/vr/ - Retro Games

>>2270396
>Maxis
>another victim of EA.

They were a victim of not releasing anything good for years, Simcity 5 was shit, they kinda deserved what they got.

Let this be as a warning to other game companies. With Maxis' demis, EA must now feed again. Lock your doors and windows! Hang garlic & crucifixes about! Be sure not to invite EA inside; it doesn't have power over you until you do!

>>2270426
Simcity was shit due to EA's influence, as was spore. They didn't "get what they deserved".

Remember how hard they tried to get Take Two 2008? They went to the point of attempting a hostile takeover. We nearly lost Rockstar too.
What exactly does EA gain from this mentality? I miss Westwood most of all, god damn the pre-EA Command and Conquer games were so fucking good.

>>2270465
Short term profit.
>release recognized name brand product
>guarantee sales

Gut the franchise, move on the next. Like a bunch of looters.

The last EA game I bought was Mass Effect 2, back whenever that came out, and it will forever be the last.

SimTower was legitimately hard.

has anyone actually managed to become a 5 star tower there?

>>2270472
It had to be impossible. You weren't allowed to build enough elevators.

>>2270426
The mobile one is good to play on the shitter. I wonder what will happen to my save now or is that what was meant by "the cloud will set you free"

>>2270396
Further proof that EA is worse than Satan.

But you already knew that

>>2270396
I mourned for Maxis a decade ago, there's no reason to cry over the fate of a zombie.

I thought they were just a name? Sim games hadn't been good for well over a decade and the last SimCity really was a shit.

Weren't they pretty much a shell of the original studio at this point?
And honestly, i've been thinking of them as dead for a while now. If anything it's a good thing that the name gets to rest.

>>2270396
Maxis died a long time ago.

Only now is it being buried.

Still though, EA rapes and murders everything I held dear about my childhood gaming experiences.

>>2270472
I did. Fuck knows how I pulled that off, but I did.

>>2270428

>"Hey dude, c'mon let me in! I'm a game fairy!"

What's sadder than seeing a developer go under is seeing a shambling corpse of a once-good developer still pathetically limping on. I'd much rather see a good developer go out on top than to fade into mediocrity. Maxis did the later. They technically only just shut down, but for many years before that, the still weren't the real maxis we knew and loved. Same situation as rare.

Good riddance.

I am tired of people going by company name to determine game quality.

It's entirely based on the team, all these archaic companies lost their good programmers and developers decades ago because why work in a shitty environment when you can work a job with twice the pay and quality of life

>>2270428
If your company if publicly traded, there's little you can do to prevent an EA raping once they have their eye on you. This is how they almost got Rockstar.

>>2272053
EA offered pay, that's how they got those studios on the first place. What EA doesn't offer is creative freedom.
Will Wright held out longer than most others.

>>2272062
I really don't get EA at all. I can understand them wanting developer to play it safe and make guaranteed hits, but that doesn't really work IRL. You'd think after the first few times where the more they restricted creative freedom the worse the games sold, that they'd wisen up and cut devs some slack. But they don't learn, and they keep buying good developers and running them into the ground.

>>2272067
I think the uncomfortable truth is that shitty games still sold.
Ultima 8 is one of the earlier examples of EA completing fucking a classic title over and it still sold more than its predecessors.

>>2270396
I worked for Maxis for a month in 2012. It was by then already just a name with nothing else to it. Workers were shared across a wide range of offices and it was inevitable that it was going to go down as a brand.

>>2272073
even before that, Serpent Isle was a rushed heap

>>2270396

Maxis has been dead for years - they're just now getting around to burying them. The corpse has been propped up for some time now like Weekend At Bernie's.

Sad to see them go, sure, but at this point it's not murder, it's euthanasia. Granted, EA's the reason they needed a mercy killing in the first place, but expecting EA to not be evil is like expecting... well, there's really nothing on par in terms of naivete that I can think of on the spot.

>>2270426
You realize this is because of EA skinning them and wearing them as a coat, right?

>>2270426

>They were a victim of not releasing anything good for years

Will Wright left in 2008/2009.

Their localization of A-Train is now lost forever to bean-counters at EA who'd rather make it available for Origin rather than GOG where it would have an audience.

>>2272707
GOG has more than a few EA properties...? i'd get mad at Artdink instead

>>2272480
>Will Wright left in 2008/2009.
What's he up to?

>>2272903
EA games aren't landing on the site anymore, not their old titles anyway. Artdink localizes their newest PC games through Degica, and I'd much rather be mad at Degica for going silent on support for A-Train than blame Artdink. Fan translators are taking a whack at one Lunatic Dawn game on Steam already; doing the same for all the old games Artdink's made available for modern OSes could force Degica's hand and get the game on GOG if they're first successful on Steam.

>>2270465
>>2270470
EA did exactly what they wanted to do with maxis. They bought their properties, and they generated an outrageous amount of money from the SIM brand. the SIMS. SIM city,

all that shit. I remember when I couldn't get away from the sims.

Maxis lost the ability to take risks, make wird games like sim ant that were like.. digital toys, not games designed for the mass market.

and maxis does indeed make games for the mass market. or at least they try to.

The worst thing they did though, was take will wright, and just rob the world of the kind of stuff he might have made were he still in full control of his company. Maybe he'd make the same bullshit. but now we'll never know.

fuck EA

>>2272913

According to Wikipedia, he collects space stuff, helped make a TV show called "Bar Karma," and became involved with Second Life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wright_%28game_designer%29

>>2272707
>Origin
That's one of the cruellest things EA has done in this regard. Not only did they destroy Origin Systems, they're even using their name for their own sinister purposes now.

>>2273346
Holy fuck I actually never thought that POS digital distribution platform had something to do with Origin Systems. Of course they own the brand.

Fuck EA. Why you do this?

Maxis
Overworks
Smilebit
Bizarre Creations

All gone...

These are truly the Shit Times.

>>2270396
They were dead long before this, OP.

>>2270472
Hey ...... what about Yoot Tower and such?

Holy shit, this here looks amazingly reminiscent of SC2K!

>>2270396
With the shit they released recently, EA was just amputating the gangrene
Fuck Maxis

>>2277372
REALLY reminiscent! I wonder how good it is?

>>2277372
>>2277442
are you going to say what the hell it is

>>2277469
SImutrans, apparently it's based on Transport Tycoon rather than simcity

Whoops, most of the screenshots had the name in the filename.

someone in this thread please tell me if and how you have gotten simtown running, tia

>>2270396
>using gradients in your logo

I would've sacked them too

>>2277373
>With the shit they released recently, EA was just amputating the gangrene

Technically, those titles sucked due to executive meddling.

Here's a question.

At this level of notoriety, how does anyone buy a game with EA on the box anymore?

I know I wouldn't, and don't.

>>2278042
EA put out some good games back in the day ,what they do now is of no concern to me.

>>2278047
They were evil even during Trip Hawkin's days. And they're a publisher and not a developer. Any decent games published by them were good despite them and not because of them.

Holy shit, I feel so guilty about having enjoyed Extreme Pinball, Fire Fight, Car And Driver and many early Need For Speed titles so much.

Ugh!

Fuck.

>>2270460
I'm not so sure. I mean, yeah, the whole "always online" thing was probably thanks to the executives at EA, but even ignoring that, new Simcity just wasn't very well designed. The agents system was broken, with sims going home to a different house than where they left, etc, and the increased resource intensiveness caused by this led to tiny city sizes. I think that one's probably the developers' fault.

>People still think Maxis created Sim Tower
They didn't. Some Jap did, and licensed it to Maxis

>>2277515
>>2277442
>>2277372
Get OpenTTD instead.
http://www.openttd.org/

>>2272073
The uncomfortable truth is that the NEXT game of a good franchise can be shitty and sell really well, because its sales of an ongoing are heavily based on reception to the previous entry, but EA interprets this pattern from one iteration as "it doesn't matter ever". And when they put down a franchise for being unprofitable they just think people have lost interest in it naturally, like a life cycle with a predestined end.

EA is a hospice for game series.

>>2270465
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_stripping

>>2278042
>At this level of notoriety, how does anyone buy a game with EA on the box anymore?
Filthy casuals don't know or care about any of this

>>2278575
I thought people knew the name of Yoot Saito from Seaman and Aero Porter at this point.

>>2278575
See >>2277331

>>2278580
Hmmm, it does also sometimes look rather like SC2K. Kind of suggests they share sprites.

Both apparently have arctic settings. Arctic settings are interesting to look into.

>>2278691
>>2278580
Yeah, definitely can look alike.

But I wonder how rigidly they're tied to a formula, how much detail they have, or anything like that..

>>2278726
>>2278691
If you're looking for a Citybuilder, look elsewhere.
Transport Tycoon is just about building roads, rails, and the vehicles that travel on them. The cities build themselves.

>>2278575
>>2278654
No one knows about Yoot Tower because nothing particularly good about it was translated over to english!

>>2270639

its easily possible, but the elevator layout is completely unrealistic. each elevator only covers like 3 floors, rest is escalators.

yoot tower is garbage cuz they implemented a new noise thing thats a complete bitch todeal with

>>2270396

does this improve or worsen the chances of us getting sim copter on GOG.
Cause that, sim tower, sim safari, and streets are literally all I care about with maxis.

>>2278572

When you're given an unrealistic deadline and have to push the game out ASAP to meet said deadline, quality tends to drop off.

>>2278736
I'm just intrigued by it having that much of a simcity 2000 esque aesthetic, it could just as well be based on, say, afterlife, simhealth, simfarn or populous.

>>2278758
Just pirate them.
It's not like giving EA money will bring Maxis back.

>>2278736
Hold on, the source code for simcity was released, so that might be a reasonable direction to look.

>>2279181
Micropolis
http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/taxonomy_menu/4/49/66
https://code.google.com/p/micropolis/