"rras1994;c-16246639" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16245786" wrote:
"Writin_Reg;c-16235726" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16235389" wrote:
"JoAnne65;c-16235296" wrote:
"Writin_Reg;c-16234997" wrote:
Everyone is forgetting the number one fact- the CEO of Electronic Arts said the live service was designed to make ALL of their games to have a longer shelf life and to deliver both free and paid DLC on a regular basis to keep the games fresh and ever changing for a lot longer shelf life before they can embark on any type of redo or overhaul. What's more he has the overwhelming support of both the board of EA and their stockholders.
So regardless of what their games used to do this was put in place during the first quarter of this year; and judging by what was being said by the heads at Maxis even shortly after Sims 4 came out 'remember Rachels and others comment "that the Sims 4 had no expiration date. They would be working and adding to the Sim 4 as long as it was feasible to do so"- says the game was designed from the get go to have a longer shelf life - well before the Ceo openly stated it this year.
So regardless of what anyone wants apparently as long as it is feasible to add to it, they will. Also remember all the previous Sims games had a limit to the number of Eps each game could hold. The data files clearly held placemarkers for just so many packs - and many of us noticed Sims 4 has no limits in the data -for any kind of packs. On top of it this smart technology game engine can constantly be upgraded - something they could not do easily in past engines. They proved it twice already. S0 yeah - this game could go on for a long time if they find it "feasible to do so."
Yes, exactly, that’s what I was referring to. I regret it highly but that doesn’t change reality. (@Erpe , I really think that ‘the way it’s always bene’ isn’t necessarily the way it’s going to be)
I know that EA mainly wants all its games to be online and to be live services because this is the current tendency. Also paid offline games sell worse and worse in the app stores for mobile devices because gamers aren’t very tempted to download paid games when there are such a huge number of games that can be downloaded for free. So EA’s attitude is very understandable.
But even in the app stores for mobile devices the game stores attempt to get around this such that they still can sell paid games too. The new way usually is to advertise a lot for the paid games and to make them in two versions such there is a version that can be downloaded for free such that people can try the game for free. But this version usually either only has the first few levels of the game or it has a lot of its game world locked such that people will have to switch to the paid version if they like the game and want to continue playing it.
But the PC versions of the Sims games differ a lot from all other games because EA’s income from them mainly is from selling a huge number of cheap-to-make expansions later and not so much from just selling the basegame. This model isn’t possible yet for the mobile Sims games (or EA just hasn’t wanted to use it until now). Therefore all the PC Sims games until now have been paid offline games (also the sidegames) and EA has released a new big Sims games with many expansions every 5 years.
There is no doubt that EA wants more online options included in the big Sims games too. But to make the game into a pure MMO game which can’t be played offline too would be a disaster for EA for the following reasons:
1. MMO games can’t be played anymore when the server is taken down and simmers would become so angry that they would refuse to buy any more Sims games if they lost the earlier game and all its expansions just because EA took the server down.
2. EA can’t continue to sell expansions for the same game infinitely. Therefore online MMO games mostly gets updates instead of exoansions. But updates can’t be sold to simmers in the same way as the expansions always have been. EA would therefore lose all the usual income from selling all those expansions which EA surely can’t just accept.
Therefore I don’t believe that EA really plans to let the next Sims game be a real live service which can’t be played offline and without many expansions because EA would just lose too much money by doing that. Instead EA’s considerations almost certainly is about making the next PC Sims game in a way where it can be played both offline and online and such that the game still can have a huge number of paid expansions. The problem just is that this is technically difficult to make because it won’t be any good if we only can visit other simmers who have bought exactly the same expansions as we have ourselves. But how should we be able to visit another simmer who has bought an EP with a whole world which we don’t have in our own game?
I know that EA is working on this problem. But I just don’t know how far EA has come or if EA is close to a solution at all. We won’t know before EA announces the next big Sims game.
But I am sure that is what EA meant with the plans to turn all its games into live services. For EA’s other games that sure is possible. But EA just have to find a modified way to do it for the Sims games. And TS4 surely won’t ever be turned into a live service as a MMO game that only can be played online! ;)
No - that was the former CEO that was pushing online multi-player and you notice how that went with Sims City 13 - which resulted in his resignation.
This CEO is not into all EA games online MMO's etc - but player first - with the only connection via Origin but not specifically as an MMO. You need to update yourself and info and totally forget what JR wanted as Andrew Wilson actually cares what the players want. He made it perfectly clear our fav games will still play the way we want them to - single player and they will also offer those capable of playing multi-player also in that format as well - but most of all he wants players to be able to access their fav games the way WE want to play them on all technology we have. MMO's are actually not always where it at now a days and Andrew sees that. He has talked extensively on keeping fav games as the players want them. That is where live service is today - unlike it's past history - it's no longer just for online multi-player games.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-08/electronic-arts-ceo-imagines-a-year-without-a-new-madden-game
JR and his all games multi-player and VR ideals are gone from EA - and instead they focusing in adding all ways players want to play via Origin. The only thing that is not an option today is playing your games with out Origin. That will be your only connection unless you CHOOSE to play an MMO specific game.
Andrew Wilson isn’t so different from John Riccitiello. Just read the article on https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/ea-boss-andrew-wilsons-vision-of-gamings-future-will-blow-your-mind-w487144
Andrew Wilson wants to continue the digital evolution and make EA’s games into free-to-play or subscription based games via EA Access. He isn’t at all interested in the Sims games but instead a sports fanatic who has played FIFA games for many years and also does surfing and golfing. Besides that he has a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. But he has also promised EA’s share holders to improve the value of EA’s stock.
He has improved EA's stock. It's up like 50 or so percent this year, despite the Battlefront II controversy. And you might want to look at what EA access is, it's like a streaming service like Netflix, it let's you dip in and try a bunch of different games, not about making all games MMOs - specially as the traditional MMO market has been on a steady decline for years, the traditional subscription service for a single multiplayer game doesn't work anymore for example SWTOR, the one MMO EA actually has didn't make profit until it went free to play (which actually ended up being quite sucessful for it) . And live service has got nothing to do with making single or multiplayer games, it's about being able to continue to make content and provide entertainment between the larger periods between base game drops. Why is there larger periods between game drops? Because games take much longer to develop now then they used - that's an industry wide trend, not just EA. People don't want to have to wait 5 years between releases with nothing, they want more content. And Publishers with increasing game costs don't just want to ahve to rely on profit from the base game price to stay a float, as now to break even you have to sell millions for a game. That's why publishers across the industry are releasing less games per year and moving to GaaS (Games as a Service) models, as it decreases the risk for massive flops. Live Service works for both developers and consumers - which is why you'll find more variations of them happening for both single player experiences and multiplayer. It's not about making every game multiplayer.
I just discovered this message now.
I haven’t followed the value of EA’s stock. But it doesn’t surprise me if it really has improved that much.
But even though it often has been written in this forum that games now take longer time to make I don’t agree at all because I have seen the opposite in all the games that I play. Several of them suddenly got different weather and a different look of almost everything and they often get something about the size of a GP just in free updates once or even twice a month. Most of them are also available in identical versions both for my iPad and for the Windows PC. So I see the idea about games taking longer time to make just as some “constructed thinking” which people have made up to “explain” why EA now only releases one EP each year. But I don’t believe this “explanation” for a minute because I am quite sure that it is just about marketing.
As I see it the games have had different fundamental ideas:
1. TS2 was about storytelling and built-in stories. Especially in Pleasantview (but also in both Strangetown and Veronaville) those stories were about conflicts between sims and between the different families. To make this possible the sims had to be able to hate and get jealous too.
2. TS3 was instead about the open neighborhood and the intention was that we only should play one family while the sims in the other families just could move around at random and sometimes even disappear permanently from the world at random. Instead the challenges mostly was about the higher difficulty degree if we played bigger families. Also the EP World Adventures introduced RPG gameplay to the game which I hadn’t seen before in a Sims game.
3. TS4 was from the beginning instead about happiness, partying, autonomous behavior and easy building. The basegame was planned to have a huge number of SPs to make building, decorating and dressing up the sims even easier than ever before. But family play and EPs were planned to become simplified such that half of the EPs instead could become cheaper GPs and SPs instead. Therefore TS4 seems to me to already from the beginning only meant to have less than half of the EPs that TS3 got. So no! I don’t think that the much fewer EPs has anything with them being more difficult to make at all! Instead there have been about a year between them because the developers have made one or two GPs and a couple of SPs before they even start on making the next EP. (Grant also said in a recent interview that with the EP out of the way they now instead will work on the next GP.)
I agree that “live service” mainly is about EA Access when the concept is mentioned in connection with the big Sims games. But seen through the eyes of the developers it is also about the free updates and the fact that they now develop SPs at the same time as they develop a GP or an EP.
