CambriaRising
Member
I can't say I'm super surprised.
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EA Closes Maxis Emeryville Studio (Spore/SimCity),[other Maxis branches staying open]
- Thread starter judhudson
- Start date
meanspartan
Member
Its like, WHY?! Why even buy them? Fuckin scum corporation
Didn't they come in a package with BioWare, maybe they only wanted BW in the first place
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
All you have to do to make Maxis relevant again is just fucking put them on some low to mid-budget offbeat Sim titles like their classic 90s output. The current PC scene is ripe for that to be profitable.
Simcity 2013 is perhaps the root cause of this , the game still sold millions of copies and turned a tidy profit I imagine but the brand was harmed substantially in the process. As well this might just be a case of some good old fashioned bullshit restructuring. Maxis Emeryville was an old studio that probably had a ton of experienced (and thus expensive talent) that wasn't doing too much. Simcity came out , got retooled a bit and also had an expansion that I kind of doubt set the sales world on fire. So, somewhere high up at EA , the suits looked over the cost of keeping 500 employees on the payroll without a new project starting up at the studio itself and balked(it's about 45 million a year).
That wouldn't have been the end of it though, they likely looked over the logistics of just starting up a new simcity game at that exact studio and perhaps quite rightly assumed they wouldn't be able to quickly get back their investment. Even a 2 year project would have cost close to 100 million dollars with a studio that size and , well, moving say 250 of those employees to new positions within EA and paying out a 3-6 month severance for the rest was likely deemed more beneficial to the companies immediate bottom line (fiscal year end occurs at the end of the month for many businesses).
It's nothing new for EA really or even the industry as a whole , working in games development is just not really a reliable and stable form of income unless you happen to own your studio or are otherwise self employed.
Also doesn't make it not a shitty thing for the former employees. Even if they do get 3 months pay at the low end (anyone outside of a contracted tester will likely get this) they still have to face relocating possibly cross country and everything that goes with that ... and then who knows ? what if that new job only lasts 6 months to a year ?
Good luck to anyone affected by this , you all deserve better.
That wouldn't have been the end of it though, they likely looked over the logistics of just starting up a new simcity game at that exact studio and perhaps quite rightly assumed they wouldn't be able to quickly get back their investment. Even a 2 year project would have cost close to 100 million dollars with a studio that size and , well, moving say 250 of those employees to new positions within EA and paying out a 3-6 month severance for the rest was likely deemed more beneficial to the companies immediate bottom line (fiscal year end occurs at the end of the month for many businesses).
It's nothing new for EA really or even the industry as a whole , working in games development is just not really a reliable and stable form of income unless you happen to own your studio or are otherwise self employed.
Also doesn't make it not a shitty thing for the former employees. Even if they do get 3 months pay at the low end (anyone outside of a contracted tester will likely get this) they still have to face relocating possibly cross country and everything that goes with that ... and then who knows ? what if that new job only lasts 6 months to a year ?
Good luck to anyone affected by this , you all deserve better.
Hari Seldon
Member
The other problem is that EA sent Maxis to die on Origin. Now I don't have a problem with Origin, but that is like making a console game and having your publisher make a deal that it is Gamestop exclusive. You really think only selling the game to the subset of hardcore gamers that have Origin installed is a good business move? Is this the shit they teach in MBA school?
AAA AAA AAA
PHOENIXZERO
Member
Wow, less than 24 hours hours ago I was going on about EA's history of destroying developers and thinking to myself how I was surprised that Maxis was still around... They're closed.
Wolf Akela
Member
An ex-Maxis employee is posting on Reddit right now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/2xxvz1/ea_closes_maxis_emeryville/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/2xxvz1/ea_closes_maxis_emeryville/
vertexnormal said:
vertexnormal said:
makingmusic476
Member
I really hate EA. I played the hell out of SimCity 3k and SimCity 4. =(
And I played the hell out of Westwood-era Command & Conquers. =(
I haven't bought an EA game in years, and moments like this remind me of why I shouldn't. Though I suppose the only EA title that's interested me in the past several years has been FIFA, but even then I choose PES whenever I decide to commit to a new soccer game.
And I played the hell out of Westwood-era Command & Conquers. =(
I haven't bought an EA game in years, and moments like this remind me of why I shouldn't. Though I suppose the only EA title that's interested me in the past several years has been FIFA, but even then I choose PES whenever I decide to commit to a new soccer game.
Rambone
Member
This saddens me. I still hope more Sim's games will follow, however based on the news I guess I can't be sure. My wife who passed away last year really loved the Sims, didn't make it to Sims 4 but I'd hate to see this series die as it lets me "be with my wife" so to speak. -Edit. From my understanding it is the Sim City studio that has been shuttered but the Sims studio is still alive but for how much longer...
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
That's the first rule though right? Corporate are never to blame for Corporate's mistakes
BrassDragon
Member
I know it's popular to hate on EA but in the case of Maxis, I really wonder if Maxis management didn't have a big hand in killing the golden goose.
We're getting consistent messages from studio heads that EA gave them a lot of freedom and that impopular pivots came from the studios themselves, not the publisher (see also the former BioWare leads). I'm sure corporate highly encouraged these changes but the narrative of a business tyrant oppressing a creative enterprise is too simple for my taste. Just look at all the talented developers hastily jumping on any bandwagon that seems to promise huge finanical success (MMOs, mobile, crowdfunding etc.)
Straight from the horse's mouth: SimCity's Lucy Bradshaw Defends Always-On DRM, Says EA Didn't Force It On Them
If you roll with the hypothesis that Maxis leadership pushed for the reviled online/social/DRM-driven game design then the current move by EA reads more like HQ trying to bring the talent under direct control at the sattelite studios instead of its own failed management at Maxis Emeryville.
We're getting consistent messages from studio heads that EA gave them a lot of freedom and that impopular pivots came from the studios themselves, not the publisher (see also the former BioWare leads). I'm sure corporate highly encouraged these changes but the narrative of a business tyrant oppressing a creative enterprise is too simple for my taste. Just look at all the talented developers hastily jumping on any bandwagon that seems to promise huge finanical success (MMOs, mobile, crowdfunding etc.)
Straight from the horse's mouth: SimCity's Lucy Bradshaw Defends Always-On DRM, Says EA Didn't Force It On Them
If you roll with the hypothesis that Maxis leadership pushed for the reviled online/social/DRM-driven game design then the current move by EA reads more like HQ trying to bring the talent under direct control at the sattelite studios instead of its own failed management at Maxis Emeryville.
PoweredByHentai
Member
Nah, there was also The Sims 4 being a commercial turd that nailed the coffin shut.
Dorsal Axe
Member
I agree. EA have not helped matters, but Maxis sealed their own doom.
We can rage about DRM all we want, but what really killed the two major games Maxis released in the last decade were huge design flaws at the most basic levels of those games. That's on Maxis unfortunately.
I mentioned much earlier in the thread, but thanks, Frank Gibeau.
I have not green lit one game to be developed as a single player experience must have been a really bold and exciting statement at the time in the brave new world we lived in.
Nah, just kidding, it was, is, and always will be one of the stupidest quotes to ever come out of the industry, no hyperbole.
hooijdonk17
Member
Well deserved all around. *If* there was actually any city building talent left in Emeryville they will probably find jobs they enjoy more at developers who actually make fun city building games.
flatearthpandas
Member
I would've shut them down too after the last Sim City.
I don't know, I think there might be semantics involved there - no, EA probably didn't have to "force" Maxis to do anything, because the designers and producers at Maxis likely knew that if they wanted their projects to be greenlit and receive an actual workable budget, they had to play politics and propose features that were popular and "in" with the preferences of EA's execs, based on whatever was current and hot at the moment.
Like Frank Gibeau's forced multiplayer, mentioned above. Or social features. Or always online. Or DLC / micro-transactions. Whatever buzzwords it takes to convince EA that their game will be a money-maker, regardless of whether it actually fits with the concept of the game, its intended audience and fanbase, or the player experience at all. ("Riccitiello says social is the future and all games will be online? Okay, why don't we add Facebook integration in our proposal, even though this is a single-player RTS.") Like, I wouldn't be surprised that's the reason there's a (completely superfluous) multiplayer mode in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Independent studios go through a vetting process too, and obviously follow trends in order to try to make money and stay profitable, but I think they are more capable of flexibility and of taking risks, and ultimately don't have the same pressures to conform their games to corporate directives at the expense of their "vision" and the player experience.
You could have said that about Maxis 5-10 years ago, replacing console with PC of course.
Except it isn't. The Sims 4 sold close to 2 million in retail alone. With the high digital ratio on PC, it could have sold as much as 4 million copies - which is similar to what The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 did in the same time period.
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
Not me. If I was in charge of EA I would have taken the criticism of Simcity 5 and immediately challenged Maxis to start making Simcity 6 but with the desires and features that the community wanted. The Simcity brand is (was?) one of the strongest in PC gaming, it appeals to not only gamers but non gamers too, it almost has a Minecraft kind of appeal and that's why the first four games sold in huge numbers and are popular to this day. They tried something new with Simcity 5 and it flopped badly, but if SC5 proved one thing in spades it's that there is a very hungry community out there for city builders. Cities Skylines is proving that very same thing right now, a week before it even releases, and it also proves that if you make a city builder with the features that the fans want then it will sell well.
Killing a strong brand like Simcity and axing a talented team like Maxis is just bad business, pure and simple, but because EA can't turn the franchise into what they truly want it to be (a mobile compatible online only DLC printing machine) they would just rather get rid of it than make a good product that differs from their "vision".
EA suffers from corporate America-itis. It's too inflexible, is afraid to innovate, and is far too concerned with book balancing than making good games. In fact EA doesn't make "games" anymore, they make profit centers. To them, that's all these SKU's are. I miss the EA of old... and now I'll miss Maxis too.
BolognaSoup
Member
Them destroying the SimCity franchise was already the last straw for me. Haven't bought an EA product since and never will again. Maxis was my favorite developer growing up. I hate EA.
TheSlySoul
Member
I thought it was confirmed the Maxis who worked on Sims 4 still have jobs. Only the Sim City folks got canned.
KillerMan91
Member
Battlefield is way more popular and making more money than Sim City ever did. They are not shutting down The Sims branch of the Maxis.
this. they should have seen the huge disappointed outcry from the release of the last game as a sign that there's a large audience out there hungry for a quality product from that team.
instead they just took their ball and went home.
silvermember
Banned
It is easy to be an arm chair executive when you don't actually have the job or responsibility.
True enough.
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
That's an easy stance to take, however EA has a history of abusing popular franchises and twisting them into products that are not what the customers want, simply in attempts to generate huge money makers. You only need to look at Dungeon Keeper mobile, Plants vs Zombies 2, and Simcity Societies for a small sample of examples.
It's mismanagement of a gaming company, pure and simple. They make very bad decisions in pursuit of profitable products while disregarding said products customer desires. If the company I worked for did this we'd go out of business. EA continues to gut and kill off what once were very successful development studios and franchises, it's a pattern of theirs, and the reason is they ignore what made those studios successful in the first place and instead twist them into something else in the name of greed.
Just looking at the city building game genre, let's do a few comparisons. It's been 12 years since Simcity 4 came out, what's been done in the genre since then? We've had the Tropico games from a small dev of a few dozen people, we've had the Anno games, Banished was made by ONE PERSON, oh and Cities Skylines is due out next week made by about a dozen people. Now, EA had Fucking Maxis, the studio that not only invented the genre but produced four of the best games in it, and arguably made THE best city building game ever in Simcity 4. And what did EA make with all of that talent? Simcity 5. We all know how that turned out. Simcity 5's problems at it's root was the design decisions made from the very beginning of development. They completely failed to make the game that their customers wanted.
There is lots of money to be made in video games, and yes even in the city building genre, but to do so you absolutely have to make games that people will enjoy playing. You can't treat your customers like cash pinatas, and you certainly can't tell them what they want, you need to design and develop games that your customers want. EA consistently fails at that, over and over again. They succeed sometimes too mostly with first person shooters but they are losing marketshare to other developers in recent years. It's a gradual but noticeable trend. And the problem isn't the dev talent they own, it's the business decisions they are making at the top.
So yeah, you can say that it's easy from the armchair to run a company like EA. But can you honestly tell me that EA's top brass make GOOD decisions when it comes to games? Is that something anyone can state with a straight face?
I dont hold any sympathy for slave pits incorporated/electronic arts but how is simcitys terrible design their fault? Its like blaming sony for how the order was designed. The game would have been perfectly playable even in the confines of those 2 square kms if the balancing wasnt so poor namely with the workforce or if the cooperation between cities would be more customizable. Also maybe im missing something but i dont see how the game was aimed for the lowest of the low end PCs.....im pretty sure the game is as big if not bigger of a resource hog like something like metro redux or watch dogs. AT least on my PC.
Sucks simcity has to die though just because of 1 poor game.
Sucks simcity has to die though just because of 1 poor game.
So, I know we all get mad at EA for closing studios (Maxis isn't actually closed, just one branch of Maxis), but we're the same people poking fun at and complaining about the latest Sim City game for MONTHS? These are the people that made that. Why are we then, outside of nostalgia, actually upset they were closed? They did a really terrible job with their newest game.
Maybe more publishers should be this proactive. Imagine if Ubisoft shut down the branch who made Assassin's Creed: Unity, ensuring that another botched version of AC isn't made again? It sucks that people lose jobs, but that's the nature of life. We lose jobs then we find new ones.
But, this branch of Maxis virtually destroyed what made Sim City great - so, in what feels like an odd ploy, I am applauding EA. They made the right choice.
Maybe more publishers should be this proactive. Imagine if Ubisoft shut down the branch who made Assassin's Creed: Unity, ensuring that another botched version of AC isn't made again? It sucks that people lose jobs, but that's the nature of life. We lose jobs then we find new ones.
But, this branch of Maxis virtually destroyed what made Sim City great - so, in what feels like an odd ploy, I am applauding EA. They made the right choice.
It's not dead. They just moved it to a different Maxis studio.
I appreciate this stance. But, at the same time, can we ignore all the positive games that have come out under EA? Look at the games Bioware makes. They are still great. Are we really upset at EA over them? What about the people behind Need for Speed? That's still rocking.; Than you have in house studios like EA Sports - Madden and the rest (save the NBA game) are doing really, really well.
So, they have a history of scooping up companies and IPs, but for one reason or another those IPs get squadered. At some point, EA can't always be at fault either. Dungeon Keeper mobile is probably an EA idea, but uh... last I checked, we hadn't gotten a Dungeon Keeper game in forever. Chances are we weren't going to get another one either way. So they chose to use a dead IP in a mobile game experiment. It's almost worse that Nintendo is doing this same thing with Pokemon Shuffle, because Pokemon is still popular and relevant.
My point here isn't that EA does no wrong - of course they do. It's just that at some point, it's on the developers to actually create compelling products. Bioware is a prime example of a studio that makes great games and somehow, EA hasn't ruined that. Why do you think that is? IF you make great games and they sell, EA isn't going to tell you what to do.
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
Welp, I suppose that comments like this from EA executives really don't inspire much confidence in their ability to design games objectively:
The Sims Studio was largely spared since they're continuing with TS4 for the time being, but there were some additional layoffs of Sims people at Redwood Shores (where The Sims Studio is based). I thought there used to be some cross-pollination between the SimCity and Sims franchises (like some artists and use of "Sims" in the SimCity games), so maybe there were some Sims employees who became redundant with the closure of Maxis. http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/4/8149791/ea-closes-maxis-simcity-the-sims
elelunicy said:
Sorry, but where are you getting those numbers from? The NPD didn't provide numbers when The Sims 4 debuted (it was number 8 on the chart), and since then EA hasn't provided any figures on sales. The only "numbers" online come from VGC, which are pretty much completely made up. So far the only indication we've seen of The Sims 4 performance has been from an unnamed source close to the studio from that Kotaku article, who said it hadn't performed very well. http://kotaku.com/ea-shuts-down-simcity-developer-maxis-1689454903#
I don't think "The Sims" IP is in any danger, but given EA's statements about not making TS5 if TS4 doesn't sell well, there's a not insignificant chance that TS4 might end up being the last entry on PC, and the IP is used solely for casual / mobile / F2P titles in the future.
Considering the pretty much annual and huge income source of the Battlefield-series it just seems unlikely that they'll be gutting DICE anytime soon.
However, if Battlefront turns out to be a complete flop later this year.......who knows what might happen. It's EA after all.
I think they should integrate Origin and sell the games on Steam, like Ubisoft does. It would still be connected to the service.
Such a shame. I had hoped Maxis would have pulled it back and made amazing games again. They were a childhood memory to me.I actually wouldn't mind that. Might be the only hope of seeing pso2 outside of Japan.
Normally I would give the benefit of the doubt, but we have reports that Command and Conquer and Dawngate were scuttled partially because they didn't want to play ball with Origin. EA may not require those features, but without them the project may not get the time and budget it needs to be successful, if it gets the green light at all.
BrassDragon
Member
Hmm, considering this argument and jgwhiteus upthread, the idea is that EA didn't meddle with the creative side once development was underway but controlled the studios indirectly through their internal greenlight/budgetting process?
That does sound plausible. I'd still point out that some of their studio heads appear to have drunk the Kool-aid but that might be cultural osmosis or cognitive dissonance from selling their baby to EA.