"ClarionOfJoy;c-18077600" wrote:
"Stormkeep;c-18077010" wrote:
EA has owned Maxis since 1997, so yes, they were the parent company all the way back to the Original TS1, @Cinebar. THey aren't just the publisher, they are the parent company. I blame EA more than Maxis for alot of the misteps that the franchise has taken along the way, but it is indeed fair to point out that they have always had a say in things for the franchise since the beginning.
It's not at all accurate to say that everything is up to Maxis, though. With in-house studios, which is what Maxis is (actually several studios under the Maxis division umbrella) management of the parent company is involved to some degree in the entire process. The extent of that involvement largely depends on the parent company's culture and management philosophies.
But ultimately, when they can fire and replace anyone they choose all the way up to the top level at Maxis, they definitely have a ton of influence.
Also, because they are the parent company, it's natural for the "company culture" to permeate throughout. That takes time though, and is why i blame EA more than Maxis. The culture of EA was not the same as the culture of Maxis originally, and it took time for EA's culture to permeate Maxis after the acquisition. What we see now is the final result of that. Especially considering for a time Maxis studios was dissolved completely before being reformed within EA...what we have now is just the name and logo, nothing of the original studio remains.
I completely agree with your post. If Maxis had the freedom and proper financial backing it needed, I'm pretty sure they would have come out with a better The Sims 4 like they did with the previous games in the series. The previous leadership at EA that brought us the best games in the early 2000s helped produced TS1-TS3. You started seeing the difference in the last few expansions of TS3 when the old leadership left and the new leadership came in.
Every EA game except for a few games like the Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (which I LOVE - if any of you haven't played it yet and love actions games, YOU SHOULD GET IT!!!) and It Takes Two (fantastic co-op game with wonderful story and puzzles), have been a total flop because of bugs and lack of features, etc. Take for example Battlefield 2042 that I was so looking forward to, which turned out to be a crap game at launch and even now is still bug-infested and still missing a lot of features that previous games in the series had. Sounds familiar to The Sims 4.
I've pretty much given up on Maxis and the future of The Sims series (voted that way in the other thread with that poll) because of EA. I feel bad for the few original devs still in Maxis (even though, yes, they are well-compensated in salary and position, but still). There are videos on YouTube on their The Sims channel about the launch of The Sims 3 back in the day. They were so happy and proud of that game!
The Sims 3 - Behind the Scenes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouH0G6-wK9g
I'm not as upset as I used to be though. I've found other genres of games that I've come to enjoy:
- Action adventures games like the Tomb Raider series and Hitman series (the latest trilogy is AMAZING!!!)
- Shooter games like the Borderlands series (am anticipating the release of a new spin-off called Tiny Tina's Wonderlands!)
- Survival games like Dysmantle and Subnautica (lots of exploration, resource gathering, crafting, fending off enemies - surprisingly addictive to me!)
- Farming/Harvest Moon type of games like My Time at Portia and Stardew Valley (very relaxing and just enjoyable to develop relationships of the townspeople in the games!)
BUT this all happened because I was so unhappy with The Sims 4 and it's DLCs, and how EA and Maxis were handling its production, and how they've treated the simming community. It's gotten to the point where I don't trust EA anymore (not just because of TS4, but the other games they've released under this leadership) and felt I needed to expand to other genres so that I wouldn't be so dependent on just The Sims games like I did before.
So as I had said before, I totally agree with you that this is more EA's fault than it is Maxis.
I don't know, did EA make the plan to build kits instead of stuff packs, and or did EA make the decision it was ok to release a wedding pack with that many obvious bugs? GPs are usually planned and worked on for about a year, right? I'm not in the camp that blames every little thing on EA. And I will go back to one point I made in the thread, the past games had a budget too, and look at what all they were able to accomplish. And it was probably for less pay and more hours and less money in a budget than would be required today. I think it's Maxis' vision rather than EA's.
