Rest In Peace Maxis ☼ 1987 - 2015

[fefenc]

 

Today is a sad day for those who used to play some Will Wright games like Simcity. EA games has shut down Maxis Emeryville, the main Maxis studio and longrunning developer behind SimCity and Spore, among other games. The official word comes via designer Guillaume Pierre, who wrote on Twitter this afternoon that the studio would be shutting down:

 

Well it was a fun 12 years, but it's time to turn off the lights and put the key under the door

 

 

EA has made a statement about how much bullets was needed to kill Maxis once for all. the situation.

 

Today we are consolidating Maxis IP development to our studios in Redwood Shores, Salt Lake City, Helsinki and Melbourne locations as we close our Emeryville location. Maxis continues to support and develop new experiences for current Sims and SimCity players, while expanding our franchises to new platforms and developing new cross-platform IP. These changes do not impact our plans for The Sims.

 

Players will continue to see rich new experiences in The Sims 4, with our first expansion pack coming soon along with a full slate of additional updates and content in the pipeline.All employees impacted by the changes today will be given opportunities to explore other positions within the Maxis studios and throughout EA. For those that are leaving the company, we are working to ensure the best possible transition with separation packages and career assistance.

 

Maxis was founded in 1987 by Will Wright and his buddies that I don't know their names because Will was the responsible for Simcity and it got killed in 2015 by EA, whose owns deserved 2 golden poos awards as the worst company from the USA from the Consumerist. If it depends on me, EA will have their 3rd golden poo soon...

 

Rest In Peace Maxis, a company that was in the UTI for a long time and finally got murdered by EA Games, the worst gaming company from USA!!

 

Infos Source: Kotaku

Edited March 4, 2015 by fefenc

[RyanBurnsRed]

RIP Maxis...may you once again make good games in game studio heaven.

 

It was only a matter of time. I still haven't gotten over the death of Pandemic.

Edited March 4, 2015 by RyanBurnsRed

[Adam Jensen]

Killed by EA's greed. If only they'd let Maxis make a real SimCity game.

[Th3MaN1]

Sadly, I'm confident that everyone under EA's wing doesn't have the creative control they deserve.

[Fraizer]

Don't worry, the former employees will probably make a new studio that ask for money on kickstarter to make a game that will be in early access alpha on steam for 3 years.

 

No worries.

[Spaghetti Cat]

Yeah I saw this too...god I hate EA. What a bunch of asshats.

 

Corporate that is, artists and programers are pretty good imo.

[iiConTr0v3rSYx]

Don't worry, the former employees will probably make a new studio that ask for money on kickstarter to make a game that will be in early access alpha on steam for 3 years.

 

No worries.

Can't f*cking wait!

[Testarossa]

OH F*CK NO!

 

Maxis made the best simulation games IMO. Such a sad sight. R.I.P.

[Coin]

Killed by EA's greed. If only they'd let Maxis make a real SimCity game.

 

In this case, not really.

 

More like foolishly promoting a woman who was partially responsible for the suckitude coming from Maxis.

 

Maxis "died" when Will Wright left in 09, IMO.

[trip]

Maxis "died" when Will Wright left in 09, IMO.

 

Yup.

 

Poor Will. The industry was out of his hands.

 

Dude is a f*cking rocket scientist. For real... No wonder his early creations were amazing.

 

E:

Thought I had this pic around somewhere.

 

Corporate that is, artists and programers are pretty good imo.

 

That is where I get real sad. I share the same first name as the founder of EA (one p spelling and all). I was also a young video game player when EA was created. It was the first time games got the respect of being art...being creative. It was fresh and new. From where I sit I think we owe a lot of thanks to EA. They can pretty much suck ass these days.

Edited March 5, 2015 by trip

[Tchuck]

In the late 90s Maxis was going bankrupt. It was then bought by EA in 1997, and released SimCity 3000, 4 and the new one, Sims 1, 2, 3, and 4, Spore. So if it wasn't for EA in the first place, we would have never seen any of those games come to light. EA gave them a lot of time to work on their own, but they just stopped delivering. Taking forever to develop games, and then Spore came out and it wasn't as great as people hoped, or at least not what they expected, and then Will Wright left. So it became just another studio supported by the name. Sims 4 and Simcity flopped, and that was the end of it.

 

There were many reasons for the failure of Simcity. I personally enjoyed the game for what it was, but the vast majority disliked it because it was not what they wanted, so it was deemed garbage. There was a lot of stupid marketing stuff as well, promoting things that weren't true, which really f*cked things over. Having worked at EA previously, it's sad how much power marketing has over the development of a game.

 

Oh well, I'll still enjoy the old games anyway. Will Wright hasn't been involved with any games since Spore, so it's not like this changes anything. People who were employed there will find new jobs, definitely.

[D3L3TD]

[El Dildo]

shame.

 

I would like to say that this is because of Sim City 2013, that piece of trash.

but this was a long time coming.

[Drunken Cowboy]

All of my Spore abominations cry for Maxis from their various orphuses.

 

Yeah, they've been dead for a while though.

Make sure you're all putting your money where your mouth is. Don't buy EA products, no matter what.

[Lee Everett]

*Delete

Edited March 5, 2015 by Lee Everett

[fefenc]

All of my Spore abominations cry for Maxis from their various orphuses.

 

Yeah, they've been dead for a while though.

Make sure you're all putting your money where your mouth is. Don't buy EA products, no matter what.

I still remember from the epic penis shaped creature with golden wings that I made for one of my hundreds of planets as an extra protection, so sad Spore ended with a childish theme at 2008 version due to the EA and Hecker's touches, the 2005 version was so much better.

 

Now it's up to Colossal Order carry the torch of the city sim genre with their Cities: Skylines game.

 

BTW, Cities: Skylines surpassed GTA V on the steam list of the top sellers and it's at 3rd place in the list.

Edited March 5, 2015 by fefenc

[Mista J]

I'm am not at all surpised that you made a penis shaped creature.

[Wayne Daniels]

Does this mean no Sims 5?

[Kiffster]

Man, what a shame. Some of the earliest pc games I ever played were Maxis games, like SimCity 1 and 2 (Never been a fan of the series actually and I stopped after 3000) and SimTown. Anyone remember that game? It was awesome back in those days hehe. Damn, can't believe that's 20 years ago...

 

 

Last Maxis game I played regularly was Spore. Couldn't get into Sims3.

Edited March 5, 2015 by W2B

[unbid]

Man, such a shame that one of my favorite city sim developer died. I still enjoy playing their three of their best games they ever made: SimCity 4 Rush Hour, The Sims 2, and The Sims 3.

 

Now I'd better go and relish the glory moment of Maxis by playing those games again.

[Audiophile]

While they closed the Maxis Emeryville location, the other studios responsible for various Sim games are still going. Emeryville was behind Spore and the debacle that was SimCity (2013).

 

They've said that The Sims is unaffected and development for future content is going strong. That's handled by The Sims Studio in Redwood Shores.

 

I think they also said SimCity isn't dead, it just won't be handled by Emeryville in the future, for obvious reasons.

 

Guess we'll see what happens. The Sims is still a cash cow for EA, and with the first expansion hitting next month, the game will get even better and people will get into it.

 

It's honestly not that bad of a game. In fact, it's a better base than TS3 and I quickly got over the lack of open-world because the game actually runs and I can play it with enjoyment. The additional content we have gotten is also better than most of what TS3 came up with. TS3 was quantity over quality, IMO.

 

What we need is another life simulation game on the market to rival TS and force them to do better. Cities: Skylines looks better than SimCity (2013), at the momemt. That's all you had to f*cking do, EA.

 

Man, I miss SC 4, TS1 and TS2.

Edited March 5, 2015 by Audiophile

[X S]

Well, I give them no sympathy for what happened to Simcity 2013. The game was simply unplayable upon the first few months of release, you couldn't play it offline, and the city plots were too small. After months of trying to get the game to remain stable and playable, a lot of enthusiasts were still peeved that they couldn't play the game offline. Rest assured, after months of complaining, Maxis and EA finally caved in and gave us an offline mode. The game was never running on cloud computing as they had been previously claiming. Lies, all lies.

 

Then came the nail in the coffin. The most sought-after revision of the game was that the city plots were too small. Yes, they were painfully small! After months and months of waiting and waiting, with hopes that Maxis had finally accomplished the impossible, they dropped their final bomb on the community. Maxis stated that they could not get the game to run efficiently with larger plot sizes, and therefore, the fate of larger plot sizes was officially dead. Oh yeah? f*ck you! Is that so, Maxis? Pitchforks were sharpened and torches were lit!

 

A few months later, a mod came out that allowed us to expand the plot sizes exponentially. So not only did they lie about the online-only bullsh*t, they also didn't tell us the whole truth concerning plot sizes. They have no one to blame but themselves.

 

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Maxis.

 

-Edit------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Ok, after venting my frustration and my hopes of playing Citites: Skylines, I understand most of the limitations put in place were EA's doing. Most of my frustrations were targeted towards Maxis and not EA. I'm aware that the online-only thing was a DRM policy, and plot limitations had to do with a cap level set on PC specifications for mass-consumption. These are business decisions. With that said, I found a very interesting Maxis response on Reddit.

 

 

Money. It all comes down to money. EA as a corporation doesn't share our sense of obligation out of sentimentality. Hence today's announcement.

 

The long gap is probably caused by several factors. First was that the expansion for SC4 didn't print cash like The Sims was at the time. Sure it made money, but The Sims had a HUGE (I remember reading 16x) return on the investment. So it got deprioritized to make The Sims 2. Which again made huge returns.

 

EA has adopted a greenlight gating process. Where by with little or no capital invested they have a few highly talented senior designers/creative types come up with the framework of a game. They develop what they can as proof of concept, usually simple gameplay prototypes and concept art, which is then presented to EA. This sets up a series of gates and reviews whereby they get more money and manpower as it seems necessary and the time to work on the gameplay, engine, and artistic style. This whole period is called preproduction, and can last from a few months to a few years. At some point you go into production, which means you know what you are making, how you are going to do it, how they are going to sell it and hard numbers to back all of that up. Some time after that, when marketing thinks it is right, they will announce the game to the public. From that point on nothing changes from the public facing. Once locked into 'online-only' there was no way of changing it. People complained that the cities were too small but there was no way to address that without compromising the numbers and forecasts when the game was sold to EA's corporate overseers. EA can't be negotiated with at this level, you can't change their mind, you REALLY have to fight to get dates changed etc.

 

So, during that 10 year wait there was almost 9 years of silence. 3 or 4 of those years had active development of the game that shipped, with another year or more of a small group of creatives. There were other attempts that never made the light of day, and products (Simcity Societies comes to mind) that didn't deliver that 'SimCity' experience.

 

I offer all of this with the caveat that they don't even tell us (read 'the devs') all of this and some of it is conjecture.

 

I also don't fault EA with this process. It is meant to minimize risk and it does pretty well at that. EA is a very large ship, it takes a lot of energy and time to get it to change direction. That long process steers the ship and adds predictability. Smaller companies are able to pivot much faster but lack EA's resources and ability to 'play the long game'. All of this stuff happens out of necessity, and all of it comes down to money.

 

EA is actually a great place to work these days. In the past there were difficulties (I was part of the EA Spouse/class action) but a lot of that has turned around. They really do want to retain talent and minimize layoffs. Not everyone shares this experience, but I haven't worked back-to-back weekends in almost a decade. EA has a really good benefits package, competitive pay, and a strong sense of progressive public responsibility. Maxis, in particular, the Sims side has what is probably the highest level of gender equality in the industry.

 

I'm sad to see that studio close, it's been my home for a very long time.

Edited March 5, 2015 by X S

[El Dildo]

I remember Sim Town.

 

does anyone remember Sim Copter?

what about Streets of Sim City?

 

back in the day, if you had Sim City 2000, you could create a city and 'upload it' to Sim Copter or Streets of Sim City. then you could actually fly or drive around your city in FULL 3D in first-person. it was unlike anything you could do with any other game during that time.

 

 

 

 

 

god damn those were good times.

[Kiffster]

Yeah we had a Maxis collection pack with a bunch of games, including Sim City, Sim Copter (didn't really play it though), Sim Ant, Sim Park, Sim Town, Sim Tower (I sucked at it) and some others I can't remember.

[uNi]

Sim Copter (didn't really play it though)

 

Give it a go! Wasted so many hours playing the demo, I wasn't very good at it, poor people.

[Kiffster]

 

 

Sim Copter (didn't really play it though)

Give it a go! Wasted so many hours playing the demo, I wasn't very good at it, poor people.

Tried it once or twice as a kid, but hated it. Couldn't play it back then.

[trip]

 

Sim Copter (didn't really play it though)

 

Give it a go! Wasted so many hours playing the demo, I wasn't very good at it, poor people.

It was great. Putting out fires with the big water bucket.

[El Dildo]

Sim Copter and Streets of Sim City are serious diamonds in the rough.

they seem low budget but that's basically just the old graphics.

 

combining the 3 games was an awesome experience.

if you didn't have a big city you were already playing, you could use the SC2000 editor to customize buildings and road layouts and create any kind of massive, instant city. then if you actually tried to play Sim Copter missions (other than just flying around) you would unlock all sorts of extra features and more powerful/faster helicopters. it was really about playing Super Hero with a helicopter. you can put out fires, clear traffic jams, rescue people, chase criminals, etc etc.

 

Streets of Sim City wasn't just about driving around, either.

if you played the missions, SoSC was like an early version of Twisted Metal or Destruction Derby.

 

you start with a cheap car and no money.

do some races, earn some cash, fix up your ride, enter higher level events. suddenly the races turn into total carnage, where opponents try to ram you off the road and eventually show up with machine guns and rocket launchers. now you can spend money on an even nicer car or more powerful weapons. destroying other cars was great but parts of the environment were also destructible. certain buildings could be blown up and would crumble, as could parts of roads, tracks, or bridges.

 

Sim Copter had full joystick support.

Streets of Sim City had full gamepad / steering wheel support.

Edited March 5, 2015 by El Diablo

[Tchuck]

Seven (six?) words for you: "I'm the CEO of McDonnell Douglas". As a kid, I was a bit impatient at times, and by god I hated that starting helicopter. Awesome game, though. I also recall that if you had a military base in your city, you could go there and get an awesome Apache, which shot missiles. And there was an UFO that would appear every now and then, and you could shoot it out of the sky if you were skilled enough, I think. At least I recall seeing a special screen after doing something like that. Good old times!

[Sean O'God]

What is this piss-swish? That's awful. Maxis games were always there for me when I was younger. Rest In Peace, Maxis. I'm going to play SimCity 3000 Unlimited in remembrance.