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SimCity: Designed to "play anywhere", with cloud saves, yet no always-online required

dLMN8R

Member
[edit] Note that this thread was created before EA announced that an online connection was required after all. See the latest posts in this thread, and the other thread here.






Original thread for posterity's sake:

Thought this was worthy of its own thread, but if mods feel otherwise, feel free to move to the main thread here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=465738

Anyway, Shacknews posted an article that I think is a lot more important than they do:

http://www.shacknews.com/article/72841/simcity-to-support-play-anywhere-online-design
One of the goals of SimCity is to make it a game you can "play anywhere." In order to do that, it relies on cloud storage. Because the game save is in the cloud, players will have a continuous save file that they can access from multiple devices--such as (but not limited to) an internet browser. Games like SimCity are "data-driven," meaning it will only require "small upload bandwidth" to have a continuous gaming experience.

This is freaking huge. SimCity is basically designed from the ground up to support playing it anywhere, on any device. They haven't outright said as much, but one can easily presume they have HTML5, iOS, Android, Mac, etc. front-ends in the works. Your data would be easily portable between them, and the back-end simulation could stay the same on every device. The only thing that would have to change is the visual presentation of it all.


Yet don't be scared:
And while online is a key feature for SimCity, Maxis has implemented an asynchronous server model, so that there's "no reliance on a dedicated live server" in order to continue playing the game. That's a philosophy that Ubisoft would best learn from.
 

Xanathus

Member
It's being published by EA so I bet there's going to be a gotcha somewhere, I'm guessing monthly fee required for online connectivity and cloud services.
 
I want it on my new iPad

0We7A.png
 

dLMN8R

Member
It's being published by EA so I bet there's going to be a gotcha somewhere, I'm guessing monthly fee required for online connectivity and cloud services.

Considering that the entire game revolves around them, that would be a silly and cynical assumption.
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
Superb and simple idea, multiscreen access, one franchise.

Just scale the input, features and exprience for each platform.

I can see this being huge.
 

bjb

Banned
I've been playing Anon for a few months, but the growing hype of Sim City has me ready to uninstall it.
 

Black-Box

Member
I don't care what people say, I like internet browsers for games now, there's no point in a menu screen when you are just going to be looking at it for a second.
 

Anony

Member
what?
i can do that too
upload save to mediafire or something, then redownload it where/whenever i want
and it's not 'always online'

is this suppose to be a big deal or something
 

TheExodu5

Banned
what?
i can do that too
upload save to mediafire or something, then redownload it where/whenever i want
and it's not 'always online'

Yeah, because that's totally the same thing.

Might as well say PS1 games have cloud storage since you can plug in your memorycard to a USB adapter, copy the files to your PC, upload them to mediafire, download them off another PC, copy them back to another memory card with another USB adapter, and play it on another PS1.
 

dLMN8R

Member
What happened to PC only?

Well, the PC version is still the only one that's been announced so far. This is just the technicality of how it works that enables them to easily bring it to other platforms if and when they choose to do so.
 

Dennis

Banned
Let me be honest, I wish they would Dreamcast this idea and just focus on one thing: making a PC SimCity V that is a worthy successor and not all this social/cloud/whatever that I have no interest in.
 

Durante

Member
Let me be honest, I wish they would Dreamcast this idea and just focus on one thing: making a PC SimCity V that is a worthy successor and not all this social/cloud/whatever that I have no interest in.
I agree. But the videos of the game make me hopeful that this is just a severely dumbed down "anywhere-interface" to the game, since what we've seen in the GDC presentation certainly won't run in a browser.
 

zoku88

Member
Let me be honest, I wish they would Dreamcast this idea and just focus on one thing: making a PC SimCity V that is a worthy successor and not all this social/cloud/whatever that I have no interest in.

Since the internet browser thing wasn't in quotes, I'm going to guess the whole "play anywhere" thing was more talking about playing on different PCs rather than different devices.

So, for the people worrying, I wouldn't worry too much.
 

Emitan

Member
Can't believe how casual Quake Live is. All the depth from Quake was removed! You can't fit depth into a web browser! It's impossible!
 

Berordn

Member
I agree. But the videos of the game make me hopeful that this is just a severely dumbed down "anywhere-interface" to the game, since what we've seen in the GDC presentation certainly won't run in a browser.

What about a browser that has direct access to the GPU? We're not talking Flash games here.
 
There has to be a catch. There just has to be. From what I've been reading this is the true and perfect successor to the older Sim City games...

I'm getting my hopes up, and I worry that they'll be dashed.
 

Zoator

Member
When they say the cloud save file could be "accessed from an Internet browser," it sounds to me like they mean you can download your save from the cloud using an Internet browser (not necessarily that you'll be able to actually play the game in the browser itself).
 
With cloud-saving, EA can just hold your save data hostage now instead of outright banning your account for using their message boards.
 

dLMN8R

Member
Let me be honest, I wish they would Dreamcast this idea and just focus on one thing: making a PC SimCity V that is a worthy successor and not all this social/cloud/whatever that I have no interest in.

There is absolutely nothing whatsoever that indicates that SimCity will be anything but a groundbreaking, deep simulation, and the most worthy successor to 4 as possible.

Enabling the ability to interact with friends' cities (without that being a requirement) is a perfectly natural extension of the previous games.


With cloud-saving, EA can just hold your save data hostage now instead of outright banning your account for using their message boards.

No, they can't, considering that the OP (heck, the subject of the thread) specifically says you don't need any sort of internet connection to play.
 

dLMN8R

Member
Bumping this thread to raise awareness of the fact that SimCity was intentionally designed with the ability to play offline, yet EA is instituting an always-online requirement "because fuck you that's why"
 

dLMN8R

Member
*ahem*

In the wake of Rock Paper Shotgun's article with a "Maxis insider" saying that SimCity could be easily built to work offline, just reminding everyone that Maxis themselves confirmed a year ago that there's "no reliance on a dedicated live server"
 

Eusis

Member
*ahem*

In the wake of Rock Paper Shotgun's article with a "Maxis insider" saying that SimCity could be easily built to work offline, just reminding everyone that Maxis themselves confirmed a year ago that there's "no reliance on a dedicated live server"
Man, that makes me wonder if they had this great idea, were going to be relatively loose, only for someone higher up to look at it and go "wait a second, you could make this always online to prevent piracy!", or more sensibly "wait a second, that leaves an opportunity for cheating we can't follow. Make it always online instead."

:/
 
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