How to fix Sim City

I am living in an alternative reality where EA has just announced that they have recalled the retail version of Sim City. Why? Because in this reality they are just following my master plan to restore the both the brand, and fix the game. You would have to be living in a cave to wonder why such a thing would be required. Over the past week, which I call launch week, the game has launched in a wild variety of locations with the fundamental problem been caused by always on DRM.

Firstly, let’s look at what EA has publicly said they are doing during this period of time to relieve stress on the servers. They have released a patch which removes some features such as achievements, region score board and of course removing the ability to speed up the game, the lovely cheater speed has taken a rest.

Of course logically they are fixing the servers, or at least preforming some kind of maintenance or releasing more servers for the game or something as well. Right?

EA has also allowed people to request refunds, which is great. But they have also went back on that promise straight away, which is bad.

Currently there are petitions online which request that the always on DRM is removed from the game, as well as any future game EA produces. While an appropriate action to get them to notice fan rage against this particular matter, I do not believe the petition will work. As many petitions are ignored for one, and for two always on DRM does provide EA with money. However it does hurt their public image.

Which brings me back to my original statement, by recalling the game from retail shelves, this will send clear message that they know there are issues with the game. This will turn off the retail sales of the game while the current owners of the title can use the title still. EA can use this current install base to test patches and essentially bring the game back into beta for a period of time, while giving gamers who bought the game continued access to the title.

So what will be patched out? Primarily the DRM, particularly the game downloader launcher.

A few things will also need to be introduced and should be introduced once this reliability on the servers has been removed. For one, the game shouldn’t need server access just to play single player. With the ability there if a gamer wants a friend to play, allow them to host the region Peer to Peer, dedicated, or find a server from the list they can “upload” their save data to and use, then “download” it to take the server offline and make it a single player game once more.

During this forced beta, further optimisation of the game can happen as well as the second biggest complaint right now with Sim City, which is the city size, can be fixed. Even as far as reintroducing terraforming. Allowing players to create their own regions by terraforming the region, then dragging city limits into the region and then putting in the main transportation links.

Also new features in general, like subways would be nice.

These changes if introduced for free, and as soon as possible, will generate good will towards EA as well as the game in general.

Regardless of what happens, hopefully the fundamental issues with server satiability will be fixed allowing more players to play the title.

I think it should also be mentioned that mainstream media has picked the server issues up as a news item.

Reading Material:
– Petition for no DRM
– EA Forums; Patch Changes
– NeoGAF; Sim City refunds
– Mainstream Media (news.com.au coverage)