Support NeoGAF

[Rentahamster]

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.

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?

Well said. It takes a special kind of incompetence to fuck up a legendary brand like SimCity. Gimme 45 million dollars and hell, I'll make something better. Armchair CEO-ing be damned.

 

[Blargonaut]

An ex-Maxis employee is posting on Reddit right now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/2xxvz1/ea_closes_maxis_emeryville/

Informative read. Such a sad outcome for this company

 

[elelunicy]

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 dunno. Maybe it's an estimate based on various PAL charts and the NPD thread? (and yes, we do know how it did in September NPD)

For example, the game sold just under 200k physical copies in Germany in 2014. And it's still charting in various PAL countries well in the 2015.

 

[SapientWolf]

Bullfrog, Westwood, Maxis...I hate Electronic Arts

Bioware is next

A lot of the acquired studios suffered from brain drain as a result of the acquisition. Molyneux and a few other key personnel walked away from Bullfrog, and a good portion of Westwood devs left to form their own company ( ‎Petroglyph Games). When enough people leave it's not even the same company any more.

 

[sheamus]

I thought the mobile SimCity on tablets was doing amazing

 

[somato]

I thought the mobile SimCity on tablets was doing amazing

I think it is doing quite well, but that game is made by a different studio.

 

[NolbertoS]

Wow, I loved Simcity. Haven't played in ages but still fun and now sad that EA has put another developer in the graveyard. Someday Bioware will join that graveyard :'(

 

[GlamFM]

Posted a million times before I guess?

 

[hooijdonk17]

Posted a million times before I guess?

I.. don't get the humor

 

[GlamFM]

I.. don't get the humor

It has not seen silence of the lambs...

 

[hooijdonk17]

It has not seen silence of the lambs...

Oh shit, now I get it. It has been AGES..