Quarterly Teasers: Statement from SimGuruKate

"@Archieonic;c-16948407" wrote:

"AshtontoAshton22;c-16948403" wrote:
I think it's the EA people on top that are making em push out stuff we don't want but obviously, since I'm terribly ignorant in matters of business, it's probably not the case.

No no, you are on the right track. While I doubt EA as a publisher tells the studio what to develop (it typically isn't the job of a publisher to do that), they certainly impose time-frames, budgets, expectations. So if you throw in together a couple of patches with bug-fixes and a few items here and there, EPs, GPs, and SPs, and you add on to that a publisher telling you that you HAVE to release X amount of content in X period of time well, might not work out that well for the developers themselves. They might have to go for things that are quicker, cheaper, faster to produce.

But sometimes, I wonder how far EAs policies are when it comes to the dev team itself. I've always blamed EA more than the studio, but sometimes I wonder if the dev studio is actually in agreement with said policies. I.E. those tweets. Say for example, with City Living, that EA pushes the studio to release it in X time-frame, so they get down to working on apartments. But wait, we don't have resources and/or time, how about we cut out the ability to create and place your own apartments? Animations for elevators? Cut that too, we are in a rush. That's quite a possible scenario.

It’s funny that you think there are separate people in EA that impose time-frames, budgets on the studio. The people that impose time-frames, budgets are in the studio and they’re part of the dev team.

People love to think EA and Maxis as two separate entities, when in reality they are one and the same. If EA needs to someone to manage the studio’s budget/time frames, then this person would be working at the studio and they are part of the dev team.