Sim City an MMO, except when it isn't

I once wrote about Sim City, and how it was a sack of shit game that didn't work when released. The thing is, the necessity to log on their shitty servers was essential to the core running of the game (no, actually, it wasn't) because Sim City is; get this - it's an MMO. Yes, I know they never advertised it as an MMO until after it's shitacular launch, but that's just beacuse they were busy, I dunno, swimming in prostitutes or something. Nah, it's not a single player city building simulation like all it's predecessors, it's an MMO! A Massive Multiplayer Game! And they have to be online, that's the whole point! Why, if it's not online, it can't work, so you can't be mad at a full price game that doesn't work!

Only that you can be mad, because it didn't fucking work.

...and now, it's quietly not even an MMO anymore.

Yeah, this week it was announced in the next big patch they'll patch in an offline mode. So since fucking March last year, anyone owing Sim City has had to tolerate shitty useless logins. But hey, it's about 10 months down the line, and it's finally taking steps to be playable at last! You'll probably still want to be checking in online a fair bit though, because this turd of a game has needed essential patches like clockwork every month since release. And the pathing still doesn't work. Yeah. So, if you've been holding out until you get the Sim City you actually want, well, it's still a ways off, but it's marginally closer now. Pity for all those people who's had to deal with its shite for the last ten months.

I bring this up because I'm actually trying to remember about what my obscenity and typo riddled rants have been in the past, and wanted to catch up the stories. And it's nice to have good news to follow. Sort of.

You know, it's stuff like this that makes my wonder just how long mainstream, triple A big budget titles can last. Nowadays, it's rumoured for our shiny new current generation can cost more then eight times what the last generation did- and when you consider that when Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 6 can sell five million copies apiece and still weren't considered a financial success you have problems. Big fucking promblems.

Admittedly it doesn't help that you take 'safe' risks like the big names of Sim City, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy and whatever 1980s games they can dig up for nostalgia's money sake tank because the the publisher would rather panic and make everything a 3rd person shooter with turret sections with a tacked on multiplayer. Let's take a look at my current games I am playing from Steam:

Must... get... all... the... gun mods...

Yeah, so that's three independent titles and a game that I think was made in the '90s. The last big budget game I brought was Bioshock Infinite, which I waited until Steam had a ludicrous sale on it first. A lot of gamers like me are finding themselves more and more to be trained to avoid a games launch (where those first 90 days most games make their money) because they won't work and later on, if you're nice and patient, Steam will sell it on the cheap. And you'll get all the dlc thrown in with it, and the patches will have it working. Why buy on launch any more? That behaviour isn't our fault. That behaviour is on the publishers.

And no, the answer isn't to have more pre-order bonuses.

We know that given even time a publisher's lust for money will sell that 'exclusive' pre-order dlc as later dlc.

Also pre-order bonuses are crap. Moving on.

Quite frankly, I'm wondering how sustainable this sort of budget is when many people like me are happy enough paying much less for a less graphically intensive but clever and enjoyable experience. Sure, it's not rendering each individual facial hair follicle in HD, but only the nutbar David Cage wants that. Hell, in certain situations, even Minecraft looks hella pretty, so pumping in all that money for a graphically superior but poor design aesthetic doesn't make a lot of sense.

So what we're getting is an exciting time of video games - we see small, cheap-in-comparison games that rely on wits, unique gameplay, humour and fun vs the big, lumbering, whiz-bang blargh bleh dross of the mainstream big players, who adapt as well as the mighty dodo. It'll be a hoot to see what we get because of this.