EA: DRM is a failed dead-end strategy
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BLEH!
EA are never getting another penny of my money.
h0d
I hate EA but I like Dice and battlefield series qqq there is no way to give my money to dice and prevent ea to pick it.
BLEH!
h0d
IPlayNaked
CronoGraal
Darren Hodgson
I just don't understand Maxis at all. While I can understand them trying to innovate SimCity by offering a mulitplayer mode, I cannot understand why they thought it was a good idea to abandon the single player mode completely. That is what they've done essentially by adding the always-online DRM using the server for storing games on and forcing people to play the game differently. SimCity has always been a single player game and that's how it should remain IMO.
I have nothing against adding multiplayer modes (even though I have no interest in them) so long as there's a single player component there that hasn't suffered because of it. This new SimCity has clearly suffered from some major compromises as a result of being online: one, you can save locally therefore if everything goes tits up then you cannot revert to an earlier save. Two, the cities are now much smaller because of the forced multiplayer element. Three, the online DRM has resulted in a game where people had to queue up to play it even if they weren't interested in the multiplayer elements.
Basically, EA and Maxis messed this game up big time and I have no doubts that the game was made to be multiplayer so they could justify the always-online DRM. Blizzard did the same thing with Diablo III, only rather than multiplayer they insisted that the always-online element existed because of the Auction House (something which I never once used by the way in the 150 hours I played the game solo). That was also done to minimize piracy too undoubtedly and seems to have worked for Blizzard after a wonky start. I don't believe for one second that those EA SimCity meetings that Gibeau mentioned did not mention ways to prevent piracy and, thus, whether to use always-online DRM. I expect the massive success of Diablo III was on their mind throughout SimCity final development.
IPlayNaked
Asgardi
Well, half truth...
"It started with the team at Maxis that had a creative vision for a multiplayer, connected, collaborative SimCity experience where your city and my city and others' were [working together]; for better or for worse, and for right or for wrong, the lead designers and the producers and the programmers felt like they wanted to tell us a multiplayer, cooperative city story around SimCity."
This is probably true, but there is no denying that it was EA who saw an opportunity to include DRM easily in this vision. Otherwise there would be an option for offline play. It is extra work that no developer would like to do and it also increases server costs and brings related problems.
Darren Hodgson
CronoGraal
IPlayNaked
Darren Hodgson
Loobyluggs
And this time, they will give us a BATTLE RECORDER
deltatux
I don't get why it doesn't have an offline mode either, it just doesn't make sense to me other than for DRM purposes. Like you can play by yourself in the game, but it doesn't let you play offline which is really stupid IMO.
deltatux
RavenMaster
tsunami231
IcE
It's not that they were forced to make an online only game for DRM purposes. I rather suspect that they were forced to make an online game purely because of all these "projections" that single player games don't sell anymore. I HIGHLY doubt that Maxis didn't at least want to put basic single player support in there, because it's pants on head stupid not to. Unless you don't have a choice, of course.
lucidus
No point in arguing about Sim City. What matters is whether or not they have learnt from all the bad press the game gave to EA. Let's see how they fare with their next big titles such as Dragon Age 3.
Stukov