macscfan

I think at the end of the day, EA "killed" SimCity 2013. SC2013 was going to succeed or die in 2013 and 2014 based on what EA did, not what somebody might do in 2015. That's not to take away from the C:S developers (especially given their size), but EA had from the launch of SimCity 4 up through this year to build something long-lasting with a SC4 sequel, and they didn't. That is squarely on EA. In fact, if EA hadn't made so many mistakes with SC2013 from the start, Cities: Skylines would probably never have been developed, since Paradox didn't want to go head-to-head with a successful SimCity revival.

It's been in the Top 10 games played on Steam since its launch. It's been one of the fastest growing non-default reddits (3-4 days in a row now), and the reddit sub has over 40,000 subscribers. IGN, PC Gamer, Game Informer, Escapist Magazine, PC World (which was carried by MacWorld), Gaming Nexus, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Lazy Game Reviews, Inc Gamers, Gamestyle, PC Games, GameWatcher, GameSpot, have all given it positive reviews, and those are some of the top mainstream gaming websites. As a matter of fact, out of the 23 critic reviews on Metacritic, not a single one was mixed or negative. That's pretty rare. Cities: Skylines is getting a lot more notice than you think, and it's positive notice.

The only SimCity you can now obtain for iOS is SimCity BuildIt (although I think previous owners of SC3K/HD can still download those versions). I mention SimCity 2000 because I think it would be perfect for the more "casual" play that works well with mobile. "Casual" play is a bad word with some, but I think a lot of newer gamers these days could be intimidated by any SimCity that's more complex than that, and I see it as an opportunity to create new SimCity fans. For the most part, I agree with you about what EA wants: Shooters, licensed/movie games, and mature stuff. There are plenty within EA that would gladly do other stuff though, and they could make EA plenty of money. In theory, SimCity 2013 brought them a good $150 million or more (while there were sales, there was also DLC), and had they not botched it, could have brought twice that amount easily.

I have seen it advertised quite a bit on mainstream gaming sites, and lots of really positive reviews, so I think it's picking up some steam. A lot of people who were on the fence waiting to see, who were maybe distrustful after SC5, are probably starting to buy into it.

I have known many people who worked or work at EA, know quite a few currently working at BioWare. There are plenty of developers at EA who want to make a unique game that does not fall into the template EA seems to be laying out (sports/shooter/action/FPS/mobile "free-to-play"). Unfortunately, they are not in a position to decide what games EA wants to make in order to please the shareholders. The riskiest games they currently make are on the mobile platform, because that's where they can experiment without risking too much, while at the same time the potential for a massive profit is there. I think if they truly want to bring back SC as a franchise, start with a remastered SC2000 on the iPad. Could be done with a 15 member team (or fewer). I understand the sentiment, although in defense of developers back then, computer hardware was making huge advances every year or two, and it was making a huge difference in what could be done in terms of gameplay. Now, many people can do just fine on a 5-year old machine (especially if they toss in a $100 SSD).

The other thing, and again, stick with a small team, is simply an updated version of SC4. If you want to toss in some multiplayer, go ahead. Don't play around with DRM, don't play around with telling people what they CAN'T do because of limitations with the engine that should never have been there. If C:S was done with 9-14 people during most of its development, EA could afford to have 15-20 people on a true SC5. You could even share art between the mobile and desktop platforms, which would save money and also help with sales between both (basically selling people two copies of SC - one on desktop, one on mobile). If done right, you can share cities between tablets and desktops - I have quite a few desktop programs that share data with my iPhone and iPad, and a SimCity sharing cities between my iMac and iPad is quite doable. The only issue with sharing cities is my suggestion of using SC2000 for the basis of a mobile offering, and SC4 for the desktop offering. Don't try and "reinvent" the genre, or whatever they were trying to do with SC2013. Give people what they want, SC5. Paradox/CO proved it could be done on a small budget with a small team in just a year or so. The only barrier is that it's not as sexy and money-making as the kinds of franchises EA wants (although I think if done right it would climb up into Sims territory).

Paradox announced that they sold 250,000 copies of Cities: Skylines in the first 24 hours. Their biggest launch ever, and didn't count the pre-orders and sales since then. I bring that up, because that should show EA that there is still a market for city builders, regardless of how many SC2013 players became disenchanted or went back to SC4, not to mention those hooked on C:S. If EA had a desire to keep the SC franchise alive, and make money, they could do two things. 1) Take a look at their mobile SC offerings (both Build-it and the previous SC3K or whatever port) and realize those offerings did some things badly in a very obvious manner, but had a few good bits that could be kept. Take a look at all of the resource management games masquerading as city builders. There are a lot of them, and some of them have brought in a lot more money than even SC2013 did (seriously, some of those resource managers brought in insane money). Think about the platform - phones and iPads (and Android). Think about when and where people play a lot of their games. It's usually not for very long, and you can't get too deep in the depth/complexity, both for lack of playing time, and computing power. Go back, and take a look at SimCity 2000. I think it could be the perfect city builder for a tablet, if you updated the systems (look at the bugs/issues people had), and the graphics. Don't add much too it - you gotta keep things simple given the platform. Think of a "SimCity 2000 Remastered". Make it look beautiful, but don't go overboard with anything that will kill performance or drive players away. If you want to revive multiplayer...it'll be a little difficult, but it's doable. Make sure it's taking full advantage of Apple's game/cloud stuff so that people could load their cities up on whatever device (or Google Drive if you go that way) they happened to be on. I got to witness the development of one of EA's "free-to-play" games and it was not pretty, and the people involved were not in touch with their potential audience at all. About 9 months from the launch, I knew the game was going to be a failure, before I even saw a playable build. They kept throwing around the F2P buzzwords and how the game would change everything. I remember telling somebody that a certain mechanic that was meant to encourage people to spend money would cause some people to just stop playing. Lesson: Don't give people a completely new version of a game that has very little to do with its namesake. You don't need a huge team either. Here's where it gets tricky. Make it a city builder, not a resource manager. Stay away from all of the "Free-to-Play" mechanics. Sell the game for $5 or $10, do not create mechanisms that "encourage" people to spend more money to speed things up, because when people run into those walls, many will leave. Sell an all-in-one game for a flat price. SimCity 2000 with updated graphics and bug/system fixes for tablets. If you want to bring in optional DLC as an in-app purchase, such as city tile sets, fine, but DO NOT get into a situation where it becomes "pay-to-win" or Advanced Resource Management 101.

That's actually an interesting issue (and fwiw, Cities: Skylines has forced more than a few to upgrade). It's not just that many PCs and laptops are cheap, but it's that over the last 5-7 years, if you got a decent dual-core system with decent memory, you were good to go for several years (outside of high-end gamers/photographers/etc.). If you were a Mac user, you were definitely good to go for several years since Apple didn't race to the bottom in performance/components. I play mostly on a 5-year old iMac, and throwing an SSD in it recently made it feel like a brand new machine. So we kind of got spoiled with having decent machines that last several years, unlike say in the 90s and early '00s where you could see significant boosts in performance every year or two if you upgraded. Game developers were always trying to develop based on what they thought would be available a year or two out, and they knew that for the most part, gamers would happily upgrade. So I can see the issue of developing games for the market as it is, especially since the performance for mid-level machines is so much better versus even 5 years ago (where you still had plenty of single-core users around). Plus a whole lot of people fell in love with the smaller laptops that became available.

I can remember when EA used to publish games that would force you to upgrade your PC. As for the Crytek engine, I assume wozzar is talking about this city builder: http://www.thearchitect-game.com (scroll down for videos).

In regards to the licensing, what I meant is that a third party completely takes over ongoing maintenance/management/development of the main franchise, and not simply being contracted out by EA or partnered up with EA to do spinoffs or other platforms - it was very unique that EA allowed Broadsword to completely take over Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot. That's been extremely rare throughout EA's history - normally they will farm out a lot of things to third parties that we never hear about (especially in terms of artwork). Those are unique games though, in that they are MMORPGs bringing in monthly fees. I expected EA to shutter them since they were/are making so little, but there were some other things going on with them. I'm totally in agreement with you that Wright is his own worst enemy, as is the examples I gave earlier. The very things that made them all creative and innovative in their respective genres, also worked against them when it came time to make a budget - not thinking about distribution costs because you pushed the limits of technology (in the case of Ultima VII and its many floppies) or something else that they couldn't handle financially and that required them selling out. A few little decisions made differently here and there could have kept them all in possession of their franchises. On the other hand, when you start to distance yourself from those creative/innovative types, and you put people in charge who are in charge because they knew how to play the system, you get SimCity 2013, or you get Ultima Forever or the mobile Dungeon Keeper - projects that are lacking a certain "something" that earlier games had. In a normal business, the people in charge of these projects would have went down with the ship - instead they were promoted and given other projects, because they know how to play the system. With that said, in the case of Broadsword, the guy behind it was very much devoted to Dark Age of Camelot (and UO by proxy), and they are doing things that fans want with those franchises. I would like to see a responsible third party, with a passion for SC, take over the SC franchise and see what they can do with it.

Agreed that Focus Interactive will be the real loser, but I can't feel sorry for them - they've known for years exactly what they needed to do in order to take over the city builder genre. They had the assets and the community. They had the time. They had the feedback needed to take Cities XL to the next level and win over a lot of long-term SC fans. All they needed to do was fix the memory and multi-core (or lack thereof) issues in Cities XL, improve the tools, and just fix a lot of the bugs that have been hanging around. They didn't even need much in the way of new features, as long as they fixed the existing issues and polished up certain areas of the XL. Their business model, in some ways similar, in some ways worse than EA, along with the history of the Cities franchise, prevents them from ever obtaining the success that was within their reach. Their view of slapping on some multi-core support and Steam Workshop was simply not enough - Cities needed to be completely rewritten with modern computers (and modding) in mind. If you told me it had 10-year old code from City Life, I would totally believe it. I can see EA walking away from SimCity though. In recent years, they are focusing more and more on either the mega-franchises (think sports, and FPS) that generate sequel after sequel on a yearly or near-yearly basis, or on small/mobile games that generate a lot of revenue for little cost, with licensed games (outside of sports) thrown in (Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG) or certain genres that are meant to compete with the other large game companies (EA wants a piece of the World of Warcraft pie, etc.). SimCity - you can't crank out a yearly sequel to it and it's not tied to a movie or sports franchise, but if you did it right, and took a very long-term approach to it, it should make a lot of money. Release a very solid game with good modding tools, and then keep a small team around to keep cranking out DLC. Given how much they are in love with so-called "Free to Play", it's a wonder they didn't release a free version of SimCity and then sold you DLC. If they were to start on one now, they would be facing a tremendous uphill battle, going against their past reputation and C:S. I think them basically retiring the Maxis name shows where things are headed. I saw this with Mythic and a few other studios. It will be years before they seriously reconsider, if they do at all. SC just doesn't fit their current model. They want safe profits.

I hate to break it to you, Simcity 4 was the last Simcity game Will Wright had any say in and it was much smaller than the previous titles. I was more referencing how EA has treated other iconic games and the personalities that were closely associated with those iconic games - in recent years, Richard Garriott, Mark Jacobs, and Chris Roberts all wanted to work with the titles that they were most closely associated with, that EA owned (Ultima, Dark Age of Camelot, Wing Commander). In every case, EA refused, and all three ultimately went on to do new games (Shroud of the Avatar, Camelot Unchained, Star Citizen) that fans of the original games are very much interested in (Star Citizen raised $75 million). The same could be said of Peter Molyneux, as he ultimately had to make a spiritual successor to Populous without using the Populous IP. These were all solid opportunities (and there were others) for EA to have engaged with the creators of their iconic games, and some of the bad feelings between those individuals and EA had lessened/evaporated as they were older and/or certain management types at EA were gone. In the case of Ultima (and DungeonKeeper), rather than engage the creators, they went with somebody named Paul Barnett, who ruined both franchises with some crummy free-to-play games, and forced the closure of Mythic Studios. Barnett, like a certain person associated with SC2013, was promoted and survived the closure of the studio he ran into the ground. The interesting thing is that rather than let Garriott or Jacobs buy/license the Ultima Online or Dark Age of Camelot games, they instead licensed them to an unrelated third party. Which is why, even if Wright showed an interest, or if Wright would like somebody else to personally take over, EA would most likely ignore him. If we get a SimCity, it won't be out of Maxis, and would likely be farmed out to a third party.

I'm very happy as well - thanks to the publisher and developers. Especially thanks for interacting with the community.

I cant see EA walking away from the Sim city franchise. I think Cities Skylines will be a big wake up call for EA. EA had no competition before apart from CXL which wasnt a threat. But now EA do have some serious competition from CO. A new SimCity from EA on the desktop after Cities: Skylines and after the last SimCity fiasco is much tougher to pull off than a new SimCity in 2013 was. Much, much tougher, because the media and players will be extremely demanding and it would have to correct all of the deficiencies of the last SimCity PLUS exceed the areas of Skylines that people really like, and would likely have to match what people loved about SC4. That would be an extremely expensive endeavor, and should the pre-launch hype fall flat, it's liable to lose EA money out of the gate. Because of the media bloodbath over the last SimCity, and especially because of the serious competition, EA will shy away from SimCity on the desktop/laptop for years to come. It's in EA's nature - they controlled the MMORPG market at one point (Ultima Online), then let it languish, occasionally adding additional MMORPGs and then closing those down, with the result that in 2014 they turned Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot over to a third party. They controlled the space-flight sim market, then let it languish. I could go on, but the point is, they have a habit of acquiring studios/competitors, and then letting them languish and/or shutting them down (do we need to list all of the studios and games that EA buried?). UO and DAOC do raise an interesting point - would EA allow a third party to come in and take over the SimCity IP? In the case of UO/DAOC, Broadsword took over those two games, and presumably is paying EA some kind of fee. It allows EA to continue making money, kept those games going, and it also denied the creators of those games access to those games (similar to Wing Commander) forcing them to go in different directions (which they have). So if EA licensed SC out to a third party, it will not be anybody associating with Wright.

My gut feeling is that SC 2013 will be the last SC we get. EA has a habit of all but permanently retiring games/IPs at times, and given that there is real competition for SC now, they may not see it as financially viable. I wish they had allowed a 3rd-party studio outside of EA to take over, as they did with their Ultima and Dark Age of Camelot games.