Quote: After previously modelling my home town in the new SimCity, as a means of diagnosing the town`s traffic problems, I was hugely keen to get back into the game on launch day and try some extra experiments.
A quick recap: the new SimCity is a city-building game that has a semi-casual exterior very much in the same vein as The Sims, yet underneath houses city-planning tools that have the potential to do a remarkable job of modelling real-life situations, as my Northenden experiment hinted at.
For my next analysis, I wanted to think a little outside the box. Modelling real-life scenarios is great, but what about modelling the infrastructure of virtual cities?
Quote: “The reality is the fight against piracy equates to spending time and money combating a loss that cannot be quantified. Everyone needs to accept that piracy cannot be stopped and loss prevention is not a concept that can be applied to the digital world."
and...
Quote: "Developers should focus on their paying customers and stop wasting time and money on non-paying customers. Respect your customers and they may in turn respect your efforts enough to purchase your game instead of pirating it.” I buy games on both my iPad and PC (mostly via Steam, tho sometimes I'll get the retail box), and I can honestly say the following two things are true:
I've not downloaded and/or played a pirated copy of a single game in the last goodness knows how many years.
I would never ever buy a game by Ubisoft because of their DRM, no matter how much I fancied it.
I'd have bought SimCity if it wasn't online only, I'd have considered Diablo 3 for the same reason. The real question is, how many other people are like me? If it's a lot then DRM obsessed developers could be in trouble.
RE: [VIDEO] New SimCity will require online connection
admars(Elite) posted this on Thursday, 21st March 2013, 21:45
I think "they" realised that towards the end of PSOne lifecycle, later games had no protection, I remember one dev saying he realised that they were just wasting time, and money when a patch was available on release day!
I had problems with PC Dragon Age Origins, `cos EA had server problems, so the game wouldn`t work. 5 mins of googling and legitimately bought game back to working again.
Having to be online does put me off PC gaming, only PC games I`ve bought in ages have been old ones or Sims 3 add ons, I`d rather buy for PS3 now, rather than buy PC game, get new drivers, patch etc. only to find can`t play `cos their registration servers are overloaded etc.
it`s not just the fact that if there are problems at their end you can`t play, but if your internet goes down etc, you can`t play, that`s offputting.
I think Arkham Asylum had a bit where if you had used a cracked version, a checksum in the game made a certain section impossible, other games have made patches not work on cracked versions, they seem like good ideas but those anti-piracy measure annoy ppl who have bought games, and then used cracks to remove cd check etc for whatever reson.
Quote: Speaking to GamesIndustry International at GDC this week, Gibeau commented, "That's not the reality; I was involved in all the meetings. DRM was never even brought up once. You don't build an MMO because you're thinking of DRM - you're building a massively multiplayer experience, that's what you're building." ..and...
Quote: "DRM is a failed dead-end strategy; it's not a viable strategy for the gaming business. So what we tried to do creatively is build an online service in the SimCity universe and that's what we sought to achieve. So, it's not DRM, even though it's not technically necessary to play the game, and requires an online connection.
RE: [VIDEO] New SimCity will require online connection
RJS(undefined) posted this on Sunday, 28th April 2013, 20:42
Quote: Si Wooldridge says... "Apparently Sim City 4 is high up on Steam downloads..." I just bought Sim City 4 Deluxe (with Rush Hour addon) on Steam for £2.49, it's on sale for the next 20 hours.
So it's probably high in the charts again now. :) Would be ironic if it was ahead of the new one.
Quote: Yes, Offline is coming as a free download with Update 10 to all SimCity players. When we launch it, all of your previously downloaded content will be available to you anytime, anywhere, without the need for an internet connection. We are in the late phases of wrapping up its development and while we want to get it into your hands as soon as possible, our priority is to make sure that it’s as polished as possible before we release it. Might actually buy it at some point now.
RE: [VIDEO] New SimCity will require online connection
RJS(undefined) posted this on Tuesday, 14th January 2014, 22:32
I suspect they were okay, but it wasn't the runaway success they hoped. My feeling is they hoped there had been so long since a SimCity game, there'd be a huge baying crowd lapping up the new one and every DLC they released for it, as they kept pirates at bay and watched the money trucks roll in.
But in actual fact the servers probably cost more than they expected, not as many bought it as they wanted, and the money trucks trundled in occasionally and they began to suspect that long term this wasn't going to be the next online wonder and that if they wanted to quietly withdraw themselves from the need to support all the infrastructure to keep the servers going, the only thing they could do was what many studios have done over the years...
...remove the copy protection with a later patch. Which lets face it, is all the online thing really was.
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