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EA closing Sims Carnival, announces new round of game server shutdowns
It has become a part of the game industry circle of life: EA shutting down online servers for its older (or unpopular) games. The company has announced a new round of shutdowns, including the complete shutdown of its The Sims Carnival creation site. The company notes that all games and content on the site will no longer be available after January 16. The Sims Carnival site does state, however, that Game Creator and game files can be downloaded before the service ends and played locally. Furthermore, EA has announced that its publishing deal for Lord of the Rings games has expired, meaning the last active title, Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 on Xbox 360, will be shut down on January 11 for Xbox 360. The PC version was closed on December 31. Several sports games are scheduled to be shut down on February 8, including several FIFA and NCAA titles. Finally, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 for Wii will go offline March 1.
Sims Carnival is now in open beta
In the future, there will be no game developers. Well, to be more accurate, there will be no paid videogame developers, just a legion of unpaid game slaves, toiling away for a chance at e-stardom. Today, the inevitable future looms just a bit closer with The Sims Carnival going into open beta.Right now, you can play some of the offerings from closed beta folks, who've come up with some really bizarre entries like this terrible take on Mario Kart and this brûlée caramelizing sim. You can also design your own games for the general populace to partake of, enjoy and never, ever pay you for.
GDC08: EA joins the user-generated bandwagon with 'The Sims Carnival'
GDC08 may have officially come to a close, but there's still plenty of news from the past week to catch up on. Lost in the mire of developer rants and ridiculously long lines was EA's announcement of The Sims Carnival, a "YouTube-style" site where users can create their own Sims-themed games, and play and rate those of their peers.By all appearances, Sims Carnival is just one more user-generated game portal, following suspiciously close to Microsoft's announcement of the XNA Community Games. What may set Carnival apart, however, is the involvement of Rod Humble, last seen wowing audiences with his minimalistic art game The Marriage. Still, examples games shown include your standard Space Invaders clones, and other simple titles which could very well turn Carnival into another dumping ground for mediocrity (albeit with the occasional low-fi breakthrough). The program is currently in a closed beta, but users can sign up via the website. We're anxiously waiting to be proven wrong on this, so go forth and create.
EA releases even more casual take on The Sims
Electronic Arts has put a new casual – well more casual – spin on its popular The Sims franchise by announcing a new collection of downloadable Sims titles over EA's casual games service, Pogo.com. The line, titled The Sims Carnival, currently includes two different titles, neither of which come across as particularly compelling nor innovative, a line of thinking with which we think EA should be intimately familiar. The first of these new titles, The Sims Carnival Bumper Blast, asks players to shoot at Sims-styled bumpers before their ammo supply runs dry, while the other, a rather tepid-sounding Tetris clone called The Sims Carnival SnapCity, has players construct a city out of falling blocks. Both games are bundled together for download for $19.99. The announcement is the latest in EA's not so secretive move to establish a significant foothold in the casual games space, and while we appreciate the effort, it will be interesting to see if The Sims branding alone is enough to convince gamers to hop on board ... or simply break Will Wright's heart in twain.
