Mar 10 2013
Sim City – What Was EA Thinking?
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’re aware that Electronic Arts has come out with another Sim City game. Unlike its predecessors, the latest Sim City is entirely online. You need an always-on Internet connection to install/authorize the game and to play it.
I understand why Electronic Arts would want to use an online authentication process, but I still hate it. The bulk of my gaming experience has been with games that had a simple key that you would enter when you wanted to install the game. It worked really well but there was always the problem of dealing with game piracy.
In my opinion, it simply isn’t possible to create a perfect authentication system. You’re going to either have a lousy gaming experience or leave yourself open to piracy. There’s no way to handle everything and make everyone happy.
EA’s approach to making everything online has proven thus far to be a colossal failure. Not only are the servers totally overloaded, but what does EA expect gamers to do when the game gets old and the servers are taken down?
I still have games that are a decade old or more. While I don’t play them, I can play them because I don’t have to worry about whether or not the game will be installable or playable because of the existence, or lack thereof, of servers. After a certain number of years, Sim City’s servers will be taken down and its admittedly low number of gamers will have no way of playing.