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Simcity (2013): So Disappointing It Drove Thread Posters Insane
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Nov 4, 2013 06:09
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| # ? May 9, 2024 13:41 |
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I just want a Banished thread now!
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Nov 4, 2013 06:40
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I can't wait to preorder Banished.
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Nov 4, 2013 06:42
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Battered wife syndrome ITT.
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Nov 4, 2013 06:55
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It would be fascinating to compare the resources and costs between Simcity and Banished.
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Nov 4, 2013 06:58
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Might just be me but Banished looks insipid and boring.
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Nov 4, 2013 07:00
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Onion Knight posted:preordering a AAA game from a massive developer for $5 off You guys get money off for preordering in the States?? 
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Nov 4, 2013 07:08
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Don't worry, they are already planning an expansion where you just get taller buildings.
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Nov 4, 2013 07:08
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Shadeoses posted:It would be fascinating to compare the resources and costs between Simcity and Banished. Resources Banished: Lumber, Wool, Food, etc... SimCity: Coal, Oil, etc... Costs Banished: Probably $20-$30 SimCity: Our Souls
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Nov 4, 2013 07:11
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Chomp8645 posted:Resources I meant more along the lines of development budget and resources. How many people worked at Maxis on it, how much advertising did EA buy, etc.
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Nov 4, 2013 07:19
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I think hindsight is just 20-20 with this stuff. If I had purchased SimShitty 'properly', it would have looked something like this: 1.) I don't preorder the game because preorders are evil. I should wait for the gaming public to play it. 2.) Review copies go out. The game is highly praised, but I should wait, just in case. 3.) The game is released, and the servers poo poo a mighty turd. But everyone agrees that when you can play the game, it's pretty neat. Still, I shouldn't play until the servers are fixed. 4.) Servers are 'fixed'. Many people are having fun, reviews are still high but include 'marred by a terrible launch' footnotes. A small community of devoted nerds notes there are some problems with traffic, so I shouldn't buy yet. 5.) Finally, a consensus is reached and the whole community does a 180, seeing the game for the lovely poo poo that it is. Good thing I didn't buy it! I like having new things. Buying new games and being on the forefront of the experience is part of the gaming experience for many people. I really loved getting Skyrim at release and talking about my experiences with other people. I would have had to have waited something like a month or two to get a real 'read' on SimCity, and who knows if that is always 'enough' time to notice how lovely a game is. I would have bought Skyrim or Bioshock Infinite on release day no matter what. Preordering is pretty much the same thing as buying on release day - so long as there is a tangible benefit, it's actually better! There is no way to predict if a game is going to be poo poo or not. You can try to avoid stinkers, but it requires more a lot more than just not preordering.
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Nov 4, 2013 07:26
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In the case of a company like EA, if you're saying "I was going to buy it anyway," you're admitting you don't give a gently caress about quality. You can't possibly take all the marketing and "reviews" (christ... just quoting the word isn't enough is it...) seriously at this point unless you have some kind of brain disorder, so by pre-ordering all you're saying is "I don't care if it sucks or not - I'm buying it either way." Which is fine with me, except you're helping them rain fire and destruction on franchises I happen to like. So, gently caress you I guess. And for that matter, you don't give a gently caress about your money either, because with EA there's a real good chance all you're pre-ordering is a shitburger you're going to get tired of after a few hours at best. Your money would have been better spent elsewhere, but now it's gone (...look to your left).
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Nov 4, 2013 07:48
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Zeike posted:Might just be me but Banished looks insipid and boring. It doesn't look like it does anything special, no. But the closest thing to what Banished is doing is probably the Stronghold games, and the settlement/economic building has always taken a back seat to the combat in those games. Oddly enough I don't think there have been a lot of medieval settlement building games, maybe I just don't know about them??
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Nov 4, 2013 09:35
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Banished looks neat but that's about it. I'll get it if its around $20 and expect some fun out of it, I'm very happy I didn't pre-order Simcity though if hats worth anything. I suppose getting burnt by SotS2 was the straw for me with pre-orders. I'm very interested in the resource chain focus if banished but looking at the agriculture video it seems simply spamming production yards is very viable. I don't like the workforce management much either, seems like the player has full control.
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Nov 4, 2013 09:46
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I think Banished looks great, I don't expect it to be a lot more involved than the first Tropico for instance, but at least the engine seems solid and it's made by a single guy. I mostly love the low key look of the graphics and atmosphere, especially those snowy scenes. I love the idea of commandeering a remote Scandinavian village or whatever with a little sawmill and fishing boat. I hope it has lots of micromanagement like that and it's not just plopping buildings.
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Nov 4, 2013 10:07
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Wow people really lost their poo poo over the pre-order discussion. I'm fairly sure bad games are going to exist pre-orders or not. I certainly remember them existing for as long as I've been buying games. It's dumb to think games like E.T. weren't cheap cash-ins during the days when nobody knew what games would be out until the day it hit the shelves. Bad movies, bad books, bad whatever your entertainment budget goes towards all exist without people pre-booking their tickets. Relax it's not bringing this unique industry down.
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Nov 4, 2013 10:16
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Darkhold posted:Bad movies, bad books, bad whatever your entertainment budget goes towards all exist without people pre-booking their tickets. Relax it's not bringing this unique industry down. But you don't get bad unfinished books sitting on the shelves. Ones with a card inside to mail to the publisher's with a list of typos, and one with the last chapter delivered five months later scribbled on a sheet of toilet paper. I think a generally safe policy is to always play single player games few months after release. That way you don't really feel the need to play the new game immediately, because you already have releases of the past months sitting in the queue.
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Nov 4, 2013 10:42
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steinrokkan posted:I think a generally safe policy is to always play single player games few months after release. That way you don't really feel the need to play the new game immediately, because you already have releases of the past months sitting in the queue. Except if that game is Command and Conquer 4 (I think), where the single-player game unit balance was tied to the multiplayer and the changes to mp unit balance made parts of the single player campaign almost impossible.
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Nov 4, 2013 11:21
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steinrokkan posted:But you don't get bad unfinished books sitting on the shelves. Ones with a card inside to mail to the publisher's with a list of typos, and one with the last chapter delivered five months later scribbled on a sheet of toilet paper. quote:I think a generally safe policy is to always play single player games few months after release. That way you don't really feel the need to play the new game immediately, because you already have releases of the past months sitting in the queue.
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Nov 4, 2013 11:26
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80 pages and many tears later and I still don't loving have anything besides SC4 and maybe CitiesXL to scratch the itch. Tropico is great, too, but I like it for different reasons.
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Nov 4, 2013 11:31
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The "it makes sense to pre-order because then I save money" argument doesn't really hold water when you consider you'd save even more money by waiting a few months for it to go on sale.
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Nov 4, 2013 13:19
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Darkhold posted:It's more the notion that Pre-orders are somehow damaging the industry that I think is so odd. As if people are sitting around tables thinking 'hmm let's make a bunch of poo poo games and hope people pre-order enough to make it worth it.' instead of people sitting around a table with an already poo poo game thinking 'well people will hopefully buy it anyway'. They wouldn't go back and re-do the game either way even if pre-orders didn't exist. It'd get shoved out just the same. With pre-orders there's less of a punishment for making a game like Sim City. Not in the sense of like "these fuckin programmers deserve to lose their houses" but more like EA might think twice about shoveling poo poo out the door because it won't make the money they want it to if everyone hears about it being terrible before they drop their $60. As to if it'll help prevent lovely AAA games in the future, who knows (probably not) but it seems totally bizarre to most people here that in the era of digital downloads you'd risk $55 or whatever because you trust the folks at EA to give you a great game. I have read the justifications for digital pre-orders in the thread and I still just can. not. wrap my head around it. At best it seems like risking $55 to save $5 maybe, or in some cases get store credit or token soon-to-be DLC. It just seems really really dumb. I wonder if it's a weird manifestation of sunk cost bias? I'm spending this money now, sight unseen, so it MUST be good! Maybe it's just some people haven't quite broken out of the child-gamer mindset where you HAVE to preorder goldeneye MOM WHAT IF THEY RUN OUT then everyone will LAUGHT at ME at lunch~! Who knows? Anyway just to reiterate I'm not talking about helping fund a kickstarter or buying into some indie dev's alpha or whatever.
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Nov 4, 2013 13:38
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Poil posted:Banished is now on steam, http://store.steampowered.com/app/242920/
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Nov 4, 2013 14:30
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I'm proud to say I've never pre-ordered a game in my life. In fact, I bought Skyrim just last week.
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Nov 4, 2013 14:37
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Onion Knight posted:I have read the justifications for digital pre-orders in the thread and I still just can. not. wrap my head around it. At best it seems like risking $55 to save $5 maybe, or in some cases get store credit or token soon-to-be DLC. It just seems really really dumb. I wonder if it's a weird manifestation of sunk cost bias? I'm spending this money now, sight unseen, so it MUST be good! Maybe it's just some people haven't quite broken out of the child-gamer mindset where you HAVE to preorder goldeneye MOM WHAT IF THEY RUN OUT then everyone will LAUGHT at ME at lunch~! There's some very weird psychology at play and I think it's hinged on the massive insecurities that plague the population of the gaming community. I think bullying is linked into this, especially if it took the form of bullying based on being poor/not having nice things.
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Nov 4, 2013 14:50
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If you preorder a game from a big publisher (small indie developers who need the money to fund the game are excepted) you are dumb and deserve to be robbed by EA. Just wait one day for some post release reviews to come out before you buy. It's not that hard. Don't be a baby that has to have everything as soon as possible. Geez. One day is not a big deal to wait. You don't have to wait weeks or months. And is saving 5 bucks really worth the risk of wasting 55 bucks on a pile of garbage? Especially nowadays no game is guaranteed to be good, no matter which publishers and devs are involved and quality is pretty variable in general. And even when a game sells out, most of the time you can buy the digital version.
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Nov 4, 2013 14:52
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Lucy Heartfilia posted:If you preorder a game from a big publisher (small indie developers who need the money to fund the game are excepted) you are dumb and deserve to be robbed by EA. Just wait one day for some post release reviews to come out before you buy. It's not that hard. Don't be a baby that has to have everything as soon as possible. Geez. Even that one day didn't really apply in this case because the beta had already shown up most of the problems in SimCity. But of course, you know, it's only $60 and that isn't much money to me  edit: Banished looks interesting but it's not SimCity scale. The achievements are for 300, 500 and 900 citizens total, so it's Tropico in scale. Not really a 'city builder' in that sense. Edmund Honda fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 15:01
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I'm pretty staggered by the number of people that are projecting some kind of delayed gratification childishness onto people that pre-order. It's just weird and insulting. Do you get all offended by people seeing a movie opening night? Buy a book in hardback? Sometimes it's just fun to have something new on the day it was released. And isn't that why we all play games? Fun? It's just entertainment. Yes if later I scream in some thread about being 'screwed over' by my pre-order by all means call me a baby. But until then why do you care so much? I haven't regretted 90% of my pre-order purchases. On the other hand about 50% of the crap I've picked up in Steam sales I've come to realize was wasted money (even quite a few on goon recommendations).
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Nov 4, 2013 15:02
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Darkhold posted:That is a safe policy and one that works for many people which is great. It's more the notion that Pre-orders are somehow damaging the industry that I think is so odd. As if people are sitting around tables thinking 'hmm let's make a bunch of poo poo games and hope people pre-order enough to make it worth it.' instead of people sitting around a table with an already poo poo game thinking 'well people will hopefully buy it anyway'. They wouldn't go back and re-do the game either way even if pre-orders didn't exist. It'd get shoved out just the same. Games like SimCity are bad for the industry, because while enough hype and pre-orders and whatever other bullshit enable that one game to turn a profit, they make it less likely for people to buy other games in the future, if only by a bit. Moreover, since a game like SimCity was able to be successful, other firms will want to follow that example. So, for now, they've got a formula, and they're going to milk it until it's dry, until everyone is tired of it; the industry will have a minor crisis and the producers at the margins (who make most of the good poo poo btw) will get squeezed as usual. Maybe Obsidian will go out of business this time? Then they'll find a new formula. Same like with superhero films right now, and Tolkienesque fantasy before that. The old publishing model of putting out big games though, does seem to be ready for some disruption. So maybe there's some hope. Or maybe that's just The Next Big Thing.
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Nov 4, 2013 15:03
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Darkhold posted:I'm pretty staggered by the number of people that are projecting some kind of delayed gratification childishness onto people that pre-order. There are reliable reviews for movies out before opening night. There are reliable reviews for books before they are out. This is not the case for video games. And I don't care much and I am not offended, I just enjoy calling dumb people dumb.
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Nov 4, 2013 15:08
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Kilroy posted:The old publishing model of putting out big games though, does seem to be ready for some disruption. So maybe there's some hope. Or maybe that's just The Next Big Thing. I just kinda hope that the whole AAA title industry collapses along with mainstream PC ownership, leaving room for semi-professional indie developers. When was the last time anyone with half a mind really, really loved an AAA title? They tend to be increasingly mediocre and if a game has a big name publisher like EA (or to a lesser degree any of the others like Squenix or Activision) I just don't trust it anymore and only buy it if it is considered exceptional. Games seem to have reached the point where you can get a reasonable technical level of production from any band of average Joes in a basement and I'd rather buy games like that for the rest of my life than trust any of the current big publishers. When I look at big titles like Far Cry 3 or the bajillionth CoD or Battlefield or Simcity or Thief or even Deus Ex:HR I just can't help but feeling those games might as well not exist. Some of them like HR are okay and acceptable but I'd rather see those franchises continued by smaller, more serious teams of developers who actually know what they are doing, I'll gladly exchange that for the big budgets those games get right now, which tend to yield little more than bells and whistles anyway. Shibawanko fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 15:15
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Lucy Heartfilia posted:There are reliable reviews for movies out before opening night. There are reliable reviews for books before they are out. This is not the case for video games. The second part of course I'm dumb with money. Everyone is that has money (to be clear I'm not making a 'I'm rich' argument I'm certainly not). Let me go through your stuff sometime I'm willing to guess I'd find about half of it to be a pointless waste.
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Nov 4, 2013 15:18
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e:^^^ See, that's kind of exactly it. Everyone is dumb with their money sometimes. I sure as hell am. I have made so many lovely, pointless purchases over the years that I don't even want to think about. Some people in this very thread were like "yeah, dumb decision, oh well" and poo poo I understand that completely. It's when people keep trying to defend pre-orders that is so weird to me. Darkhold posted:I'm pretty staggered by the number of people that are projecting some kind of delayed gratification childishness onto people that pre-order. I can't speak for everyone but I would hazard a guess that most people feel like I do about it, which is to say: it's just really loving weird. Like just plain not-understandable and seems like a bad idea from every angle. I'm posting about it because I actually want someone to post an argument for it that makes any sense whatsoever. They're digital downloads so they never run out. Even if you GOTTA PLAY IT DAY ONE 12:01:01AM AUUGHHH you still can. You might get a few bucks of store credit or whatever but you're risking the majority of your dollars on buying a game sight unseen which is a pretty silly gamble. If you ~don't need the money~ then who gives a poo poo, why risk $60? If you DO need the money to the point where $5 every couple months is going to make or break you, wouldn't it be way smarter to wait for a real sale, if this is the game you really want to play? If there was a cool trinket or something only available with a pre-order, that I could totally understand (even if I wouldn't want one). Sim City had what? Maxisman? Isn't that DLC now anyway? It's just a Weird Thing and I want to talk about it. Pentecoastal Elites fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 15:20
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I'm still more inclined to trust an AAA title than an indie game. To be honest I don't even remeber the last time an indie game caught my attention. And I have quite a few games on Origin that I still occasionally play, including The Sims. I don't even care about Deus Ex HR or Skyrim, or GTA, but all those games were more entertaining and innovative than all the derivative indie platformer-or-whatever bullshit published in their respective years.
steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 15:21
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Shibawanko posted:When was the last time anyone with half a mind really, really loved an AAA title? GTA5, Pokemon, Bioshock Infinite, AC4? Feel free to discount them as not AAA and redefine that label to fit whatever you want. I'd look more at the fact none of them are EA products.
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Nov 4, 2013 15:23
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Onion Knight posted:I can't speak for everyone but I would hazard a guess that most people feel like I do about it, which is to say: it's just really loving weird. Like just plain not-understandable and seems like a bad idea from every angle. I'm posting about it because I actually want someone to post an argument for it that makes any sense whatsoever. quote:They're digital downloads so they never run out. Even if you GOTTA PLAY IT DAY ONE 12:01:01AM AUUGHHH you still can. quote:You might get a few bucks of store credit or whatever but you're risking the majority of your dollars on buying a game sight unseen which is a pretty silly gamble. If you ~don't need the money~ then who gives a poo poo, why risk $60? If you DO need the money to the point where $5 every couple months is going to make or break you, wouldn't it be way smarter to wait for a real sale, if this is the game you really want to play? Games aren't that big of a gamble in my mind. I'm fairly easy to please when it comes to games. There's very little reason not to go for it if it looks like something I might enjoy. Darkhold fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 15:28
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Edmund Honda posted:GTA5, Pokemon, Bioshock Infinite, AC4? And if those don't work, how about games like Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising, Witcher 2, Dark Souls and Fallout: New Vegas. Those are some of my favorite games ever. Most of them had large budgets and a marketing push behind them. It's insanity to think that indie developers could make up for those kind of games. Andrast fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 15:30
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Darkhold posted:Honestly I'm unsure how to reply to your first point. It's pretty much a non-sequitur. Review embargoes and paid for reviews exist for both those mediums. Sure they aren't as bad as games but they're there. Also I'm sure everyone has seen a highly reviewed film they thought sucked. You can't buy any form of entertainment without taking a risk even if you sit around and ponder all the variables all day. It's still possible to wait until a review is out then. And spending a couple of minutes reading a review doesn't take all day. Just a few minutes of work reduce your risk considerably. And reviews are a pretty good measure for quality if you know the tastes and preferences of a reviewer and how they compare to your own. And yes, I have wasted money on entertainment. But it's always on entertainment that doesn't cost much or doesn't take long to consume. Big video games cost $60 and I expect to spend from 10 to 100 hours playing them. Waiting for a review and taking the time to read it is really worth the effort in these cases. And the effort is practically zero. Lucy Heartfilia fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 15:31
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Can we not just talk about Simcity? Would that be so hard? If you're so bothered about pre-ordering a game that turns out to be horrible, don't do it and let people grown up enough to make value judgements and part with money without a Kotaku review do so. If you're proud that waiting six months will save you three hours of the minimum wage, hey, great. Make another thread. Stop making GBS threads up this one.
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Nov 4, 2013 15:33
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| # ? May 9, 2024 13:41 |
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number one pta fan posted:Can we not just talk about Simcity? Would that be so hard? Except nobody is talking about waiting six months. Just until reliable reviews are out. And I'm sorry that reading a couple of paragraphs is too difficult and hard for you. And throwing away money doesn't exactly make you a grown up. Also caring about acting grown up is not a very grown up thing to do.
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Nov 4, 2013 15:35
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