If you've been following gaming news recently, you're likely aware of the controversy surrounding the recent release of SimCity. It, uh, seems that the game is fundamentally broken in many ways. There's the overloaded servers that have only gotten marginally better since launch, always-on DRM and "server-side calculations" that prevent offline mode from being possible, broken AI that doesn't live up to the hype, and lots of minor things missing from the game that previous installations of the series had, like being able to choose where to put highway on-ramps and large city sizes.
Well, now, there's more than this all that. Modders recently found that offline mode is in fact possible, and can be enabled, albeit without the ability to save, by commenting out an entire two lines of code. Those server-side calculations? Cut, if they ever existed at all. They did remove cheetah speed (the fastest one) to "reduce server load", but I doubt that really had anything to do with it. The only thing the servers are needed for is multiplayer, and saving the game to the cloud. (the reason we can't currently do so with a modded offline game) EA claimed that to make offline mode work would take a lot of engineering. Wow, two lines of code and a patch to enable local saves. That sure is a lot of work.
Now on to the AI. EA claimed that SimCity would be completely agent-driven, with each city being populated by simulated citizens living in specific homes, going to specific jobs and stores, creating all the problems a city can run into dynamically and realistically. Closer inspection to the game shows the AI isn't all that smart, and a look at the code shows the population numbers get inflated or "fudged" (EA's term) as the city grows. Now, as a developer, I know this sort of thing happens all the time. You get planning all these neat features, get a proof of concept working that shows what it'll look like in action, then end up being unable to deliver on those hopes and the promises that come with them. (Remember the street battle from the HL2 E3 demonstrations? "None of this is scripted." ...Turns out it was.) There's nothing wrong with lofty goals, but you have to remember to say it's a planned feature, rather than a definite one, or at the very least say "Turns out we couldn't get it to work, so that's no longer in there."
As for the missing features, well, there's no explanation for any of that, except the stuff they removed to "reduce server load". What gives, guys?
Anyway, now that that summary is out of the way, here's the NEW stuff: Not only has EA been proven to have lied to us multiple times, they're giving away free copies of older games to players who pre-ordered SimCity and bought it on launch day as a way of saying "We're sorry to screwed up." CEO John Riccitiello has just stepped down, citing poor financial returns in the last few quarters. Now if only they'd give us a damn offline mode and fix the missing stuff, SimCity would actually be worth buying.
No comments:
Post a Comment