
EA Shuts Down ‘SimCity’ and ‘The Sims’ Developer Maxis - taytus
http://gamerant.com/sims-city-developer-maxis-shut-down/
======
stickfigure
These laments are a bit overblown.

I worked for Maxis during the big closure in 2004, when the company was in
Walnut Creek. A small group moved to Emeryville, many people (including the
Sims teams) moved to Redwood Shores, and some some people didn't make the
transition. Think of it like layoffs, following on the colossal failure that
was The Sims Online (although, ironically, what's left of that team had
already moved to EARS).

This is pretty much the same thing. Spore was a disappointment, SimCity was
never a massive moneymaker, and whatever games they've been working on since
got cancelled. The Emeryville shop has had a decade to produce a hit and it
hasn't worked out. Some folks have already been laid off. Some folks will get
moved to EARS. Some folks will be looking for a new job. The cycle continues.

It's unlikely that any of the individuals responsible for the specific
versions of whatever old game you fondly remember playing are still around. At
the end of the day, what you're lamenting is the loss of an office building
and a logo.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
> Spore was a disappointment

Spore was a textbook example of bad management. They spent 80% of time, money
and effort on creature designer - a feature that did not make up even 20% of
game, closer to 5%. Game had complex and massive functionality for libraries,
various downloadable creatures, even tunes for cities, outfits for citizens -
all things that were not just unnecessary, but one might say even made game
less attractive (because usually you end up not being such great designer and
all cities look equally generically bad). Essential features, such as
autosave, were lacking. It is hard to fathom how detached from reality the
managers were.

~~~
mseebach
I don't know anything about the game or how it failed, but what you describe
reads like a classic caricature of an engineer's wet dream: lots of fancy tech
that's fun to build but not very useful to the end user, while comparatively
boring but useful features (autosave) gets passed over.

Sure, management also failed (any failure is by definition a failure of
management since they're supposed to be responsible for the project) - but
textbook? You hardly made the case for that.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Management letting engineers build whatever cool toys they want instead of
features customers want and _need_ sounds like it ought to be a textbook
example of what not to do.

Maybe you can't herd cats, but you can at least train them to use the litter
box and not scratch your television.

~~~
stickfigure
Maxis (and EA in general) doesn't really work like that. The producers and
game designers are in charge; engineers may have some input but there are
professionals running the show. And those professionals screw up a lot. It's a
hard business.

Maxis in particular suffered from the problem of having a bright, famous
designer who produced two major hits. This gave him license to make dozens of
failures. Unfortunately, Maxis started "betting the farm" on his last couple
creations, with budgets into the high tens of millions. You don't get to roll
the dice many times at that price.

------
spiritplumber
Westwood, Origin, Bullfrog, Maxis....

EA's strategy seems to be "Buy studio, make them shovel a couple incomplete
games out of the door, close studio, repeat."

Okay, they're asshats. What I don't get is, how does this make them any money?
They're basically strip-mining the games industry, is this really more
profitable than actually making good games?

~~~
troymc
EA has at least one other strategy, with EA Sports: every year they come out
with a new and improved Football, Basketball, Hockey, Golf, etc. and people
get it. Madden NFL has been going since 1988.

To be fair, EA Sports did discontinue some of their less popular games, such
as Rugby and Cricket.

~~~
omegaham
And despite all of their shiny improvements, Madden 2005 and 2008 are
considered the best from a gameplay and mechanics standpoint.

~~~
fernandotakai
i can't speak for Madden because i'm not a fan/player. But for FIFA (a
franchise that i've been playing since Road To World Cup 98), 2014 is easily
the best one. They improved a shitton of stuff.

Also, they have FIFA Ultimate Team which has a whole meta game of players and
cards (which i love).

------
kenrikm
This is just my opinion, though semi-backed by conversations I've had with
people who work at EA.

EA Gameplan in a nutshell.

1) Force studio to make changes to a game that benefit the EA but have no
tangible (or very little) benefit to the customers (Forcing use of Origin,
Sims being online only, etc..)

2) Act surprised when the proverbial shit hits the fan with angry customers.

3) Let said customers know that "you're sorry" and they "have been heard"
"loud and clear".

4) Close studio that you forced to make the game breaking changes (or at a
minimum lay off most of the staff)

5) Repeat 1-4 yearly.

~~~
iamartnez
What about DICE? And BioWare?

I wonder if DICE came to the negotiation table more prepared and/or with
something up their sleeve. It could be that EA is hands off so long as a
studio produces highly profitable titles. As soon as there's a dip, snip snip.

~~~
sb057
It's widely agreed that Battlefield has been on the decline since 3 (3 being
the first game released under EA). Bioware has been putting out exceedingly
mediocre games since their purchase, not to mention are the laughing stock of
many gamers.

~~~
eropple
Calling Mass Effect 2 and 3 "exceedingly mediocre" puts you in a camp that is,
by pretty much any metric, very fair from the mainstream. And I wonder who
these "many gamers" are who think BioWare is a laughingstock. Do elaborate,
please.

~~~
dkbrk
I, for one, was extremely disappointed in Mass Effect 2 as compared to the
original. As a result, I didn't buy the third.

Mass Effect, was, in my opinion, truly inimitable. While the sequels may have
kept the setting and had very high production values, at their core they were
little more than a sequence of cover-based setpieces and cutscenes.

Dragon Age 2 was even more of regression from Dragon Age: Origins. Origins may
not have had quite the same depth as truly old-school CRPGs such as Baldur's
Gate or Planescape: Torment, but it took many ideas from that heritage and
translated it into something indubitably modern.

I wouldn't call BioWare a laughingstock, but they certainly haven't fared well
creatively under EA.

~~~
sesqu
Mass effect 2 was perhaps the best game in the series, but it was a very
different game than mass effect 1. While the core mechanics were the same, it
was extremely episodic and the plot was flimsy. I recall ME3 reeled it back a
bit, doing away with some of the annoying exploration stuff, but suffered from
third installment syndrome.

~~~
ansible
I, like others, was disappointed in the ending for Mass Effect 3. This guy
took the time to explain it very well:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-
xs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs)

Even with their "improvements" to the ending, it was still just choosing what
color explosion you got.

~~~
izacus
I'm sorry, but last I recall ME3 was a 20-30hour long game that is way more
than just a 10-minute ending sequence. Maybe criticism of it should take that
into consideration?

~~~
ansible
I don't expect to convince you otherwise (honestly, I don't expect that of
anybody on the Internet, though I still try sometimes), but did you watch the
linked video?

The critic (and a whole bunch of other people) did enjoy the game, and the
series. Overall, I don't regret the time spent playing it. If people didn't
enjoy the ME series, no one would have cared about the ending.

------
jerf
As far as I'm concerned, the time to mourn is upon the acquisition by EA. On
that day, the studio is already dead to me. By the inevitable day the name has
finally had all "value" squeezed out of it by the corporate behemoth that is
now EA, I have long since done my mourning.

signed _still bitter about Ultima 8 & 9_

~~~
kingmanaz
>As far as I'm concerned, the time to mourn is upon the acquisition by EA.

 _Warning: Possible Spoilers Ahead_

Origin did mourn the EA acquisition; Ultima 7 Black Gate is littered with
forebodings over EA. The serial killers Elizabeth and Abraham carry the
initials of the company and leave a trail of butchery throughout Britannia.
The shapes of the EA logo--a triangle, cube, and sphere--are re-purposed as
"generators" which undermine magic everywhere. Even the horror lurking beyond
the eponymous black gate--the Guardian--is possessed of a personality based on
EA's hostile business practices. The EA buyout loomed over the whole
production of Ultima 7, ultimately producing one of the series most
conscienceless, unreasonable, single-minded villains. More info can be found
here:

[https://casualaggro.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/ultima-vii-
is-o...](https://casualaggro.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/ultima-vii-is-one-giant-
reference-to-how-terrible-electronic-arts-is/)

>signed still bitter about Ultima 8 & 9

One can only dream what would have followed Serpent's Isle had Origin retained
control of their creative processes. All the magic in Garriott's dreamworld
stood for nothing against the dead-hearted accountants of EA.

------
calcsam
Wow, an icon of my childhood gone.

If you're an affected developer, shoot me an email & I'll be happy to put you
in our pipeline.

~~~
saganus
Icon is the correct term.

SimCity had one of the earliest form of DRM I remember. The almost-impossible
to Xerox manual (highly reflective paper so photocopies would come black) was
used to answer a question the game asked you, about the population of a
specific city on a certain page of the manual.

Loosing the manual was not an option.

Farewell Maxis.

~~~
jwalton
This is not DRM, it's copy protection. DRM is about stopping you from using a
product you paid money for - as Wikipedia puts it "[controling] the use of
digital content and devices after sale." No matter how many years in the
future you travel, no matter what happens to Maxis, the original Sim City will
still work (assuming you still have the manual, and hardware capable of
playing it.)

~~~
rancur
I'm glad there has sometime, somewhere, been a literal, physical-realm use for
the term "Copy Protection"

------
qmalxp
I was just thinking today about how cool a modern open world version of SimAnt
would be. Oh well.

Edit: Someone posted a link to this but then it got deleted:
[http://www.formicarium.org/](http://www.formicarium.org/)

~~~
byjess
Wow, haven't thought about SimAnt in a long time. Loved that game, thanks. And
SimTower too.

~~~
clayh
SimTower, aka Yoot Tower, is available on the iPad.
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yoot-
tower/id379197311?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yoot-
tower/id379197311?mt=8)

------
UnoriginalGuy
The title (and of the article) is inaccurate. The title talks about Maxis as a
whole closing, but the article and third party sources list just one
(admittedly BIG) location closure.

The Maxis brand may very well continue and appears to be operating at other
physical locations.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Maxis Emeryville _is_ Maxis. The _Will Wright_ Maxis, the _Sims_ , _SimCity_
and _Spore_ Maxis. The real Maxis, if you will.

There are some other things EA does under the Maxis brand, but that's just
rebranded EA Play stuff. The Maxis people cared about is dead. (Though _The
Sims_ isn't, that was spun off into its own studio before Spore was made.)

~~~
stickfigure
Maxis split up when they closed the Walnut Creek office in 2004, with SimCity
and Spore (and Will Wright) going to Emeryville, everyone else going to
Redwood Shores. Will Wright left in 2009. There is no "real Maxis", and if
there was, some Maxis expat older than me would tell you it died back in the
90s or whatnot.

Maxis had a few big hits and a lot of colossal failures. Including some that
never made it to the public. I guess the balance sheet just finally shifted
too far in the wrong direction. This isn't necessarily EA's fault; studios
that fail go out of business one way or another.

~~~
TwoBit
The modern version of what Maxis used to be is Minecraft. Developing those
games is risky though. For every minecraft there are ten failures.

------
bobbles
"EA have a nasty habit of closing studios associated with poorly received
projects."

ie. Any studio they take over and force to change gameplay to pay-to-win

------
angersock
YOU CAN'T REDUCE FUNDING TO MAXIS

YOU'LL REGRET THIS

~~~
eropple
Yeah, yeah, yeah, HN has no sense of humor and all, but angersock owes me a
new keyboard. Thanks for that.

~~~
Gigablah
It just made me sad :(

------
keyle
There seems to be a lot of misinformation going around.

They're chopping off the people of Maxis but the name will remain (ahem!).
Same for the IP, it will live on and be farmed to (an)other studio(s).

(I don't side with EA. Sad day for SimCity lovers. Maxis is a mammoth of
history and should not be chopped up. My thoughts for the devs that lost
jobs...)

~~~
bstar77
People are what make game companies great, not names or logos. There's
something to say for maintaining the direct line of employee descendants to
the original Sim City.

~~~
tsotha
Absolutely true. I've purchased a few sequels over the years only to find
somebody made the game in a different place with different people and turned
my beloved franchise to crap.

------
jdfellow
Is not the original SimCity, now called Micropolis, open source and part of
the OLPC project distro?

Still, really sad to see Maxis axed.

------
chris_wot
Pretty much typical behaviour for a massive corporation who buys out an
innovative company. EMC has done this to more companies that I care to list.

~~~
csours
HP as well, but without the innovation.

------
ChuckMcM
Kind of sad when I think back of some really awesome Maxis games like SimLife
and SimAnt. But Maxis hasn't really been in a position to make the kinds of
games they used to have they? Seems really odd to shut it down during GDC
though, could make for some awkward badges over at the convention center.

------
ntaylor
Bummer. I'm not necessarily a fan of their titles today, but I grew up with
them and they have a very special place in gaming history. Maxis, you will be
missed.

~~~
jedberg
> I'm not necessarily a fan of their titles today, but I grew up with them

I suspect that is part of what led to their demise. I'm in the same boat. I'd
much rather run classic SimCity than any of the new stuff.

------
Vanayad
Just going to leave this here. Better than SimCity by miles.
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/255710/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/255710/)

~~~
Paul_S
It's not even released yet but it's better? When will this early access bubble
burst? There's cities xl as well (with the benefit of having actually been
released), how would you rate it?

------
sporkenfang
Right in the childhood :(

------
Paul_S
People always make EA out as some comic book villains but they're not doing
this to spite gamers or against the wishes of the previous company owners. The
creators go into these deals willingly and sometimes it's either that or
bankruptcy. What I'm saying is EA are less like lions hunting studios in their
prime and more like hyena's going for the weak and wounded, or ones who just
want out. My analogies are worse than EA.

------
DigitalSea
I seem to be sensing a recuring theme here with EA buying well-loved studios
and then slowly killing them off before eventually shutting them down for
good.

------
acjohnson55
SimCity probably changed my life. I grew up with SimCity on DOS and then Super
Nintendo, and then SimCity 2000. Then The Sims came out when I was a teenager
and blew my mind all over again.

As an adult, I consider myself to be very strategic and analytical. I believe
I can attribute some of my refinement in this sense to games like SimCity and
Civilization. It's sad to see such a storied label gutted.

------
meddlepal
Fuck you EA. Mid 90's Maxis was my childhood.

------
codemod
C&C - Red Alert 2 is the best RTS game I have played so far. The thing about
EA is, its probably right. If a game does not perform well, its better to cut
losses as the game industry is very unforgiving. But somehow all these studios
closing down, does feel like the original theme or charisma of the game that
they are associated with is lost.

~~~
kxo
Company of Heroes - 1500+ hours played. I miss it so.

------
guncheck
I was talking to a friend who works at EA and said most of them were just
being moved to EA Redwood Shores. The Maxis studio was a satellite studio out
of Emeryville and teams were being migrated to Redwood Shores. "Nothing has
changed, Sims 4 and such are still being made" -EA Employee

The internet has made this seem blown way out of proportion.

------
phatbyte
I hate EA with all my energy. Maxis, Bullfrog...all amazing companies that
created some classic games in the 90s turned into DRM corporate BS.

What I don't get it is why are people still buying EA games...

------
TazeTSchnitzel
A real shame. I loved Spore (and Galactic Adventurea).

------
comrh
I played so much SimCity, SimTower, SimAnt and SimGolf. They always had
quality games in the beginning.

------
KVFinn
I wonder if sales were down since they started making the games exclusive on
'Origin'.

------
parasubvert
I'm thinking the SimCity Online debacle probably had something to do with
this.

------
blueskin_
EA are basically the comedy supervillain of gaming.

------
mimighost
Please leave Bioware alone...Shame you EA!

------
bluehex
Reticulation of splines complete.

