{"id":1997,"date":"2013-03-24T21:34:58","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T03:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=1997"},"modified":"2013-03-24T22:43:40","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T04:43:40","slug":"simcity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=1997","title":{"rendered":"SimCity"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you were to redefine clusterfuck, how would you go about doing it?<\/p>\n

About three weeks ago, EA – The Worst Company in America<\/a> – released a long awaited sequel to one of the best-loved video games of all time.<\/p>\n

Now, you may already know what SimCity is, and you may have already heard about the “problematic” game launch<\/a>.\u00a0 But a little background is in order because I like to type.<\/p>\n

The original SimCity game came out in 1989 and was pretty unique in its concept.\u00a0 It gave you a blank slate and some tools and let you build a virtual city on your computer screen from scratch.\u00a0 You could watch it grow, and the simulation would react much like a real city would to various events.<\/p>\n

\"SimCity\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The game was so well done that it sold shitloads.\u00a0 Metric shitloads.\u00a0 A sequel came out, then another, then another.\u00a0 This year saw the fifth official iteration… supposedly.<\/p>\n

I’m going to digress now to tell my story with SimCity.\u00a0 Back in 1998 when I got my first PC, one of the things I was most excited about was the free game I’d be getting with it.\u00a0 That game was SimCity 2000, the sequel to the original.<\/p>\n

\"CalebopolisX\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"SimCity<\/a><\/p>\n

I never did learn how to play it though.\u00a0 SimCity is hard.\u00a0 SimCity is complex and you have to spend a lot of time learning how to play it to get a functioning city going.\u00a0 And as much as I like cerebral strategy games, I just couldn’t figure it out.<\/p>\n

I would load it up every now and then, but I couldn’t seem to get it.\u00a0 I even got SimCity 3000, but I couldn’t seem to make sense out of that one either.<\/p>\n

Then I pretty much forgot about that until just now when SimCity 5, or SimCity 2013 came out.\u00a0 EA calls it SimCity and is trying to pass it off as a “reboot” of the franchise.\u00a0 Fuck them.<\/p>\n

SimCity is a single player game.\u00a0 And EA insists on crippling every game they sell with “always-online” DRM.\u00a0 That means you have to have an internet connection with their servers at all times in order to play the game.\u00a0 And in a few years when they don’t feel like supporting a game any more, you can’t play it any more.\u00a0 Too bad for you.<\/p>\n

So fuck EA.\u00a0 For them to automatically treat every one of their customers as if that customer is a thief is unacceptable if you ask me.<\/p>\n

But that’s not even the worst part about all of this.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 The worst part is that EA and the once respectable Maxis have flat-out lied to their customers about the features of the new SimCity.\u00a0 They lied about what the game could do.\u00a0 They lied about bugs being fixed that weren’t.\u00a0 And the worst one of all is that they lied about the game needing to be played online.<\/p>\n

All these have been proven to be lies and EA and Maxis don’t even have the decency to acknowledge that.\u00a0 Fuck them.<\/p>\n

To top this all off, in some cases they are refusing to give refunds for this falsely advertised and pitifully broken game.\u00a0 And if customers exercise their right to ask their credit card issuer for a charge-back, EA will ban the customer from EA’s Origin service.<\/p>\n

Fuck EA.<\/p>\n

I did not buy SimCity 5 and I will never be an EA customer again.\u00a0 The last game I ever bought from EA was The Sims 2, and I kind of regret that because I never play it.\u00a0 And it makes me sad that people let themselves be ripped off by deceitful companies like EA and Maxis and then continue to buy and even preorder from them all over again when the next unfinished cookie-cutter game gets released.<\/p>\n

But enough vitriol.\u00a0 All the hubbub about SimCity has actually made me wish I had a decent video card so I could play SimCity 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"simcity4_ss1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"simcity4deluxepic1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But I do have the next best thing, and I’m teaching myself how to play SimCity 3000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"simcity3000<\/a><\/p>\n

\"simcity3000\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Damn, it’s hard.\u00a0 But it’s engrossing.\u00a0 And fascinating.\u00a0 And those citizens are so demanding and I’m always on the brink of bankruptcy, but at least it’s not stupid fucking easy and broken like the latest version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you were to redefine clusterfuck, how would you go about doing it? About three weeks ago, EA – The Worst Company in America – released a long awaited sequel to one of the best-loved video games of all time. Now, you may already know what SimCity is, and you may have already heard about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[414,38],"tags":[241,441,443,442,439,440],"class_list":["post-1997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angry-fucking-rant","category-video-games","tag-drm","tag-ea","tag-lies","tag-maxis","tag-simcity","tag-strategty-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1997"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1999,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions\/1999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}