[NEWS] EA Comments on EAL Closing

[Aster]

Click me to read the news on the main page or go to http://eal.stratics.com.

I'm sitting here seething about collaborative play and painting. Playing TSO is not like painting. Sometimes it's like playing Legos with a bunch of drunk people, and sometimes it's like participating in the world's largest game of Exquisite Corpse. Sometimes it is like a summer when you are 9 and everyone decides to put on a show in the barn, complete with costumes and fake snow, or being 4 and turning a rose bush and a refrigerator box into a whole world.

But it isn't like painting.
Pft.

 

[ajdown@jp]

If those 'in charge' are so completely out of touch, then it's no wonder they screwed up so much to close the game down.

 

[Gilly]

Click me to read the news on the main page or go to http://eal.stratics.com.

I'm sitting here seething about collaborative play and painting. Playing TSO is not like painting. Sometimes it's like playing Legos with a bunch of drunk people, and sometimes it's like participating in the world's largest game of Exquisite Corpse. Sometimes it is like a summer when you are 9 and everyone decides to put on a show in the barn, complete with costumes and fake snow, or being 4 and turning a rose bush and a refrigerator box into a whole world.

But it isn't like painting.
Pft.

It seems to me that most if not all of the management at EA is only looking at graphs, trends and other bean-counter (mathematician) generated aspects of the offline Sims. Offline creativity is a solitary endeavor.....how can it be anything else?.....with the uploads and game forums being the 'social', "look what I did!!!", aspect of that experience.

I suspect that TSO and all of our game dynamics and game play has been completely off the radar for EA management for over three years....I don't think our 'numbers' regarding online player's game play, needs and interests, have been included in any of their graphs and calculations......or if it was, it has been overwhelmed by the shear volume of offline player data.

We are a minority (possibly even invisible, data wise) group in the Sims Universe.

 

[Shari]

After reading the article, I have to wonder if the President even knew what TSO is/was... it sounds like she has never actually played the game.

 

[stormi dayz]

OMFG you have got to be kidding me I just spent the last 2 years of my life painting and playing paper dolls, WHO KNEW. Has anyone written to the editor of that web site. that was perhaps the most uninformed ridiculous thing I have read so far about why they did it, and I think someone needs to tell the story from our perspective. I for one am done with EA they can take sims 3 and shove it up their charts.

 

[princess45001]

anyone else know wtf is this lol i understood none of it sounds like she talking bout different game.put the bottle down dear

 

[NikiKing]

That just offends me on so many levels!

I have think tho, our 19 devs practically performed miracles in this much too short year, imagine what they could have done with 350.

 

[debslee]

I am so miffed by that article - that I think if I expound on it, I will get myself banned from Stratics!!!!!

"We are constantly talking to our players and running focus groups around the world. We hear a lot from players on what they want. Our job is to deliver that back to them." - yea right!

 

[Milton]

I wish the article had allowed for reader comments.

 

[Spacey]

Oh now that is a bunch of you-know-what. Painting? Hrmff.

As wildly popular as the Sims offline is, having an online version should have been much more appealling than it was. The problem... noone heard about it!!! It was never advertised on TV, radio here... and I am right smack in the middle of the United States, and not the boonies I might add! I happened to run into it by chance while looking up things for Sims 1. My sims experience changed dramatically. I can no longer play Sims 1 cause it is too boring playing alone. It is not appealling to play with NPCs anymore. I wish other people had the chance to experience it too. Sims 3 and beyond doesn't appeal to me.

Maybe by some miracle the 'sim suits' will jump back in the MMO arena later down the road when Sims 4,5,6... comes out. They could just forget the booboo of TSO 1 and move on. BUT PLEASE...LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES.

 

[labyrinth]

I do agree that The Sims Online wasn't really advertised.
I heard about The Sims and wanted to know what it was about, but only found that you could only buy the pc version/offline version, and at the time I just didn't feel like buying it.
I kept looking and looking for something online, and I looked for over two years, and never came across anything until July of 2005.
I had finally found The Sims Online!
Then, once I was in the game, I found out the game had already been out for a couple of years.

I was so amazed I hadn't found anything about it before, because I had looked and looked.

And, even after 2005 I never saw any advertisements for it.

 

[CherryBomb]

I actually DID see an ad on TV! Once. A long, long time ago. And I have an insert advert in a CD box for one of their other games, which must be some kind of collector's item.

I am not surprised about the EA comments quoted. The developers were completely clueless about what players were actually doing in TSO. The connection got a bit better when they tried the redesign, but still, plans like a $500 per week income cap "that would not affect 80% of players" showed how out-of-touch they were.

CherryBomb

 

[Gilly]

It seems to me that it is basic self protection...

....they are not at fault and can not be held responsible for failing to gain and maintain an appropriately large player base for an online version of one of the worlds most popular game franchises......because we (Sims players) do not like to play online, and never wanted it in the first place..

It is called 'spin doctoring'.

And with all due respect Cherrybomb, I believe that this 'attitude' comes from the top down...not from the Devs (who are in the middle, not at the top of the game food chain) upward.

 

[Katheryne]

And with all due respect Cherrybomb, I believe that this 'attitude' comes from the top down...not from the Devs (who are in the middle, not at the top of the game food chain) upward.

Correct. Fact of the matter is, a game developer - no matter which game it is - has absolutely nothing to gain by making the game fail, except perhaps unemployment.

 

[LordDeath]

Click me to read the news on the main page or go to http://eal.stratics.com.

I'm sitting here seething about collaborative play and painting. Playing TSO is not like painting. Sometimes it's like playing Legos with a bunch of drunk people, and sometimes it's like participating in the world's largest game of Exquisite Corpse. Sometimes it is like a summer when you are 9 and everyone decides to put on a show in the barn, complete with costumes and fake snow, or being 4 and turning a rose bush and a refrigerator box into a whole world.

But it isn't like painting.
Pft.

Aster, you are my favorite poster! Even though we haven't talked in game for ages, you are one of the (many) sims that I will miss dearly when the world ends. For me, playing TSO brings me back to my childhood in the late sixties. I was an artist and love to paint, my buddy had a bunch of those big GI Joes and his sister had Barbie Dolls. One time when I went to his house, I brought my paint set. (You can see where this is going) I took one of his sister's Barbies undressed her and painted her to be more "realistic". My buddy thought it was the coolest thing so we took all her Barbies and "impoved" them. Then we took all his GI Joes (some had "Kung Fu Grip") and made them into real men.

Now there was a saying in the sixties that went, "Make love not war!" So with a half dozen naked "improved" GI Joes and a half dozen naked "realistic" Barbies... Well it would have been a great time for all, but his mom walked in and when she saw our collection, she was not happy! My buddy was grounded for like a month and I was banned from his house. He was kind of a jerk after that and blammed me for his troubles. But it didn't matter because his whole family moved before school started and I never saw him again.

Last time I heard anything about him was last October when a friend told me he was a big shot with Electronic Arts here in Redwood Shores... wait... OMG!! I see the connection... IT'S ALL MY FAULT!!!!

*coming soon, a really cool signature!

 

[boggslane]

Actually painting Barbies, Kens, GI Joes is a thriving cottage industry, see...

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=ooak+barbie&category0=

Back on topic, the suits at EA are shutting us down for our own (mental health) good, see...

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1739601,00.html

Good article, a must read. Explains why I got the cajones to divorce (after 22 years of marriage) an emotionally abusive alcoholic and shack-up with my Sim-Husband (we've been together for over 4 years now).

Still it's hard to lose the place where we met and lay to rest our alter-egos.

 

[Carley Jo]

I am so miffed by that article - that I think if I expound on it, I will get myself banned from Stratics!!!!!

"We are constantly talking to our players and running focus groups around the world. We hear a lot from players on what they want. Our job is to deliver that back to them." - yea right!

That woman probably wouldn't know what the game was if she was sitting at a computer watching someone else play it!! Her remark about "Our job is to deliver that back to them" just proves she knows nothing about the game, as far as I'm concerned!!

It's ok debslee, I'm sure there are plenty of us who would love to expound on it right along with you!!!

 

[Scotty]

I am so miffed by that article - that I think if I expound on it, I will get myself banned from Stratics!!!!!

"We are constantly talking to our players and running focus groups around the world. We hear a lot from players on what they want. Our job is to deliver that back to them." - yea right!

OMG! That is the biggest load of codswallop I have read in a long time. They run focus groups? LOL WhatEVER. They didn't listen to us beta testers when we told them the game wasn't ready to go live a few years ago. And we BEGGED them not to release the game. It was buggy, and didn't have a lot of features. They didn't listen to player suggestions over the years. EA killed the game. They are totally clueless when it comes to their customers. I honestly believe that they really don't care. All they seem to care about is money.

 

[Carley Jo]

I just wrote a comment to that BBC and told them if they want to hear our side of the story, (sim game players) to email me and I will send them a link where they can find out. Also I told them that EA is not delivering what the players want, and what the woman Global President said was a crock of you know what!!

 

[SimTripps]

Nancy Smith's comments are so blasé, revealing that she really doesn't give a hoot about the TSO community. A Global President cares more about profits and the economical bottom line than who they are offending by slamming the door. From a purely business perspective, TSO has been a liability to them for years. I'm surprised the game had lasted this long...

Our players like coming together to share what they have created. But the actual creative process itself is a single-player experience.

Uh, holy baloney, Ms. Smith - she obviously doesn't have a clue about creative processes... Since when is creativity a solo experience? I've always thought that the whole end result of anything creative is sharing it with others...

 

[Avyi]

holy baloney

LOL!
*goes now to paint peanut butter into the holes of the baloney*

 

[LordDeath]

Actually painting Barbies, Kens, GI Joes is a thriving cottage industry, see...

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=ooak+barbie&category0=

WOW, I think I made the wrong career choice when I went to Law School! I should have stuck to painting Barbies.

My take on EA's "focus" groups runs along this line. When TSO was getting ready to be beta tested, I wasn't sure about playing online games myself. Perhaps most people are a bit intimidated by the whole online thing to begin with. But when I started playing, it was something that I never expected. Now playing off line Sims is a hallow experience. Think about this, EA basically stopped supporting TSO after innitial expectations were not met. The last major change until Luc came on was the addition of pets. Yet we played on.

Contrast that with any offline game. The few that I bought, I basically played through once and left them to collect dust. Then contrast the online games supported by EA to Second Life and WOW. I never played WOW, but I do play Second Life. It is hard to learn to walk, but the graphics and the CC were light years better then TSO.

I agree with most the posters here!

 

[ajdown@jp]

Contrast that with any offline game. The few that I bought, I basically played through once and left them to collect dust.

The "write / box / sell / forget" model is clearly EA's success, with new versions coming out every year with minor changes and an updated league table (in the case of sports games) but, as you say, people play for a while, finish, then forget about it.

TSO isn't a typical "EA" game, and they simply aren't able to cope with the needs of a thriving community because it needs ongoing updates to remain fresh and interesting. None of the EA sports or racing games have anything near the lifespan of TSO, more like 5 weeks instead of 5 years.

If custom content had been introduced at release - as was the original plan - along with all the other things EA failed to deliver, I think things would have been very, very different now... and probably the seamless transition into "Sims 2, Online" that many expected to happen would have a long time ago.

 

[Raisin]

If custom content had been introduced at release - as was the original plan - along with all the other things EA failed to deliver, I think things would have been very, very different now... and probably the seamless transition into "Sims 2, Online" that many expected to happen would have a long time ago.

I agree.