EA shuts down Maxis during GDC.
My first PC game was Sim City, I bought it one week before receiving my 486. It was like… this is a game that was only possible with a disc based OS, a type of fun different to whatever you could see in a arcade saloon machine or the 8 bits.
remove hat
silence
Goddamn.
After the train wreck that was the last Sim City game, I can’t say I’m surprised, but EA has to take its share of the blame for that fiasco.
And so they join (or will soon) Bullfrog, Origin, and Westwood. . .
Ah, EA, the great butcher, swings its fell implement once more.
Not sure how to feel , on one hand it sucks for anyone to lose their job. On the other hand Spore and Sim City 2013 were both extremely disappointing.
But the reasons for the disappointment were probably less to do with the average worker and the quality of the work they did (which was very good), and more to do with what EA wanted as well as the higher ups at Maxis.
pours one out for Robosport
Well, I guess this was a long time coming, but it’s always sad to see a storied (if occasionally troubled) team dissolve like that.
Most of my Sims-playing friends also loathe Sims 4, seeing it (rightly) as a blatant, heartless moneygrab from a heretofore reliable fanbase. I don’t think they’ve put out anything worth much consideration in years, and like you, I suspect a lot of that has at least as much to do with the suits at EA as it does with the folks in charge at Maxis proper.
I wonder how many studios - studios, not publishers - from the 80s are still around.
I didn’t hate Spore as much as a lot of others did. It wasn’t great, but my kids loved it because it offered simple play with creativity. Basically, it filled that not-quite-tween gaming niche that Minecraft would later dominate. (Not to say that Spore was as good as Minecraft.) It certainly wasn’t the game they presented early on, but it was okay. Just sort of vaguely disappointing because the stages were so simplistic and didn’t gel together very well.
SimCity 2013 though… Sheesh what a pile. From the terrible messaging, awful restrictions, bugs, online features being broken, and the infamously tone-deaf responses from PR, the whole thing was a debacle.
The Sims 3 was good, but I was burnt out on The Sims by the time it came out.
I guess the last game I really liked from Maxis was SimCity 4.
Falcom in Japan might be the oldest, stuff since the early 80s (1982)
I would imagine that is a strong consensus at this point.
-Todd
I still need a new Sorcerian to make it to the west…
I have not played SPORE in forever. Going to give it a play through.
Don’t believe I’ll ever get Sims 4. I have 3 and most of the expansions. 3 really seems the better game to me.
I still play 3 in little hour or two hour batches. It’s still a fun game.
“What have you done for me lately?”
I expect to see the comic of EA shooting Maxis in the back of the head by the Pit of the Doomed.
Such an odd critique sometimes.
Games companies are a business. Businesses that sometimes have a good deal of sentimental memories and feelings attached to their products, but businesses first and foremost. They survive solely by releasing products that will earn them profit, and do so in a large and varied marketplace. Consistently releasing products that no one wants to spend money on (or taking actions that reduce many customers’ willingness to spend more money on the company’s products in the future) is one of the best --but not the only–ways to go out of business.
I mean, yes, literally, what has Maxis (as an EA-controlled shell of its former selft staffted by individually good, talented, nice people with families and homes and the need to eat food regularly) done for me (the broader games-purchasing populace) lately?
I don’t think most people commenting on the “obviousnessness” of this death by way of the disastrous quality of their last few releases secretly or openly believe that Maxis employees are a bunch of lazy hacks deserving of righteous Punishment Via Capitalism, so there’s not the sort of “personal vendetta” feel about this discussion as there is around similar ones. Rather, it’s mostly a case of “This is sad, but was fairly well inevitable when their last few releases weren’t well-liked or well-bought, I guess.”
Sorry for the giant response and probably de-rail; in all likelihood, I’m reading more into your comment than is necessary, but it’s not the first time I’ve seen it in the couple of hours.
Did Maxis insist Simcity be always-online? Was Maxis responsible for the crippling server instability? Did they make the call to remove all the features from the game later on so it would work online? Those were all EA’s bad calls. Pre-release reviews were hugely positive. EA forced Simcity to fail, then killed Maxis because of it-- a studio that essentially supported EA in the past with the hugely profitable Sims franchise.
It is indeed a business. But that doesn’t excuse EA for being evil. There are plenty of other very large gaming studios that are substantially less evil, at least from my perspective.
On the other hand, maybe they’re just as evil but more clueful and less stupid. Difficult to make that call.
To be fair, Maxis claimed all the decisions–from the pitifully tiny game plots to the broken simulation engine to the always online requirement–were entirely their own.
Although that’s exactly what they’d be forced to say when being thrown under the bus.
In any case, I don’t think anyone’s debating that EA is fundamentally evil in the same way that Hitler and Comcast are here.