"To be completely honest here, there are times where you just have to sunset a game and there are fans still playing that game." Nick Earl But once it comes time to pull the plug, the full weight of that progress, and how little they have to show for it, becomes clear for the spurned users. As long as the game is online, that investment is a boon to operators, giving players continued reason to stay engaged with the title instead of leaving the game as an unfinished project. ![]() After all, they've been playing games built from the ground up on long-term progress, games where players' progress is throttled by design, where half the joy comes from taking a step back and surveying what their months and years of dedication have built. It's a mix of intense rage and pronounced sorrow, extreme emotions that show these people care deeply about the game they've been playing. Or the petition to keep it running, which has already drawn 2,700 signatures. Sometimes you just can't win.įor evidence of that, just take a look at a few of the 92 pages and 1,400 posts on the Pet Society forum thread announcing that game's closure after five years. Now the decision to make SimCity Social always-offline is getting blowback. First EA caught flack for an always-online SimCity. And when you yank the carpet out from underneath these devoted players, you inevitably create ill will. They have the most reason to continue playing, the most to lose by walking away from the game. Some refer to them as whales, but we'll opt for the slightly less dehumanizing term "hardcore players." Anyway, these hardcore social players are invested in the game's success in the most literal way possible. Like any free-to-play title, Playfish's efforts relied on a minority of users to purchase in-game resources and compensate for the overwhelming abundance of players who never paid a dime. The latest evidence of that happened just this weekend, as Electronic Arts revealed plans to shut down all of its Playfish division's Facebook games, including SimCity Social, The Sims Social, and Pet Society. But going beyond cute semantics, there are some deeper tensions inherent to the genre, ones that have become increasingly clear as the bad news surrounding the sector piles up. ![]() And in most cases, they aren't especially social, unless your definition of socializing is pestering your friends for resources and then inviting them over to show off all the stuff you've bought or made with those resources. Whether you're paying with money, marketing bombardment, or time, they aren't free. Free-to-play social games are an interesting oxymoron.
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