Boycotting SimCity: Will Ghost Towns Be Its Downfall?

(Author’s note: this was originally posted back in March 2013, for Press2Reset, and all of the reference links are no longer active. When posted on P2R, the editor wanted my original title changed and to remove the word “boycott” from the headline so that the P2R headline was “Editorial: The ghost at SimCity’s feast.” Suffice to say, I wasn’t thrilled that the main focus of my editorial was being hidden. So in re-posting this, I am using the original title that I had created for it.)

SimCity is almost here and while the excitement is understandable it might be wise to stop and think before making that purchase. Maxis has taken the franchise in a different direction, one that focuses on online play which means that the new game features always-on DRM. A decision that Maxis has had to defend on many occasions like Blizzard has done with Diablo 3.

And we all saw how that game turned out for Blizzard (Metacritic user score is still low at 3.8 at time of this being posted.)

But I don’t want to get into a discussion about Diablo 3 or rehash my arguments on why always-on DRM is a problem or that it is ineffective against certain unsavory elements. If you want to read about that, then I would suggest checking out Boycotting Diablo 3: A Threat to Gaming and More trouble ahead for Diablo III. Instead, I want to point out some of the issues players will stumble across because of Maxis’s decision to take the franchise in this always-on direction and why the game will be in desperate need of an offline, single-player campaign.

The issues all revolve around the fact that players will be unable to reset their cities if things don’t work out. Many uninformed players have received the wrong impression of how the game works when participating during the beta. The beta weekends allowed people to play an hour-long session before stopping and then, if they wanted to play again, wipe the slate clean and start all over.

Such is not the case for SimCity when it is released. You don’t get to start over and try again. So what happens when someone who is new to the franchise suddenly realizes that their city isn’t doing so well? Well, nothing! They are now stuck with that city and then the game is no longer any fun. This in turn will lead to a lot of new players becoming frustrated with the game and eventually give up.

And then we will start to see ghost towns.

They will begin to crop up making it so that other players can’t utilize those regions for their own benefit. But disgruntled players won’t be the only ones abandoning their towns. Other players might begin to get bored or take a long hiatus. A serious problem considering that SimCity is a multiplayer-only game built on the concept that, according to Maxis producer Jason Harbor who said, “…real cities don’t exist in bubbles that nobody else has any influence in. City actions affect other cities, and other cities affect them.”

Harbor is right on this point and guess what? This is going to be one way cities will be affected.

There are no plans to deal with ghost towns that will surface as time goes by (according to fansite SimCity Hall who had the opportunity to talk with the developers and play the full version of the game). Imagine it! You are playing with some friends and one of their cities happens to supply power to everyone else. Well, they decide to take a few days off, go on vacation, forget to pay their internet bill, or something else and suddenly their city is no longer providing enough power to yours because you continued to build and expand while they were gone.

You can’t kick that player out of the region and you can’t take over their city in order to build more power plants. Let’s even go so far as to say you don’t even have room to build a power plant in any of your regions because they have all been developed.

Your game is now entirely stalled because someone else isn’t playing which means their city isn’t providing the necessary power or resources that your own city needs. Even if that weren’t the case, and your city wasn’t dependent on theirs, their cities could be located in regions rich with minerals you could be exploiting yourself but are unable to now. Well, you can’t even escape to a single-player campaign while waiting, or hoping, that the player returns because there isn’t one.

And this game will need a single-player campaign that people can play offline. Multiplayer games are fun and all but there comes a time when being at the mercy of other players isn’t all that fun. When it gets to the point where you can’t develop your cities anymore because they are dependent on other people’s cities.

Then there will be the standard issues that follow games with always-on DRM like the plague. Just like Diablo 3 (Error 37 anyone?) SimCity will suffer from connection issues and downtimes during, at least, the first two weeks as Maxis’s servers are overwhelmed by the traffic. Even after that Maxis could find themselves scrambling to release patch after patch in short order meaning even more downtime preventing gamers from playing the game.

I won’t even go into the fact that there won’t be any modding for the new game. A feature that I loved about Simcity 4. The lack of mod support means that Maxis will most likely be releasing a ton of DLC packs to milk their diehard fans of every cent they can for a game that will be a disappointment in the long run. It also means that SimCity’s shelf life won’t be nearly as long as its predecessor. 

(Wouldn’t it be nice if there were modding tools so that the modders could give us some larger maps?)

So I offer you two suggestions. Boycott Simcity or take a wait-and-see approach. Boycott the game to tell developers we are tired of them trying to cram always-on DRM down our throats. Overall, it doesn’t provide consumers a great gaming experience but hinders it at some points. There are no benefits it provides that consumers can get from a standard multiplayer game.

Or just wait. Hold off on buying the game on day one. Instead, wait and see how things turn out. After all, look at Aliens: Colonial Marines. That doesn’t have always-on DRM and yet, for a highly anticipated game, it failed on many levels. So practice restraint with SimCity and wait. 

Personally, I’ll be boycotting SimCity just as I do with any game that has always-on DRM. But if you plan to buy it then wait. Wait until all the server issues are resolved. Wait until Maxis comes up with some way to deal with the ghost towns.

Just wait and see.

Author’s Note:

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