EA Shuts Down SimCity Developer Maxis

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Grand Master

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EA Shuts Down SimCity Developer Maxis

EA has shut down Maxis Emeryville, the main Maxis studio and longrunning developer behind SimCity and The Sims.

I've been hearing rumblings about this for a few days now, but official word comes via designer Guillaume Pierre, who wrote on Twitter this afternoon that the studio would be shutting down:

We've reached out to EA for confirmation.

Originally founded in 1987, Maxis is best known for the Sim franchise, which began with Will Wright's SimCity and expanded to include a number of other games, including the popular The Sims series, which is handled by a separate developer called The Sims Studio.

Source: Kotaku

Grand Master

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considering the mess that was Spore and especially Darkspore, I am not surprised.  The latest SimCity was a mess too.   So nothing good came from them in last years.

So I guess the new strategy project title Maxis was working on is canned.

 

Sims are developed by different studio and they are the money maker now and crowd favourite now.

 

 

I miss playing SimCity 2000 and 3000  - now this games were pure brilliance, that they could not re-capture with later titles.

 

 

 

  On 04/03/2015 at 20:18, .Neo said:

:cry: I had such good memories playing SimCity 3000 and The Sims.

 

 

Sims are developed by different studio now.  so no worries about them (even if i felt the game where you have to go to shower and go to work and hand out with friends, seemed stupid, comparing to managing a city)

Grand Master

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*sigh* I loved Maxis back in the day......

 

Sim City

Sim City 2000

Sim Earth

Sim Ant

Sim Farm

Sim Tower

Sim Isle (I actually hated this one, but still...)

Sim Copter

Streets of SimCity

Sim Town

and even later Sim Safari

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Grand Master

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Sim ant and Sim farm were my favorites but as the last few games they have pushed out have been a mess i am not surprised that they are shuttering the developer.

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Grand Master

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  On 04/03/2015 at 20:27, Geoffrey B. said:

Sim ant and Sim farm were my favorites but as the last few games they have pushed out have been a mess i am not surprised that they are shuttering the developer.

hmm,  i loved the simcities and even simtower

  but i never tried the farm and ant

 

 

are they still worth finding and trying out?    or am i going to be dissapointed?   somehow i did not even know they existed (well, i heard of ant, but as a teen playing simcity2000 it seemed silly for me to try at the time)

Grand Master

neufuse Veteran

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  On 04/03/2015 at 20:27, Geoffrey B. said:

Sim ant and Sim farm were my favorites but as the last few games they have pushed out have been a mess i am not surprised that they are shuttering the developer.

I thought they did a good job with SC4, but the last one ugh... I was so excited for it until it came out... bought it and thought why..... what did you do to this game

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.Neo

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  On 04/03/2015 at 20:22, earthworm jimmy said:

Sims are developed by different studio now.  so no worries about them (even if i felt the game where you have to go to shower and go to work and hand out with friends, seemed stupid, comparing to managing a city)

I was like 13 yo when the game was released, currently I don't really play video games anymore.

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  On 04/03/2015 at 20:25, neufuse said:

*sigh* I loved Maxis back in the day......

 

list snip

one of my favorite guilty pleasure maxis/sim games has always been Sim Golf. I had always kinda hoped for a sequel

 

EA really knows how to ruin good developer studios then shut them down :/

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Grand Master

firey

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  On 04/03/2015 at 20:25, neufuse said:

*sigh* I loved Maxis back in the day......

 

Sim City

Sim City 2000

Sim Earth

Sim Ant

Sim Farm

Sim Tower

Sim Isle (I actually hated this one, but still...)

Sim Copter

Streets of SimCity

Sim Town

and even later Sim Safari

I didn't play all of those, but I did play SimCity / 2000,  Sim Copter, and Sim Tower.  I remember in Sim Copter there was a bunch of cheats you could do,  I don't remember it exactly but one was like 'im the ceo of....' can't remember the rest, but it let you spawn an commanche helicopter which I would fly around and shoot people/missile people with.  You could also drag people out of your helicopter.

As for Sim Tower I used to have awesome towers, and would have the VIP come.. but then I could never get past that.  I could build towers that filled the screen but could never progress beyond that point and unlock new things.

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SierraSonic

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I really hope going forward companies would rather preserve themselves than sellout to EA to make a quick buck.

 

Seeing as everything EA touches either ends up being garbage, is crippled from ever developing true evolution of the game, or dumbed down to the point where they can make yearly incremental changes and recharge for practically the game as last year, and once people realize this, they will just kill off the studio, while making every claim on how it was completely not their fault.

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onewarmslime

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  On 04/03/2015 at 22:17, SierraSonic said:

 

Seeing as everything EA touches either ends up being garbage, is crippled from ever developing true evolution of the game,

 

I think this is a rather ignorant comment to make... EA has published some great games you know. Sims1/2/3, Simcity 4, Skate 3 and NFS: Hot Pursuit (the last-gen version) to name a few...

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SierraSonic

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  On 04/03/2015 at 22:21, onewarmslime said:

I think this is a rather ignorant comment to make... EA has published some great games you know. Sims1/2/3, Simcity 4, Skate 3 and NFS: Hot Pursuit (the last-gen version) to name a few...

Publishers don't make games, they make them available, but sometimes they can abuse their position by making developers (the people who actually matter) shift away from their original vision into crap. Then you go from SimCity4 to SimCity, then the developer dies while the cause lives on.

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onewarmslime

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  On 04/03/2015 at 22:35, SierraSonic said:

Publishers don't make games, they make them available, but sometimes they can abuse their position by making developers (the people who actually matter) shift away from their original vision into crap. Then you go from SimCity4 to SimCity, then the developer dies while the cause lives on.

I didn't say thay make games. You implied that by saying "everything EA touches ends up being garbage". I think the truth is that publishers definitely have an influence over the final product (in the case of Maxis they have all the influence because they've owned Maxis for ages).

Like I said, not everything EA touches over the years is "gargabe". I gave you plenty of counter-examples

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