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EA 'confident' Origin will be stable for international SimCity launches
Electronic Arts stated late this afternoon that the high demand for SimCity has impacted a small percentage of users accessing the always-online game's servers. (We're currently locked out.)The Twitter account for the publisher's digital distribution network, Origin, went on to note, "We're making changes to prevent further issues, and are confident that Origin will be stable for international launches later this week."You hear that, Europe? Confident! Let's see how it goes.
SimCity gambles on disaster in new footage
SimCity has all its permits and union payoffs in order to start building next week. Here's an example of a casino city, and another that won't be a city much longer. Fallout: SimCity, anyone?
From city-builder roles to caring for citizens in SimCity
Regions are the beating heart of Maxis Games' upcoming SimCity revival. The always-online game places a lot of emphasis on community, but it's less about the global fellowship and more about the ties that bind neighboring cities together.Players face a choice when they're first starting out: break ground in a small region with only two or three city-sized plots of land to develop ,or jump into a more expansive location, one that supports as many as 16 cities. The cost/benefit for each choice is simple enough to break down; it's the difference between carving out your own, private space in the world versus leaving the door open for other players to join.All of SimCity's regions are created in-house at Maxis – there's no plan to let players mold their own regions – and each plot of claimable land comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. A helpful status bar pop-up points out which resources are and aren't available when an unclaimed plot is highlighted, so you know what you're getting before you settle on a civilization site.Maxis has been working to test against a whole galaxy of possibilities in the run-up to SimCity's March 5, 2013, release. It's to the point that sizable portions of the working day at the studio are now devoted purely to play, with staffers being assigned to a range of discrete city-builder roles. "It's hard to go into every nook and cranny of the game because there's just so much. The breadth of the game is really large," lead designer Stone Librande told Joystiq. "We have different designers who are assigned to different tasks. Like, 'You're making university town, you're making casino town, you're making ore and coal mining town.'"%Gallery-179241%
SimCity's second beta assembles Feb. 16
If you missed out on the first SimCity beta, you'll be pleased to know EA has laid the foundations for a second closed beta, starting February 16. The publisher tells us the second edition features an "enhanced" version of the one hour's worth of city planning featured in the first one.The beta begins at 9AM ET (6AM PT, 2PM British) on February 16, and runs through 24 hours until February 17. The deadline for sign-ups is 9AM ET on Monday February 11. The game proper launches in North America on March 5, which is when you can get your hands on its Limited Edition, as zanily promoted in the new trailer above.
SimCity's Euro sets teased in trailer, Mac version planned for spring
The latest SimCity trailer is intended to entice mayors to purchase the "Digital Deluxe" edition, which features three distinctive tile sets as a bonus, along with some well-known landmarks.The Digital Deluxe version includes the Paris City Set with Eiffel Tower, German City Set with Brandenburg Gate and British City Set with Big Ben. The packs also include French police cars, German trains and British buses.Developer Maxis also updated SimCity's release date on Mac with a "Spring 2013" window. The game is scheduled for March 8 on PC. The company notes that Mac and PC players will be able to play together on the same maps. Pre-orders are not currently available for SimCity on Mac and the company will have more information soon.
SimCity beta next weekend, sign up now
Dearest fellow city planners, the SimCity Beta is prepped to begin January 25 and run through the weekend until Monday, January 28. The SimCity Twitter account notes players will get the chance to try out a "one hour slice" of the game.Interested participants should head on over to the SimCity site and sign up for the beta. The full game's final launch date is hopefully set in concrete and is expected to hand out building permits on March 5.
SimCity and the power to build with friends trailer
One of the most exciting ideas in the new SimCity is the "multi-city play" feature, which is showcased in this latest trailer. Around the 2:50 mark is where the co-op features start to really get shown off. Build a better city with friends starting March 5, 2013.
SimCity creative director shows off more of game's interface
SimCity creative director Ocean Quigley (rockin' a badass mustache) shows off the game's intuitive visual presentation, which we praised back at Gamescom. The trailer features nice examples of the immediate impact of civic structures and parks. SimCity will be out the first full week of March 2013.
How SimCity deals with disasters
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When SimCity gives you meteorites, tornadoes and earthquakes ... you'd better hope there's more than a refreshing beverage around. As the latest trailer for next February's reboot shows, an adequate support structure helps alleviate the worst events.
Sims 3 '70s, 80s & 90s Stuff' pack announced, university expansion teased
Maxis announced today that The Sims 3 expansion "70s, 80s & 90s Stuff" will be available in January 2013. The pack includes clothing and stuff that exemplifies the decades of the Nixon through Clinton administrations (Wilson through Blair in the UK, Indira Gandhi to Vajpayee in India).The division of Electronic Arts also teased a college or university expansion pack coming after the three decades of stuff pack. The Sims 3 is currently prepping for the Seasons expansion this November.%Gallery-162696%
SimCity early gameplay walkthrough
We got small taste of SimCity when we went hands-on with it at Gamescom. Here's EA giving a solid nine minute chunk of the earliest parts of the game. Don't worry, splines will be reticulated.
Look around SimCity, don't get bogged down in charts
"I want more time," I thought leaving my first SimCity hands-on experience. "I must go deeper!" There's just so much I wanted to try out, poke around, but the rails were firmly set to give the tiniest taste of what's to come. Needless to say, I'm ready for the SimCity entree when it launches in February 2013 on Mac and PC.The demo I tried out went through the super basics of building residential, commercial and industrial zones; along with how the city infrastructure is built out. All of it quite instinctual.%Gallery-157342%
SimCity PC beta registration open as soon as the site goes live [Update: It's up!]
Registration for a closed SimCity beta has now opened, EA and Maxis announced during their Gamescom press conference in Cologne, Germany. Or rather, it will be open as soon as the registration page goes live, which as of press time it has not.Eventually though, prospective PC mayors can register for their chance to benevolently/malevolently control the lives of millions ahead of the game's February release window. No word yet on when the beta will actually take place, or whether Mac mayors will get to join in on the fun of not getting to sign up for a SimCity beta.Update: The site is now live and accepting beta applications. Go get the key to your almost-guaranteed-to-be-obscenely-named city!
EA sues Zynga for copyright infrigement, cites Tiny Tower
EA has dropped a lawsuit on Zynga's doorstep, claiming that one of Zynga's latest Facebook games, called The Ville, is essentially an infringing copy of EA's popular The Sims. You can read through the entire complaint at Scribd. What's most interesting about this whole case -- other than two companies fussing over whose millions are whose -- is that EA is casting itself as the defender of innovation for casual and social gaming. Forty-seven points into the complaint, EA brings up the Tiny Tower/Dream Tower debacle, in which Zynga released a game very similar to Nimblebit's popular Tiny Tower called Dream Tower. In EA's post about the lawsuit, the general manager of EA's Maxis Studio (creators of The Sims Social) says that "Maxis isn't the first studio to claim that Zynga copied its creative product. But we are the studio that has the financial and corporate resources to stand up and do something about it. Infringing a developer's copyright is not an acceptable practice in game development. By calling Zynga out on this illegal practice, we hope to have a secondary effect of protecting the rights of other creative studios who don't have the resources to protect themselves." Now, whether any other studios allegedly copied by Zynga have the resources to "stand up and do something about it" might still be in question. But reading through the complaint, it's more than apparent that EA isn't going after Zynga just for themselves -- they're trying to establish a repeated pattern of Zynga's infringement. And given Zynga's stock troubles lately, a big lawsuit like this is probably the last thing the company needs. It'll be very interesting to see how this litigation moves forward. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
SimCity Social, a Facebook game you may actually care about, launches today
In writing this post informing you that SimCity Social is now live (in "open beta") on Facebook, I may or may not have played SimCity Social for 25 minutes without realizing it. And then I discovered full screen mode, which makes it look even more like SimCity.What I'm trying to tell you is that the game is live. And that I want to go play more of it. Because it's SimCity. You should probably check it out too, right here.Perhaps you'd like to know more before proceeding? We've got that covered too!
Send giant birds to poop on your friends in SimCity Social
We've taken two major points away from the SimCity Social producer diary above. First off, the game is looking an awful lot like SimCity 2000, which is a good thing in our book. Secondly, SimCity Social makes it possible to send a squadron of massive birds, flying in formation, to take major dumps all over your friends' cities.We're going to spend literally one hundred percent of our time making that happen once the game launches on Facebook, which is said to happen sometime in the coming weeks.
Build a SimCity with friends, challenges keep game moving along
SimCity returns next February and fans of the series have a lot to get excited about ... like, a lot a lot. Powered by a fancy new engine called Glassbox, the game uses a tilt-shift photography (miniature faking) visual style to fulfill fantasies of producing a model-like world come to life.The E3 demo I saw was played in real time, starting with curvy roads being laid and residential zones spawning home construction. Houses were formed, followed by Sims pulling up in moving vans and residents starting new lives. There is so much detail work, delivering a lot of visual cues. Houses with electricity light up, pollution turns the world brown and crime is represented by graffiti. These visual indicators present a lot of information intuitively."We were really inspired by Google maps and infographics. We have so much data and we want to present it in cool and easy to understand ways," a Maxis rep told us.%Gallery-157342%
SimCity trailer discusses water management, produces a civil action
This latest clip of next year's SimCity reboot shows how water distribution will work in the simulation. It also reveals how industrial pollution can poison groundwater. What it doesn't show is the multi-million dollar lawsuit that follows.
Katy Perry returns to The Sims 3
The Sims 3 Showtime: Katy Perry was just not enough Katy Perry-themed expansion content for The Sims 3. An absolutely unacceptable dearth of Katy Perry remained.Luckily, EA has rescued us from a life of insufficient simulated Katy Perry paraphernalia with the announcement of The Sims 3 Katy Perry's Sweet Treats, which lets you decorate your Sims' homes in the style of an imaginary "Candyfornia, complete with cupcake-themed guitars, candy playground equipment and delicious cotton candy trees."You'll be able to cover your Sims and their homes in virtual candy this June on PC and Mac. It's a good thing The Sims 3 doesn't connect to SimAnt.%Gallery-152107%
The life of a Sim in SimCity
Ocean Quigley, creative and art director at EA Maxis, wants individual Sims to matter in 2013's SimCity. He wants them to have a real bearing on the world. He wants them to be less the uncharismatic specks they've been in previous games.Each Sim has a set plan each day: They wake up and pay their rent -- surprisingly, it's only $1 -- and go to work. After work, if they have money, they spend it throughout the region. Spending money gives Sims more happiness, thus increasing their enjoyment of your city.Sims have their own bank accounts, and can potentially become homeless if they don't have any funds. If you don't have a place for Sims to earn money, they'll start loitering in parks, decreasing happiness and forcing them to move out of your city.%Gallery-151600%
