EA shuts down maxis

Drexel

So seems like another studio bites the dust. Maxis joins other studios like Westwood and Bullfrog that have been shut down by EA

http://kotaku.com/ea-shuts-down-simcity-developer-maxis-1689454903

Where are the developers from these studios going? Are EA forming one massive studio or are they going away from EA altogether?

BeerWolf

Maxis has long been dead before this official announcement.

Kiith

Yeah, i'm not surprised with this. You make **** games, you get closed down.

eastyy

Just seems to happen with developers once they are owned by a big publisher it is like they have had there soul sucked out

Varik

eastyy wrote: »

Just seems to happen with developers once they are owned by a big publisher it is like they have had there soul sucked out

Only difference is there's someone there to pull the plug rather than them dying slowly, profitable studios don't get closed

deBop

They've only shut down one division, they still have other divisions still working around the world so they're not dead. (Think there's one in Helsinki or Redwood?)

AndreiD

Yeah, they closed only the Emeryville studio, the other one making the Sims series is still alive.
Sad to see though, as a long time Sim City fan...

Hercule

ever growing pile of developer corpses

degrassinoel

seen this over on the YLYL thread

dreamers75

Thread on reddit about this from ex dev who works there.

Cant get onto reddit in work if someone comes accross the post.

Gbear

I presume you mean this one:

Money. It 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. First was that the expansion for SC4 didn't print cash like The Sims was at the time. Sure it made money, but The Sims had a HUGE (I remember reading 16x) return on the investment. So it got deprioritized to make The Sims 2. Which again made huge returns.

EA has adopted a greenlight gating process. Where by with little or no capital invested they have a few highly talented senior designers/creative types come up with the framework of a game. They develop what they can as 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 money and manpower as it seems necessary and the time to work on the gameplay, engine, and artistic style. This whole period is called preproduction, and can last from a few months to a few years. At some point you go into production, which means 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 point on nothing changes from the public facing. Once locked into 'online-only' there was no way of changing it. People complained that the cities were too small but there 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, you can't change their mind, you REALLY have to fight to get dates changed etc.

So, during that 10 year wait there was almost 9 years of silence. 3 or 4 of those years had active development of the game that shipped, with another year or more of a small group of creatives. There were other attempts that never made the light of day, and products (Simcity Societies comes to mind) that didn't deliver that 'SimCity' experience.
I offer all of this with the caveat that they don't even tell us (read 'the devs') all of this and some of it is conjecture.

I also don't fault EA with this process. It is meant to minimize risk and it does pretty well at that. EA is a very large ship, it takes a lot of energy and time to get it to change direction. That long process steers the ship and adds predictability. Smaller companies are able to pivot much faster but lack EA's resources and ability to 'play the long game'. All of this stuff happens out of necessity, and all of it comes down to money.

EA is actually a great place to work these days. In the past there were difficulties (I was part of the EA Spouse/class action) but a lot of that has turned around. They really do want to retain talent and minimize layoffs. Not everyone shares this experience, but I haven't worked back-to-back weekends in almost a decade. EA has a really good benefits package, competitive pay, and a strong sense of progressive public responsibility. Maxis, in particular, the Sims side has what is probably the highest level of gender equality in the industry.
I'm sad to see that studio close, it's been my home for a very long time.

From this thread on Reddit.

gizmo

dreamers75 wrote: »

Thread on reddit about this from ex dev who works there.

Cant get onto reddit in work if someone comes accross the post.

Reading it now and there's some pretty interesting stuff there. From the technical perspective, the only caveat is that he appears to be from an art discipline rather than programming. As a result, he doesn't go into much detail on some of the more fundamental problems with the game.

What I've again noticed though, is that when the subject of who came up with the idea of always online is raised, the question is somewhat deflected or ignored. It's not the first time either, every so often you see a comment from someone who knows a dev there and the general jist is Maxis were the one pushing it from the start rather than EA. It'd be interesting to get a more "official" confirmation on this at some stage.

Irelandcool

sim city and the sims were my childhood. One more reason to hate EA.

Kiith

To play devils advocate, i wouldn't blame EA for this (at least not entirely). If Maxis hadn't massively ****ed up Sim City, they would probably still be in business.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

What I've again noticed though, is that when the subject of who came up with the idea of always online is raised, the question is somewhat deflected or ignored. It's not the first time either, every so often you see a comment from someone who knows a dev there and the general jist is Maxis were the one pushing it from the start rather than EA. It'd be interesting to get a more "official" confirmation on this at some stage.

May have been the case of Maxis thinking EA would only greenlight it if it was online only. So technically Maxis were pushing for it but really it was EA.

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

May have been the case of Maxis thinking EA would only greenlight it if it was online only. So technically Maxis were pushing for it but really it was EA.

Perhaps, but I'd be quite surprised if Maxis were having any real difficulty in selling a new Sim City title to EA. It is, after all, the IP most responsible for the publisher's acquisition of the company in the first place.

That being said, I'd look at what you said as a studio over promising and under delivering rather than any inherent wrong doing on behalf of the publisher. At the end of the day, as Kiith said, if they had delivered on what they were promising during development, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Perhaps, but I'd be quite surprised if Maxis were having any real difficulty in selling a new Sim City title to EA. It is, after all, the IP most responsible for the publisher's acquisition of the company in the first place.

Really? I never got the impression from anything I read that EA were pushing for another Sim City. The Sims games were far more profitable and the city building genre was fairly dead in the mid-late 00's.

Not annoyed with EA about this, I can see why they wouldn't be hugely keen on pushing a lot of money into a Sim City game. Which may have been the problem if Maxis were wanting to do *a lot* as you suggest.

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

Really? I never got the impression from anything I read that EA were pushing for another Sim City. The Sims games were far more profitable and the city building genre was fairly dead in the mid-late 00's.

I wouldn't suggest they were actively pushing for it but with Spore dead, The Sims now being developed by a different studio and Will Wright gone, I'd wager a new Sim City would have been the most logical project for the Emeryville studio to begin working on next.

nesf wrote: »

Not annoyed with EA about this, I can see why they wouldn't be hugely keen on pushing a lot of money into a Sim City game. Which may have been the problem if Maxis were wanting to do *a lot* as you suggest.

Which is itself another point, if they weren't keen on putting a lot of money into a new Sim City, why would they then be the ones pushing for an always online game which would require a substantial and indeed longer term investment in nearly all facets of the development process. A single player focused game would have been considerably cheaper to make even if everything had gone according to plan.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Which is itself another point, if they weren't keen on putting a lot of money into a new Sim City, why would they then be the ones pushing for an always online game which would require a substantial and indeed longer term investment in nearly all facets of the development process. A single player focused game would have been considerably cheaper to make even if everything had gone according to plan.

It was being developed during the height of the "push back against piracy" thing with Ubisoft, EA et al. It's not that surprising that they went online only in that atmosphere.

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

It was being developed during the height of the "push back against piracy" thing with Ubisoft, EA et al. It's not that surprising that they went online only in that atmosphere.

And yet, the only games released in that period with such horrific online functionality were Darkspore and Sim City, both of which were developed by Maxis Emeryville and both broken as all hell. This is in contrast to the later Sims titles which had iterations both released and in development around the same time and, while they had their own fair share of issues, didn't feature such (broken) online systems.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

And yet, the only games released in that period with such horrific online functionality were Darkspore and Sim City, both of which were developed by Maxis Emeryville and both broken as all hell. This is in contrast to the later Sims titles which had iterations both released and in development around the same time and, while they had their own fair share of issues, didn't feature such (broken) online systems.

UPlay. I take your point that Maxis Emeryville did it twice. It's hard to tell if these were test balloons being sent up or not though. EA wouldn't premier such a new system with Battlefield or Sims.

Sierra Oscar

Kiith wrote: »

To play devils advocate, i wouldn't blame EA for this (at least not entirely). If Maxis hadn't massively ****ed up Sim City, they would probably still be in business.

It looks like the EA executives didn't have much faith in the studio leadership after that major balls up.

Venom

Kinda funny how every studio that previously had made awesome games, gets bought by EA and then suddenly starts making utter crap which then causes its closure.

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

UPlay. I take your point that Maxis Emeryville did it twice. It's hard to tell if these were test balloons being sent up or not though. EA wouldn't premier such a new system with Battlefield or Sims.

Oh, I'm specifically talking about EA here in the context of it all being their fault. The test balloon point is valid although it seems a little too stupid from a business perspective. I mean which is more likely, EA decide to potentially screw up three titles in a row from the same high profile developer out of their entire stable of first party studios or the higher ups in Maxis simply make a string of bad decisions across three successive projects? I mean in terms of potentially project ruining decisions, the only one that I can think of that even comes close is the addition of micro-transactions to Dead Space 3.

Venom wrote: »

Kinda funny how every studio that previously had made awesome games, gets bought by EA and then suddenly starts making utter crap which then causes its closure.

Not particularly true in the case of Maxis, Bioware, Criterion or even Bullfrog though, is it? Pandemic made what, one game of true note before their acquisition? Westwood bled staff shortly after the acquisition so it's not particularly surprising their output decreased in quality soon after.

Do folk never wonder why the studios with the most consistent output are the ones which retain their most experienced staff over time? I mean, in the case of Maxis, the lead designers on Sim City 3000, Sim City 4 and Will Wright himself no longer worked there, why would we assume they are intrinsically better at making games as a studio than any other one?

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Oh, I'm specifically talking about EA here in the context of it all being their fault. The test balloon point is valid although it seems a little too stupid from a business perspective. I mean which is more likely, EA decide to potentially screw up three titles in a row from the same high profile developer out of their entire stable of first party studios or the higher ups in Maxis simply make a string of bad decisions across three successive projects? I mean in terms of potentially project ruining decisions, the only one that I can think of that even comes close is the addition of micro-transactions to Dead Space 3.

Yeah, just floating it as a possibility. The idea could have come from Maxis and EA might have gone with it just to see what happened.

gizmo wrote: »

Not particularly true in the case of Maxis, Bioware, Criterion or even Bullfrog though, is it? Pandemic made what, one game of true note before their acquisition? Westwood bled staff shortly after the acquisition so it's not particularly surprising their output decreased in quality soon after.

Do folk never wonder why the studios with the most consistent output are the ones which retain their most experienced staff over time? I mean, in the case of Maxis, the lead designers on Sim City 3000, Sim City 4 and Will Wright himself no longer worked there, why would we assume they are intrinsically better at making games as a studio than any other one?

If EA can't hold onto talent then that is very much an EA problem. Though apparently they've gotten better at it in recent years.

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

Yeah, just floating it as a possibility. The idea could have come from Maxis and EA might have gone with it just to see what happened.

Quite likely. Like I said above, if Maxis had convinced EA they could deliver what they initially promised, it's not really surprising they would go for it. Hell I was pretty excited by the early previews of Sim City and as a result, the online requirement aspect didn't really bother me that much. Needless to say, I gave the game a miss on release.

nesf wrote: »

If EA can't hold onto talent then that is very much an EA problem. Though apparently they've gotten better at it in recent years.

Most definitely, they're far from blameless in this respect. That being said, nearly every company experiences staff turnover and when you're talking about periods which can span over a decade, it's not surprising when this can lead to fairly significant creative changes at the top. In the cases above, it clearly had a fairly detrimental effect on some of the studios involved.

Sierra Oscar

gizmo wrote: »

Do folk never wonder why the studios with the most consistent output are the ones which retain their most experienced staff over time? I mean, in the case of Maxis, the lead designers on Sim City 3000, Sim City 4 and Will Wright himself no longer worked there, why would we assume they are intrinsically better at making games as a studio than any other one?

The same issue came about with Westwood Studios. By the time it closed down a lot of the original staff had already moved on to different developers.