SimCity Developer says that EA is a "Great place to work, but it all comes down to money"

SimCity Developer says that EA is a "Great place to piece of work, but it all comes down to money"

Last week we reported that the development studio responsible for the SimCIty franchise Maxis Emeryville, got shutdown past EA. Now a previous Maxis employee using the name Vertexnormal took to reddit during the weekend to shine some light on some of the struggles that tin be had past working for EA, but still maintaining that "it'due south a bang-up identify to work".

SimCity iv's expansion didn't "Print coin" every bit The Sims did at the time

Over on reddit at that place's a pretty long thread going, about EA'due south closure of the studio Maxis Emeryville. And a sometime Maxis employee has posted quite a lot in that particular thread. The developer has mentioned that the long filibuster between releasing SimCity 4 and the SimCity from 2022, was due to the SImCity 4 expansion not "printing coin" likewise as The Sims did, and therefore EA choose to deprioritize a new SimCity.

Money. Information technology all comes down to money. EA as a corporation doesn't share our sense of obligation out of sentimentality. Hence today's announcement.

The long gap is probably caused by several factors. Kickoff was that the expansion for SC4 didn't print cash similar The Sims was at the fourth dimension. Sure it fabricated coin, but The Sims had a HUGE (I recollect reading 16x) return on the investment. Then it got deprioritized to make The Sims 2. Which once again made huge returns.

The developer goes on to explain a bit of how EA actually deal with conceptualizing games and how preproduction works for a studio nether EA.

EA has adopted a greenlight gating process. Where by with little or no majuscule invested they have a few highly talented senior designers/artistic types come up with the framework of a game. They develop what they tin equally proof of concept, usually simple gameplay prototypes and concept art, which is then presented to EA. This sets up a series of gates and reviews whereby they get more than money and manpower every bit information technology seems necessary and the time to piece of work on the gameplay, engine, and artistic mode. This whole period is called preproduction, and can last from a few months to a few years.

At some point you become into production, which ways you know what you are making, how you are going to do it, how they are going to sell it and hard numbers to back all of that up. Some time after that, when marketing thinks it is right, they will announce the game to the public. From that bespeak on nothing changes from the public facing. One time locked into 'online-just' there was no way of changing it. People complained that the cities were too small-scale but in that location was no way to address that without compromising the numbers and forecasts when the game was sold to EA's corporate overseers. EA can't be negotiated with at this level, y'all can't alter their heed, you Really have to fight to get dates changed etc.

And so, during that 10 year expect at that place was almost 9 years of silence. three or 4 of those years had active evolution of the game that shipped, with another twelvemonth or more than of a small group of creatives. At that place were other attempts that never made the light of day, and products (Simcity Societies comes to heed) that didn't evangelize that 'SimCity' feel.

So 3 to 4 years of active development, and a year or so of preproduction, seems to be what nosotros should take out of this. And during that time EA pumped out content for The Sims, and of course other non-Maxis produced games. It's sorry to meet EA chew up studios and franchises, simply it has been this manner for years sadly.

The programmer doesn't mistake EA with the above mentioned procedure, since it is meant to minimize run a risk and it "does pretty well at that", and ends by stating that EA is actually a great place to work at even if EA equally a company volition prioritize making money first. If you want to check out all of the developers posts on reddit regarding this, you can do and so hither.

And for those of you that want to read a funny petty comic-strip related to all of this, you lot tin do then here.

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Source: https://wccftech.com/simcity-dev-it-all-comes-down-money/

Posted by: puaocked1995.blogspot.com

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