Have ea, just shot themselves?

Ningyo42 wrote:
People are so negative. Still surprises me.

Let me explain a bit about EA, so you know who they are and how this works. I've worked at a developer as well, so I know some of the ins and outs.

First, EA started back in the days of the Commodore 64 (and other classic computers) days. They were the best thing to hit computer gaming ever, at that point. Why? Because they started by publishing games made by small developers (programmers, people like you or I, that made a game on their own at home) to the world. Many of these games would go unknown by most people nowadays, but they gave many people their big breaks. Think of people like Peter Molyneux, with one of his early games being Populous and Magic Carpet ... two games I loved when I was a kid. And now he's doing games like the Fable series.

Now why did I tell you that? To tell you THIS! lol Anyway, there are two parts to making games. Publisher and developer. The developer is the one that MAKES the game. They design it, program it, keep it updated, and are the ones that TRULY care about a quality product. The Publisher is the one who pays the developer, advertises, presses the discs and sends them out, or gets the game on Google Play/iTunes/etc. In the case of EA, because they are so big now, they are both publisher and developer, although the rolls are still the same, but handled differently. The development team still is the ones who want the best product possible, but now they are EA employees. With mobile games, such as TSTO, they likely also handle the publishing of the games online, but the rest of the work is handled like a publisher on that end.

Now... Why did I tell you THAT? To continue with THIS! :) The developers want to make money, they want to keep making their games, and they have to bow to publisher pressure, such as donuts in TSTO, and how they are handled. Why? The devs want a killer game, the publisher wants only something that people will at least like, and pay for. If it was up to the devs, so long as they get a paycheck to live off of, they would almost definitely make this game 100% free, and donuts would only be earned (if they existed in the game at all) for the special stuff, and would likely come at a much faster rate.

So, there's some history on EA, before they grew into one of the most hated companies in the world (factual, not my opinion, they still have some good stuff, but have done wrong now and then, in my opinion). Then some about the developer/publisher relationship. So where does this all bring me?

No matter what anyone says, they have to produce a product as good as they can to make people want to play it, and in a case of something like TSTO, they have to have a product that will last a long time. Annoying the players with events of a type they hate means people will rate it badly and not want to play it. Giving them something they want, while also making money, will keep players. So the developers (EA Mobile) probably have dozens of ideas on what they want to do, and are obviously paying attention to the players to stop giving them what they don't like and giving them what they do like.

So, that boils down to: EA Mobile - We want a great game, but are only given so much money and time to make the product. EA (Publisher) - Make this game for this amount of money and have it, or the updates/addons, ready for this date. And handle the donuts this way or we'll get someone else (likely others within EA, in this case) to make the game from now on.

So put your annoyance where it needs to be, give the devs the credit for trying (There are tons of different Android devices and iPhone models are starting to vary quite a bit nowadays, so it's not as easy as you think). Give EA at least some credit for letting their devs do something like this great Stonecutters update.

So this was a bit longer than expected. :) I've been into gaming since pong made it to homes, spent a few years making PC games for a publisher that eventually turned into the ones that now make GTA, and have watched this industry like a hawk through magazines, then the Internet. I hope this was an interesting read! :) (this is so long, and it's past midnight, so I'm going to save before proofing it... Gotta get my Simions - just put Simpsons and Minions together there lol - to work on todays tasks!)

This was an excellent and insightful post! Thanks for taking the time to write all that out! :thumbup:

This is exactly why we have forums, and why if anything goes wrong we should complain. This would break the barrier at EA to allow developers to be a little more open with their ideas. Granted some of those ideas weren't great, but thanks to everyone's honest feedback they saw they needed to change things around to keep everyone happy, and the keep the money flowing.

So the moral of the story is, if something sucks talk up, and when it's good say thanks haha. :lol:

simpsons7795 wrote:

baddazoner wrote:

simpsons7795 wrote:
I think they have a great opportunity to somehow turn the long ago mentioned monorail into an awesome event. :-)

you couldn't make a event out of the monorail

I think they could if they got really creative. There are certainly enough potential prizes from that episode: Lyle Lanley, Lanley Monorails construction trailer, mutant radioactive tree, squirrel with laser eyes, Mr Snrub skin, Homer monorail conductor skin, Springfield's oldest tree/Birthplace of Jebediah Springfield log cabin, Ye Old Anchor Shoppe.

Edit: fixed typo

not so much the prizes how would go about with the actual building of the monorail and how would you unlock those prizes all events have been about collecting a certain item.

besides there are a few players that don't want a working monorail because of how it was in the episode

This event ends July 2nd so maybe within a few weeks of the end of the event we'll get level 42. And then hopefully we get the Chili Cook off around August 4th or 5th.

KayneMatrix wrote:
In my work history, I have Worked as a Beta tester for a few gaming companies, such a Konami / Capcom / Ubisoft and Rare. I am not saying that even the best games do not have issues. Some glitches are fun, and exploiting them leads to greater game play Others bring the entire experience down. One can tell when a game has been rigorously developed and coded etc.

... and when it has been rushed.

It could be only my opinion, but considering the number and wide variety of glitches this game has.I feel like the updates could be planned/ developed/ tested and beta tested better. instead of rushing whatever looks good.

Personally, I would rather wait for a good bug free/ virtually bug free experience rather than the bug filled crash fest I have now.

No, I don't want to hear excuses about multi-platforms because that could be solved by a compatibility mode, especially when the latest OS's have the same problems the older ones do

But I have said all of this before. I am not trying to dismiss the points made in the above statement, but this is the counterpoint.

my two cents

First, and most important... Beta testing is VERY different than working for an actual developer inhouse. Beta testing online games has two reasons: First is to stress test the servers (and to find general bugs), and second is to see what people like and don't like. This is part of the development process, but you aren't a paid employee and your reward is to play the game for free before most anyone else has.

Now I'm not saying that TSTO is flawless, but you have to understand some things. First, based on what I wrote above, it's not multiplatform that's the problem. iOS and Android are one OS each, and to make one game work on the multitude of Android devices ... as well as the small but increasing variety of iOS devices ... is a challenge. They can't have one of every single Android device, and they will have to fix things once they find out how one particular device lends some weirdness. It's a bit easier with iOS because there are considerably fewer.

Second, and one of my main points above is the developer/publisher relationship. The publisher wants something out by a certain time. Nowadays, with updates available on every platform from a handheld game system, to PC, to smart device, they still want the product out at a certain time, no matter if it's finished or not... because it can be updated and fixed. This is not the developer's fault, but is the publisher's. The best publishers will see a problem, and hold it longer before release, but that costs money.

With TSTO, I agree that some inexcusable bugs have existed. They likely didn't have time to test it as well as they'd like on all OS versions of both devices that they wanted to because it needed to be out on a certain date. But on our side, it SHOULD NOT have gone out with that TERRIBLE lag, and some money will need to be spent to fix things such as login problems that shouldn't happen, and the multitude of problems we see.

I'm on your side, but as someone who has helped made a few big games on PC, I have experienced this first hand. Example: Our publisher wanted the game released. We found a big bug that needed to be fixed the day after it went gold. We could have sent them the fix before it went to publish, but they didn't have the resources to get that fix in there. The problem there was two fold: Our test team missed something, and the publisher wasn't able or willing (we're not sure) to incorporate the fix into the shipping version.

So with this, the devs missed something, and I'm very sure they knew they did. This is likely due to changing something in the game's rendering engine that caused issues. But the publisher wanted it out, so they had to release it and then found out how wide spread it was.

Sorry that's so long winded. I find when I don't explain myself properly, I open myself to mistakes. I hope this helps! No bad feelings or anything. :)

KayneMatrix wrote:

Ningyo42 wrote:
People are so negative. Still surprises me.

Let me explain a bit about EA, so you know who they are and how this works. I've worked at a developer as well, so I know some of the ins and outs.

First, EA started back in the days of the Commodore 64 (and other classic computers) days. They were the best thing to hit computer gaming ever, at that point. Why? Because they started by publishing games made by small developers (programmers, people like you or I, that made a game on their own at home) to the world. Many of these games would go unknown by most people nowadays, but they gave many people their big breaks. Think of people like Peter Molyneux, with one of his early games being Populous and Magic Carpet ... two games I loved when I was a kid. And now he's doing games like the Fable series.

Now why did I tell you that? To tell you THIS! lol Anyway, there are two parts to making games. Publisher and developer. The developer is the one that MAKES the game. They design it, program it, keep it updated, and are the ones that TRULY care about a quality product. The Publisher is the one who pays the developer, advertises, presses the discs and sends them out, or gets the game on Google Play/iTunes/etc. In the case of EA, because they are so big now, they are both publisher and developer, although the rolls are still the same, but handled differently. The development team still is the ones who want the best product possible, but now they are EA employees. With mobile games, such as TSTO, they likely also handle the publishing of the games online, but the rest of the work is handled like a publisher on that end.

Now... Why did I tell you THAT? To continue with THIS! :) The developers want to make money, they want to keep making their games, and they have to bow to publisher pressure, such as donuts in TSTO, and how they are handled. Why? The devs want a killer game, the publisher wants only something that people will at least like, and pay for. If it was up to the devs, so long as they get a paycheck to live off of, they would almost definitely make this game 100% free, and donuts would only be earned (if they existed in the game at all) for the special stuff, and would likely come at a much faster rate.

So, there's some history on EA, before they grew into one of the most hated companies in the world (factual, not my opinion, they still have some good stuff, but have done wrong now and then, in my opinion). Then some about the developer/publisher relationship. So where does this all bring me?

No matter what anyone says, they have to produce a product as good as they can to make people want to play it, and in a case of something like TSTO, they have to have a product that will last a long time. Annoying the players with events of a type they hate means people will rate it badly and not want to play it. Giving them something they want, while also making money, will keep players. So the developers (EA Mobile) probably have dozens of ideas on what they want to do, and are obviously paying attention to the players to stop giving them what they don't like and giving them what they do like.

So, that boils down to: EA Mobile - We want a great game, but are only given so much money and time to make the product. EA (Publisher) - Make this game for this amount of money and have it, or the updates/addons, ready for this date. And handle the donuts this way or we'll get someone else (likely others within EA, in this case) to make the game from now on.

So put your annoyance where it needs to be, give the devs the credit for trying (There are tons of different Android devices and iPhone models are starting to vary quite a bit nowadays, so it's not as easy as you think). Give EA at least some credit for letting their devs do something like this great Stonecutters update.

So this was a bit longer than expected. :) I've been into gaming since pong made it to homes, spent a few years making PC games for a publisher that eventually turned into the ones that now make GTA, and have watched this industry like a hawk through magazines, then the Internet. I hope this was an interesting read! :) (this is so long, and it's past midnight, so I'm going to save before proofing it... Gotta get my Simions - just put Simpsons and Minions together there lol - to work on todays tasks!)

... and when it has been rushed.

It could be only my opinion, but considering the number and wide variety of glitches this game has.I feel like the updates could be planned/ developed/ tested and beta tested better. instead of rushing whatever looks good.

Personally, I would rather wait for a good bug free/ virtually bug free experience rather than the bug filled crash fest I have now.

EA's motto, Release first Fix later

just take a look at recent games EA has been involved in to see how much they care about quality control, over the last few years they have been rushing developers to get things out the door and quality has suffered badly.

We shall see if they shot themselves with this update. To me it could be seen as two ways: it's their last attempt at putting something original into an event before their license expires and the game slowly dies away or it's a renewed vigor into the game so that it brings in new players.

This event indeed is very well thought out. The mini tasks that can be done within a 16 hour timeframe and the scrolls are very cool as well... only minor issue I have is that *I* as a 'good' neighbour am getting punished (only 30 clicks or so where I get points) whereas neighbours that don't do * are still getting up to 15 points just for me visiting them even if they don't visit back.

There is almost no way to find out who did visit and who didn't except for starting a written administration log... I'd like to see this changed.

Yep back to the boring generic level updates after this

It's really complex enough to hold my interest but I'm not the only kindle player having serious problems. With this update, I can't get to all my friends. I'm kicked out of the game over and over.

Is the question posed by this post "is a fun update actually a bad thing?"