Mr. Flibble

I think Civitas is dead. The moderators of the forums on what passed for the site Quixotically defended the developers' inability to post even a couple sentences to let people know it was still being developed over the last six months since they said the "beta" would be opening soon. As of a couple weeks ago they've pulled the plug on the forum because of a lack of news.

I'll never install Origin on my system. Remove that requirement and we'll talk. After you at least triple the city plot sizes and allow offline saves for each city so I can wreck and reload it.

I'm enjoying SC4 with the recent NAM release immensely all over again, have been playing Prison Architect, and am looking forward to Banished and eventually Chris Roberts' Star Citizen. Any longing I had for the new SimCity disappeared sometime in April or May. Nothing will make it appealing for me, even if they double the size of the city plots and add offline saves. I'm as much against the arrogance of EA as I am any specific flaws in the game at this point and will never install a game requiring Origin to play.

I'm not a contributor of anything much besides the occasional comment but my time with Simtropolis goes way, way back to the early days of its existence. Just wanted to thank Dirk and the rest of you all who DO provide so much wonderful stuff here and make it the finest SimCity destination on the internet (in my opinion at least). Here's hoping you do reach a million!

Where, oh where, will people be able to fit these in their cities with Balls of Twine and Giant Garden Gnome landmarks from buying all that toothpaste, and amongst their Nissan Leaf dealerships?

I understand that, my comments apply to any developer.

They can start by not treating us like bottomless wallets that are expected to have a Pavlovian reaction to addons and enhancements that should have been in a game to begin with. They might also respect the opinions of long-term fans and supporters and tailor their visions to mesh with them rather than directly opposing them and saying, "trust us, you'll love the changes".

What language classes do you have to take at school to be able to rattle off sentence after sentence of corporate babble like that earnings call is full of?

I like Will Wright, I really do. Listening to him, though, I can't help but start to ask "what have you done for us lately"? Spore was hyped to the moon and beyond and ended up a disappointment. Given the number of venues that small, independent designers have to promote their games and get funding, there's more expectation than ever for something he does or is involved with to be groundbreaking, not derivative.

You know it'll be online only. How else can they have Facebook and Twitter intertwined into it? You know they'll try. Whether you start your own little Sim neighborhood or move into someone else's it'll all be on some remote cloud server that you can't save or roll back.

Why is the word "sim" even attached to this? There is nothing remotely realistic in how either the workplaces or the citizens behave. It simulates nothing. This is like pitching a flight simulator that doesn't bother to model thrust and aerodynamics and decides to write a wholly fictitious algorithm based around wind pushing you up from the ground and from behind.

Does this company's right hand even know what it's left hand is doing?

Sad to see that this is what the development studio behind SimCity, SimEarth, SimAnt, etc. has dwindled to. Just a hollow, soulless marketing vehicle.

If it's only available in the U.S., why was it on a Brazilian site? Doubtless, it'll probably be sitting there on your hard drive as bloat in the game install. To see it in anyone else's neighboring cities you'll need to have it downloaded, too, whether or not you ever redeem the code to use it yourself.

It's a riff on the "Biggest Ball of Twine" roadside attractions in various parts of the U.S., the most famous probably being the one in Minnesota.