Sim City’s launch was a troublesome one, we’re all aware of that — consumers unable to play the game they purchased at launch, misinformation regarding the always on connection and the reasons for its existence. Speaking to Games Industry International, Will Wright, the creator of the initial Sim City discussed the launch. While his first comment was a declaration that he felt bad for the team, he did admit that the situation was “inexcusable”.
“I could have predicted – I kind of did predict there’d be a big backlash about the DRM stuff,” he said. “It’s a good game; I enjoy playing it a lot.”
But Wright admits that he understood the anger.
“That was basically inexcusable, that you charge somebody $60 for a game and they can’t play it,” said Wright. “I can understand the outrage. If I was a consumer buying the game and that happened to me, I’d feel the same.”
Will Wright also discussed the ways in which Indie development is transforming our industry and the ways in which games need to grow up. Head to Games Industry International to read the full interview.
Will Wright: Games “falling way short” as a medium [Games Industry International]
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14 responses to “Will Wright: Feels Bad For The Team, But Sim City’s Launch Was ‘Inexcusable’”
Yes EA’s attitude to loyal gamers is also inexcusable. I have now uninstalled Origin and my Origin dependent game library and don’t intend on coming back anytime soon. EA does not deserve my business. Pity because BF3 was a great game and Sim City looked great but I won’t support a company that has their priorities the way they do.
I’ve done the same thing. The ONLY game I had on Origin was Battlefield 3 … and when I got over it due to a mixture of boredom, and due to the fact that updates downloaded incredibly slowly (I could only download a max of about 100 – 150kb/s on Origin vs 700kb/s on Steam), I just decided to give the whole thing up. I will NEVER buy another game on Origin, no matter what. EA is basically dead in my eyes … everything they touch turns to shit.
Troublesome. WW2 was troublesome, this was a shit storm plain*(auto correct fix) and simple. Simcity is a great series ruined by EA. Now they have Star Wars to stuff up to, A+ EA.
Hopefully I am missing some acronym here as I may be out of the loop, But did you just compare World War 2(WW2) to a video game? Also, following that first appalling behaviour you followed it up by using ‘plane’ instead of ‘plain’.
I agree it sucks the game didn’t work when I had it the first day. Though I’m not about to compare the deaths and war of nations to a failed video game launch. Poor taste. Also, honestly if you meant something other than World War 2(WW2) the disregard impudence of my statement.
In all sincerity yes, there are far worse things in the world happening just today and they all make complaining about a video game ridiculously trivial but I don’t really think it is helpful to constantly point it all out.
And anyway it is a well known rule that the first person to mention WW2 loses anyway :-p
But it all ok to play WW2 shooters? Yes WW2 was a dark time if history but if you have played any COD game then the saying “pot calling the kettle black” comes to mind.
Thank You. Don’t have to be a genius to understand it, takes a genius to ignore it and get it to market.
On one hand, he’s got a good point.
On the other hand, SPORE.
I dunno, I am still bitter about Spore.
Hard to blame him for EA making him gut it for expansion packs.
I totally never finished Spore. I had the goal of colonizing every planet in the galaxy at some point, if only to deny access to the godamn superenemy. But because travel is such a bitch, I was really only able to start planting seed races, which I had to try and balance to being warlike enough to be able to fend off invasion, but not so warlike that they’d turn on me.
I totally failed and got bored. If I’d only been willing to make the hard decision and eliminate all life in the galaxy except mine, my empire would’ve been much easier to defend, but then… what would I have achieved except becoming essentially the same as my enemy?
fighting the enemy was too hard, it was much easier to drop down on their planets and use your terraforming tool to adjust the planets temperature, when it hit a certain threshold all their cities would be destroyed. Also because they were meant to be evil or something the temperature range that was uninhabitable for the enemies was in the range for normal species.
SO basically glass the planet? i like it!
Was it Will Wright that changed Spores direction? After seeing the much better alpha video I was given the impression that Spores googily-eyed ‘streamlining’ was once again EA’s fault.
Chris Hecker takes credit for the googily-eyes if I recall correctly, but it was Will Wright who said
We’d rather have a game that makes money than a good game.
That’s a good motto to have.