Some of the creators of SimCity 2013 game have talked about how to release this game and the need for its constant internet connection.
Recently, PC Gamer media has talked with some members of the SimCity 2013 team about the problems of making this game, their reasons and the negative reactions of users to the game. SimCity had a disastrous launch. The need to connect to the Internet always online, even during single-player games, caused access to the game to be interrupted if the Internet of the players or game servers had problems.
In fact, Sim City servers faced many problems; Because many people wanted to experience it in the first days and weeks of the release. Aston LiberandeThe chief designer of the game finds it painful to release this game. in that time Lucy Bradshaw Electronic Arts said that the need for online connection was a creative game design decision; However, it seemed to be more about preventing illegal access to the game and encouraging users to go to Origin, EA’s digital store.
Librande said about this:SimCity was one of the most pirated franchises and then there was an order to see how to prevent illegal downloads of the game. One of the ways was to keep a lot of information on the server so that there is nothing to hack and even if you hack your version, you have to be approved by the server.”
Ocean Quigley, the creative director of the game added: “Origin was the customer’s shop window; So Sim City was supposed to go online and direct players to this store. If there was a proper infrastructure, maybe this decision would have worked.” Librande also said that at that time all games had multiplayer components. He also had a personal goal; To be able to play SimCity with his two children.
It should be noted that no one mentioned in the above interview that this constant internet connection was there to run part of the game simulation on EA servers due to performance issues. However, this was one of the reasons the company claimed about the internet connection at the time.
If we leave the problems of the game aside, in the interview there were also talks about the excitement of this game; Especially because of the simulation and the design philosophy that originated from it. “I had a sign above my desk that said cities are people, not buildings,” Liberande continued. This was an urban planning statement. You don’t want to look at a city as a collection of buildings and streets; Rather, people go from one place to another through this system.
Shortly after the release of SimCity, Librande and Quigley left Maxis Studio, and Electronic Arts closed this studio after some time. Quigley and another Sim City creator formed a studio called Jellygrade, which released nothing. Quigley is now the creative director of Meta VR, and Librande is a designer at Wright Games Studios.
