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"Always On" - Telling people to move is not a solution.
Henroid
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
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Edit Edit - April 5th
Adam Ort, lead designer at Microsoft Studios, ran his mouth on Twitter in a pretty flippant manner regarding complaints about "always on" features / solutions. When he started to get challenged on it, he locked up his account, and offered up a pathetic "I was joking with a friend" defense (even if his friend corroborates the story, Adam Ort was responding to outsiders during the exchange). Whether he likes it or not he is a representative of Microsoft when it comes to MS related things, be they fact or rumor. So now the shift of "Always On" has changed from SimCity and individual games to a console and Microsoft's possible execution of a horrible idea. This thread is definitely the place for that.
Edit - March 16th
I'm going to officially note that the focus of the thread can focus on SimCity specifically and its development flaws. I think it's better if we catch the bullshit in here rather than let the official thread of the game be filled with just negativity. People are enjoying the game and they have fun with it and that's groovy, so the least we can do is let them discuss it without bullshit potentially showing up.
Anyway, RockPaperShotgun has been on top of things and their latest article nails the whole of the situation. It is quoted below, and below that is the original OP I wrote.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Well once again a calamity has struck in the world of video games. SimCityGate has arrived, worse than anyone had anticipated. How ironic is it that a game themed around infrastructure is running into problems because of poor infrastructure?
This thread is not to talk about SimCity though. This is about 'always on' DRM. The discussion of this issue is probably taking away from the SimCity thread and it's definitely curbing the industry thread, so let's have it all here.
'Always on' as a concept does not bother me one bit. There's two positives to it (again, as a concept). First, it's the one means of DRM that can actually provide you content, even for a singleplayer experience. Second, it would be a testament to our real world infrastructure (I love that word), that our internet is so well knit together, so well maintained, that it is a practical measure for everyone involved.
Sadly we are failing hard on the latter. I don't know if it's the content providers hoping to push ISPs (internet service providers) into strengthening the internet's throughput and stability, and that hope isn't being fulfilled. I don't know if it's businessmen and shareholders not giving one fucking damn for the realities and are making poor decisions. I don't know if it's really just bad luck and the consumer base keeps surprising both content providers and ISPs with demand. But something has got to give.
I used to entertain the idea that servers have a cost associated with them, that nobody should expect the launch to support what the actual long-term bandwidth would add up to. But temporarily adding to your server cluster is a reality, it is a doable thing. So launch week can be supported with a pre-readied bandaid. So why doesn't it get done? Well if you ask me, we've been harboring a culture across several countries where penny pinching, even in the realm of millions and billions of dollars of profit, is necessary. Even at the expense of the operation going smoothly, of supporting those actually performing the operation. But perhaps that's a more politically driven aspect to this.
I've said of this situation and others that, while the content providers are certainly to blame, I think there's an additional hand in which consumers themselves are to blame. People allow themselves to be whipped up into frenzies to get a product ASAP and use it ASAP. And they should be able to, but the point is patience. That instead of going to see a film on opening weekend, go the next week or week after. So you see it a little later - big deal. But, again, if consumers decide to be impatient the provider should be ready to handle it. Ultimately, solving the issue is 100% in the hands of the content provider. That's not the consumer's responsibility.
Though I still have to say with full conviction that this issue is a foreseeable danger to consumers and they ignore that and still walk head on into it.
So.
What can we do? Is it possible for consumers to do anything?
I almost want to request the phrase "vote with your dollars" be banned from this discussion. It is a bullshit notion. It assumes that everyone cares in the same way you do. It assumes everyone agrees with you. Here's the reality - some people buy something, don't like it, and want a refund. Some people buy something, don't like it, and demand justice (for some fucking reason). Some people buy something, don't like it, and go, "Shit, that sucks oh well." And probably most people do some mix of all that, all depending on what type of product is involved and where their interests lie.
The point is, don't suggest "vote with your dollars" because that is idealistic nonsense.
Adam Ort, lead designer at Microsoft Studios, ran his mouth on Twitter in a pretty flippant manner regarding complaints about "always on" features / solutions. When he started to get challenged on it, he locked up his account, and offered up a pathetic "I was joking with a friend" defense (even if his friend corroborates the story, Adam Ort was responding to outsiders during the exchange). Whether he likes it or not he is a representative of Microsoft when it comes to MS related things, be they fact or rumor. So now the shift of "Always On" has changed from SimCity and individual games to a console and Microsoft's possible execution of a horrible idea. This thread is definitely the place for that.
Edit - March 16th
I'm going to officially note that the focus of the thread can focus on SimCity specifically and its development flaws. I think it's better if we catch the bullshit in here rather than let the official thread of the game be filled with just negativity. People are enjoying the game and they have fun with it and that's groovy, so the least we can do is let them discuss it without bullshit potentially showing up.
Anyway, RockPaperShotgun has been on top of things and their latest article nails the whole of the situation. It is quoted below, and below that is the original OP I wrote.
What Maxis are doing is frankly peculiar. Earlier this week we posted a story revealing that claims that SimCity required online servers to run non-regional computations were not the case. That night we were promised a statement from the studio, but heard nothing. Repeated emails to EA have resulted in no response since, and the whole situation has become more muddy with each day. It’s since been revealed that population numbers are nonsense, even down to leaked Javascript code featuring “simcity.GetFudgedPopulation” as a function. We’ve learned that city size limits are arbitrary, pathfinding is rudimentary at best, and Eurogamer’s absolutely superb review lists many more bugs, broken features, disappearing pretend-money and never-arriving resources.
So it’s all the more odd to see Maxis head Lucy Bradshaw acting as if none of this is happening, and instead just carefully rewording her mantra of how SimCity is only supposed to be played online, but this time leaving out the bit about server-side computations for local play.
This week’s fuss all began after Bradshaw’s repeated statement that SimCity needed to be online simply to function. A claim we learned was not the case.
On the SimCity blog on 20th December 2012 Bradshaw wrote,“GlassBox is the engine that drives the entire game — the buildings, the economics, trading, and also the overall simulation that can track data for up to 100,000 individual Sims inside each city. There is a massive amount of computing that goes into all of this, and GlassBox works by attributing portions of the computing to EA servers (the cloud) and some on the player’s local computer.”
Speaking to Polygon on the 9th March she again said,“With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud. It wouldn’t be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team.”
And talking to Kotaku in the same week, Bradshaw yet again stated,“Online connectivity as a creative game design decision was infused into the game’s DNA since its inception and so we’re fully committed to delivering against that experience first. A significant portion of the GlassBox Engine’s calculations are performed on our servers and off of the player’s PCs. It would take a significant amount of engineering work from our team to rewrite the game so that all of those functions are calculated locally without a significant performance hit to the player.”
In today’s posting the studio boss writes,“From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world… We also made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation into the cloud to support region play and social features.”
Spot the difference.
RPS knows that the “simulation” being run on the EA servers is about 1% of the simulation being run on your own PC, so even this rebranded version of the claim still rings a little oddly. It’s not clear what exactly is so innovative about having interactions between different players be handled by online servers – that’s kind of how multiplayer works. But yes, it’s absolutely undeniable that the multiplayer aspects of the game require connection to the, er, multiplayer servers. No one was disputing this, because to dispute that would be frog-hatted mad. The reason there was any fuss in the first place were the claims that the servers were involved in much more, aspects that were they really calculating would indeed deny the simple possibility of a single-player, non-regional version of the game.
And let’s stress again here: If Maxis wanted to make an online-only, multiplayer-only version of SimCity, then that’s their call. No one has a God-given right to a single-player version, and while deliberately shooting themselves in the foot with a cannon by refusing to offer one seems a little odd, it’s Maxis’s call. The issue that RPS has only ever wanted to tackle was getting to the truth about why not. And as many have since demonstrated with offline play hacks (there’s a new one here), we didn’t have it. We could indeed write a very decent, very sensible editorial on why not offering single-player for a SimCity game is hard-boiled lunacy, but that was never the point.
Bradshaw’s post, which appears to be some sort of attempt at damage limitation – without actually ever addressing the issues raised – re-emphasises the point that they wanted it to be always online because of how they designed the game. She then lists the functions those server sums supply. And they’re what we already knew – they let the social game be social. This list that is basically just “the game has co-operative multiplayer” eight times seems to be an attempt to reveal just how grand this aspect is, how intrinsic it is to… something. It doesn’t manage this. What we’re learning from the many players posting videos, and the reviewers who actually played the game properly before smothering it with rosettes, is that those regional functions don’t work very well either.
Things then take a turn for the darned strange when Bradshaw adds,“The game we launched is only the beginning for us – it’s not final and it never will be. In many ways, we built an MMO.”
In almost no ways have they built an MMO. The first M rather puts pay to that suggestion, with minimal numbers of players interacting, and even then interacting through relatively remote systems. Let alone that it’s a management game that previously functioned perfectly well without the addition of social aspects – which is what makes it so mystifying that apparently adding something has caused so much more to be taken away. But the association with an “MMO” is an essential part of the vocabulary Maxis and EA want us to use, to reinforce the notion that this hasn’t been about piracy, preventing solo-play cheating, and controlling players’ experiences. “Oh, MMOs,” we’re supposed to say. “Yeah, good point, because you couldn’t play World Of Warcraft offline, could you? So this must be the same.” We’re asked to ignore that SimCity looks, feels and plays like a single-player game with some multiplayer functionality, and instead conflate it with an entirely different type of game. It’s a blatantly fallacious stance, but one that’s unfortunately perpetuating. (Check out many other sites’ coverage of Bradshaw’s statements this evening.) Bradshaw then says,“So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision.”
And this is something else we’ve been meaning to mention. This notion that SimCity was born in Maxis’s womb as a permanently online, perpetually social game, is somewhat at odds with, well, Maxis’s own words from just a year ago. Back then they made it clear to the press that the internet would only be needed to boot the game, and then it could run offline after that. These straight answers seem as wobbly as the new SimCity’s roads. A game that was always intended to be so intrinsically online that no offline mode was even conceivable, except for last March, a year before the end of development, when it was.
Obviously we would still desperately love to hear from Maxis to explain the discrepancies we’ve discussed. To ask why it was repeatedly claimed that the servers were so integral for running the core game, when all people needed to do to prove otherwise was pull the ethernet cable out the back of their machine. We want to know how a game that a year ago only needed the internet to launch, is now a game that was originally conceived to be permanently online. If this is a confusion, then please do clear it up for us.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Well once again a calamity has struck in the world of video games. SimCityGate has arrived, worse than anyone had anticipated. How ironic is it that a game themed around infrastructure is running into problems because of poor infrastructure?
This thread is not to talk about SimCity though. This is about 'always on' DRM. The discussion of this issue is probably taking away from the SimCity thread and it's definitely curbing the industry thread, so let's have it all here.
'Always on' as a concept does not bother me one bit. There's two positives to it (again, as a concept). First, it's the one means of DRM that can actually provide you content, even for a singleplayer experience. Second, it would be a testament to our real world infrastructure (I love that word), that our internet is so well knit together, so well maintained, that it is a practical measure for everyone involved.
Sadly we are failing hard on the latter. I don't know if it's the content providers hoping to push ISPs (internet service providers) into strengthening the internet's throughput and stability, and that hope isn't being fulfilled. I don't know if it's businessmen and shareholders not giving one fucking damn for the realities and are making poor decisions. I don't know if it's really just bad luck and the consumer base keeps surprising both content providers and ISPs with demand. But something has got to give.
I used to entertain the idea that servers have a cost associated with them, that nobody should expect the launch to support what the actual long-term bandwidth would add up to. But temporarily adding to your server cluster is a reality, it is a doable thing. So launch week can be supported with a pre-readied bandaid. So why doesn't it get done? Well if you ask me, we've been harboring a culture across several countries where penny pinching, even in the realm of millions and billions of dollars of profit, is necessary. Even at the expense of the operation going smoothly, of supporting those actually performing the operation. But perhaps that's a more politically driven aspect to this.
I've said of this situation and others that, while the content providers are certainly to blame, I think there's an additional hand in which consumers themselves are to blame. People allow themselves to be whipped up into frenzies to get a product ASAP and use it ASAP. And they should be able to, but the point is patience. That instead of going to see a film on opening weekend, go the next week or week after. So you see it a little later - big deal. But, again, if consumers decide to be impatient the provider should be ready to handle it. Ultimately, solving the issue is 100% in the hands of the content provider. That's not the consumer's responsibility.
Though I still have to say with full conviction that this issue is a foreseeable danger to consumers and they ignore that and still walk head on into it.
So.
What can we do? Is it possible for consumers to do anything?
I almost want to request the phrase "vote with your dollars" be banned from this discussion. It is a bullshit notion. It assumes that everyone cares in the same way you do. It assumes everyone agrees with you. Here's the reality - some people buy something, don't like it, and want a refund. Some people buy something, don't like it, and demand justice (for some fucking reason). Some people buy something, don't like it, and go, "Shit, that sucks oh well." And probably most people do some mix of all that, all depending on what type of product is involved and where their interests lie.
The point is, don't suggest "vote with your dollars" because that is idealistic nonsense.
Henroid on
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Oh man I didn't expect to see you in G&T @spool32, woo!
You're absolutely right. But here's the problem - renting the servers costs money, and somebody in the decision making process is reacting with, "Why the FUCK would we spend money? Just have things setup for the long-term and ride it out." Obviously, those people making those decisions are idiots.
The majority of gamers are not smart enough to vote with their wallets, because they have to have Game X right now no matter what. This is why the two always online games that have caused the biggest ruckus lately have been Diablo 3 and the new SimCity - devs know that the average gamer isn't capable of rejecting a AAA game due to DRM, and that they'll just buy it and then bitch about it later.
This is why you see ridiculous microtransactions and ultra restrictive DRM and on disc DLC and purchasable cheats codes in big budget games, because gamers will still buy them, no matter how much they hate everything I just listed.
I have been saying for a long time that the videogame industry is like a dog. If every time your dog shits on your rug you give it a treat and then complain to your friends about how your dog shit on your rug, your dog is going to keep shitting on your rug.
I have opinions about always-on DRM and when I am not on an iPad I shall share them!
It's worth noting that people of the likes that visit PA, and self-described "gamers" as a whole, are a very small market compared to the vast majority of consumers. We have a huge amount of information known about things like DRM compared to the average guy who sees a cool game advertised, maybe looks at a review or two, and then buys the game from the shelf on the way home from work, whether for themselves or their kids.
It's all very funny to repost that MW2 Boycott Steam group, but it's largely impossible to get actual data on how much game x sold in y and z demographics, rather than amusing anecdotal images. For all we know, a bunch of high-information purchasers skipped on it, while many, many more lower information people picked it up without knowledge of any of this.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
It's why I still give a lot of credit to companies like Crytek and Bethesda, who realize their own communities can improve and extend the life of their games. I mean just imagine where we'd be without DotA, CS or DoD (ok, maybe we'd be better off without the "modern" shooter model.)
This isn't necessarily true though because Torchlight 2 allows for you to mod your game and play with other people online. Granted I forget the specifics and they aren't strictly "always on," but it's some example of worth.
The problem mod communities face isn't always on DRM - it's restrictions of server hosting.
Sensible always-on DRM: You start the game, it sends a ping to an authentication server to confirm your credentials are up-to-date. If you lose connection mid-game you are allowed to continue playing, and some form of "offline mode" is available once you've validated once, albeit with features such as updates and multiplayer disabled.
Annoying always-on DRM: You start the game, it sends a ping to an authentication server to confirm your credentials are up-to-date. If you lose connection mid-game you are immediately booted out of the game.
Simcity DRM: You start Origin and it checks your credentials. You start the launcher and it checks your credentials. You pick a server and assuming it isn't too busy, it checks your credentials and launches. Then when you go to actually load a city, it checks your credentials again. It then checks your credentials periodically every few minutes. If you lose connection you're booted out after 10 minutes or so.
What we need is more sensible DRM, and less annoying DRM.
This is important to note by the way because your second point - Ubisoft's method - got canned after they had tried to make it stick. I'm not going to say EA will eventually ditch this for SimCity's sake, but in the future they may decide to knock it off entirely. But for now, we're stuck with this. SimCity seems to be the pilot run of a system they want to use and it's a horrible idea.
Perhaps I have them confused, but it seems like the two always go together. They use restrictive server hosting as a means to handle the DRM.
I guess it depends on a game by game basis. If you're always on for multiplayer, then you're stuck. If it's just always on DRM, then it doesn't have to be.
You're not wrong. But I mean theoretically, you can have authentication while not subverting custom content (be it by yourself or in online play).
Bioware maintained an authentication server for NWN for nearly a decade, but anyone could host a game and the modding community was fantastic. I don't view Internet authentication as "always-on"... To me that means: if you have no Internet, you have no game.
I find that idea very problematic.
I fully agree with you, Henroid, that when talking about general consumerism, this is a bullshit notion. Something gets advertised, you see it, you buy it, and then you are disappointed. That's not really what the "vote with your dollars" idea is all about. You've missed the mark.
The idea here is for the consumer to not reward shady and unethical business practices with their money. If you know ahead of time that either the developer, publisher, or retailer are doing something wrong, it falls squarely on the shoulder of the consumer to make sure the developer/publisher/retailer is punished for their wrong-doing. Because generally speaking, bad business practices still fall into the realm of legality. It might be bullshit, but it's still legal. Which means the government isn't gonna get involved.
Take for instance the entire mess we're in with preorder bonuses. You know why things like Retail-Specific preorder bonuses exist? Because the consumers bought into it, thereby justifying the incredibly shitty actions of the retailers and publishers.
You know why Day 1 DLC exists? Because the consumers told the corporations that they were ok with this business practice.
If we had stopped giving them their opening day blockbuster sales, if we had punished them by lowering their bottom line, they wouldn't be doing this shit to us anymore. Corporations only listen to one thing. Dollar signs. If they do something shitty, we get them to stop doing those shitty things by not giving them money. No money sends a negative signal, while Yes money sends them a positive signal. We ourselves are responsible for the rise of Gamestop, Online Passes, and Day 1 DLC. Because we bought into it.
On the topic at hand, that being the Always-On DRM, it falls on the consumer to tell companies like EA and Activision what they are and are not ok with. Is the idea of linking everyone together persistently across the world a cool notion? Sure. But in the case of Sim City, we knew from the beta that the servers were unstable and not capable of handling a huge load, even when the play tests were limited to just a measly hour in length.
Honestly, I think the consoles have it right. You can play the game singleplayer if you want. Signing in to Xbox Live or PSN is not required. But doing so gives you such an incredible wealth of other options that it is worth your while to do so (game dependent of course).
But honestly, when it comes down to it, I don't know if I will ever buy Sim City. Why? Two reasons.
One: I would be buying it entirely for the singleplayer experience. I don't feel that I should have to connect to EA servers just so I can build some streets and let tornadoes and fires destroy all that I have wrought. Am I ever going to use any of the social features that benefit from the Always On DRM? No. Not at all. I enjoy social gaming in some games, but simulations are one genre I prefer to play by myself.
Two: I hate that EA has started holding their PC titles hostage and are making them exclusive to Origin. Simple as that.
So getting back to my point: The way I tell EA that I'm not cool with their Always On DRM for my single player game is by not buying it. The way I tell EA that I'm not cool with them forcing me to use their shitty online distribution service is by not buying the game.
It has nothing to do with product satisfaction. It has nothing to do with whether or not I want a refund. It's not about whether or not I want justice for feeling ripped off because I was an uneducated consumer. It's about telling the corporations that I am not cool with their business practices.
I just wish there was another way of slapping down the shady business practices of these big corporations. Why do we need another way? Because we are consumer whores. We buy things. That's what we do. We're inadvertently going to tell them "Yes" even if we are saying "No." And that's because dammit, Mass Effect is so goddamn fun. Yes, I bought it. Yes, I gave them money even though their game has an online pass
Yes, I bought Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 even though I don't agree with the fact that both of those games also have Always On DRM.
And you know why that is? Because companies are shitty even in the very act of providing us with something we want. We all want these games and they know we will buy them. So they attach shitty business practices because they know they can get away with it.
I have to wonder, when looking at the iOS market if Square Enix is actually making any money off of their ridiculous pricing model for their Final Fantasy games. Are people out there actually paying for this stuff? I'm certainly not, but I guess somebody is since they're still doing it.
PS4: Voranth
It's gonna take a lawsuit to bring awareness to it. Possibly more than one. Problem is, you have to prove actual wrongdoing.
You are assuming that the people who buy it already know they won't like it before they buy it.
You still haven't really provided a good reason as to why a person should have automatically assumed the dog would shit on the carpet just because some other dog someplace else took a shit on a carpet.
Not everyone has the same experiences, expectations, and/or knowledge that you do.
I agree with Jeff but I do think that EA oversteps the line between rolling the dice and petty greed/stupidity quite a bit nowadays. Always on DRM, day 1 dlc, pointless multiplayer in single player games, etc is ruffling quite a few feathers.
You can almost guarantee that if SimCity takes off a bit that they will start adding features from previous games like subways, terra forming or increased land space via $30 expansion packs.
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Well, again, this is a culture thing. We're talking the ugly side of capitalism.
Just because you have all these examples doesn't mean everyone does. There's going to plenty of people who never dealt with AC or Bioshock at all, let alone on the PC. The only one of those games that was a big widespread story is Diablo III. The majority of people who buy this game are going to probably know of one or zero other examples, the one most likely being Diablo. And SimCity and Diablo are PC exclusive games that attract a very wide audience. Lots of people who buy them are not PC gamers. The fact that both games make a real effort to run on low-power machines is proof enough of that. A lot of people who buy either of these games likely played games like AC or Bioshock on a console if they even played them at all.
There's also the simple fact that these are different games made by different people. Someone else botching something does not mean people should assume a completely different developer and publisher will botch the same thing. There is nothing illogical about expecting to buy a game and have it work because 99% of the games people buy do work.
You keep assuming that what you know is what everyone knows. Now everyone has a bunch of knowledge about always-online DRM. I'd bet all my money that a significant portion of the people interested in SimCity didn't even know about it until they bought it. I follow gaming news a lot more than most gamers and even I didn't know it existed until this controversy broke out. Most people aren't even going to think about the DRM, they buy it because hey, a new Sim City! I like Sim City! I'm gonna check that out. Most people don't do tons of research before they buy a game, they buy it because it looks cool and the industry has built up the expectation that you buy a game and it works.
And those things you quoted aren't the opposite of what I said at all. You are blaming the consumer for buying something they know they won't like. I am telling you that the consumers that are upset did not think they weren't going to like it. They didn't expect the game to not work. They didn't have the same opinions or experiences you have that led them to the conclusion that it would "obviously" not work. Just because YOU have come to the conclusion that online DRM automatically means failure does not mean everyone can or will. They saw a game they wanted, saw it came out, and bought it. Then it didn't work. And that made them upset. And they have every damn right to be upset and it's not their goddamn fault they were deceived and sold a broken product.
I'm so damn tired of this blame the victim mentality.
These online games could have relatively smooth launches, but that'd require infrastructure that would only realistically be used at launch - once the amount of simultaneous users stabilizes, only a fraction of what was necessary would remain so.
So, the company just shoves out the game with only enough resources as will be needed later,and then hems and haws about how it's tough and they weren't ready for the large numbers and they're working on it, knowing fully that the problem is self-correcting. Plus, they already have your money so, well, fuck you very much.
This will only get worse as always-on grows, and launch "problems" will just be expected and gamers will accept it.
No matter the vocal amount of bitching you see on the internet, it seems the vast majority of buyers just wait it out. And in a week, it's fine.
I think more people are pissed that a game like this needs to connect with servers at all. You can make arguments for this kind of DRM for something like Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 but for a game that's been known as a single player game since it's inception and throughout it's sequels that it boggles the mind why they chose to go this route.
Even casual players may find themselves frustrated when they realize that they can't play this single player game because of server issues plus the fact that Amazon pulled it for a bit may signal that EA truly did go a little to far this time around.
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The correct answer is "the people who made the stove that burned them" by the way.
It is at very best a half truth to describe the Diablo franchise simply as "previously a single player game".
Coop multiplayer has always been a huge aspect of the Diablo games, and the most vocal and diehard fans of those games almost invariably played them primarily on battle.net
I've never played a Sim City game but my understanding is that they have always been a deeply single player experience with little or no multiplayer component at all.
I don't think equivocating between these two is fair, and I don't even think comparing Sim City to Ubisoft's prior DRM schemes is fair. At least Sim City was made with social multiplayer as a kind of core pillar in its design and it apparently employs cloud processing in the workings of its engine, rather than Assassin's Creed which has literally no excuse or benefit for a constant connection other than as DRM.
That's not strictly speaking true, i mean unless a company is pants on head retarded their game servers will just be virtualized in a cluster, for a big company like EA it would be logical to have the extra power, assign it to say simcity when it launches, then when interest in simcity has died down swap em over to whatever game is currently releasing next for launch, switching like that isn't a big deal, and large corps do it all the time for critical infrastructure, it's just they don't care enough to implement it, it's easier to piss people off for a week or two.
It was pretty equal parts both, with strong followings for both. What mattered more pretty much depended on the individual user.
We consumers told companies that this would work long before Diablo III.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/
I write about video games and stuff. It is fun. Sometimes.
"almost invariably"
My comment was not a "do you even lift bro".
My point is that Diablo 3's online structure can reasonably read as a natural extension of the previous games whereas Sim City's multiplayer integration has no precedent and comes off as a total left turn for the franchise.
But that doesn't matter too much. Part of the complaints stem from the decision to force this MMO-like mode on people and not include an offline option at all.