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SC2013 was never intended to be the next SimCity following the customer nurtured SC4. The intent was to transform a niche genre product with immersive gameplay for simulation and replication to a volume market product with accessible gameplay for casual and leisure patterning. I have to admit though, it is understandable that people thought that SC2013 would be the next SimCity, building upon the strengths of a nurtured SC4 intended to outdo that game. EA's marketing deliberately created expectation patterns for that. The problem is, that was only done in order to get existing franchise fans to generate buzz, to talk about it, to kickstart their communities in to creating exposure for it. We can argue about whether that is morally acceptable or not, fact remains that it worked. People bought the marketing, and thus the game. As it stands, there is no morality attached, because people buy it. They enable the mindset that results in these situations. Personally I'm in agreement with the good folks of RockPaperShotgun. SC2013 is an easy access quick bit of fun game. But as it so heavily favours form over function it is just not my game. From a professional perspective it is well made, well tailored and well marketed according to strategic directives, I can see how it was planned and specced out. But I also find discarding the existing potential of an existing commercial customerbase wasteful. I can see how they easily could have served both worlds, so to speak. That they decided to discard one world after use, well, that is EA's prerogative. That it is commercially wasteful has even already become clear in sales figures available today. But so be it. I fully realise that EA will take a few lessons from 2K Games in how to use the factors of "I want to believe" and "I want to embrace" for the immersive gameplay niche customer base to come back and buy more DLC in order to finish, fix and enhance the game. Personally however I am not going to give them that chance. The mentality behind this kind of entrepreneurial approach is one of desdain for the customer, and more importantly it is one of desdain for the dependancies any company has to deal with in order to achieve growth. It does not deserve giving that chance, I much prefer (and I realise this is a decision out of principles) to give a chance to other companies who do not demonstrate the same wasteful desdain towards customers, developers and investors alike. The big question right there for those who are demonstrably not the target customers for EA with the SC2013 title is whether or not they will a) come back to buy DLC (to essentially finish the game, fix the game and enhance the game - in recognition of those enhancements being designed to cater to other customer types) and b) come back to buy further titles from EA. In the knowledge that they have been used, are not sufficiently important to be serviced and are not the target customer types EA wants to create for. Yes, it should have been possible to punch through the marketing. Some people did, others did not. Ultimately however punching through it was not even necessary as EA managed to pull its own pants down, so to speak, through the consequences of decisions originating from the mindset behind the strategic directives. Server issues were just one tiny case in that. A bigger case was that of contradictions between EA's and Maxis statements. A yet even bigger case was that of EA's own failures in messaging towards customers following release. SC2013 is perfect for today's volume markets. It is only because of EA's own failings in mentality that it failed in reaching those strategic targets. It's a game that does provide a nice quick shiny bit of fun, but it fails to keep my attention. Not because of all the issues or frustrations surrounding the marketing and release, but simply because it does not match my gameplay. I prefer to simulate in depth, to try and build to replicate both the real and the imaginary (and imaginative), I don't appreciate arbitrary constrictions, and I do not see any point in being forced to play online only quite simply because to me a simulation game is something I engage in on my own at a time and place and circumstances of my own.

Only natural. It's called "making use of personal networking". Publishers are quite good at putting that to use in service of narrative control. You can see it in quite a few places actually, ranging from outright (and silly) blocking to a more guided approach of locking threads once they reach a certain point.

Well, as long as you are an American you essentially have no rights in these types of affairs as long as commercial terms & conditions trump state and federal law. I realise that is probably something hard to understand for non-Americans, but this is the reality of our legal system today. A big part of that comes from something we as citizens have caused ourselves, the very behaviour which (admittedly together with the excesses of incorporated greed) have created the claim culture. It is only natural in our system for a corporate entity to make use of market potentials to its maximum ability up to and including the use of the forces within potential markets as resources, just like it is only natural for a corporate entity to cover its dependancies and risks against them. There's a myriad of precedents, exceptions and conditional elements, and we should not forget that in many regards the law lags behind both technological and economical evolution, but in a nutshell a company's terms - if constructed properly - trump what we have in terms of generic consumer protection mechanisms. If you are an American citizen, your job is to buy blindly and only talk about intangible rights as long as those do not clash with the organisation of society. So yes, EA can do what it wants. And to be quite blunt, while we can all have our opinions on the morality of our organisation of society and thinking we have to accept responsability for our choices. If we buy, we have to accept that and all consequences because we did not utilise our remaining prerogative of not buying. Consumerism relies on principles to guard against excesses resulting from the human behaviour that drives and requires it. Not on law, that is just a derivative instrument in its own right, not something magically balanced or neutral. Principles like responsability are only our own, so either live by them or accept the consequences of not living by them. And yes, marketing is today's instrument that works against that conditionality of principles, but there too we must accept our responsability because we are essentially able to not buy the marketing either. It is in EA's interest to keep the waters as murky as possible, that is how one protects interests. And in the organisation of our society corporate interests come first. We created that societal organisation over the course of our history, so it's a simple case of either accepting it or changing it.

I would not say losing interest as such, but I do agree with this article on RockPaperShotgun in full. SC2013 is a nice quick bit of fun, but as it favours form so much over function I just find it limited to a point where it just becomes less and less my sort of beef. Then again, I must admit, I am hardly part of the target user group or market volume. I simply prefer to puzzle deep, to replicate and simulate.

They're doing that though. The international city packs contain improved transportation and law enforcement services, depending on which country you wish to make the city emulate. Since this is being sold as a multiplayer game with some competitive elements, it could be seen as giving someone an advantage for purchasing the city packs. True, it is however not going to be a bottleneck of sorts until EA opens the store and enables DLC's tied to Origin's version of Achievements and enables the ranking elements properly again. What I do have to admit is that where it comes to such matters this is where DLC concepts are ideal to cater to. Most DLC methodologies are by default and by design created to cater to human psychology. The bulk of people want to have their win, so it is only natural to sell that to them. I realise that for the "old" users of the "nurtured" SC4 that may seem a bit wierd. It is a sim right? Unfortunately, such mindsets are not what this reboot was created for. It was created for the volume market of those who do want to buy their win / rank / etc. There's variations to the theme, ofcourse, large portions of the volume market user types seek the shortcut concept, others seek the "validation" of being ranked on a magical list, yet other groups seek the idea of being part of something, and so forth. It's a bit of a scale, and DLC is ideal to cater to it.

It is possible. The latest EA decisions leave a gap of rules or even guidelines on what they consider the difference between a hack and a mod. It's rather unnerving really, since for a lot of people quite a bit is tied to their Origin account, to say the least. Equally there is still no information on any policy regarding content contributions. I could understand it if EA had a problem with people releasing their own free content parallel to EA's DLC's.

Not possible, currently. I believe I caught a tweet from one of the devs stating they would look at it, I could be wrong though.

For EA to make quality games as a foundation for their business development a lot would have to change. For starters, they would have to adopt a radically different model. For EA it pays to not have quality as the foundation for their model, but efficiency of marketing plus sales versus costs. It is a reality of today that businesses do not stay in business longer if they offer what customers want. It happens, but it is a rarity. Overall businesses stay in business because they invest more in the arts of marketing and sales rather than investing in just what the customer wants. Don't get me wrong here, one has to have an idea of what customers want, but this is generally approached from the angle of what can we make so that it sells the most. What customer types have which expectation patterns IS a strong element of that, but it is a tactical element - one that takes place on a development / production level - and not a strategic level. EA has set a range of strategic directives for its subsiduaries. Those work within the constraints of those directives. Their research takes place after those directives are set on an entirely different level. And even then their research is focused still on mapping what user types (different from "customers") share in expectation patterns which is then translated in to mapping out production according to first and foremost using these results to cater to the strategic targets. SC2013 already is a classic textbook example of how a publisher active as an investment broker takes its steps on a strategic level in service of developing a lock-in service model controlled strictly through a services platform. It is equally a classic textbook example of how a subsiduary tasked with production for a venture is required to work within the constraints imposed by these strategic targets according to instructions, timeline, resource allocation and so forth. If you want EA to make money for investors, you should encourage them to learn from the SC2013 case in terms of figuring out the lapses in marketing, resource allocation planning and sales, so that in the future they do not allow prospect and existing customers to see the differences between marketing of a product and the realities of the origins, the release, the state of and the specifications of a product. In simpler terms, if you want EA to make money, you have to encourage them to invest deeper in to the Big Lie methodology in order to be smarter about it. I'm sorry, but that is how it is. You need not worry, EA is perfectly aware of this, and is already showing signs with the departure of its latest CEO to commit themselves further and deeper on that road. As for taking an angle of low cost productions, rest assured that is well under way. SC2013 is at its core a fine example of revisions in that focus element of strategy. Ofcourse one has to punch through some creative accounting, in many ways very similar to that of how the movie industry has come to work, but it is quite clear in the briefs. But yes, EA will continue the roadmap of reboot, DLC and services platform for its AAA mainstream titles, it will continue to invest further in the values of data mining and profiling research, it will strengthen efforts towards enablement of services platform technology for targeted contextual advertising, and so forth. Again, business as usual. What it will not do is engage in quality first productions, it will not engage in niche genre products beyond the reboot formula where one can tie seperate titles to a same market, it will not loosen the leash around the necks of the poor folks who do the actual work, they will further focus wide rather than deep.

Well, like all good resources they go wherever it is quickest It's pretty much the same as with where they live, they don't really have a house or rent one, they just go in to one and spend the night there. I'm surprised I haven't seen more parties in the streets.

But ofcourse EA considers striving towards full control over how customers play a game a strategic target. It is one of the basic requirements for creating a lock-in platform / service market. In many ways EA is trying to do what Apple does a lot better, but of which Apple recognises that there are natural limits to lock-in markets.

That is not what I am saying though. I'm making a distinction between engaging in economic interaction to generate wealth through production, and concentrating wealth by the use of production. Labour is involved in both, but the first uses it to produce while the second uses it to tap in to the first. And as we evolved to a services system and moved away from the first we require a system of declaring debt to fill in the logical gap between the two in order to establish continuity for the second. In our modern economics there is no causal relation between one person having a lot of money and "thus" another person having less money. Most people tend to think there is such a causal relation, but we tend to forget that most of our wealth is not generated by labour but by means of declaration of debt. The person holding a lot of money has it easier to make use of that than the person holding a lot less money. Keep in mind these are opposite ends of a scale. And keep in mind that there are plenty other countries, cultures and economies where there is a relation between one person having a lot of money and thus another person having less money. And those economies influence ours directly. Yet another dependancy we have to deal with. Our modern economics does have dependancies however. One of these is that regardless of what one holds one should be able to engage in labour to create wealth, the reality unfortunately is that our credit system has been gradually redesigned to present the idea of creating wealth on the basis of that declaration of debt, and much less through engaging in labour. The theory you present is correct, it has however not been the reality since the early '90's because we have changed the mechanisms of distributing wealth. In simple terms, our theories of economics have become instruments underneath the proverbial marketing required for ensuring that people continue to participate in the functional requirements of our chosen systems. The notion that there is always a need for more and better is a very american notion. It is part of our upbringing, the american dream is after all integral and required marketing for our society. We should not confuse the demands of demographics imposed on economics in - for example - developing countries with this. The scale of necessities changes over time, a fridge once was luxury but now is a basic element. Still, in most places of the world you see strong cultural trending that conflicts with the notion of "demand more and better is always there". When I first left the states one of the more funny things encountered was being invited at the home of a German banker, very affluent I might add, who completely failed to see my point of having a house with just a single bathroom and that being not enough. Similarly a Belgian investor who once invited me to a dinner did not grasp the idea of buying a huge shiny double fridge for his kitchen because he had a fridge that worked and was enough for her and her family. Puzzling. But you get the point. Consumerism is not the same throughout the world, we tend to forget that. That we as a society these days favour concentrating wealth is understandable. We are brought up with ideas of rights and power and big is better, that buying is good and that the american dream is a working system. It has created a culturally defined theme where one has to participate in certain ways or one is a destructive factor to the system. But look at our own society today. Generating wealth today is subject to participation in the system of declaring debt and using debt as a collateral. It is a wierd system when you think a little bit about it, because using debt as collateral creates virtual wealth, but not actual wealth. Look at the position of our middle class today, with increasingly less ownership of what they use to create wealth, and increasingly less ability to do that because there are natural limits to the use of virtual wealth. A tangible collateral for an investment always beats an intangible one. I do agree that there is always room to grow an economy. But one of the things I have learned is that it is healthier for a society to create wealth through labour as opposed to creating it by declaring debt. It may seem a subtle difference, but it is extremely significant. The irony today is that the economies that struggle in patterns of relations between consumerism and debt declaration as the basis for economics are the ones who face structural issues. While those who are not based on declaration of debt don't have these structural issues. See, it is indeed not a zero sum game. Because it is not a zero sum game it remains possible for participants in an economic interaction to apply influence through the ability of making choices. We should never simply believe anything just because it was accurate in the past or because it is what we perceive as required to function in an economic sense. Circumstances change, dependancies shift, and as all is connected there is no such thing as an isolated economic interaction. Honestly though, if you believe that you have made your sale by offering a superior value to the buyers that is your belief, and it may very well be reality. The reality however also is that it has become too rewarding to not offer superior value, but to offer impressions of superior value. The distinction is significant. EA some years ago made the strategic decision to not focus on delivering superior products, but to strive towards selling products in a superior way. Again the distinction should be clear.

It's not about being fair. Fair has nothing to do with it. That's a subjective non factor. It's commercial instrumentation, which with the help of just a little bit of messaging also aids in destabilising "unproductive" trends among customers (like engaging in constructive criticism or mere voicing of frustration due to having fallen for the publishers marketing but finding out that the created expectation patterns do not match with the releases game itself) by splitting them up in those who want to believe and who thus are very likely to pitch themselves against other users. Classic marketing construct really which always serves in more than just one way.

Because it pays more to release a shell game and sell split off elements down the road again and again and again to large volumes to users seeking to expand the shell game in to the full game the company designed and specified before cutting it up. There's a few variations on the theme, but this is how our industry has dealt with the introduction of the microtransactions concept. Think about, look at it from an angle of psychology but also of business development. It is cheaper, simpler, presents much more room for tailoring to the largest possible markets and constantly uses the human desires to believe and to complete.

Its smart, because then they can claim simcity was a huge success and disregard all the lessons learned. But they did learn lessons, and they will apply them. They are just not the lessons consumers have learned out of this. The biggest lesson for EA is that they must invest more in narrative control. I agree that does not serve the consumer types who have punched through the marketing, but that is irrelevant either way as the user types connected to that have served their purpose anyway. And cutting them off, so to speak, saves EA money in terms of handling those now, and in the future.

There is difference between not liking something because its different and not liking it because its different and broke. If the Simulation aspect would have worked at least in a reasonable manner, I could have at least respectfully said its not for me. But the problem is the core game doesn't even function properly to allow me to make the choice. SC13 could have easily been a slightly larger Tropico 4 with out the island dictator comedy, but at the moment we can't even tell that. Besides, we should take note that it was EA who made a conscious decision to sell it to us as the next SC4, instead of just being honest and presenting it as a reboot and thus avoiding a lot of risks of pants dropping. EA created the expectation patterns for SC4 users deliberately, to make use of those user groups for generating messaging and exposure in service of a release sales cycle. It failed, but only really because EA lied and was terrible in not covering the lies.

Not really. We all have reset buttons. They are called brains. It's just a matter of using them. We have become incapable of making a distinction between marketing and information. If people would start making that distinction again, circumstances would drastically change. Just consider what sort of impact that would have on todays media dependancies, or even just our food distribution, production and sales. Or our financing of investments. Our buying behaviour would radically change, which would severely upset the status quo yes but which also would provide enormous opportunities to once again create wealth. The two biggest issues with our economy are our buying behaviour and our extremely limited capacity for creating wealth. These have arisen not out of pathetically polarised politics or anything like that. We have made our choices. The consequences are equally our own. Our vote in politics is no longer an application of our power to grant a mandate to a representative. Our function in economics is merely that of a resource. Using our brains is rapidly becoming the equivalent of voting with your feet. Except that using our brains is what creates opportunities. We just have to use them. Your biggest power as a consumer and a citizen today is your consumptive behaviour. Just to to find the button, and use it. One step at a time, consistantly. The secret of life is to choose, and choose again, and choose again. We still have that capacity of choice. We can throw it away by not using it, or we can actually do it. Insert Yoda here, so to speak. Smart little guy.

It includes batches (boxes but also key packs) bought by retailers. It's not the same as sales to end-users.

As long as people buy it, anything goes. Making people buy anything is easy. Just control the narrative, and if that does not work throw them a bone so you can divide them between those who want to believe and those who want to inform themselves. The latter are too expensive to bother with anyway.

Yeah well, let's be honest, this *is* how our societies work today. Again, because consumers buy (in to) it. Better and new businesses do not get a real set of prospects for the very same reason. It's all in the hands of John and Jane Doe Citizen Consumer. If people made different choices, our economy would get an enormous boost because there would be a necessity to create wealth again visible to those people who like to seize opportunities. And that is an awfully big part of our economy. But right now such efforts are either not "bought" in consumerism (largely because they cannot compete in the sense of having the bigger budget for the longer breath) or they are really bought and made part of those parts of our economy which insist on the status quo of concentrating wealth (why do you think EA invests in buying up studios and various related rights, it is not just to grow a balance sheet or add another product rack to the store - for that matter why do you think our finance industry makes such a structural effort in coaching startups to the point of acquisition and splitting of assets tangible and intangible). Look, our industry is just another industry. A lot of its people have just as little idea of their role in it as the average consumer. That is how it is required to work. It is you, as a consumer, who enables that and prevents other initiatives from getting a foot on the ground. Yes, EA and such companies are not innocent either, but they are still a symptom of our own behaviour as consumers. Pure and simple. Let me put it this way, have we as a society learned from the excesses in our banks, or from the bailout syndrome (too big to fail? seriously? look at history, allowing banks to go bust does cause issues yes but it also revitalises economies throughout history - has anyone looked at how countries like Iceland handled their banks too big to fail?). Nature abhors a vacuum. Filling a vacuum does produce chaos yes, but that chaos is what human beings seize to create new order from. New opportunities, new chances. So don't look at EA as evil, it is just another symptom of our behaviour as consumers. If we make different choices, we create our own opportunities, every time again.

I agree with you. But at certain point no one can hide the truth. Maybe more people have tendency to believe in something without critical thinking, but not all of them. EA goes too far with this. Very far. What does truth have to do with it? Well, it is only ever a factor when people pull their own pants down, but even then most of the time publishers are smart enough to ensure that truth serves their purpose. Look at SC2013, a lot of issues are really only issues because people who came from SC4 bought the marketing and came to the game not only with created expectations, but more importantly with their tendency to puzzle. So when things did not add up, they picked things apart. But one very desired result of that in a reboot execution format is that this way because of such issues you cut off those types of users, and they are not your target market anyway. They are a resource, they have served their purpose, the target is a volume market where people play casually online without picking apart the game when their expectations are not met - because they are given just that which fits their behaviour. SC2013 is really well designed in that way. Any next SimCity is an easy venture for that volume market of leisure and casual social / multi play. EA may decide to once again try to generate exposure and messaging by means of using those who's expectations are not met by a straight reboot application, but chances are they won't even have to or want to. Such user types cost more. They are a niche. Cutting them off pays more, it makes control over volume markets easier and cheaper. Yes, I do agree that EA has grown to be counterproductive to its own long term interests. But those interests do not matter as long as EA can maintain short cycle investment runs. Simple. It does not pay for EA to change. They just have to entrench deeper, and enhance the current instrumentation to control the narrative better. Which is cheap. Especially now that many of those niche markets who do go deep, so to speak, are a lot less likely to jump on the next incarnation.

Heh. Hehehe.

Core = AAA titles in our industry, but it also is a concept used for categorising prospect markets related. The format however is a different case, for example an FPS AAA title can be released as a Core game but it can also be a niche game and a leisure market game, or casual market game, and so forth. Formats used to be a case of genres and niches, but that has changed with the entry of microtransaction concepts and mobility & social market orientations. It's why I have stated before that SC2013 is such a smart and well developed product for the volume market targets desired by EA under the circumstances of today and in service of its own strategic goals. The quality or individual reception of the game is not relevant to them in any way or form in this. The real issue is that EA got caught using Big Lie methodology. And that is really its own fault.

It's irrelevant really, that discussion on producing quality games. It is ofcourse entirely subjective, we should note that. The case in point unfortunately is that for EA's business format it is also an irrelevant discussion. It does not matter whether a venture delivers a quality product, it only matters if a product sells sufficienly to pay for the investment cycle requirements and extra. That's it. But that is what strikes me as fundamentally wrong there. EA has an enormous potential, just not in the current format. But it is too invested in to that format for it to adopt another format. It is unable to restructure itself for that purpose, it has too many dependancies of a financial nature for running ventures, investors are not going to let it overhaul itself without first meeting all the running dependancies. EA has no real option other than even more firmly planting its feet on the road of already chosen strategies and to invest more in marketing for guising the continuation of the course.

Exactly, it is smart. And a lot of people will buy in to it. No doubts there. The real irony is how such things are used on the balance sheet, it is fully artificial gain, but hey - welcome to statistics And well, that they are laughing is clear anyway. It fits the mindset and the methods. The customer to them is just a joke at best, sheep at worst. That used to be different in our industry, and personally I think it would be smart to not fall prey to such a mentality. Unfortunately, it pays better, because consumers consume. Pure and simple.

There's too much inertia in terms of financial dependancies for a quick complete reorientation. Essentially. The train of Facebook has sailed for investment rides so to speak as well. Zynga has already demonstrated to be a bubble just waiting to burst. Also, being honest, EA is without a complete restructuring unable to engage in flexible venture development. It's one of the bigger issue with the short cycle format. It creates top down structures where non production elements carry far too much weight and cost. I do agree that the next will be a puppet, but not all investors are equal. Most do not realise that. There's barely 3 or 4 who have the actual "pull" to push at the moment. EA's reputation degraded once EA basically had met its founding goals. Hard to believe, but EA once was put together to be a platform for creative industry, to secure potential for creative souls. EA already failed upon completing those goals, every company that reaches such a situation knows that it has to reinvent itself according to changing circumstances of dependancies. Instead EA just sailed on and essentially became a mere investment broker, with the obvious issues attached. It became rather hated once it started to advertise how it wanted to be the elephant in the gift shop, early '90's. After that, the by then reigning mentalities elected to shower desdain on that which enabled it - developers and customers. It kept that up in a format of short cycle venture development. Without regard for dependancies or long term evolution of markets.