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OS X Games

SimCity Mac Launch Facing More Problems 177

Posted by Soulskill from the at-least-they're-consistent dept.
The launch of the new SimCity back in March made headlines for the problems caused by the game's always-online DRM. EA Maxis even decided that people who bought the game early deserved a free game for their trouble. They also decided to postpone the launch of the Mac version of the game. Well, the delay is over; SimCity has arrived for Macs, and players are now facing a whole new set of installation and launch problems. "Those issues include a 'mutexAlert' error, which can be resolved by switching the OS to English. Another simply doesn't allow a player to install the game once downloaded. The suggested solution for that is to re-install Origin and opt in to the new Beta version. The game also apparently doesn't currently support Mac OS X 10.7.4 nor the upcoming 10.9 beta release." There are also reports that the game won't function on high-resolution display settings.
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SimCity Mac Launch Facing More Problems More

SimCity Mac Launch Facing More Problems

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  • Same shit, different day (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:26AM (#44716311)

    Did anyone expect anything less from this series of disasters?

  • Treat the EA badge as a warning sticker (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sandbagger ( 654585 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:27AM (#44716325)

    No, really.

    • Re:Treat the EA badge as a warning sticker (Score:4, Funny)

      by jimmifett ( 2434568 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:42AM (#44716475)

      Ah yes, the warning sticker, made famous by LJN games during the NES era. If it said LJN, you knew it sucked.

      • Re:Treat the EA badge as a warning sticker (Score:4, Interesting)

        by TWiTfan ( 2887093 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:49AM (#44716553)

        It used to be that way on Netflix-streaming when you saw a Starz logo at the beginning of the movie. It meant a non-HD, non-anamorphic, low-resolution, shitty-print movie. I dreaded seeing it. I was so glad when Starz left Netflix. A lot of other people saw it as a bad sign at the time, but to me it was "Good riddance, assholes--and don't let the door hit the ass of your awful quality videos on the way out!"

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

          I know how you feel. Back then I would start a movie and if I saw that logo I would go back to browsing. No point in watching low SD resolution 4x3 pan and scans on my HD tv.

      • LJN: The Shit Rainbow. [youtube.com]

    • Re:Treat the EA badge as a warning sticker (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Friday August 30, 2013 @10:25AM (#44716921) Homepage Journal
      The takeaway I have is that after EA buys a studio, it has maybe a 50/50 shot of their next game release being good, and after that it's all over. I've seen this time and time again with Westwood, Bioware, Bullfrog, Pandemic, Playfish, and more. EA is in the business of buying up studios, and then choking them to death in order to make a quick buck, and it has made them the biggest video game publisher in the world. They have more in common with sharky wall street banks than your traditional game company.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Njovich ( 553857 )

        and it has made them the biggest video game publisher in the world.

        It has made EA into Activision?

      • I think you can narrow it down a bit more. If it's a new franchise to EA (either a first game or a studio that was previously independent), it has a better than 50% shot of being good. If it's the second, it has less than a 50% chance of being good.

      • Actually Activation is the biggest. By a long shot too, they have double the net worth of EA games. This is noteworthy because they are one of the studios that don't seem to turn everything to shit.

    • Re:Treat the EA badge as a warning sticker (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fermion ( 181285 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @12:34PM (#44718309) Homepage Journal
      As a casual gamer, who enjoys playing video games but is not a fanatic about it,I would say this about most game companies. EA lost me a long time ago because they did not let me play my games on whatever computer I wanted. It just made it too hard to play a game that I bought. Lately I did play the freemium mobile games, but it also just got annoying. I would buy stuff so but there would still be ads. The game would require one to buy more stuff to do things that were once just part of the game. I think in many cases firms believe they can only make money from the hard core gamers who pay a premium and are willing to jump some hurdles for the privileged of playing the game. It may be so, and if so I will go off and do something else

  • The continuing saga. . . (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:28AM (#44716333) Journal

    of bad software.

    Despite the vociferous pronouncements from many on here as to how high their salary's are as programmers and that you get what you pay for, it's amazing the amount of bad software, games or otherwise, the end user has to suffer with.

    I speak from near daily experience when I say the quality of today's software is far below what one would expect considering the company's producing the software and the lofty salaries paid to the programmers.

    It's similar to the financial industry where the mantra "best and brightest" is trotted out to excuse the salaries and bonuses of those who continually reek havoc in the financial markets and suffer no penalty.

    If these are our best and brightest programmers shoveling out this software, can we try the worst and dullest to see if they can do better?

    • Re:The continuing saga. . . (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:41AM (#44716461)

      While I've met my fair share of awful programmers, the blame can't be placed solely on programmers. We don't know what kind of internal deadlines existed at EA, what sort of QA/testing procedures were in place, etc. For all we know, the programmers knew of these issues and simply had no time to take care of them. I'm not saying that is 100% the case, but it is unfair to simply assume straight away that these are just a group of talentless individuals.

      • How many of these problems are DRM based rather than game-programming based?

        DRM mean Broken-by-Design

        • An error that can be fixed by changing the OS language could conceivably be a DRM issue. the others are less likely.

          Not working at a high resultion is extremely unlikely to be DRM related. This may be an issue that affects the PC version as well, though; Just that such high resolution displays are rare on the PC.

          • Re:The continuing saga. . . (Score:4, Informative)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Friday August 30, 2013 @11:06AM (#44717405)

            An error that can be fixed by changing the OS language could conceivably be a DRM issue. the others are less likely.

              Not working at a high resultion is extremely unlikely to be DRM related. This may be an issue that affects the PC version as well, though; Just that such high resolution displays are rare on the PC.

            OS localization has always been a VERY tough nut to crack, and no one does any adequate job.

            Windows tries by using API calls to tell you where Program Files and Windows directories are (and it returns " (x86)" as necessary for 32-bit apps). But most devs don't use those APIs nor the environment variables and assume it's ALWAYS "C:\Program Files" (nevermind you may want to install on D: or use a localized version where that folder is translated).

            OS X is likely similar - the EA programmers assumed something to be a fixed string that got localized in the end.

            And heck, I'm sure Linux isn't invulnerable to it - since localized versions of many command line utilities exist to break your shell scripts... (though to be fair, you can set enough variables to force it to English for just the shell script, though how many people remember to do that?).

            Though, not testing high-resolution displays is a sin for OS X - Apple does NOT ship a computer with a 1080p display, the "Retina" MacBook Pros sell extremely well, and the iMacs all have high res screens as well. The lowest res thing is the 11" MacBook Air with its 1366x768 screen.

            The screen-less Macs (Mac Pro, Mac Mini) are some of the worst sellers in Apple's lineup, and are there purely to fill a niche.

            None of it is really DRM related. Just practically "It compiles - ship it!" mentality.

            • OS X is likely similar - the EA programmers assumed something to be a fixed string that got localized in the end.

              There is always the danger that someone without a clue translates something that shouldn't be translated. Like all your images are in the "images" directory and some twat translates it so the German version looks in the "Bilder" directory and doesn't find anything. That's just clueless.

              But there's a different problem on MacOS X: When you localise an app, all the code assumes that either everything is translated, or nothing is translated. If nothing is translated, then the English version on a French syst

            • For Mac it is quite unlikely, since all the standard directories are english only. They just happen to have file named ".localized" in them, and the Finder (but not "ls") will show their localized name. I find this to be actually a pretty good approach since you can change language at any moment and system-created folders will also magically get a localized name. To have the application fail if the locale is not english under Mac OS X you really need to go out of your way and do something contrived and stu

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ais523 ( 1172701 )

              I remember to set a quick LC_ALL=C when I'm doing anything that might have to parse the output of a shell command (typically just on that command, rather than exported). Including the space you need to separate it from the command, it's what, nine characters? (And as a bonus, it forces things like the decimal point convention to known values too.)

              (By the way, "C" is a better setting than any specific language, including English; its entire purpose is to be as portable as possible across computers. I've actu

    • Re:The continuing saga. . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:59AM (#44716671) Homepage

      Despite the vociferous pronouncements from many on here as to how high their salary's are as programmers and that you get what you pay for, it's amazing the amount of bad software, games or otherwise, the end user has to suffer with.

      And you might be amazed at how much of that is the fault of management.

      Between ridiculous timelines, cutting budgets for QA, management who change their minds fairly often, and salespeople who promise the world -- there's often quite a disconnect between what people are saying and what's happening.

      Having spent a lot of years in and around software, I lay more blame on bad PMs, clueless management, and overly optimistic forecasts.

      And the game industry is famous for the continual 'deathmarch' -- the constant scramble to finish it like the deadline is tomorrow, and when you finally get there you start all over again.

      I'm more likely to believe the management at EA is lousy, and the developers can only do so much. Because that matches my direct experience in the industry.

      • Re:The continuing saga. . . (Score:5, Funny)

        by tapspace ( 2368622 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @10:11AM (#44716773)

        The fault of management? How can that be. Software is easy right? I mean, I can use the Excel... kinda. How much harder is it than that.

        If these are our best and brightest programmers shoveling out this software, can we try the worst and dullest to see if they can do better?

        We need more attitudes like this in management if we want to truely succeed as an engineering discipline.

      • Is the constant crunch time simply because everyone else is doing it, and if you want to work in games you don't have a choice in the matter, and besides everyone else is doing it so it must be the best way to go? Or is it more than that?

        • Never worked in the game industry, but, like any public company, it's all driven by the almighty quarterly numbers.

          So I would expect it's more along the lines of "ok, we just delivered, but the stock market will lower our value if we don't release something by this date, and then the executive bonuses will be reduced".

          Other than angry customers and the stock price, I don't think there's an external force saying they need to do it.

          Of course, if you deliver crap you end up with angry customers anyway ... whic

    • It's similar to the financial industry where the mantra "best and brightest" is trotted out to excuse the salaries and bonuses of those who continually reek havoc in the financial markets and suffer no penalty.

      I resent the comparison. The traders have a rock star like, individualistic culture. Software I've worked on has very much been a team with the individuals less in competition and more coming together to share responsibility for making the best product possible. Making quality software that stands up the barrage of unexpected situations (and even more untested situations) is a very difficult task, especially when it has to have a reasonable price tag.

      If these are our best and brightest programmers shoveling out this software, can we try the worst and dullest to see if they can do better?

      Someone's got a career in management ahead of them. I

      • Someone's got a career in management ahead of them. I encourage you to give it a shot!

        I keep making the offer but no one has taken me up on it. Apparently me wanting to accomplish something isn't what people want. To quote Barney Stinson:

        Actually doing things gets you fired.

        So, I will make the offer again. Anyone who has a management position, contact me with the details. If I believe I can do the job, I will tell you so. If I can't do the job, I will tell you so. You give me complete and

    • For projects like these, it's less about the programmers and more about the constraints placed upon them, such as deadlines, the shifting moods of bosses, irrational mandates from EA that probably change every week, etc.. I imagine it's like working with a shitload of primadonna's every day.

    • The reason programmer salaries are high is because of supply and demand. The demand is higher than supply, so we make more money until they come into equilibrium.

      Because the demand is so high, it sucks a lot of low-quality programmers into the mix as an attempt to compensate. Add to it that management is not willing to pay the extra in time and development for high quality software (it's not like bugs get out by magic, those who write quality software do so by testing a lot and that takes time), and you h

  • At last, platform equality. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Galaga88 ( 148206 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:32AM (#44716379)

    Maybe they're afraid that if they gave Mac users a non-broken version of SimCity, people would accuse them of playing favorites.

    Really, this level of "quality" isn't much different from what the Windows users were delivered, so EA is just trying to be fair. "Look, we put just as much effort into our OS X products as Windows. Which just happens to be little to none. Now buy more DLC!"

  • meta-game (Score:5, Funny)

    by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:34AM (#44716409)
    I think there's some sort of secret meta-game here. They planned it all along. The actual "winning the game" is getting it to run at all and "playing" is all the troubleshooting. It's actually more of a realtime strategy puzzle game than a simulation, that was just the cover. That or EA absolutely sucks.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jimmifett ( 2434568 )

      The only winning move is not to play ...er, buy.
      Good old WOPR, shame you got stuck in a crappy sequel.

      • *gasp* you solved it! You win their secret bonus prize of $50 credit in the Steam store*

        *Must uninstall Origin as well.

    • That gives me a brilliant idea for a way to salvage this game. They could include the code and call it SimDev.

      Simulate the experience of being called in to finish a non-working software project that's gone over budget and missed half its requirements. Track down and locate SimBugs!

      Intellisense, er, SimAdvisors will give you tips along the way! How close to zero can you get your fatal compile errors, er, rather, "SimComps"?

      They could even include DLC as DLC. The "SimDLC" DLC will let you experience disabling

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sosume ( 680416 )

        Actually, there is a game like that, Game dev tycoon, which even makes your game studio go broke because of piracy if the actual game is pirated.

    • If a gruff-talking general and a scruffy-looking scientist show up at your door, you might want to ask some hard questions before agreeing to anything.

  • Hey Maxis, outsource much? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:40AM (#44716455) Homepage

    I've got an idea! Maybe if you can get some 3rd world country to train children to code your games 20 hours a day in exchange for only housing and basic sustenance then the development costs will be low enough that you can still afford cover up the huge faceplant that every game's release has become...

  • Linux Port may have no problems (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:44AM (#44716495)

    someone that i know that works at EA (actually she work at Maxis) told me that an Experimental Linux port of the game may have 0 Problems if released, but apparently (according to his boss) they wont release it because they have not yet implemented a "good" DRM scheme for Linux.

    • drm stands for do not buy. get the pirate copy it has less problems.

  • What boggles my mind... (Score:3)

    by ilsaloving ( 1534307 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @09:48AM (#44716533)

    What boggles my mind the most, is that there are so many stupid people who continue to willingly give EA money.

    EA has no incentive to put out software that isn't crap, as long as people are happy to pay for garbage quality.

    And of course, this sends a bad message to other companies as well. "EA is making money hand over fist. We can seriously improve our profits by tossing out our QA department, since users will throw money at us no matter what!"

  • Origin, a crapware that tries to imitate more successful distribution platforms like Steam and fails miserable. Crashes unexpectedly for no apparent reason and kicks you out of your game whether you are online or not. The UI almost doesn't make sense, if you search for DLC it doesn't show everything they have in the catalog unless you click "Available DLC" from in-game.

    Take that pos and port it badly to Mac so we can spread the pain to those users too. :P

    I can understand the reasoning for Origin since EA re

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cinder6 ( 894572 )

      I have a few games on Origin that I picked up for super cheap when they were on sale. I honestly haven't had any trouble with it. That said, I still prefer Steam--I trust Valve more.

  • This has long since been EA's standard operating procedure. What galls me is that so many people continue to put up with it. They do the bare minimum to get out a functioning game then spend what they should have spent on development on licenses and marketing.

    There does appear to a downward trend. EA's games have gone from merely being unpolished crap to showing a total lack of testing. The fact that gamers continue to stick with a company like this just goes to show how unprincipled consumers are. Through

  • You're holding it wrong (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is a Mac afterall.

  • Testing: A wonderful thing.

  • Another Gaming depression looming (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheSkepticalOptimist ( 898384 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @10:26AM (#44716937)

    I think there is another gaming depression looming similar to the great Atari game depression of the early 80's.

    The problem is that companies like EA are so profit hungry that almost everything they do in games today is to drive more profit. Always on ensures no piracy, DLC ensures a constant revenue stream after a game release, Freemium is almost one of the most blatant attempts at gaming cash grabs ever because they know that stupid people will drop hundreds of dollars into a "free" game just to be able to advance to level 2. Nintendo has destroyed everything that was successful about it. Microsoft is pushing forward with a product that is already unpopular and Sony is just Sony.

    This is happening on the PC, Tablets, Phones and Consoles, no platform is immune to the greedy corporations.

    And so you might say what about the Indies, they are going to save gaming! Not if they are trying to push Freemium products like they are doing.

    Eventually consumers are going to get fed up and stop buying games. I have no interest in the next generation systems and have generally stopped playing games even on mobile devices. I mean when Angry Birds started wanting you to buy power up's and Might Eagles to help you through the games then its obvious there is no integrity left in this industry. When I need to invest $40 to upgrade a dinosaur in the last Freemium game I will ever play, something is VERY wrong with the gaming industry.

    What needs to happen is an almost universal collapse of ALL game companies before we might see a new generation of companies that actually respect their customers and not just their customer's money.

    • EA and the big publishers are only destroying big publishers. There are a number of great Indie games out there and coming. This is the result of the big studios abandoning PC gaming for the console market (where the only games they publish for PC are console ports). Steam has made indie publishing viable and in the end it's probably we can only hope that it destroys EA and the other big publishers.

    • Humble Bundle!

    • Hollywood has shown that consumers are more than happy spending money on shitty remakes, crappy ideas, and overblown special effects instead of a good story or acting. The game industry is no different. Just look at the yearly football games, the call of duty annuals, and the absolute lack of RPG's (too much work to do it right) combined with the ever breaking sales records each year when the next is released.

      There is no gaming depression coming. Just the swan song of an industry that's chosen capitalism

  • The Film and TV Industry (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jjohnson ( 62583 ) on Friday August 30, 2013 @10:36AM (#44717065) Homepage

    The games industry continues to be a shitshow of project management incompetence. Unrealistic deadlines, budgets blown, line workers (i.e., devs in their twenties) death marched... it's like after three decades, they still haven't figured out how to actually make what they make.

    What always surprises me is that a very similar model for producing creative content already exists and works really, really well, for the most part. Movies and TV shows deal with comparably large budgets, multiple different yet co-ordinated creative teams, and go through a similar lifecyle of design, execution, post-production, and release. You hear about film productions that go bad largely because it's uncommon for them to do so, and that's virtually always driven by a single figure with excessive influence (e.g., Michael Cimino on Heaven's Gate, Kevin Costner on Waterworld). For the most part, films and TV get made profitably, people get paid, and this is all with a bunch of union labour too. Roles and responsibilities are well-defined; financing models well worked out. They even know how to integrate IP franchises to everyone's benefit.

    Why don't Hollywood producers move over to videogames and explain how it works?

    • Seriously? Movies and TV shows get produced on budget on time??? You could have fooled me...

      http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-29/entertainment/ca-29112_1_films-waterworld-schedule [latimes.com]

      Any artistic endeavor is going to have trouble with schedule and budget, because you are never quite sure where you are going to end up. You can make artistic compromises to bring in dates and lower budget, but the outcome is usually not worth the trouble.

    • Movies aren't under NEARLY the time pressure that video games are.

      A good movie is a good movie. It will ALWAYS be a good movie, and it they'll be able to sell it (on various media) for DECADES after it is released.

      Video games are transient. You have about 18 months before your game is obsolete, and sales basically STOP. Hardly any games continue to sell after more than 2 years on the market.

      All the problems with the game industry stem from this requirement to get shit done FAST. You can't take 2 years to ma

      • > Hardly any games continue to sell after more than 2 years on the market.

        That's why Diablo 2 + LOD sold for 10 years. It is called "polish" and good design + gameplay. (Plus free patches that helped drive end-game content.)

        Almost everyone tends to forget Gabe's quote:
        "You can ship a bad game on time and no one will remember it shipped on time.
        You can ship a good game late and almost no one will remember it was late.        "

        > You can't take 2 years to make a game anymore.
        You can but the ROI is terrible. Ev

    • Hollywood has been failing pretty dam epic as of late, you can see there downfall starting with all the reboots basically riding off big names to pull in profits just like gaming has done but in the gaming world its gotten old after cod 134 modern something.

  • Hmm. Another body, this time Mac Sim City, and no real clues as to who killed it.

    The Fellowship representatives, Elizabeth and Abraham, arrived in town two days ago and headed out to Minoc this morning. Maybe they had something to do with it.

  • The problem is fundamental: server based. Anything that requires a connection to play is a loser game. Connections are not reliable, universally available or fast everywhere. By requiring a connection they instantly limit their audience and turn off those of use that won't accept that shackle. Major problem is that they can just decide to shut down the servers one day and then the game you paid for is dead. Worthless.

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