Will Wright Says SimCity Launch Was 'Inexcusable'

from the from-god's-lips dept

While we recently discussed how EA's silence has managed to push the backlash over the SimCity launch debacle into the background, anyone at all familiar with the story realizes what a complete botch it was. The initial backlash was bad enough, but it was made all the worse when company executive after company executive came out of the woodwork to excuse, obscure, and otherwise make misleading comments about the more egregious aspects of the launch failure. The most frustrating of these was the insistence that the online requirement for the game was in no way a form of DRM, it was a simply a matter of vision in core gameplay, and anyone confusing the two doesn't understand the gaming software business.

You know who does know a great deal about that business, however? The creator of the Sim City franchise, and legend, Will Wright. And when asked to comment about the latest iteration of the franchise, which he didn't have a hand in, he spoke quite plainly.

"I feel bad for the team", he says. "I could have predicted - I kind of did predict there'd be a big backlash about the DRM stuff."

Yeah, that's Wright telling EA that they should have seen this coming. He goes on to say that he actually enjoys the game quite a bit, but adds in some fairly harsh words for the anti-customer method of the launch.

"That was basically inexcusable, that you charge somebody $60 for a game and they can't play it. I can understand the outrage. If I was a consumer buying the game and that happened to me, I'd feel the same."

To understand the gravity of a legend like Wright making these comments, it would be as if the leaders of the world went on a world tour telling you how great the entire planet was in every way and how you had only them to thank for it being so mega-awesome, all the while war, murder and famine occurred around you. Then, just as you were getting fed up with the lies and BS, whatever God you might believe in parted the heavens, poked his head through, and said, "Hey, not bad, but you guys kind of f%@#ed the whole thing up."

Filed Under: drm, simcity, will wright
Companies: ea