Please also note that the NAM--and most other Plugins--have compatibility issues with OS 10.7 (Lion) and later, due to the removal of Rosetta and the requirement to use the Aspyr Universal Binary patch to play SimCity 4 Deluxe in those OSes, which make the game prone to crashing. Installing over previous versions: NAM 31.1 may be installed directly over top of any previous NAM releases. It is a full release, not a patch or a hotfix. All future updates are planned to be in full package form, and there are no plans to issue patches or hotfixes in the future. Please also note that the NAM Team only provides technical support for the most recent version, which, as of this document, is NAM 31.1. We cannot assist users of the original NAM 31 release, or NAM 30 (or earlier). Special Thanks: The NAM Team would like to thank the following members of the community, who have tested the penultimate build of the NAM 31.1 controller and given their feedback on its stability, and/or assisted with other controller-related tests after the NAM 31 release, in an effort to nail down the game stability issues: A Nonny Moose, dyoungyn, Joe 90, mgarcia, mneonnew, shanghai kid, spot, and txrailcat74. Also, special thanks are in order to Haljackey and the Dirktator, for their efforts on getting this file onto the STEX. The file is also mirrored at SimCity 4 Devotion's LEX and ModDB.

The Maxis Highway get a great overhaul with Project Symphony! The NAM Team officialy reveals this piece of technology for the upcoming NAM 31 release and shows what it can do. Part 1 of 2 is a presentation of the basic functionality of Project Symphony. For more information about the NAM, check SimTropolis or SC4Devotion,com and stay tuned for more NAM developments! Stay tuned for Part 2, where we going to build some basic interchanges! NAM 31: Coming to you on March 1st! (NAM Team is the best pony ) Best, Maarten/MandelSoft

A sneak preview of new features in development for the upcoming Version 32 release of the Network Addon Mod (NAM) reveals a number of new features for the NAM's RealHighway (RHW) plugin, including the new QuickChange system.

Plopping Fractional Angled curves and roads is now a thing of the past with the new DragFAR! The NAM Team officialy reveals this piece of technology for the upcoming NAM 31 release and shows what it can do! On behalf of the NAM Team, Maarten (NOTE: the plopable curves will still remain available in the next NAM, so don't worry if you can't get used to the new FAR construction method)

The long awaited version of SC4Mapper have been released It now works in XP, Vista, win7 and even in win8 It features a config.bmp editor so you can now tweak a SC4M to your liking

Screw the game, SimCity has become a cynically brilliant advertising platform So the good news is that Cheetah Speed has returned to SimCity, and some new content in the form of the “Attractions Set” has been released. Who doesn't love new buildings to add into their cities? So this is something that's free right? Or will we have to pay? Son of a $%&^!. So there's no way to buy the content, and it certainly isn't free. It's just a way to get people who like SimCity to buy toothpaste. This isn't a cosmetic addition to the game, as these additions - and I think a giant ball of twine is seriously an awesome addition - will give you an advantage during play. “The Attractions Set adds happiness to low wealth Sims,” the official post stated. “They will also bring in all three wealth classes of tourists into your city.” This is why I have such a deep loathing for EA at the moment. It's not that you get neat stuff for buying a certain brand of toothpaste, it's that the game seems designed around these sponsorship deals and monetization strategies. It doesn't feel like EA and Maxis sat down and tried to create the very best version of SimCity possible, it feels like they designed the game that would be the easiest to control, monetize, and sell to advertisers. Source: http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/simcity-as-advertising-platform-how-ea-rewards-you-for-buying-real-world-pr

The Network Addon Mod (NAM) combines all transportation network-related fixes, additions and new creations that have been released so far. It will add countless new features to the existing network tools, such as new overpasses, highway onramps, intersections, ped-malls, a ground light rail network, roundabouts and turning lanes. VERSION 31 FOR WINDOWS FILESIZE: 206 MB New features in Version 31 (March 2, 2013)--Includes NAM Controller r169 New "Monolithic" package--all previous separate download plugins now included in the main package, including RealHighway Mod (RHW) Network Widening Mod (NWM) Railway Addon Mod (RAM) High Speed Rail Project (HSRP) Street Addon Mod (SAM) Rural Roads Plugin NAM Retexture and Cosmetic Mods (North American and Euro) Virtually all previously released bridges RealHighway Mod now updated to "Project 57" specs, with Multi-Height networking, and Wider RHW Bridges. New Draggable Fractional Angle Road system. Maxis Highway Override ("Project Symphony") by MandelSoft and jdenm8. For the first time ever, transit stations and hole-digger/raiser lots are included. Disappearing construction lots, making the use of starter pieces vastly simpler and less cumbersome. A few odds and ends for the Network Widening Mod. Two new styles of SAM Streets: Klinker Streets by squidi and jplumbley (Set 6) and Moonlight Japanese Streets (Set 10) Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool (TSCT) updated. Please note that some documentation is still forthcoming as of this writing.

The Simtropolis Wiki is an open, collaborative project with the aim to be the definitive resource for the new SimCity (2013) game, as well as a general resource for the SimCity franchise and its communities. Creating an account with the Simtropolis Wiki takes only a few seconds. Don't be shy -- dive in and start editing!

Why has the SimCity story gone away? It’s a good question. And the answer for it reveals much about how both the games industry, and the games journalism industry, work. In March, shortly after SimCity’s disastrous launch (servers couldn’t cope, the game barely ran, features had to be removed, and the always-on DRM was seriously crippling the game), EA and Maxis’ PR went into damage protection mode. And one refrain we saw over and over was a line from Maxis’ studio head, Lucy Bradshaw, that the ‘single-player’ game had to “offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers.” On 12th March, RPS revealed that this statement simply wasn’t true. Via a source from inside Maxis, we learned that the server was doing no such thing, and that the calculations were running on the player’s PC. Two days later these claims were confirmed by a modder who had the game running indefinitely offline. It was clear that the message coming from Maxis simply wasn’t true. (There’s no better round-up of the events than the one put together by Kotaku.) (One thing that’s important to note here: That the claims weren’t true does not provide room to conclude that Bradshaw was “lying”. Not knowing the circumstances within Maxis at all, there’s no way to know that Bradshaw did not believe what she was saying to be entirely accurate. Miscommunication, deliberate misinformation, we just don’t know, and as such accusations don’t help this discussion.) So what to do next? Via RPS, and much of the gaming press, the reality that the servers were not running offline calculations became widely understood. So how did EA or Maxis handle this situation? With silence. And if simply telling the truth isn’t considered an available option, silence is by far the most effective response in this industry. Full story: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/22/the-power-of-silence-why-the-simcity-story-went-away/

From Paradox Interactive, Cities in Motion 2 is a mass transit simulation game where you build transportation networks for cities. CIM2 brings new choices to building transportation networks. If you want to focus less on city-building, and more on transportation networks for cities, CIM2 might be worth your time to check out... Here's the marketing blurb: Cities in Motion 2 (CIM2) is the sequel to the popular mass transit simulation game Cities in Motion. Build, manage and lead your transportation network to provide cities with their ever changing needs. Cities in Motion 2 introduces new features including multiplayer game modes, day and night cycles, timetables and dynamic cities. Building the transportation network will directly affect how the city grows. Affordable transportation brings middle class housing and work places, while more expensive and exotic choices bring high end businesses. Take advantage of many different types of vehicles including buses, trams, ferries and more. Build alone or play cooperatively with a friend. Use the newly implemented bus lanes to build efficient traffic free roadways. Tackle rush hour by managing transportation timetables and meeting the needs of the citizens. Dynamic cities Player’s choices affect city growth Day and night cycle Manage the timetables Multiplayer, both co-operative and competitive modes Campaign and sandbox mode

This has cropped up on the forums one or twice recently, but anyone interested in transport type games should definitely take a look at the features list: Currently it is still looking for crowdfunding though the devs seem to think it will meet its target. I for one hope so, looks like it has great potential and greater depth than Cities in Motion.

You: SimCity… Network… Not this again! What are EA up to n– Wait. SimCity 4? Network Addon Mod? Me: The latest SimCity might have been hamstrung by infrastructural problems, but there’s no reason your love affair with Maxis’ fair city-builder need end there. SimCity 4 has enormous cities. SimCity 4 had no internet requirement. SimCity 4 had… all the same traffic problems as the more recent release. But! It also had a vibrant modding community that’s still working on fixing problems and making the game better today. This pre-release (i.e. alpha release) of version 32 of the Network Addon Mod is testament to that. NAM improves the game’s pathfinding, fixes bugs in the base game, and adds “a myriad of new transport network items, ranging from ground light rail, to fractional-angle roads, to roundabouts, and much more” Roundabouts! Here’s an expanded list of features from the ModDB site, because it’s the nerdy detail of it all that excites me so much. And so on. NAM isn’t the only SimCity 4 mod worth installing, nor the only mod still under development. The SimCity 4 Devotion website and forums reveal a community still humming away with activity, and there’s a lot that’s worth looking at. That includes downloadable saved games, new buildings to turn your city into Tokyo or some other real world hotspot, and expansive mods and total conversions. Despite its age, SimCity 4′s high-resolution sprites still look fantastic. Time has even been kind, as today’s faster computers have a better time rendering all those hundreds of sprites than my machine did when the game was first released. If you’re looking for a spot of management and city-building this Christmas, you could do worse than dig out your old copy. Because no matter how hard they try, there’s hardly a single game developer that can match the ouput and commitment of their community. The Network Addon Mod is available from ModDB, and the SC4D Lot Exchange contains plenty more to browse.

Following last year’s surprise Worst Company In America victory by Electronic Arts, there was hope that the video game giant would get the message: Stop treating your customers like human piggy banks, and don’t put out so many incomplete and/or broken games with the intent of getting your customers to pay extra for what they should have received in the first place. And yet, here we are again, with EA becoming the first company to ever win a second Golden Poo from Consumerist readers. After an astounding number of votes, Consumerist readers once again chose EA over Bank of America, with the video game company taking nearly 78% of the vote. Full story: http://consumerist.com/2013/04/09/ea-makes-worst-company-in-america-history-wins-title-for-second-year-in-a-row/

A gamer no longer has to worry about his disability preventing him from terrorizing his own metropolis with an alien invasion. When redditor joey6957 became interested in SimCity, he quickly discovered that his physical disadvantages were keeping him from its full potential. He explained in a post on r/SimCity how his mouth-controlled device limits his ability to execute multiple commands: Redditor ProcsKalone immediately jumped to the rescue. With a passing knowledge of Autoit, an automation language program, he got to work on a code that "sends the 'n' or 'm' key every 1 second to SimCity," thus eliminating the need to do so manually. After programming several other keyboard functions, tweaking the command that switches the automation on and off, he submitted the link to joey6957. “[You’re] a genius it works perfectly!” he wrote. “I hope I didn't keep you up trying to get this working for me. Thanks a lot for the help buddy!” ProcsKalone's generosity touched fellow redditors as well. “I'm sure you're getting a heavy dose of PMs right now since this post of yours went on /r/bestof,” greenblaster wrote, “but I wanted to say that you're an awesome person for putting so much effort into helping a stranger while having nothing to gain.” "I love happy endings," CryoGuy added.

Six hours ago, an anonymous redditor posting under the name “DisappointedEA” made a thread containing an open letter expressing his disappointment in the company’s handling of SimCity. The twist? He reportedly works there: “To the executives at EA, from one of your employees I am deeply embarrassed by the troubled launch of Sim City and I hope you are too. When I walk around our campus and look at the kind of talent we’ve collected, the amenities we have access to and the opportunities working at such a big company affords us, I can’t imagine how for release after release, EA continues to make the same embarrassing, anti-consumer mistakes. We should be better than this. You should not be failing us so badly. Another thing I see when I walk around our campus are massive banners that display what are said to be our company values. They are on posters on every floor, included in company-wide emails and hanging above the cafeteria in bright colors. You even print them on our coffee mugs so we see them every day. But somehow when planning the launch of Sim City, you threw them all out the window. Most important of the values you are ignoring is Think Consumers First. What part of the Sim City DRM scheme, which has rendered the game unplayable for hundreds of thousands of fans across the globe, demonstrates that you are thinking about consumers before you are thinking about yourselves? Does “first” mean something different in boardrooms than it does to the rest of us? Does the meaning of that word change when you get the word “executive” in front of your title? You can’t even pretend that you didn’t know consumers would be angry about this. Common sense aside, consumers complained about this during your public betas. In fact, when one of them posted his criticisms on the forums, he was banned! You tried to silence your critics. The same thing is happening now as users write in to demand refunds. What part of this behavior aligns with our company value to Be Accountable? What you’ve demonstrated with this launch is that our corporate management does not believe in our core values. They are for the unwashed masses, not for the important people who forced this anti-consumer DRM onto the Sim City team. This DRM scheme is not about the consumers or even about piracy. It’s about covering your own asses. It allows you to hand-wave weak sales or bad reviews and blame outside factors like pirates or server failures in the event the game struggles. You are protecting your own jobs at the expense of consumers. I think this violates the Act With Integrity value I’m looking at on my own coffee mug right now. On behalf of your other employees, I’d like to ask you to fix this. Allow the Sim City team to patch the game to run offline. If Create Quality and Innovation is still a core value that you believe in, then this shouldn’t be a hard decision. Games that gamers can’t play because of server overload or ISP issues are NOT quality. Be Bold by giving the consumers what they want and take accountability for the mistake. Finally I’d like to ask you to follow the last company value on the list in the future: Learn and Grow. When you made this mistake with Spore, the company and all your employees suffered for it. You didn’t learn from that mistake and you are making it again with Sim City. So please, learn from this debacle. Don’t do this again. Grow into better leaders and actually apply our company values when you make decisions. Don’t just use them as tools to motivate your staff. With the money, talent and intellectual property available to EA, we should be leading the industry into a golden age of consumer-focused game publishing. Instead we’re the most reviled game publisher in the world. That’s your fault. Things can only change if you actually start following the company values and apply them to every title we launch. Sincerely, A Disappointed But Hopeful Artist at EARS”

Dear Electronic Arts, My mother always told me that it's petty to say "I told you so" when proven right. That's why I really hope she isn't reading this, because I have a message for you: I told you so. But it's not just me; a big chunk of the gaming community feels the same way. I don't want this to seem petty, but I genuinely want you to learn from your mistakes, so you don't repeat what's shaping up to be one of the most embarassing game launches in years. So far, Amazon has 1,091 one-star user reviews for SimCity out of 1,213 reviews total (and I'm pretty sure several of the five-star reviews are being sarcastic). A Change.org petition has raised over 35,000 signatures in two days demanding that you offer a single-player, offline mode in SimCity and eschew always-on online for games. Polygon has revised its score of SimCity increasingly downward from 9.5 to 4. At PCMag, we even came up with seven SimCity alternatives for players who don't want to deal with server problems. I don't want to gloat. I want you to understand why this happened, and how you can prevent it from happening in the future. When concerns are raised over "online features," listen to them. When people warn you months in advance that there will be server issues, listen to them. When gamers worry that they won't be able to play SimCity years from now (when every SimCity game from the Super Nintendo version to Simcity 4 remains playable and enjoyable), listen to them. Turn away from your paranoia regarding piracy and realize that there are tons of customers who want to give you money in exchange for being able to play a game. Appreciate the value of customer loyalty and developing a community instead of squeezing every last drop out of people and discarding them.

A new version of JUPITER is uploaded to the lex. This version contais the following bug fixes: -Fixed the bug that caused violent lightning at higher altitude maps. -Partial solution for nights that became too dark during rain/snowstorms. If this happens lightning can be reset by toggling between day and back to night mode again. In this case unfortunately it is necessary that the weather lot has power. -Minor tuning of the climate. -Tornados are now optional. -Removed all red circular markers that were left in for testing purposes -Now <10% of all lightning strikes are destructive (applies to destructive version only). -Minor bug fixes.

Check out the preview of the new Raise and Lower tool.

After a decade of waiting, the next SimCity is finally here! From the perspective of a lifelong enthusiast, is it any good? Er, you may want to sit down for this one. The SimCity retrospective if you haven't seen it:

Talking about why he quit EA, former SimCity creative director Ocean Quigley told Polygon he had been "dismayed" at the botched launch of SimCity, in which EA insisted gamers play always-online, while failing to provide enough server capacity. The botched launch closed many players out of the game and led to severe criticism of EA's processes. But Quigley added that he has been thinking of setting up a new project for some time anyway. "I was dismayed at the blundered launch of something that I had poured so much love and attention into, which made the leaving easier but it would have probably happened anyway," he said. "Honestly I think I would have left regardless of whether EA's launch of SimCity was smooth or rough. It was basically my third SimCity. I did SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 and this new SimCity." Quigley announced on Twitter today that he, SimCity lead architect Andrew Willmott and lead gameplay engineer Dan Moskowitz are setting up a new developer called Jellygrade. They are working on an iPad simulation game that seeks to recreate the early formation of the Earth. Full article: http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/16/4529260/quigleys-dismay-at-simcitys-blundered-launch-and-why-he-quit-ea

Electronic Arts is at it again. This time with an overzealous EULA. The company's resentment and bitterness towards their own customers manifests itself in treating beta players who fail to report bugs no differently than the bug abusers: "If you know about a Bug or have heard about a Bug and fail to report the Bug to EA, we reserve the right to treat you no differently from someone who abuses the Bug. You acknowledge that EA reserve the right to lock anyone caught abusing a Bug out of all EA products." Maybe EA hasn't come out with the best Sim City sequel, but there is no denying they've created the best oppressive regime simulator on the market.

"I feel bad for the team," Wright said when asked about the troubled launch by GamesIndustry.biz following a lecture at the University of California Santa Cruz. "I could have predicted—I kind of did predict there'd be a big backlash about the DRM stuff. It's a good game; I enjoy playing it a lot... [but] that was basically inexcusable, that you charge somebody $60 for a game and they can't play it. I can understand the outrage. If I was a consumer buying the game and that happened to me, I'd feel the same." ... His comments go against the official line from Electronic Arts that SimCity's online requirements had nothing to do with DRM and everything to do with providing a persistent connection to the worldwide trading markets and regional interactions in the game (never mind that hackers have opened up the potential for offline play without much issue). "It's not [DRM]," EA Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore said last month. "People still want to argue about it. We can't be any clearer—it's not." Full story: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-05-04-will-wright-games-falling-way-short-as-a-medium

You hate us because we're so good at what we do EA COO Peter Moore wrote a reaction to the poll, and his defense of the mighty publisher is both tone deaf and insulting. He blames homophobes who dislike EA’s push for allowing LGBT characters in games. He says that many dislike microtransactions, but you can’t argue with results! He once again says that the always-on require on SimCity isn’t DRM, as if the only thing keeping us from loving that game is a matter of semantics. His message is simple: EA doesn’t really care what you think about it, because it’s successful. Which is an argument that doesn’t hold up to the faintest of scrutiny. Your CEO doesn’t deploy his golden parachute due to lower than expected revenue because your games are doing well. EA is losing both the battle for gamers’ wallets as well as the battle for our hearts. They can say that they don’t mind being hated as long as we give them money, but fewer of us are giving them money. This is not the time for a victory lap. The Consumerist has a rather damning response to Moore’s arguments about why so many people hate the publisher, and the post dismantles Moore’s arguments one by one. “EA received hundreds of nominations from Consumerist readers this year, by far the most of any contender in the bracket, but not a single one mentioned anything about sexual orientation,” the post stated. “Consumerist does not condone homophobia or hate speech of any kind, and our readers understand the Worst Company contest and nominate businesses based on their merits.” ... EA has given us ample reasons to hate them SimCity not only requires an Internet connection, a decision that has led to no end of technical problems, but we can no longer create huge cities. We can’t save our game, experiment with the design, and then reload. It’s not a sandbox anymore, and the playful nature of past games in the series has been replaced by a game that forces us to play a certain way. ... “The tallest trees catch the most wind,” Moore wrote. “At EA we remain proud and unbowed.” I have bad news for Peter Moore: Activision is the tallest tree, and people are actually buying their games. EA is fast becoming kindling, and the company ignores its customers throwing matches at its peril. ... Full story: http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/ea-earned-hatred-with-poor-games-lack-of-vision-and-contempt-for-the-audien

An article looking at both sides of the argument about whether the new SimCity game is a downgrade from SimCity 4.

The Maxis Highway get a great overhaul with Project Symphony! The NAM Team officialy reveals this piece of technology for the upcoming NAM 31 release and shows what it can do. Part 2 of 2 is a presentation of the basic interchange construction of Project Symphony. For more information about the NAM, check SimTropolis or SC4Devotion,com and stay tuned for more NAM developments! NAM 31: Coming to you on March 1st! (OMGWTHBBQRELEASEDATEZOMFG!) Best, Maarten/MandelSoft

A new version of AURORA is uploaded to the lex (bug fixes + some new features). Still in a Beta phase as it still requires the lot to be placed in the center of the city. Most important changes: -CTRL+X "Effect jenx_screencenter" should now show the placement helper marker -sync error with game clock during medium and fast game speed should be fixed -introduced phases of the moon -introduced a comet that appears in the sky at night (random chance) -hopefully the aurora will now show up foe everyone. It should be triggered between 22-23 h in january nights

Barely 1 year after launch, SimCity Social is closing down: "The decision to retire older EA games is never an easy one to make but in order to re-allocate servers and resources to more popular titles we are removing SimCity Social from Facebook. Players who still have a balance of in-game currency are encouraged to spend it before the game is shut down on 14th June and is no longer available for play." For more information, click here: http://forum.playfish.com/showthread.php?t=2968221

SimCity's Problems Have Caused This Family Nothing But Suffering Meet the Rogers. They live in that tiny little house. One of the first families to move into my burgeoning metropolis of Windfall Islands, they are stalwarts of the city, having stayed in the same spot, in the same house, for what feels like an eternity. Or, at least, I think they're the Rogers. Not everybody that lives in the house - and the number of inhabitants varies day-to-day - is actually called Rogers. There's a wide assortment of ages, genders and race coming and going every day, so maybe they're adopted siblings living together. Maybe it's a group house. I don't know. Not all of them have jobs. Understandable, since the Rogers were dirt poor when they moved into their lot, and have remained so, Windfall Island's land values sadly ignorant of the fact their block not only sits on the water, but also enjoys fantastic transportation approaches and has vast green fields for a backyard. I've heard they cast envious glances at the single residential tower nestled in the middle of my pollution-choked industrial quarter, but the single BBQ pit across the street has propelled land values there so high they'll never be able to afford it. Shame. Those ocean views and fresh, clean air will have to suffice, for now. Like all families, they have their problems with the city. They often complain that there's no shopping. There's an entire shopping district right over the bridge, and a bus stop outside their home to take them there, but that's not important. What's important is that the Rogers have perceived problems. Which are worse than any real ones, because for the Rogers, there is no escape from the bubble of discontent they find themselves in. They're uneducated, even though public schooling is only a few blocks away. They're often unwell, despite the presence nearby of a brand new, cutting-edge clinic. Yet their biggest concern, the one that literally hangs over their home, is that they lack the space to expand their abode, when really, all they have is space. I could get angry at the Rogers. At least frustrated. My performance as their Mayor is based not on the actual solutions to their concerns that I've supplied in full, but on how they believe I'm solving them. Or, in their case, not solving them, because how can I solve problems that can't be solved by solving them? Yet as absurd and illogical as their issues are, I don't blame them. It's not their fault they're so, for want of a better word, stupid. Instead, I feel a little sorry for them. I often wonder how they feel, getting up every morning and walking out the door of their "modest" little home, when the first thing they see are the glistening steel towers of Windfall's commercial and administrative heart. Do they yearn for a higher standard of living? A more meaningful place of employment? That might explain why they can't seem to hold the same job down for longer than a single day. ...Read the rest at Kotaku...

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw delivers his take on Simcity. Spoiler alert: he gives it a "meh." The Escapist : Zero Punctuation : SimCity

RPS: As we’ve repeatedly pointed out, while not offering an offline version of SimCity is entirely Maxis’s call, our issue this week has been with their claiming it would be near impossible, rather than their simply believing it undesirable. (Obviously we have enormous issues with any game being crippled by such DRM, too.) So how simple does Azzer think getting an offline version going might be? “They could make an entire region single player offline with absolute ease. It would be as simple as coding in a switch saying, ‘Is this person playing single player? Take the power values of each city from local memory instead of ask for it from the server instead.’ The only thing missing is saving to local hard drive – but let’s be real, the code for saving your city already exists, I can’t imagine even that would take more than an hour to put into the client (and it probably already exists in the client for development builds), plus a little bit of time for the UI elements for Save/Load.” “For an offline mode,” he continues, “instead of asking EA servers how much power is available from a fellow city in the region, it will simply have it in memory, as a small handful of values from another city. No live calculations done on them. Just raw values, all the EA servers send anyway. And as you’ll only be playing/simulating one city at a time in offline mode (cities you don’t play are “frozen in time”) – those values of how much spare power, resources, etc. other cities have won’t even need updating, until you change cities.” But how exactly would that work? If those cities are frozen, resources won’t be renewed, nor depleted? “Let’s say you and I play in a region together,” says Azzer, talking about the regular online game. “You build a town that has lots of power and water (water is a consumable just like coal) and spare fire trucks. I build a big casino city with lots of criminals. You go offline and don’t play for a whole week, but I keep playing for an entire week.” Okay, with you. “During that week, my client will keep telling me stories about fire trucks coming to help me from your city, I’ll keep getting water from you, I’ll keep getting power from you – of a ‘set amount’ dictated by how much you had spare when you last logged off. This is all processed by my client, not by the server. All the server did was tell me ‘X fire trucks available, Y water available, Z power available, from city with the name ABC,’ as a raw list of values. When you log back on, your water levels will be exactly as they were when you last logged off, because EA’s servers were NOT doing any processing, and my client only affects the city I am simulating.” Crikey. So an offline version of the game could act in exactly the same way. You could play multiple cities in your private region, each freezing when not played just as the current game operates. “No processing is done on the cities you aren’t currently playing on – they simply freeze in time and provide a fixed set of values of ‘resources’ that the currently played city simulates. The client does all the processing, which is why any city not being played (online or not) has nothing done to it by EA’s servers if the owner of that city is not playing their city at the time.” Source: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-modder-tells-us-offline-regional-play-easily-done/

Train fever secured a €50,000 investment recently, and with 12 days left of the crowdfunding project, stands at 87% funded. Train Fever is a railroad-focused business simulation game with role-playing elements. In other words, it's a modern-day Transport Tycoon with procedural content and a sophisticated city simulation. Worth noting given recent SimCity issues that "Each person is individually simulated. Given a home adress and a working place" Developer Basil Weber also stated that: Features: Randomly generated, modifiable terrain with realistic dimensions Advanced passenger simulation Dynamically simulated urban development Procedurally generated buildings No grid – that is, the game world is not limited to 90 (or 45) degree angles Vehicles from more than 150 years of transportation history Four distinct characters Comprehensive skill system Detailed 3D graphics Freely adjustable zoom factor

Imagine a school where playing video games is encouraged during classes and may even replace exams. A new educational programme uses SimCity to test children on vital problem-solving skills. Video games usually get in the way of homework. GlassLab, however, is a collaboration between educators and technologists. Uniting commercial game studios and educational groups the aim is to embrace gaming technology to transform the learning process and make it more relevant to the demands of the 21st Century. They could even one day replace traditional exams. SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge, which has just launched, is an educational version of the video game SimCity. Designed for teenagers, students play the role of a city mayor, managing a city with some pressing pollution problems. BBC Future spoke to Jessica Lindl, general manager of GlassLab, at the Silicon Valley-based gaming company, EA (Electronic Arts) about how games could prepare children for jobs Full video at the source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131107-could-video-games-replace-exams

SimCity creative director Ocean Quigley has left Maxis along with lead architect Andrew Willmott and lead gameplay engineer Dan Moskowitz to set up a new studio called Jellygrade. “We were lead developers on SimCity, SimCity 4, Spore and The Sims2. We love making simulations,” wrote Quigley. “We’re making a simulation about the dawn of life on earth; about lava, water, rock and the emergence of the first primordial creatures." “We’re starting off on the iPad with a fundamentally new simulation engine. I can’t wait to start showing it off. We’re building the new simulation engine now.”

Special Announcement... (No we didn't forget - just got hit with the "busies".) Here's our March Member of the Month winners. Stop by and offer your congratulations to this month's winners. Thanks!

Well, it appears EA took another gamble on SimCity. This time with announcing, slowly and silently, the first expansion pack for SimCity. According to a leaked SimCity newsletter, it states: "Build your own cities of the future with the first SimCity expansion pack. Transform your cities into a utopian world powered by clean technology or a corporate metropolis feeding your Sims' insatiable consumerism. Build to the sky with the all new, mult-zone MegaTowers, three times the height of the tallest SimCity skyscraper." The expansion titled "Cities of Tomorrow" will hit store selves on November 12, 2013 - Or somewhere around that time frame. Will the expansion pack fix all the errors the base game currently has or will it just add to the problem? Is the expansion pack ready for release in November 2013 or will EA continue their tradition of releasing incomplete games? In November, we will see.

Cities XL platinum is available on Humble bundle this week for a minimum of $1. You will also get steam keys to 5 other games.

EA may be looking at the possibility of adding offline play and other features to SimCity as part of its future updates for its world-building series, according to a customer survey that has surfaced on Reddit. The survey (screenshots) seeks player feedback on potential upcoming features. These include: farms, faster rebuilding after disasters, over and underpass roads, cities twice the size of current land plots, terraforming, cooperative city building with friends, and Classic mode. The latter is described as allowing players to, “In offline or online mode, play a single, fully functioning city using cheats and unlocks that allow you to create your perfect city.” - Full article.

TRAIN OF THOUGHT. APRIL 11, 2013 There's a science to getting people from point A to point B, and Cities in Motion 2 takes a very technical, not particularly user-friendly approach to its simulation of urban mass transit. Despite significant strides in creative freedom over its predecessor, this is still largely a puzzle about imposing a successful public transportation system on a city that initially doesn't support one. Such a transition isn't easy, of course, and Cities in Motion 2 seems intent on reminding you of that every step of the way, but it's a rewarding puzzle to solve. .... It's also a roomier world, with maps four times larger than we saw in 2011. On a practical level, the map sizes justify the construction of lengthy and lucrative train lines between fare zones. It also allows room for your city to grow, which is handy, because perhaps the greatest addition to Cities in Motion 2 over the first is the ability for your cities to grow at all. While the focus on transportation means you have little or no control over the specific types of building that arise (as you do in SimCity), it means we get to construct dozens of rail and road types with adjustable elevations, and it's always fun to see a new row of buildings slowly pop up along them. I was initially disappointed with the mere six maps that all feature the same Seattle-meets-New York aesthetic, until I realized that there's already a small but already blossoming selection of player-made cities on CimExchange.com, and that I could always use the powerful map editor to build a city more to my liking. Or I could, if I were willing to put up with the editor's unwieldiness – a UI design problem that plagues most of Cities in Motion 2. .... Read the rest at IGN.

Company is actively seeking feedback on "first draft" of mod guidelines, though. Ea is currently discussing whether or not to officially allow mods like this in certain circumstances. EA is taking the first steps toward adding long-promised official modding tools to this year's revamp of SimCity (not to be confused with the unofficial modding tools hackers opened up months ago). However, the company's opening bid on restrictions for such user-generated content (UGC) is spurring intense discussion among players and developers. Yesterday, EA rolled out a "first draft" of the guidelines it hopes to put in place when UGC is added to SimCity in the future. That draft includes a rule that says "acceptable UGC and mods do not jeopardize the integrity of the gameplay or harm the experience of others." Another rule disallows "UGC that effects [sic] the simulation for multiplay[er] games and features." As written, these initial guidelines severely limit what the modding community will be able to alter in the game, restricting mods to cosmetic and incidental features. In fact, the only acceptable examples of UGC the guidelines explicitly mention are "swapping art assets, like buildings and vehicles." Users don't exactly seem happy about these proposed restrictions. In an ensuing thread discussing the guidelines, user Oppie pointed to the wide-ranging gameplay mods available for SimCity 4 and worried that restrictions on modding the underlying simulation would leave "SimCity modding... dead in the water." "While I understand that there's a huge drive to keep the integrity of the multiplayer aspect of the game intact, one has to aslo aknowledge [sic] that there is a large segment of the fanbase that exclusively plays in single-player regions who don't have any interest in leaderboards, global markets and other multiplayer aspects," he wrote. "Why not allow these players to play the game their own way[?]" Of course, the only reason this is even a discussion is because of SimCity's always-online passive multiplayer, which causes each player's individual simulation to have knock-on effects for other players in the same region. "The idea behind this point is that one player modding their game shouldn't disrupt the way another player experiences the game," developer MaxisStaab wrote in the resulting forum thread. "I wouldn't want to join a region where someone purposely made a super-pollution factory and polluted the entire region. Well okay I might, but I wouldn't want to do it without 'opting in' first." It's that "opting in" mention that offers a glimmer of hope for some kind of compromise on this issue. Developer MaxisKane hinted that he'd be open to allowing simulation-based modding in private regions in the game's current sandbox mode—or in an entirely new mode specifically designed for UGC. Developer MaxisStaab seems similarly open to player feedback on more open modding options. "As a player what would you want to be able to know about mod enabled regions?" he asks in the forum thread. "Would it matter if the mod's [sic] used changed after you started playing in the region? If a mod created an unbalanced region would you care? If a SimCity update created an issues [sic] with a mod and the region broke—would you be upset or just realize that's part of modding a game that updates?" While EA's opening bid to heavily restrict modding in SimCity is a bit disheartening, the fact that the company is soliciting fan feedback and seems to be taking it to heart has us hopeful that more substantial gameplay mods may eventually be allowed in the game.

Maxis announces more road options in development including overpasses, tunnels and bridges. Other updates to traffic behavior, trees, vehicle behavior, freight and more are also in development. New: Brand new tool to create bridges, overpasses, and tunnels when you draw your roads. When building your road, pressing the , key or . key will lower or raise the road accordingly creating overpasses, bridges and tunnels. Note: Existing road layouts cannot be raised or lowered New: Improvements for Traffic behavior to make it smarter. This should reduce the number of lines formed by all available vehicles converging on a single spot. This affects all vehicles including Police, Fire Trucks, Moving Trucks, Garbage Trucks, Recycling Trucks, Resource Trucks, Buses, Ambulances, and Civilian vehicles going home, to work, or shopping. New: Tree tools – Place individual trees around your city. These tools are located at the end of the Nature Parks palette. Terrain: Fixes an issue some player’s see where terrain covers sections of roads while the camera is zoomed out. Fixed an issue where the fire animation would sometimes continue when fire was extinguished. Parks: Sports parks are now accepting Sims 24 hours a day. Airship: The number of Airship passenger trips should now be correct over multiple days. Vehicles: Vehicles now accelerate and decelerate faster, allowing them to leave buildings and go through intersections more efficiently. Freight: Freight trucks now only leave factories if they have a valid delivery destination. Gifting: Money gifting should be more reliable.

Update 4.0 Notes • New: SimCity Launch Park, an exclusive new park just for our dedicated fans who were early adopters. • New: Region: Edgewater Bay. Seven city sites in one cluster around a beautiful bay with one great work site. • New: Your current server will now be shown in the options menu. • New: More detailed rollover information on buildings telling player’s if their Sims received happiness from a park or from shopping. Previous to this fix, this information was generic. • Re-Enabled Feature: Global Market prices now dynamically change during gameplay. • Re-Enabled Feature: Leaderboards are will be active on EU West 3, Pacific 1 and Pacific 2 at the release. We will enable them on additional servers throughout the day. • Re-Enabled Feature: Region filters are now enabled on all SimCity servers. Players will be able to search for open games by Map Name, Sandbox Mode, and Abandoned Cities. • Rain Clouds: Fixed an issue where some cities would not have rain clouds to replenish their water table. If you had a city with this issue, you will start seeing clouds again within a game day. • Fire: Improved response time of fire trucks to fires. Improved the time it takes for a fire signal to reach a fire station. • Mission updates: Tuned Metals HQ and Community College missions. These were appearing too early, making them difficult to complete. They now appear later in a city’s development. • Solar Farm Great Work: Reduced fire risk at the Solar Farm Great work. Local fire engines were spending too much time at the Solar Farm. • Messaging: Improved pre-requisite messaging for Trade Port, Casinos, Smelting Factory and Oil Refinery. It should be clearer on how to unlock these buildings. • Graphics: Fix for flickering low wealth buildings on NVIDIA graphics cards. • Education: Fix for an issue some cities experienced where commuting students did not return from a neighbor’s city. This was causing a problem where students would disappear from a city in some cases. • Tuning: Sims will lose a small amount of happiness if they don’t have a place to shop. Cities without places to shop will see complaints and feel the effect of unhappy Sims. This will emphasize the importance of commercial zones.

"Electronic Arts' John Riccitiello is stepping down as chief executive officer. He submitted his resignation to EA's board of directors today, and will finish his tenure March 30. Effective immediately, former EA president and CEO Larry Probst will step in as executive chairman while the company searches for a replacement..." More in the article

UKAzzer published a video to YouTube (via Reddit) that shows him playing around in the game's debug mode. From there, he was able to edit the highways that connect cities together outside of the city boundaries. The game's city sizes have been criticised by some for being too small. "You can edit the highways ANYWHERE - even outside of your city boundary," UKAzzer said, "and even if you quit the game and log back in later, it's all saved safely on the server. "This shows that highway editing will be easily possible, AND that editing outside of the artificially small city boundaries should be very viable too." Meanwhile, UKAzzer modded out the "fluffed population count" so the game shows the real population count - a disparity players have complained about since launch. Most importantly, UKAzzer was able to disable SimCity's disconnection timer, thus setting it to unlimited. Tests have shown SimCity kicks you out after around 20 minutes of offline play. Source: Eurogamer

SimCity is in shambles. Not the virtual cities built within its digital confines, mind you, but the game itself. The reboot of EA Maxis' classic SimCity this week has been a roller coaster of emotions, with positive reviews and fanfare pushing hype levels past 11... all of which fell apart just after midnight on Tuesday morning when the game launched to a crushing response from fans. Unlike many games, including previous SimCity entries, the new SimCity requires a constant connection to EA's servers. It requires a connection regardless of whether or not you choose to play with others, even -- a bold move, and one that was met with much wariness among gamers when announced last year. Given the mass popularity of the SimCity series and the glowing praise the game received ahead of release from press, it was no surprise that the sheer number of customers trying to snag the game -- and subsequently, play it -- overwhelmed EA's servers. The result? Days of choppy play, or, more often, an inability to access the game at all. Worse yet, EA's started shutting off parts of the game in hopes of lowering server loads across the board, which (understandably) angered many players. So, how did we get here?

As the headline tells you, EA is rolling in 1 more beta And we all know why of we look at the effects it had on sales according to its last quarterly review.

During the SimCity Community Day, we had a chance to speak with Maxis developers about the new game. In Part 1, we talk with Kip Katserelis, Lead Producer and Stone Librande, Lead Designer. In Part 2, we talk with Ocean Quigley.