[DeepT]

I have a confession to make. Because I really didn't want to fork out another 50 bucks for another game I didn't think I would get much play-time out of, I warez it. My intent was that if I really liked the game, I would actually buy it.

I played it for about 6 hours, maybe a few more, its hard to tell how much actual game time got because of several crashes. Anyway, it was clear I really didn't like the game. Well that isn't quite right to say I didn't like the "game" because it is, in no way, a game. I am not sure Id call it a 'toy' either, because even toys seem to offer some kind of challenge, be it Lego's allowing you to make something really cool, or a puzzle to solve or whatever.

I am not sure what SimCity Societies is, or what it is supposed to be. The one thing it isn't, is fun, at least to me. I really tried to find fun in it. Even trying for the unlocks didn't matter because the unlocks were not interesting. I had more money then I knew what to do with despite my city being spiritually based (and avoiding all the religious structures which left nearly no spiritual buildings to place) and somewhat knowledge based.

I think everyone was ecstatic and just with the speed cranked up, I was making money faster then I could spend it. Sure I could have turned the difficulty up, which maybe would have given me some happy people or content people instead of ecstatic ones, but even then since I had so much money I would have just thrown down 50 'venues' to make them ecstatic again.

There is no 'game' in that game. I can't understand how anyone who made it would genuinely play it and see it as a fun game. I can understand things not being to one's taste. I may have zero interest in Madden 07, but I could at least see that people who liked football games might like it. It just boggles me to see a high profile game (not as high as Bioshock and whatnot, but within the genera of City Builders) being made so 'empty' and that nobody noticed.

When I worked at a game company, people would delude themselves telling each other how awesome the game we were working on was. The excuse I had was that nobody had actually made a good game before, it was a small potatoes company thinking they actually had talent. It was a bunch of people stroking each other's egos, while some of us were doing all we could to contain our bile and contempt. Tilted Mill has made good games, they comprise of people from the company that made Cesar III, Pharaoh, Zeus, etc... Even CotN which was not to my tastes, was still a solid city builder. It wasn't for me, but I could see how people would like it. Yet, how did Sim City societies happen? With all that experience and talent, what went wrong? How could the vapid game-play of SCS go completely unnoticed? Whomever the single person was, or perhaps the very small group of people that was the 'vision' (assuming it was mostly realized) behind SCS needs to get out of the game business. He/She/They have no talent in this area. Zero, zip, nada. Their calling in life is somewhere else. Not here.

Yes, I know. I am a pompous ass. Who am I to question any of this? If you have been around the forums for a while, you should know I am some kind of opinionated lunatic according to the 'group think' of QT3. You should also know that I am a gamer. I am a gamer that has been around for a long time, before games even had 'pixels' and were just text. I have played a metric fuck-ton of games, and AFAIK every city builder ever made. I am sure I must have missed some, but I sure as hell do not know of any.

I am the guy you are tying to sell your game too. I am your customer. I am the choice demographic, the 'single white male' with a lot of discretionary income and plenty of time to waste. That is why you should care what I say, because I am the one who can, if I choose to, buy your game without a second thought.

In any case, despite having 'warezed' SCS, I have decided that not only will I not buy it at ANY price (even for $5 in the bargain bin), that this game isn't even worth the disk space to have it installed. Seriously, I got like 260 gigs of FREE space and the 2gigs (or whatever) this game takes on my HDD is better reclaimed, then to even be left with SCS installed. The game has been completely purged from my system, even the ISO and torrent have been nuked. I am so glad I didn't spend $50+ on this game. I have so many games I have bought that were not worth the asking price. Right next to my computer I have a stack of games that probably cost $400, and the oldest game in that stack is only a few months old. At least all of them offered some value to me even though I didn't think they were worth the asking price.

I need to do this more often, or perhaps, as a rule. Try before you buy. Id definitely not spend nearly as much on games as I currently do, and I have no doubt that if I really did like a game, I would spend the money for it.

Despite my opinion that this game will tank (didn't I already say that in this thread, or was that in another thread about another game?), I hope that the idea behind SCS survives and that EA / TM re-think the game and end up spending most of their time putting in game-play for the sequel or whatever the next 'city' game is. You could totally keep the everything you have in SCS and add nothing but game-play for the next year without any more graphics / sound and still end up with a very good game. It wouldn't hurt to add more content, it just wouldn't help at this point. Adding 10,000 new buildings would do absolutely nothing to increase the appeal or 'fun factor' of this game.

If you feel compelled to add new buildings, I have a request. Add a whole bunch of spiritual buildings that have NOTHING to do with religion. I can see how you would confuse the two, but spirituality really has nothing to do with religion. If you pardon the snark, religious buildings really belong to the authoritarian set, not the spiritual one. You know, OBEY OBEY OBEY (Obey God, Obey the supreme leader, Obey Big Brother, etc...) fits very well in the authoritarian state.