Tag Archives: SimCity

The urban blight that is SimCity

Miscellaneous, Technology, , , , , , , ,
This was too easy, really. (Courtesy of SimCity.com.)
This was too easy, really. (Courtesy of SimCity.com.)

To much fanfare, Electronic Arts (and Maxis) released the latest iteration of its storied franchise on Tuesday, titled simply SimCity. One feature that got a lot of attention prior to the launch day was its “always-on” Internet-connected mode: to prevent piracy, the game was intentionally designed to prohibit playing offline.

And the result?

Good luck trying to move into the new SimCity.

Ever since the city management game launched on Tuesday, countless gamers have found themselves battling error messages and random disconnections that prevent them from experiencing what SimCity was supposed to deliver in the first place — fun. In response, publisher Electronic Arts says it’s working around the clock to try to fix the problems and add more servers so people can play without worry.

Now, an allegedly disgruntled EA employee has sent an open letter to his company, railing against its DRM debacle:

What you’ve demonstrated with this launch is that our corporate management does not believe in our core values. They are for the unwashed masses, not for the important people who forced this anti-consumer DRM onto the Sim City team. This DRM scheme is not about the consumers or even about piracy. It’s about covering your own asses. It allows you to hand-wave weak sales or bad reviews and blame outside factors like pirates or server failures in the event the game struggles. You are protecting your own jobs at the expense of consumers. I think this violates the Act With Integrity value I’m looking at on my own coffee mug right now.

On behalf of your other employees, I’d like to ask you to fix this.  Allow the Sim City team to patch the game to run offline. If Create Quality and Innovation is still a core value that you believe in, then this shouldn’t be a hard decision. Games that gamers can’t play because of server overload or ISP issues are NOT quality. Be Bold by giving the consumers what they want and take accountability for the mistake.

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Finally, a reason to visit the museum

Miscellaneous, Technology, , , , , , , , , , ,

New York’s Museum of Modern Art is now featuring video games:

In a blog post by curator Paola Antonelli, it was announced that the museum has acquired and will exhibit games including Pac-Man, Tetris, Out of This World, Myst, SimCity, Vib-Ribbon, The Sims, Katamari Damacy, EVE Online, Dwarf Fortress, Portal, flOw,Passage and Canabalt.

“Are video games art?” asks Antonelli. “They sure are, but they are also design, and a design approach is what we chose for this new foray into this universe. The games are selected as outstanding examples of interaction design — a field that MoMA has already explored and collected extensively, and one of the most important and oft-discussed expressions of contemporary design creativity.”

The games will be exhibited as part of the museum’s Architecture and Design collection. It plans to add 26 additional games, to bring the total to around 40 in the near future, including Pong, Snake, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Minecraft.

The games are selected based not only on their visual quality, but the elegance of the code and the design of the player’s behavior. They were looking for games that combined historical and cultural relevance as well as innovative approaches to technology. The curators have consulted scholars, critics and digital conservation experts to understand how to display and conserve these digital, interactive artifacts.