SimCity 2013

Miaopinie the gaming world has come to the point where games from big companies like EA, Activision, Bethesda, Take Two, Microsoft, Ubisoft and THQ are for the wealthy, with boardband connections and expensive consoles or tablets. Everyone else will play cheap games from individuals and companies like Mojang (Minecraft), 2D Boy (World of Goo), Edmund McMillen (Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac), and Re-logic (Terraria). Any of these games can be played with keyboard and mouse. This is why the unfortunate business reality is unfortunate only for both the gamers who don't have money to burn on big-company crap, and for the big companies who are deliberately cutting out of a substantial but poor market.

I will miss id Software (whose games I have not played since DOOM 3) and the Bioshock series. I will not miss SimCity 2013, whose requirements are offensive.

I have disowned SimCity 2013 due to its digital control management, its dependence on EA's online service and its always-online requirement. Then there was the EA ban on all its forums of anyone not reporting bugs (unintentional, but still …). Then there are the reviews of SimCity 2013 itself, mostly negative — so negative that Amazon has pulled the game from its site, and Penny Arcade (which has posted two strips satirizing the game) is recommending gamers to stay away from it. It's impressive to hear about EA being surprised by the number of people wanting to play the game: What company fails to plan for success? Stay away.

EA knew disaster was coming with SimCity 2013. It could not have been ignorant of what was going to happen, unless the ignorance is on purpose. Indeed, it most likely is on purpose: EA will continue to push the online requirement, passing the costs of any outages along to the customers in the form of useless purchases and higher game prices. (Oh, and by the way, I did not buy SimCity 2013, so I did not get ripped off. Haaa-ha!) It is guaranteed to ensure bankruptcy for EA, unemployment for its non-suits, loss of value for shareholders, and for posterity the equation EA executive = idiot. Does it care? Nope.

When a retailer stops selling your game because your s◊◊◊ is so busted, and people try to get the money they spent on your nega-game back and you get mad, it seems like that would be pretty bad. Maybe it should be! Maybe it should matter. Does it? Well, seeing as they pull this s◊◊◊ more or less on the regular, we can say pretty clearly that it does not.

Indeed, it cannot. The game is not about rights: It is about control of a game even after it is sold, after which control should not matter. Thus the issue is not digital rights management; the true name ought to be digital control management.

This is bad for the rest of us, because the need for control is the same, whether it borne by a wife beater or by a corporate executive. And like spousal abuse, digital control management is never going to stop, because as it is said, power is the addictive drug!

Digital control management is good for some laughs at other people's expense, though, ranging from the Sony rootkit débâcle of seven years ago to the ongoing SimCity 2013 disaster. EA is in agony, all self-inflicted, due to its need for its digital control management fix, as evidenced by this extended quote with the subtitle EA: It's So Hardcore It Only Plays the Public Relations Game In Nightmare Mode.

The wheels have now come completely off EA's DRMobile, thanks to its botched SimCity launch that was marred by server issues, long lines at the refund counter and some amazingly bad coding, all held together by Maxis GM Lucy Bradshaw's irrepressible bullshit-spinning. The backlash has been enormous and EA is likely wishing it was back in the good old days when Spore (remember that backlash?) was nothing more than harmless vaporware.

It's safe to say that EA has almost single-handedly run the good highly-tarnished name of DRM and internet-only requirements into the ground, finishing the job Diablo 3 began last year. Many gamers have pointed out the futility of these anti-piracy (and anti-cheating/hacking) efforts as well as unleashed their fury at being handed a worthless, broken-on-purpose product in exchange for their money.

And what makes it worse is that, while drug addicts go to jail for stealing stuff to support their habit, EA corporate executives get to go scot-free from stealing from their customers to support their digital control management fix. Yeah, the CEO was fired, but then someone had to be the scapegoat.

As far as I am concerned, SimCity 2013 does not and will never exist. And if it does not exist, then why should I buy it … especially if the game has proven to be a piece of s◊◊◊ that would never truly be mine no matter how much money I would pay for it. This is why, in my opinion, and I repeat, SimCity 4, released ten years ago this past January, is the final chapter in the simulation game's saga. SimCity is over.