
SimCity Update: Straight Answers from Lucy - danso
http://www.ea.com/news/simcity-update-straight-answers-from-lucy
======
simonsarris
This was dreadful and embarrassing to read through. Zero new information, no
apologies, just dodging.

> You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available
> to you anywhere.

"Anywhere" there's an internet connection, "anytime" their servers are up.

You want to claim its an MMO? You want to claim game-as-a-service? Fine. But
sell it as that, charge me $15 a month for an ephemeral product. Not $60 for
something I can't even use on my own time.

edit: The point of the last statement isn't to compare it to an MMO, the point
is that EA are not upfront about the _odds of the game itself being very
ephemeral._ I'm not sad I can't buy it for $15. I'm sad that its quite
possible in just 2 years time that no one can.

~~~
xymostech
Guild Wars 2 sells an actual MMO as a one-time fee, and they're doing just
swell. I've heard most people claim that as one of its benefits, not a
downside. Not sure what that means, just wanted to point out that people often
do enjoy single-fee game-as-a-services.

Also, when you say "$60 for something I can't even use on my own time" are you
claiming that the game doesn't even work, as all of the hyped up gaming
articles are claiming? I've been watching someone stream the game for the past
week and a half, and he's been doing just fine, playing consistently for about
8 hours a day, each day since the release. So, sure, there are some problems
with it, but it's not like the game is so horribly broken that you can't use
it.

~~~
endianswap
Guild Wars 2 is a game that was designed from the beginning to be a
cooperative, online experience, though. SimCity is an iteration on a
previously offline design, with no marketing or design data shared with those
looking to buy the game to indicate that it's an entirely different game (to
justify online-only) than the previous SimCity games. There's also a big
difference between a game where all of the computation takes place on the
gameservers and a game where you simply replicate your state up to the server.
I think that we're at a point in technology where the public, at least core
gamers, understand the difference and can make judgment about this themselves
without relying on marketing material or other-party commentary.

Edit: For example, there is similar drama* regarding Diablo 2 to Diablo 3 and
StarCraft to StarCraft 2 given the former games had offline+LAN support and
the latter require a persistent online connection. Guild Wars required a
persistent online connection, so Guild Wars 2 requiring the same thing was
practically a given.

[*] I can elaborate on this, if you'd like.

~~~
xymostech
I'll agree that EA did a terrible job of explaining to people why the new game
was different than the old ones (i.e. why it might require always-online). I
think the key point comes from this (taken from the OP):

> Players who want to reach the peak of each specialization can count on
> surrounding cities to provide services or resources, even workers. As other
> players build, your city can draw on their resources.

What some people may not realize is that the cities in this new game are
pitifully small (probably so that a computer can handle trying to update 20k
sims at a time), so in order to actually do anything of significance, you
usually have to draw from surrounding cities for materials, people, etc. This
is the part of the game that requires online-only, because unless you want to
be simulating all of the cities in your region (which I'm assuming you don't,
but I don't really know whether the computation costs would be that high), you
need some sort of server to handle that for you.

People claim that they came out with an "offline patch" that allows you to
play offline, and while that is true, you then miss out on all the city-
sharing features, and thus your cities end up crappy, because it is impossible
to manage all the resources within a single city.

I'm not saying that what EA/Maxis is doing is necessary, but people seem to be
missing that this is the main reason that the cities are always online, not
just for the city saving features or anything.

Also, I do know about the StarCraft to StarCraft 2 drama, and from what I can
tell, people don't really care any more, and people have gotten over the fact
that they need internet to play their game. Sure, sometimes the internet drops
in the middle of a tournament, and people get riled up about it again, but it
seems to have died down very much since the launch.

~~~
milkshakes
> What some people may not realize is that the cities in this new game are
> pitifully small (probably so that a computer can handle trying to update 20k
> sims at a time), so in order to actually do anything of significance, you
> usually have to draw from surrounding cities for materials, people, etc.
> This is the part of the game that requires online-only, because unless you
> want to be simulating all of the cities in your region (which I'm assuming
> you don't, but I don't really know whether the computation costs would be
> that high), you need some sort of server to handle that for you.

I don't think anyone is debating this. What people are upset about is that
Maxis seems to be making the argument that introducing such a mechanic was
done for the "vision" of the game. Perhaps they are genuine. But if they are,
it leads one to question what exactly their vision was focused on.

~~~
xymostech
>But if they are, it leads one to question what exactly their vision was
focused on.

I think it's pretty clear that their vision is focused on the "social"
aspects, and with that comes the idea of having all of your friends build a
single small city in your region, and you all interact with each other and
stuff. I've seen some examples of this happening, it looks pretty fun. I'm
sure people would like the option to build single huge cities, but Sim City 3
still works just fine for that.

> I don't think anyone is debating this.

Have you been reading the same news that I have? I hear a lot of people
complaining that the servers are basically doing nothing but saving cities to
the cloud, so everything should be able to be run client side, and either
don't realize or refuse to acknowledge that the servers might be doing other
things/useful. I dunno. Maybe things will clear up in the next week or so,
when server issues will hopefully get better, and we can stop having front
page posts about a company who doesn't know how to scale an online game.

~~~
milkshakes
Do you honestly believe that the primary motivation for this evolution to
SimCityVille has anything to do with how much fun the new version is?

------
NoPiece
EA should clean house on their PR team. What disastrous responses. To starting
this post with, "I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity," is so
gross, self congratulatory, and not contrite. That plus doubling down on the
dishonesty instead of really offering straight answers is just going to fuel
the fires.

~~~
endianswap
There's a subtle piece here that a lot of folks are missing: it's not just EA,
but also Maxis, independently responding to the community. Maxis being the
developer, EA being the publisher. That's why part of this is a shitstorm,
Maxis and EA are sharing contrary words with the community, so the community
sees double-speak and stops trusting anything from EA _or_ Maxis.

~~~
NoPiece
Because Maxis is a wholly owned subsidiary, I assume what is said by Lucy
Bradshaw is actually filter and vetted, if not scripted, by EA corporate PR.
If not, shame on Lucy for being so tin eared. If so, shame on Lucy for letting
it happen.

------
kevingadd
Relevant: [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-bosss-
str...](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-bosss-straight-
answers-seem-pretty-wiggly/)

Compares her current 'straight answers' with previous statements from Lucy
(and other EA reps) along with the truth. She doesn't do too great.

------
nwh
> We even check to make sure that all the cities saved are legit, so that the
> region play, leaderboards, challenges and achievements rewards and status
> have integrity.

Wait, didn't someone demonstrate that a modified client can edit the region as
well as their own cities? There's obviously no sanity checking going on with
the data the clients return, much less server-side simulation.

------
ipsin
Despite harsh words from players and critics alike, EA has stayed true to
their guiding principle: "No refunds".

~~~
uptown
Almost: [http://consumerist.com/2013/03/12/using-the-eecb-gets-me-
a-s...](http://consumerist.com/2013/03/12/using-the-eecb-gets-me-a-simcity-
refund-but-what-about-everyone-else/)

------
jiggy2011
Still no answer to the important question, "When will you turn off the servers
and what happens then?"

~~~
MBCook
Or why they were unprepared for the launch demand.

Or why it took so long to scale up to manage the "unexpected" demand.

~~~
pyre
After reading the RPS link[1] posted here[2], it seems to me that the
multiplayer-is-required aspect probably was bolted on towards the end of
development. While this doesn't preclude the possibility of fully preparing
their servers for the launch, it does hint that a lack of direction could have
led to confusion and/or a lack of planning for these issues. (Though this is
really just shooting in the dark because we can only go on what public
statements they make)

[1] [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-bosss-
str...](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-bosss-straight-
answers-seem-pretty-wiggly/) [2]
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5384314>

~~~
ijk
They've been making a _lot_ of public statements about how the simulation
works and their plans over the course of development (For example: [1]). Most
of it nitty-gritty stuff has been in industry conferences and publications,
but there is a fair amount of information out there. Probably not enough to
absolutely pin down their mistakes, but there is some information.

[1]
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/164870/gdc_2012_breaking_...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/164870/gdc_2012_breaking_down_simcitys_.php)

------
ebbv
If they consider this "Straight Answers" their disconnect from reality
explains why they thought an always online Sim City was a good idea.

------
bencxr
This week many of the stability issues were mitigated, and I began to enjoy my
game. To be honest, while I didn't ask for the multiplayer features, they were
a bonus when they worked. I could even ignore the DRM if the game worked.

But posts such as this can only make my blood boil. What I read is neither
"straight" in a sense of honesty nor an "answer" of any sort to the
downtime/mismanagement they've done.

Shame on you, Lucy. The next time you want to lie, at least don't claim it's
"straight". Only there won't be a next time.

------
DigitalSea
I feel as though I just read the political equivalent of watching paint dry,
atrocious. No apologies, no explanations, just justification and dodging the
real issues. They could have made it all somewhat right by coming out and
admitting they made bad choices, instead we get dribble about how they've
always had an always online vision, etc.

How about we get some questions about the horrible path-finding AI and what
they plan on doing about it?

~~~
blaabjerg
<http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-update-8>

------
nekojima
Their research for the vision they have developed for the new SimCity had
quite a different result from the basic Facebook poll I did earlier this week
amongst my friends.

Self-selected responders replied to my post asking if they were interested in
playing the new game as SP, MP or both, along with how many have purchased and
how many would like to or will.

Of sixty responses, two chose MP only. Fifty-three both SP & MP(including
sandbox option I hadn't initially mentioned), and five SP only. Three had
purchased the game, all wanting refunds because a lack of SP and server issues
(which had to do with their own connection issue in one case).

Over fifty had played one of the previous versions of SimCity. Almost none now
wanted to buy/license this version, because of the issues, connectivity, and
lack of SP gameplay.

Granted it was a small sample, not scientifically done, and self-selecting
responders, but I very much doubt the sincerity of EA's reply that the
"vision" they have developed for this new version is based on actual user
feedback, or the users are an EA selected group designed to give that them the
response they want.

------
Maven911
I strongly feel that EA suffers from a big company, we-are-never-wrong
syndrome, and instead of a sincere apology, the fans get PR copy

------
niggler
" We recognize that there are fans – people who love the original SimCity –
who want [single player experience]. "

I suspect those people far outnumber those who want a messy online experience

------
milkshakes
> I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity,

All 12 of you who can actually play

> but I’d like to offer some straight answers on the topic: Always-Connected
> and why SimCity is not an offline experience.

I'm going to spend exactly one word answering this question.

> Always-Connected is a big change from SimCities of the past.

We at Maxis used to care about our customers, games, and integrity

> It didn’t come down as an order from corporate and it isn’t a clandestine
> strategy to control players.

We don't care about controlling you, any more than we care about whether or
not you have any fun. We just want to make more money. But we noticed we were
making less money than we predicted, then found out that you're mad, so here
comes the best rationalization we could come up with on short notice.

> It’s fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity.

Making more money

> From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using
> new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create
> a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global,
> ever-changing, social world.

We took a look at Zynga, and they seemed to be making money at the time.

> We put a ton of effort into making our simulation and graphics engines more
> detailed than ever and to give players lively and responsive cities.

Here's a completely irrelevant anecdote to butter you up before we lie to you
again.

> We also made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation
> into the cloud to support region play and social features. Here’s just a
> few:

Again, by innovative, we mean for our bottom line.

> We keep the simulation state of the region up to date for all players. Even
> when playing solo, this keeps the interactions between cities up to date in
> a shared view of the world.

We don't know how to design distributed systems.

> Players who want to reach the peak of each specialization can count on
> surrounding cities to provide services or resources, even workers. As other
> players build, your city can draw on their resources.

Our engineers told us there was no technical excuse we could hide behind, so
we altered the game mechanics instead.

> Our Great Works rely on contributions from multiple cities in a region.
> Connected services keep each player’s contributions updated and the
> progression on Great Works moving ahead.

We know we could have built a game with mechanics that work offline, but then
we wouldn't have much to hide behind, would we?

> All of our social world features - world challenges, world events, world
> leaderboards and world achievements - use our servers to update the status
> of all cities.

We thought of calling it SimCityVille, but that just didn't have the same ring
to it.

> Our servers handle gifts between players. We’ve created a dynamic supply and
> demand model for trading by keeping a Global Market updated with changing
> demands on key resources. We update each city’s visual representation as
> well. If you visit another player’s city, you’ll see the most up to date
> visual status.

Here are some more examples of "features" we came up with that are plausibly
related to a game about simulating a city. We know they're a stretch, but
we've already used up all the good ones.

> We even check to make sure that all the cities saved are legit, so that the
> region play, leaderboards, challenges and achievements rewards and status
> have integrity.

We might lack integrity, but we'll be damned if we let you.

> Cloud-based saves and easy access from any computer are another advantage of
> our connected features. You can pop from work to home, play the game and
> have your cities available to you anywhere.

Thin, we know, but this was the least contrived use case we could come up with
to justify removing your ability to save.

> Almost all of our players play with connected cities. But some chose to play
> alone – running the cities themselves. But whether they play solo or
> multiplayer, they are drawn to the connected city experience.

Altering the game mechanics to support our business needs appears to have
successfully influenced their behavior.

> And Always-Connected provides a platform for future social features that
> will play out over regions and servers. The game we launched is only the
> beginning for us – it’s not final and it never will be.

Until we decide to sunset the game.

> In many ways, we built an MMO.

We heard those make more money.

> So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes.

Remember, by subset we mean subset of the things important to us, not you.

> But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision. We did not
> focus on the “single city in isolation” that we have delivered in past
> SimCities. We recognize that there are fans – people who love the original
> SimCity – who want that. But we’re also hearing from thousands of people who
> are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-
> Connected functionality.

We get that you don't like it. But we don't really care.

> The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its heritage but catches up
> with ever-improving technology.

We did our best to maintain a superficial resemblance to the game you knew and
loved. Hopefully this will fool a few people who have been living under a rock
into purchasing it.

> So I’ll finish with another HUGE thanks to everyone who stuck with us
> through this launch. Hundreds of thousands are building and sharing cities
> online now. And what you’re creating just blows us away. SimCity is a
> special game, with a very special community of players, and we’re proud to
> be a part of it.

Thank you for playing SimCity. Remember, it's not your game, it's ours.

PS We're not sorry we lied

~~~
DrJ
>> From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using
new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a
SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-
changing, social world. >We took a look at Zynga, and they seemed to be making
money at the time.

Sounds so true that I almost spat out my drink.

~~~
ijk
The sad thing is, Zynga knows how to run a game as a service. They have the
engineering down to a science, and a launch like this would never happen for
them. For starters, they would have done continuous internal beta testing, had
a soft launch that would have caught these issues, and have actually
engineered their cloud servers to scale, rather than act like individual WOW
shards. Actual WOW shards are run across on multiple scalable servers, I
should add. Blizzard also knows what they are doing.

------
evolve2k
I think what they actually meant was: 'answers straight from Lucy'.

~~~
endianswap
Hah, I doubt they didn't spin and edit it first, so probably the title should
be just "answers", with the quotation marks even.

------
happywolf
Previously I had implemented a project that needed to be always-connected, and
in order to take network outage into account, we would write to a buffer (a
sqlite database actually) if we couldn't detect network. We will sync with
server once online and sync the related information as necessary. Simcity can
use similar technique because I don't see there is any hard real-time
interactions between players or the server. In offline mode, the simulation
will run with a default parameter set, or the data from the previous sync,
until the next sync happens. In fact, my gut feeling tells me the simulation
engine should have an offline switch to let it run stand-alone, or else it
would be hell to debug a system that keeps on changing states.

------
minimaxir
_So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we rejected that idea
because it didn’t fit with our vision._

Hindsight is 20/20 indeed.

~~~
anonymousab
Heck, they could still do it easily. The game periodically does make
encrypted/obfuscated local 'saves' which are automatically deleted over time.

If a release group (against all odds) beats them to it then all the better.

------
codezero
Summary:

If you're still thinking of buying SimCity, don't, we're not going to change a
thing. To those of you who bought it already, thanks for your money.

------
zem
Could the hacker news post title at the least remove the word "straight"?

~~~
ijk
This is actually a better point than you might think, because the state of
game journalism means that most journalists and reviewers are both overworked
and dependent on publishers, and this the publisher's spin doctoring. Many
have just reposted the press releases without context or commentary.

------
atx
Here's what EA really means by 'straight answers'

    
    
      I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity, but I’d like to offer
      some straight answers on the topic: Always-Connected and why SimCity is not
      an offline experience.
    

We're super pretentious!

    
    
      Always-Connected is a big change from SimCities of the past.  It didn’t
      come down as an order from corporate and it isn’t a clandestine strategy to
      control players.  It’s fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity.
      From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind –
      using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to
      create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a
      global, ever-changing, social world. 
    

Which not many SimCity fans actually care about! Of course it didn't come down
from corporate, it came from General Managers like you! That isn't
corporate...no!

    
    
      We put a ton of effort into making our simulation and graphics engines more
      detailed than ever and to give players lively and responsive cities. We
      also made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation into
      the cloud to support region play and social features. Here.s just a few:
    

Let me just insert arbitrary features we had 'envisioned' and reinforce the
idea that this isn't DRM right here.

    
    
      Cloud-based saves and easy access from any computer are another advantage
      of our connected features. You can pop from work to home, play the game and
      have your cities available to you anywhere.
    

Guess what, Lucy? Steam Cloud provides the exact same thing and not all of
them involve DRM. -shock-

    
    
      Almost all of our players play with connected cities. But some chose to
      play alone . running the cities themselves.   But whether they play solo or
      multiplayer, they are drawn to the connected city experience. And
      Always-Connected provides a platform for future social features that will
      play out over regions and servers.
    

Let me be pretty clear about what SimCity was and always has been. The
basement dweller's dream of creating the life and the feel that they were
never able to partake in. Social? You're out of your brains...

    
    
      The game we launched is only the beginning for us – it’s not final
      and it never will be.  In many ways, we built an MMO.
    

No. No you did not. You marketed it as a once off game to buy and play. MMO's
have a very distinct feel about when they're released. They have alpha and
beta releases, news releases all up until 'official' launch date. You had an
official launch date. You failed. This is not an MMO. Please don't try to spin
the wording.

    
    
      So, could we have built a subset offline mode?  Yes.  But we rejected that
      idea because it didn't fit with our vision.  We did not focus on the
      'single city in isolation' that we have delivered in past SimCities.  We
      recognize that there are fans - people who love the original SimCity - who
      want that.  But we.re also hearing from thousands of people who are playing
      across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected
      functionality.   The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its
      heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology.
    

Really? Where have you heard these reports from? Please, do tell.

    
    
      So I'll finish with another HUGE thanks to everyone who stuck with us
      through this launch.  Hundreds of thousands are building and sharing cities
      online now.  And what you.re creating just blows us away.  SimCity is a
      special game, with a very special community of players, and we're proud to
      be a part of it.
    

'Please be kindly understanding in our most insincere apologies as we give out
some lame excuses and reiterate that this was all part of the plan.'

And as one commenter said on the article:

    
    
      With all due respect, to write an article about why the new SimCity has to
      be always online and not to mention DRM or the anti-piracy measure even
      once, is dishonest and down right disrespectful.

------
cowalla
Fuck you Lucy.

