I'm going to point a finger and say that this is clearly untrue, and very easy to disprove just from basic network monitoring over 5 minutes of playing the game. I would immediately fire a systems architect that designed a single player game to compute significant calculations on our expensive [buzz word] cloud servers. Unless we use different definitions of the word significant...
It's a little ridiculous to suggest that?... plus, for zero benefit (above DRM), it would have a non-negligible affect on their bottom line if they are computing time cycles for SimCity on their own servers...
Anonymous source or not, conjecturally, it's hard to not agree with what the insider has said.
There's nothing you could do in an EC2 instance that I couldn't do on my quad core i7 at many times the speed and a fraction of the cost. Even if you matched users one-for-one with large EC2 instances, you'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour (and that many don't exist).
Anyway, offloading processing to the server does have its benefit and uses, just maybe not the case here with SimCity (though I'm not sure about this having no experience with the series)
That said however...
If there's a shared world, then running its simulation server-side makes sense. Not the game minutiae, but global state. Something like weather, simulated stock markets, etc. The environment, basically. That's not to say that SimCity has any of this, because it doesn't.
> I'm going to point a finger and say that this is clearly untrue, and very easy to disprove just from basic network monitoring over 5 minutes of playing the game.
c'mon. The amount of computation done can be completely uncorrelated to the number of bits sent over the network, in the same way that the effects of your saying something offhand to someone could have a massive effect on the final state of the planet.
http://kotaku.com/5990165/my-simcity-city-thrived-offline-fo...
If that could be done (by someone with far greater skills that myself, I can do it for Web dev but not this) fairly easily and the game play went on for several hours would that not put a very big hole in EA's argument?
I mean other than the one already sitting there...
Also, many network multiplayer games rely on a server for calculations like timing, collision detection, bullet-hits, race position, and the like.
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:Lag_Compensation http://www.mousepad-feet.com/2012/07/21/battlefield-3-hit-de...
Games like WoW / PlanetSide / EVE Online ("MMOs" in general) also do lots of server-side calculation: http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/planning-fo...
Two servers?
It just seems unbelievable to me that the backend was designed in a way that it couldn't be scaled out any faster than that. Since each region is a discrete unit, you'd think they should be able to move them between servers.
Was it all intertwined? Did the regions, stats, achievements, and DRM all run out of the same database? Were they not separate services?
They had to know this game would be popular, they've been pushing it for months (to great effect). It's a major property and the first release in about a decade.
Then there is EA. Even if Maxis couldn't figure this out (and I doubt that), EA has online experience. They're the publisher for Mass Effect, Madden, Fifa, NCAA, and more. They should have the resources, the people, and the experience to have prevented this.
If you completely ignore the DRM or the seemingly unimportant always-online requirement, it this whole thing still seems botched. There were multiple groups who should have known better and prevented this. My understanding is that they got some warning signs during the beta.
I would kill for a postmortem blog or article on Gamasutra explaining why they couldn't scale out faster; to know what decision was the lynchpin that held them back.
This brings us to the scalability problems and why regions/cities are not shared to all servers. The database is the bottleneck, so sharing regions between servers would only worsen performance.
If it's all just a chef/puppet based infrastructure in EC2, you should be maybe 20-30 minutes away from pumping out a new 'server'. One is as easy as ten, at that point.
That being said, all of this wouldn't be needed if they'd just release an offline mode. The upcoming DLC content to unlock expected features (bigger cities, more transportation options, etc) is bad enough, but the always on requirement just makes this game impossible for me to buy.
I can totally imagine that. Be afraid. Be very afraid. :)
That just killed it. I have since bought a copy of SimCity 4 and plan to be quite happy with it for another decade or so.
Really? Not the terrible launch?
This says nothing about the game, only your preference of playing single player games over multiplayer games. There are plenty of great games out there with 'social multiplayer' or 'cloud-based saves'. These are not problems that drive away players.
I would rather play Starcraft today than buy SC2. OK so that is stretching, but I haven't tried the new StarCraft, and it's mostly because of this DRM situation.
I'm sure Sim City "Megatropolis" DLC is soon coming that doubles the default city size. Only $19.95 or whatever they think people will pay.
And don't worry about the traffic jams from bigger cities. Sim City Subway edition will comes out soon after. Only $15.95.
(yes I am very cynical and angry about this and making bitter sarcastic comments. This is a game I've wanted for a long time but is so flawed because of bad decisions)
But from what others have said, that doesn't seem to be the case.
You made this assertion elsewhere in this thread also. I don't see any reason to believe this is the case, do you have any evidence in favor of this theory? There's a huge amount of PR from them saying this is not the case, and from my minimal experience with game development it makes no sense.
There's a difference between Sims and Sim City.
The problem stems more from their failure at scaling than not supporting an offline mode. Diablo was the same crap on launch week.
There's an apparent pressure from publishers to create always-online games, but something tells me the teams are not having the experience/schedule/man-power to create scalable architectures to back it. Massive multiplayer gaming is certainly a hard problem.
These two statements don't contradict each other.
People are complaining because EA changed the fundamental premise of the game from single-player to multi-player, and (people think) that change was driven by business goals and not from design goals. "DMR" is no longer a strictly accurate term, because it's now a design principle rather than a technology, but that's exactly what has people so riled up. They perceive that the principles of DRM are working "up the stack," so to speak, and are now infecting not just the game technology, but the game vision as well, making it a more insidious and existential threat than it was previously.
The decision to shift a fundamentally single-player franchise in a fundamentally multi-player direction is questionable at best. While it may not be so black-and-white as EA handing down a mandate, and I'm certain that business interests at least influenced the decision.
The social/multiplayer aspects of Diablo, WoW, and SC are obvious to me, which is why Blizzard's move never really concerned me that much. Add on top of that the truly well done matchmaking system and I hardly think about it all. Doing things well goes a long way in convincing naysayers.
However, when I think SimCity, all I can think of is single player. And the vague things I've heard about interacting with others seem really lame. Again, maybe there are some awesome multiplayer aspects, but I have not heard of them and it sounds like most people aren't that interested in them.
In a market where some game's design decisions for online focus and/or online passes are driven by an effort to reduce piracy and the secondary sales market, it becomes very hard to convince people that any one game isn't.
Good luck selling that: "No, not in this case, our design just happened to support them by coincidence, and, oh, we're also part of EA and even though the cynics have been right about our motives in the past, we're totally not doing it this time."
Maybe for something like Diablo 3 but there's a level of solo play that defines a game like Sim City.
The top comment here is more elegant, but EA is clearly lying. Their "apology" was a joke and amounted to "Sorry we've had so much success, it's your fault for assaulting our servers."
"Our source, who we have verified worked directly on the project but obviously wishes to remain anonymous, has first-hand knowledge of how the game works."
Either RPS is being duped, or it strongly adds validity to the story. RPS has a great reputation, and if they say they verified it, I think that puts the burden of proof now on EA to show that that the claim is incorrect.
http://ask.wireshark.org/questions/16788/wireshark-decrypt-s... http://computer-forensics.sans.org/blog/2009/03/10/pulling-b... should help get you started.
"The great thing about facts is that they're true whether you believe them or not"
Also, Notch has "confirmed" this (if you trust him more than a sketchy anon source that RockPaperShotgun has stated that they've verified) https://twitter.com/notch/status/311535572596432896
EDIT: Seems people disagree that this isn't complete guesswork. Yes the game runs for a while without a connection, but that doesn't prove that servers aren't necessary as the headline claims. There is no hard, undeniable evidence. It's the same story that has been rehashed since the game was released.
And since the Xbox 720 'leak' fiasco I take these 'sources' with a pinch of salt, regardless of how reputable the site is.
http://www.gamefront.com/tech-sites-fall-for-fake-xbox-720-l...
Regardless, Maxis has stated they will respond shortly to the article. https://twitter.com/rockpapershot/status/311618456640450561
Maybe you're right, I'll wait for the Maxis PR statement, that's where the truth will lie!
Those with an editorial reputation in the gaming press are (perhaps even uncomfortably) close to the guys in the industry they cover. They knew better than to run with that hoax, and Rob Crossly even called the hoaxer out on it (read the emails he posted to twitter if you want to see the hoxer have a hissy fit).
If RPS says they got a Maxis duder, they probably got one. One has to be suspicions of all reporting, but even though the NYTimes fucks the pooch sometimes, its not really grounds to handwave away every bit of reporting ever.
This is probably accurate.
