Wright touches of the problem of how people view the game, saying it occupies a ”very uncomfortable space” between MMO and singleplayer. Maxis have announced another major update due this week.
”I feel bad for the team,” said Will Wright. The approach to how this SimCity would function was poorly conveyed, and ultimately people didn’t want an MMO experience.
”I could have predicted - I kind of did predict there’d be a big backlash about the DRM stuff. It’s a good game; I enjoy playing it a lot,” he continued. ”It was kind of like, ‘EA is the evil empire, there was a lot of ‘Let’s bash EA over it.’”
”That was basically inexcusable, that you charge somebody $60 for a game and they can’t play it. I can understand the outrage. If I was a consumer buying the game and that happened to me, I’d feel the same.”
There’s a whole problem with always-on: ”I think people care if it doesn’t work,” he said. ”If you can’t play it on planes, stuff like that… I think there are some very valid concerns about it. Also there’s a perception; I don’t expect to play World of Warcraft on the airplane, because my perception is it has to be on the ‘Net.”
”SimCity was in this very uncomfortable space, like the uncanny valley,” he added, saying it was caught ”between was it a single player game or was it a multiplayer game?” Maxis has now revealed that a new update is imminently due which is said to drastically target the game’s traffic AI. The Update 3.0 patch notes have been posted.
EA has just announced The Sims 4 and has been keen to point out it’s an offline game.
