Shattered Timelines is here?

Shattered Timelines and all the promo decks are up on the store here. Does that mean that it has arrived now and they're busy packing up all the Kickstarter orders as we speak?

I think it is probably allowing people to Pre-Order at this point. Since it is so close to it's arrival.

Though if it has arrived that would be super awesome!

doth my eyes deceive me? the time of shattered is almost upon us!

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according to their last kickstarter update, they said they'd try and post when the shippment arrives.

that said, in addition to that, they said their process was basically: pack orders for distributors (as it takes longer to get there and they need the space to pack kickstarter orders; but giving them a streetdate for release such that kickstarter orders can get theirs first), then pack kickstarter orders, then pack website preorders and retailers.... with lots of drinking and pizza breaks mixed in there.

so, my guess is that this is just preorders for when they get to the preorder stage.

If you check out this thread: https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/preorder-shattered-timelines-2987

Paul says:

We have decided not to do a "pre-order" for Shattered Timelines per-se (since tracking that through our web store is a huge pain). Instead, we'll just be putting Shattered Timelines (and all the new mini-expansions) up on the web store available for purchase as soon as the shipments come in from the printer. You'll then be able to order the game (though it won't ship out until after we ship out Kickstarter backer rewards).

Hm... Must of missed that one. Though that was just over a month ago so maybe things changed? Though I would really like it if ST has arrived!

I'd take it to mean that they have the shipment, and then would jump up and down and whoop a little.

You're going to get a lot of people's hearts to skip a beat with a topic title like this. ;)

May or may not have been intentional. 

I think the games may have arrived.

I was on a vid chat w/ Christopher briefly last night and he showed off the stack of packing lists. This was nothing more than one piece of paper (I think) per order. The stack was HUGE. Oh my lord they have a lot of packing and shipping to do.

Hip hop hooray!

Whether or not the games have arrived or not, I'm sure the wonder folks at Greater than Games are not going to give us a date. Unfortunatly with the games industry, there are a lot of factors that are out of thier control, like boats and suchlike. They probably want to avoid what happened to Plaid Hat Games, for sure. 

That said, I am excited things have been a little bit faster, so that's good. Here's hoping for a speedy delivery!

So seeing as they said they are shipping out in mid-march the next week or two would most likely be them organizing everything. But earlier would definitely be a welcome sight.

Side note: Anyone think we would see the mini-expansions grouped into a combo pack? Cause I think right now what draws future people is having to pay $28 close to $30 before shipping for all the mini-expansion. Which has less content than a normal expansion.

I am not familiar with this reference. Please enlighten me. 

(i figure the next couple weeks will just be logistical organizing and such. they are a 3 man team... an awesome 3 man team, but a 3 man team (and whatever friends/family they can guilt in to helping) so to go through it all will take some time for them)

Personally, I would say "expect it at the end of March" and if you get it before then, it will be a pleasant surprise.  :)

Is FedEx the absolute only shipping option? I'm fully prepared to give my money straight to Greater than Games, rather than waiting for, say, Amazon.com or eBay or something, but with FedEx I am terribly concerned that the package would never arrive at my house.

Someone on BGG posted saying they ordered Shattered Timelines from the website and received an email saying it would be shipped "early next week". The post is dated 3/2/13!  That would be excellent news if it is indeed true. 

El Diablo!  But I must say, Dedlius: You're my kind of bastard.

On another note, checked my e-mail this morning, and there was a shipping notification from FedEx saying they had picked up my order from >G!

Shattered Timelines is coming!  SHATTERED TIMELINES IS COMING!

To top it off, we're getting tracking numbers this time, so I can obsess over it in detail rather than stare longingly out my living room window for the next week!

Oh man, work this week is gonna suck…

Cue the fireworks!

Yeah, that was DEFINITELY not an email I was expecting today.

A game company that ships before the theoretical deadline.  Isn't that against the guild's rules?  I see me clicking the FedEx tracking page's reload button many times in the next few days.

When Plaid Hat Games released Mice and Mystics last year, they quoted their best guess at a release date. It ended up slipping a couple months due to circumstances with shipping from China (weather and customs). Additionally, their fulfilment company ended up shipping out copies to retailers before pre-orders despite direct instructions not to. So between people getting copies from online retailers before some people got their preorders and the long delays, some fans got quite angry. It was all out of their control, real comedy of errors worst-case-scenario type stuff but the Mice and Mystics Forum on BGG was swamped with angry posts for about a month. Really sad too, because they're awesome people and were super transparent about what was going on.

Ooh yay, I just had the Kickstarter update e-mail saying about how shipping has started. Presumably it'll take overseas orders a bit longer to arrive than those who are over there in the US. I haven't had my shipping notification e-mail thingy yet, but hopefully soon :D.

Got an e-mail aswell, woohoo! Too bad it doesn't give an estimated delivery yet, but I think mine should be here by thursday since i'm not that far away. Can't wait to get it and adding more heroes, evironments and villians to the online game.

Oh - If I may ask - how far is "not that far away"?  I'm in the Detroit area, and would love to have mine in time for my Thursday night game.

Do you think FedEx will pull through?

I placed an order last week that shipped late Monday.  It made it to Houston, Tx by Thursday afternoon. 

St. Louis is a four hour drive from where i'm at. It's mainly wishful thinking, since FedEx hasn't failed me yet!

Wensday March 6th, that is the day that Chrono-Ranger, Omnitron X, and The Scholar enter the ranks against Dreamer, Kismet, Miss Information, Le Capitan, and Iron Legacy (as well as Ambuscade since we couldn’t find him in stores and ordered him as a la carte)

By the way, I want to thank all the guys at GTG (and everyone asscociated with them) for such an amazing game. I can not wait to meet you guys in person in Augest at Gen Con in person. (I have been confirmed as a demoer, and will be there as Spite)

This is what makes me hate the Internet culture. Instant gratification and entitlement have become far to prevaliant. Like tonight, Simcity was supposed to be released at midnight eastern, a lot of people havent been able to get it yet. And everyone is going craaaazy on the EA forums.

But … why? Have some patience folks, and true EA is no transparency like the above example but like with Mice and and Mystics… how can you be mad when they freely tell you -were sorry! This is beyond our control!-

I don't want to derail this thread, but Sim City 5 is a very different situation because it was avoidable. You can't play single-player because EA insisted on an always-connected model for DRM reasons. The circumstances now are a direct result of poor choices made during development.

That's a very different situation than your game being a month late because of bad weather and random selection for increased scrutiny by customs.

Gorram typhoons...

Wait are these typhoons in Simcity, or the Real World?

Well if they were in Simcity they'd be a good thing, since it would at least mean that the game was working...

you do realize that half the simulation that simcity does is done server side? glass box wouldn’t work without the servers behind it. Also a lot of the global market affect things in your game. prices for selling resources through the trade hub buildings are simulated through an economic model based on all the players on the server. The always online isn’t a drm thing. It’s to make the game as realistic as possible to simulate and much of that can’t be done on a personal computer or with just one player. pirating this game won’t happen for a while not because of drm but because half of he game takes place on sservers that pirates won’t be able to access until someone figures out how to make a pirate server. and even then it will be like Wow pirate servers… Not the full content.

little off track there sorry
.
anyways no its because the designers made a choice to provide the most realistic simulation possible and much of that could not be done without the online component, not because ea insisted on a drm. even if you play alone you’re not really. This is a mmo simulation even if you never actually direct see another person online

Wellp, this thread is fully derailed now, so I'm gonna hop in with both feet.

I do realize that much of the simulation is server-side, I'm simply unwilling to give EA benefit of the doubt that they have failed to earn in the past. I do not believe that modern computers would be unable to handle the simulation, and the connected markets seem largely superfluous. Maybe they're a neat feature, but there's no reason you couldn't have offline programmatically-determined markets if you choose to use an offline mode. That's all I really want: the option.

My main complaint is that the lack of even an OPTION for offline is incompatible with them acting in good faith to make the best game they can. We can go back and forth all day speculating on their intentions, but what it comes down to is this: if you care about consumer experience in a single player game, you offer at least the option for an offline mode. Period.

In any case, these issues have nothing to do with "I want it now" internet culture, and have everything to do with a healthy dose of suspicion when it comes to the motives of large publicly-traded corporations. This is a very different situation and even if they were acting in good faith, they still can't fall back on "We're sorry! This is beyond our control!" because the way they designed the game was within their control, and these issues were predictable because this is what always happens.

You could almost be talking about Blizzard there (Diablo III)...what is it with the big name companies doing this kind of stuff? No wonder I favour the little indy developers more now...

OKay so...

It really comes down to 2 things here 1) The Future of the Gaming Industry (and face it, Online play is where its at) and how Maxis/Ea/The Developers want to be part of that and 2) DRM

Now im not going to say EA probably wasnt overjoyed at the ability to put an always online DRM. Im sure their investors were estatic about it. To them, mostly a bunch of old guys with money looking to make more money, its a protection on their investment.

However the first part is whats important. Now personally, i dont care if its always online or not. If i get a queue or i get disconected, i go do something else. Its usually a sign i should be offline anyways. But i understand that is a personal aspect to a discussion that cares naught for what I personally feel about it (at least in that exampel)

I do believe however that the developers had a choice (when dealing with the first above) in either Working to Push the Edge or Toeing the Status Quo - and they chose to push the edge. Is it an unpopular decision? No doubt. Will it hurt hem in the long run? I doubt it. I predict Sim City will easily be one of the top selling games of the quarter, if not -the- top selling game (Heart of Swarm may edge it out, blizzard has a bigger following i think?) and I believe that the developers were wanting to push the edge.

10 years ago, when Steam was just getting its feet under iitself, people complained. They bitched. They moaned. they hated the concept and thought it was stupid - i have to be connected to steam to run my game? Man this sucks! I know, i was there. - And yes, steam has an offline mode, but the concept is still there, remember that

Today? Everyone bitches about Origins... because its not exactly like Steam. 10 years ago steam was pushing the bleeding edge of how games would be distributed. Today, its /expected/ that there will be a digital download available.

Time passes - the game industry - at least most of the major players, like Blizzard and EA - have made the choice to direct it toward always online games. Your always conected. You're always interacting. The best games will take a /huge/ advantage of this in visually and flashy ways. Did you play Dark Souls? You saw other players death scenes. You saw notes left behind by other players. Yes you chould choose to turn it off and play solo, but man half the fun was walking into a new area and seeing a sudden phantom image of someone getting their butt kicked, and knowing you're likely to do the exact same thing in a moment. Also, when i first realized that that message on the ground that said "Good Luck' or 'Beware ahead' was from another /player/ i thought it was one of the coolest things ever.

With SimCity Maxis and EA are making a statement - they believe offline mode and singleplayer is a thing of the past. Are they possibly a head of the curve and trend? Probably. Is it really going to hurt them to be on the ground floor? No, i dont think it is. in fact, they will already have more experience in it than most other companies which will give them an edge as it becomes more and more popular. 10 years from now they will be taking the most advantage of Always Online PLay, and other companies willbe struggling to catch up (Like how Steam wins the competition on the Digital Store idea, and Origins is trying to catch up)

As for Opening Day Queues and Distribution issues - yeah, they are well known blues for always online and digitally downloaded games. Are they going to be completely gone away? No. If you think about it, probably 75% of the initial player base (i made that up on the spot) will get the game right away. After a couple of days, will all 75% of those players be on at once? Helll no. Server load will be acceptable at that point. A few opening day blues  is probably deemed acceptable for their checkbooks - will they loose a couple of naysayers? Possibly. Will it hurt their profits? No, those people already paid. (Is this right? Probably not. Is it a fact of business?  Yes) 

These are businesses. They have a bottom line to make, and whatever is going to give them the best return on their investments they are going to do. IF that means loosing a few customers, as long as what they lost isnt more than what they gained out of it, it might be worth it. Valve you know is a business too. Valve also has a hell of a better PR department than EA. 

Anyway what Im saying is that they made decisions. They are pushing what they think is the future, and then they are protecting (and enhacning in the case of not having server load to cover the one time charge of the majority of their players on at once) their investment. It will cause naysayers and it will cause unpopularity - and it will seem a whole lot worse than it is because no one ever goes onto a games forum to say 'This is great! thanks!' rather they go to complain.  In reality, once you get past the internet vitrol and overabundance and loudness of complainers, the game is still good, and still going to do well.

Now, if your principles say you should stand on the issue of offline play, then by all means - make your voice heard! But do so in a way that is not bashing the company, or trashing the developers (Not saying anyone here is, by the way, just making a point), rather do so in a way that is constructive and makes a valid point.

Or, vote with your feet.

I did vote with my feet. This is the first Sim City I've not bought. I don't disagree that online functions are important (and rad), I just think that offline functions are ALSO important. Your Demon's/Dark Souls example is perfect. The online stuff there is really cool. Also, I can elect to turn it off and my game still works if my internet is out for the weekend. For a game that I have to drop ~$60 on up front, this is the correct way to do it. If my internet goes out for the weekend or I want to play Diablo 3 on a flight, I'm boned, despite it being perfectly playable singleplayer. I feel like they're trying to have their cake and eat it too: charge me like it's a product but treat it like it's a service. I'm okay with either of those. I mean, I play subscription MMOs and I give money to Riot for League of Legends skins. I'm not opposed to games that are services. You just have to pick one because it can't be both.

Singleplayer will never be "a thing of the past," just like video games didn't replace board games. Sim City bears this out because the game is essentially singleplayer in the same way that Dark Souls is essentially singleplayer. It has some cool connectivity stuff but it's totally playable alone. Speculating as to the future instead of trying to make the best game you can make is folly. And trying to push an agenda about what what you want the future to look like to the detriment of your game and your players' experience is self-destructive.

Lastly, I will not sit here and watch you defend blatantly anti-consumer practices just because they're trying to make money. Of course they're trying to make money! I'm trying to get as much stuff for as little money as possible! Those are the natural roles we play when we buy and sell things. I understand WHY they do these things. That isn't the problem. I understand WHY people commit crimes but that doesn't mean I need to be happy about it. Blatantly anti-consumer practices SHOULD piss off consumers, because you're the one getting screwed. Trying to say it's okay and consumers shouldn't get angry is the same as saying that you shouldn't be angry when somebody steals your phone. The thief just wanted money, it's totally cool you guys.

You can make a totally valid argument that it's not actually anti-consumer. That's fair. I will continue to disagree, but I fully respect you for making it. What I cannot respect is the argument that it's okay for them to do bad things because they're just trying to make money.

I did put in there ' (Is this right? Probably not. Is it a fact of business?  Yes) '

Anti consumer practices, as you put it, are pretty common in the world. And what one person believes is anti consumer isnt always such. Especially on the internet - what one person doesnt like, there are likely 10-20 people who dont care, do like, or are willing to ignore. Does that make it Right? not necessarily. Does that make it wrong? Again... not necessarily. Does that make it a PR nightmare? Probably.

What is good for business is oftne seen as anti consumer. But you can't lump it all in - you do not like the choice, and you do not like what your paying for (or not in this case)... how many hundreds of thousands of people are going to buy the game and be OK with it? Does that mean that it is anti consumer if its only the small, (Very vocal) minority that is against it? is it anti consumer if most people are willing to deal with it?  If it -truely- is anti consumer, then it will play out in the money. The money always shows true in the end. If they make money, then in the end, enough people werew illing to accept it, and the majority of the mob always wins (doesnt make it /right/ but makes it accepted)

Im not saying its right or wrong. What im saying is that if the majority accept it, its going to pass, and its going to go on. I personally don't find it anti consumer - personally, im not in anyway against the loss of singleplayer for an always contected universe. Then again, im always connected. And if im not, I have books  and Sentinels of the Multiverse XD. yes it does suck to not be able to play a game i purchased in those situations, but ive also worked hard to push myself away from the instant gratification and learn patience (Im not saying you arent - obviously when you purchase something you want to be able to use it in your way and your choice. Im just saying that I accept those downtimes as part of the process and am willing to put it aside and try again later.)

As for Purchasing a Product vrs a Service, i can somewhat understand this, but I really think that the world of computer programs is drifting away from that easy distinction between 'a game' and 'a subscription' - its all one piece. Some you pay for over time, some you pay for all at once and get a free subscription for ever more. I disagree that you have to pick to be either a Product or a Service - especially in the world where every day more things are getting a wireless connection. Is my view the only one? Hell no - i can see and understand your distinctions and respect them. But i dont have a problem with the loss of it.

i want to add

I don't begrudge your opinion. I can certainly undersetand it in entirety. You pay for a game you want to use it how you want to use it. I get that. 

Its just my opinion that the drawbacks are worth the advancements, and I'm willing to work around them - and I think that the majority of gamers who will never post to a forum ... do as well.

Okay, one quick thing before my response. I'm making a two pronged argument here: I find EA's practices to be unethical, and I find them to be a bad deal as a consumer (when compared with the value I expect to get from a deal based on previous similar deals with EA and other companies). I do not care about speculation as to the way that things will go. That is immaterial to either of my arguments.

I agree that anti-consumer practices will eventually come show up in the money. This is why nobody spends $20 for a CD with one good song anymore. The problem with using that as an argument here is that it takes a long time for these things to shake out. If Sim City makes oodles of money, that doesn't actually mean that consumers find it to be a good deal. Certainly the people who preordered the game and have been denied service or access to the game they paid for don't find it to be a good deal right now and their money is already in the pot. Anti-consumer practices actually often net you more money in the short term. A decade from now we'll see where EA is at and then we'll actually have data to use for this.

The thing is that many things that are good for business are bad for consumers, and most things that are bad for consumers will be bad for business long-term. There really isn't any qualitative difference between what's good for business and what's anti-consumer. It's merely a quantitative difference. I'll admit I've been playing loose with that distinction because TBH I really don't see much of one. As a consumer I couldn't care less about what's good for the business, I care about what's good for me and I care about ethics. You will never sway me by explaining why they offered me a bad deal because it's still a bad deal.

I also agree that anti-consumer practices are common. Unethical stuff happens all the time. Subprime mortgage lending was unethical and a bad deal, but it still happend and it still made the corporations involved a mess of money. That doesn't mean people didn't get screwed, and it doesn't mean it wasn't wrong.

You say you're not claiming it's right or wrong, and I say that this discussion is inherently about right and wrong. If you make excuses without judgement, you are effectively judging them to be in the right.

As far as the product/service thing goes, I think that the market will not bear this sort of have-your-cake-and-eat-it-to thinking. With so many microtransaction-supported free-to-play games around it will be increasingly difficult to get away with charging $60 and then trying to also get people to spend additional money and tightly controlling the game on servers. I don't find this to be particulatly unethical, but I do find it to be a very bad deal, and I think most other consumers agree with me. This is separate from my opinion that tying a singleplayer game to a mandatory but transparently superfluous online component is both unethical and a bad deal.

Anyway, I want to thank you for having a super awesome, civil debate with me. That's rare in the internet and you've got a ton of respect from me for it.

I think now were talking about 2 different things - or at least I percieve it now

1) Always Online being anti consumer

2) Not being able to play the game, being anti consumer

now these /sound/ like the same thing, but when you get down to it if the launch went off without a hitch, and the servers were never down, is having no offline mode a drawback? Only for a few people at a time, for reasons completely beyond EA/Maxis control. 

I agree that not being able to play the game you paid for is a bad thing. Especially given the current issue with the SimCity servers, where it appears a majority of players have not been able to play for more than a few hours at a time. The failure on EA/Maxis to be able to provide proper server access is inhereintly a bad for consumer, bad for business thing.

But in a hypothetical perfect model, i do not find that the always online requirement is a bad thing. I understand not being able to play it on a flight or when your internet goes down, but these are things beyond EA/Maxis control - in fact, you could say its like a 'recomended uses' - its against the warning to use a toaster to heat your clothes up (extreme example, but you get what I'm saying) and in this case, its EA/Maxis desire that this game only be used while playing online. That does not make it a bad business practice, that makes it a choice to restrict how their product can be used. Thats entirely within their purview, and we as gamer consumers agree to it when we agree to the ToS that everyone clicks through to get to the game.

Now, the other aspect - By not saying if its right or wrong i inherently say its right, i disagree. Im saying I do not have enough information to decide if its right or wrong - You have your /opinion/  that this is a wrong practice but is it wrong or is it not is a subjective thing - And I personally do not have enough information to make that call. I feel that the hypothetical perfect ideal of Always Online games is not inhereintly wrong. I feel the execution of many of the games that do this just might be.

You are correct that always online and not being able to play the game are two separate things. It's fair to say that I have been indulging in some crosstalk between the two, and I apologize for my imprecision. The reason I've been speaking this way is because the latter is a predictable result of the former. For one, these sorts of launch server issues are constant and predictable. For another there will definitionally be more times when the game is inaccessible under an always online model than one with an offline option.

Hypothetical perfect scenarios can be misleading. In hypothetical perfect scenarios nothing breaks and nothing ever goes wrong. Those are precisely the points where always online models are the most problematic because their faults enhance and are enhanced by other things going wrong. You might as well say that nuclear power is strictly better than other forms of power because in a hypothetical perfect scenario Fukushima never happens. Any impressions you get from this sort of hypothetical, while potentially useful, must be tempered with reality. As long as the servers are perfect, and your internet service is perfect, and the company's continued support of the game's servers is perfect, and you never want to play the game on a laptop away from home, then it makes little difference. But when those things start breaking down, always online models make your existing problems much worse.

Your last paragraph threw me for a loop. Why are you defending them if you don't agree with them? If I were arguing that Sim City is awesome and the haters are dead wrong how would you respond? If it's just a devil's advocate thing I totally get it. I do that too, and this debate has been enjoyable either way. If you're ambivalent about it and just kind of arguing towards the middle I get that too. Sometimes when I don't know what I think about a topic I will argue just because it improves my understanding and helps hone my own opinion. But if you can understand from my perspective you've been consistently arguing in favor of and in defense of these practices. Even if you maybe don't agree with it 100%, you've been taking their side in this debate.

I half agree that it's subjective. There is a subjective component, but there's also an objective component. This is why moral and ethical debates are so tricky, becuase there are underlying conceptions that we share but there's also a lot of wiggle room for subjective interpretation. Even if it were purely subjective though, that doesn't mean that we can't have a discussion about it. I like Skrillex. That's purely subjective, but I could give you a reasoned explanation for why I feel this way, and we could have a debate about the merits and faults of his music and his public persona. The more subjective the topic, the less likely we are to be able to reach a consensus. Maybe that's the case here and if we reach an impasse I'm fully willing to call it off amicably. But that doesn't make the discussion any less valuable.

Even a close to perfect situation - where the servers are up 90% of the time, and my internet connection is just as normal (that is, down for a few hours once a month or so) then I would still say its acceptable, and I would still say that is the price for playing this game - and for the purpose of this disucssion, i still feel is a good thing and not necessarily a bad thing - The developers have made that choice to make their product available this way.

Again, there is a cross over here - Consumers expect to be able to do whatever they want with games, while developers are trying to provide the product they want, under the circumstances they want - its a bad situtation. You dont go into best buy and expect your dryer to do your dishes. But we expect games to be played in anyway /we/ want them to be played, not how the developers intended.  This is i think the most important point here - You expect to be able to play a game anytime you want, after youve purchased it, in anyway you want. Its software, its mutable, and its purpse can be adapted and changed by a few lines of code, so the impression is that you can use it however you want. However, we dont expect that of our washer (hardware is not mutable, to say) so why do we expect it of a (so called) finished software product? The designers have said 'This is our intened way for you to play this game' - we accept that from Maytag when they tell us 'this is how you are intended to use our device' but we're not supposed to accept it from Maxis/EA?

I dont disagree with them (as you have read my last paragraph) - i disagree with the execution (leading to bad launch days, such as D3, SimCity) but I /do/ agree with the always online concept . This is their product, they can present it to us however they would like to - see my above paragraph. I am defending them against an interent culture that believes it has the right to dictate how a programers game will be used. Now, in todays culture we /do/ have a lot of those - Crowd sourced games, open source games, crowd directed DLCs and so on. Do not forget the power of the crowd - the power of the crowd changed Mass Effects ending. The power of the Crowd provided the money for Shattered Timelines far beyond any expectation. Its a powerful tool. I disagree that it should use that power everywhere. I disagree that they should be able to force a bigbox company like EA/Maxis to create a game it doesnt want to create. The SimCity creators want realistic, close to the world city simulation as they can make. No city exists in a bubble, and randomly generated 'area statistics' are nothing but random noise to a simulation (as told by the developers) and they want such information to come from other players, in a true multicity world environment. So they have made this call. I defend their right to do so, and defend their right to say 'this product is ours and this is how we intend it to be used' - i denounce the crowds rule to say they want to wash dishes in their dryer.

This isnt entirely realistic - after all, the crowd still pays the bills at Maxis/EA - but i disagree with its treatment of the company because of the sense of entitlement that the crowd has on its right to do whatever it pleases.

And I thank you too for this conversation - its helped me define what I am really disliking about all the flames going up over the SimCity launch, and other always online games. The sense of /entitlement/ that they have the right to dictate to developers who want to make their game, their way, simply because they play it. Smart developers will listen to the crowd, yes, but that doesnt mean they /have/ to nor does it mean that loudly shouting to the internet is going to make such people any less obnoxious for that sense of entitlement that they have the right to dicatate how an artist creats his work (And this is not directed at you, its a general 'crowd' issue. )

Ooh, I'm actually really happy you brought up Mass Effect 3's ending. I caught a lot of flak for defending Bioware (and by extension EA) when that was happening. It wasn't the greatest ending, but it certainly didn't deserve anywhere near the amount of derision it got. I think a lot of the outcry stemmed from a gross misunderstanding of what they were trying to do in that series. Shepard was never your character, you never had control of his arc or his personality. Shapared was precisely two characters: Renegade Shepard and Paragon Shepard and they exist in quantum equilibrium. You make zero choices as a player, all you do is observe Shepard and thereby lock him into one of those characters in that moment. It was never about player control, and Shepard was never yours. The ending supported that and even upped the stakes by adding a THIRD OPTION (heretofore unheard of in the series).

Also, I was kind of bitter when they said they would "change" the ending becuase dangit it's their story. They get to write the story they want to. But then the execution of that was actually really good. They didn't change the ending they just fleshed it out a little bit. I was relieved that they didn't compromise their vision, even if that vision was in some ways flawed. I can definitely sympathize with how you feel here because I felt like there were a lot of players who seemed like they felt entitled to precisely the ending they wanted, regardless of the story Bioware's team of writers wanted to tell.

On the other hand, I feel like this situation is different. Feeling entitled to a game that actually functions several days after release is actually pretty reasonable. If Sim City was a washer that didn't work right after you bought it, you could return it for a refund without resorting to reporting it to your credit card as fraud and therefore losing access to your Origin account. This is why the washer analogy is flawed. The company controls your interaction with the machine by withholding service if you misuse it and it fails. You are still physically able to misuse it, you simply accept the risk that you'll damage it and won't be able to get it repaired.

But Sim City isn't actually a product that you purchase. You're paying an upfront fee to get access to a service. There are probably a lot of people who didn't understand that distinction because EA made it a point not to highlight it. It's not in their interest to be transparent about this, because once you've given them your money you have no recourse. It'll screw them long term because it kills consumer confidence, but for this release at least it's a bunch of cash in their pockets.

I respect Maxis' right to make the game they want to make. However, I find it difficult to believe that's what truly motivated the always online model here. One reason is that EA has deactivated some of the online functionality to reduce server load. If they were commited to a specific vision they wouldn't sacrifice it like that. The other reason is that EA has plausible ulterior motives for the server-based model. Neither of these is true with ME3's ending. They stand to potentially gain a lot, at least in the short term, by forcing it to be always online regardless of the developer's vision. We have no way of knowing whether this is truly what Maxis wanted for their game or if it was compromised to EA in the first place, so I'm not inclined to defend it on the grounds that it's what they wanted for their game.

The other side of that coin is that tightly controlling what players can do with your game is actually a really shortsighted way to design games. Enabling your players to have fun with your game is good design. Telling your players they have to do it a certain way is not. One really good way to play Absolute Zero is to have him recklessly nuke himself to deal damage really fast, and it seems to be Christopher's preferred way to play him. But if he was designed such that healtanking was impossible, he would be a much less interesting character to play.

Another way to look at it is I don't like it when writers tell people how to interpret their books. They have an absolute right to write the book they want to write. But then as a reader I have a right to come to my own understanding of it. Telling me I'm wrong because your book means a certain thing to me that it doesn't mean to you is lame. The weird thing about video games is that there's room for crossover there. I believe in their right to make the game they want to make. On the other hand I also think that tightly controlling the way I interact with the game is generally unwise. And trying to control the way I interact with the game because it serves a profit motive and not because it serves your vision of the game is bad.

Ah, but this loops right back around to earlier discussion points.

1) Maxis vision for an always online model is perfectly fine -  to quote you ' Feeling entitled to a game that actually functions several days after release is actually pretty reasonable. ' - Yes, yes it is! However, the sense of entitlement I was speaking of was not in related to what has happened, but what would have happened had the release gone without a hitch. I completely agree that a bad release (and sim cities was worse than most!) is not a good thing, and we /are/ entitled to have aproduct available when its released. I would not have minded waiting anothe rmonth or 2 for a final product. One reason I always like Blizzard. Their policy of 'Its done when its done' has served them well, and for the most part been adhered too. But what I was speaking against was that of players believing that, bad releases non withstanding, they can do whatever they want with a piece of software.

So my washer machine anology still holds true, in the sense that the overall purpose of the product is still the same. Now if Maytag was selling washers that needed a special kind of water hook up and they agreed to provide it and then couldnt on the day of release, then we'd be in a similiar situation.

2) Again, to reference an earlier post, I do not feel there is a difference (or soon there will not be a difference) between a Product and a Service - you have a good argument in that, but to my ears its going to fall short because i see the line between such blurred to the point of indistinction already. Yes, SimCity is a service, given how they have chosen to run it. But in my view, Product vrs Service is quickly becoming the same thing - you buy something, and you get something for a time period down the road as well. Its becoming one thing. In both games, and hte real world - Best Buy tech support, warrenties that include being able to call in for tech support, road side assitance when you buy a car, ect. The world is quickly loosing the distinction.

3) Services disabled - Ah, but this loops back to point 1 - It /is/ perfectly reasonable to be able to expect to play a game once its released. In trying to meet that they disable non critical to the core of their game functions - theyve disabled achievements, leaderboards, and challenges - all things that have nothing to do with their game, but eveyrtime they ping they put load on the server. They also disabled cheeta speed, and my only guess i think is because of the majority of the simulation being done server side.

4) Controling a game - I too believe that letting a game be open and used however a player wants is a good thing. If Skyrim had come with ModAPI from the start, man that owuld have been the coupdetat of gaming. However! I fully defend the right of a developer to control how they want the game to be played. They have a mission, a belief, and a desire to show something, and if they feel that it is best to restrict usage to a certain method to do what they want to do , then I give them my 100% support for that. I beleive that its always better to let players experiment - the crowd, as much as i hate its sense of entitlement, can do some amazing things - but its still their right for their product to do with it as they see fit, and not to 

And i think we're reaching an end to the debate, because now we're looping back around into already discussed talking points. :P 

And remember, the true point to a debate is never to really persuade the other person in it - becaues the two people usually have very firm believes. Its to sway those listening one way or another... ;)

As one of those listening, my opinion (cautiously on the side of Cosmonaut) remains unswayed, but I've gained a lot of understanding of the situation and it's been lovely to see an intelligent, civillised debate here :D

As a side note - a model of a good release that depends on servers would be Star Wars The Old Republic Mmo. depending on when you pre ordered, you got to start into the game early, anywhere from a few days to a week in advance. This really stretched out the influx of people heading onto their servers and excepting for a few queues on official launch day (and those weren’t any longer than 20mins or so) it went off perfectly.

which in itself defends your point that you can provide an excellent launch day and it’s not above consumers to expect it. which I agree with. But it also defends my point, in a way, that should simcity have done something similar than the cry for offline play and no drm would be a true sense of entitlement and unwarranted. does the bad launch give that cry some weight and possibly justification? In a way, yes. However, I still argue the point that maxis is allowed to develop the game the way they want, present it and expect us to play in that way. Just because an event happened that gives credence to the naysayers, doesn’t mean that in the end, once such hiccups and bugs have been worked out and things are running the way they were intended to run, that those naysayers are any more correct then they were in the first place.

Have to agree with Meerkat. I have been reading this discussion as it has progressed and it has been so refreshing to see such a civilized exchange of ideas on the Internet from two people who obviously hold different points of view. 

I'm certainly not believing that my side is the popular one, or an easy to accept one - or even that my passioned arguments will sway many people (though I can hope) - fact is we live in a world where entitlment on what you want to do with what you have (be that a car, a computer game, or a house, or whatever) is expected that once money changes hands its yours to do as you please. For the most part thats true. I can wish it was elsewise for the sake of the good people who make games that recieve all this flack,

On a side note, EA anounced today that its giving a free origins game to anyone who has bought SimCity up to this point, in a partial attempt to make up for the very crappy launch, and that they admit 'The amount of servers we had was just plain dumb' - aparently the beta didnt show anywhere near this amount of numbers that they got in their opening days. As I read, ove 700,000 cities were founded in the opening 12 hours.

given the vocal amount of people who couldnt get in... thats an astounding number of people.

The EA mess has come up on another forum I visit, and on there it's been mentioned how apparently EA said that people are free to request a refund if they're unhappy with how the new SimCity game has turned out. In the same post, there was a link to a chat log in which someone attempted exactly that - asking an EA help person for a refund. Turns out, apparently, that while you can request a refund, it isn't in their policy to actually let you have one. And apparently you can get your Origin (presumably some sub-company of EA?) account banned if you attempt to pursue the matter.

origin is a service via EA that is like Steam (when steam was only a few years old) - it is there attempt to get a piece of the online game distribution market. Its not so bad, but no where near the popularity of steam.

As for requesting a refund/not getting one - i always am warry of chat logs. I dont know if any of you MUSH, but I do and there is a site called WORA... which is famous for showing the worse of the MUSHing world, and chat logs are frequent there... and frequently edited to show only what a person wnats them to see.

No, I've never heard of either MUSH or WORA.

i doubted so :P Anyways those 'posts' were supposedly debunked by the Maxis project Director, Lucy, in her twitter interview the other night. Didnt see one way or another, but apparently she completely denied that

Your Maytag analogy actually works pretty well with respect to the special water hookups. I would be pissed at Maytag for eschewing the standard hookups and requiring special Maytag-branded ones as well. There the bald profit motive is clear. For one there's no intersection of art and craft so you can't chalk it up to artistic vision. For another the processes at work are simple enough that we can all understand exactly what they're trying to do: charge you for an extra thing that they themselves get to tightly control.

I agree this is close to its end, but it has been fun. What it really comes down to is you believe that they required an online connection because that's the way they wanted to make their game, and I believe they did so because they're greedy and shortsighted. There's not really a lot to say past that anymore.

About the chat log, that has been mostly debunked. The main implication of that log was that you'd get your account banned if you disputed the charge with your credit card, not that you'd get banned if you asked for a refund. Last I heard, they refuse all refunds on digital copies, despite publicly offering refunds in their apology. Also, EA has since claimed that they will not ban your account for disputing the charge with your credit card. I can give them the benefit of the doubt since I haven't acutally heard any reports of accounts getting banned for disputing the charges. It's possible the log was falsified, but it's also possible that one CS rep strayed from the actual policy, and it's also possible that EA's being really coy about their wording when claiming they won't ban you for disputing the charge as I haven't seen it response verbatim.

its far more likely the person was demanding and beligerant with the rep, and was warned not to be, with consequences up to and including banning their origins account... they probably just left those bits out of the log. I feel really bad for all the customer service reps who had to man the phones. 

On another note, a week later now and ive had no problems logging in for the last few days. Great gameplay, having a blast.

Interesting article with some insider info about what the servers are actually doing: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-update-straight-answers-from-lucy

even more interesting

So,in the end, my argument stands strong and true - I support the right of developers to make the game they want to make. its their work, their art, their creation, and I have nothing against them doing so.

Are you unconcerned that they have flat-out lied at times throughout this process?

A year ago they were claiming that you would only need to connect once when you start the game. Still onerous, but if they would only require you to connect at the beginning then contant feeds of info from other cities would not be strictly necessary for their vision of the game. Now they are claiming it was conceived as always-on. Either this is a lie, or their description of the game's DRM was a lie in the past.

Even more damningly, they were claiming up until a couple days ago that a significant amount of the simulation is done server-side. This is false: you can play for upwards of 20 minutes with no noticeable problems. It connects to the server only for the multiplayer component. Their claim that GlassBox requires server-side processing to function was a lie.

The funny thing is if they had just called this Sim City Online and ACTUALLY launched it as an MMO (free-to-play, microtransaction-based if they're smart) this would not be a problem. The problem is I feel like they tried to dupe us, and I trust them even less than I did before this started.

the development of a game is a fluid monster - what was stated a year ago has no bearing on what the finished progress is.

What they were stating a few days ago, about the calculations... thats PR speak bud. Signifigant calculations could mean whatever. The players took it to mean simulation. They obviousl occluded themselves a little bit to make it look better for them, but everyone does that. All the aspects that they wrote about happening online are signifigant amount of calculations.

Seriously - companies do that all the time. Is it right? No - do I mind? No because i expect it. They came clean, and thats enough for me. 

as for being an MMO from the start - yeah that would have stopped a lot of it. But you know what? I read between the lines that it was basically simcity the mmo. :p

I understand that development changes. It's not so much that it's different now, it's that they're still trying to claim that it was conceived as an always connected game and that was their vision for the game from the beginning. This cannot be true. They didn't come clean at all because they are still pressing this despite its blatant falsehood.

Also, the thing with the servers oversteps the bounds of PR speak. The post on the blog that you linked is PR speak. As far as we know they're not saying anything that's flat-out false, but they're also clearly trying to spin it to put it in the best possible light. I expect that. PR speak includes trying to turn weaknesses into strengths, playing up strengths, and downplaying weaknesses. It does not extend protection to complete fabrications and falsehoods. They went beyond saying a significant amount of calculations happen server-side. They actually stated that the game offloads processing from the local computer to the cloud, and they specified that this extends to core simulation as something separate from the economics and the trading. That was a lie. They talked about it with enough specificity that you can't weasel out of it and say that they didn't TECHNICALLY lie, they just spoke in a blatantly manipulative way. They actually lied.

Their marketing message is not one of contrition. They did not come clean, they got busted. And still, they're repeating the same talking points as before but with the point about cloud processing removed, hoping that we don't notice and that we'll believe this was their line all along. A week ago they were saying they couldn't make an offline mode right now, even if they wanted to. Now they say they can, but refuse to because it's not in line with their vision. There's no "I'm sorry we lied to you," no coming clean. Just relentless spin.

Do I expect corporations to lie to me? Sadly, yes. However, that doesn't mean I need to continue to support them and defend them when they think they can play me for a fool. You admit that it's wrong, but you're uninterested in holding them accountable? I don't understand this position.

Yeah, I can see being frustrated , if I paid for a game that I was really excited about, but because of technical difficulties I was not able to play.

Oh wait ....  ;)

hmm... i am assuming this conversation is no longer about shattered timelines?

cause if it's still talking about that, i feel very confused for some reason...maybe i'm just sleepy. or both.

It sort of got sidetracked at some point into the great EA/SimCity mess and how big companies these days seem to give the impression of being a bunch of arseholes by screwing over their customers to make profit ;).

Yeah, sorry. I take responsibility for that. It was a fun discussion tho, if it's a topic that interests you. I like that everybody's so cool here we can have debates like this and be friends after. :D