14 DAY TRIAL // Lucy Bradshaw, the leader of the Maxis studio, says that she understands the strong negative reaction that the player base had to the recently launched SimCity and that it’s fair to attack the game for the problems that the company had with the infrastructure.
She tells CVG that, “We understand that there are some people who reviewing SimCity on its merits as a game, and some are reviewing it on its merits as a service. To that degree, I don’t disagree with the way in which reviews have been handled.”
The developer wants to solve all the problems that SimCity currently has and hopes that fans and reviewers will return to the game and evaluate it purely on gameplay merits.
She also wants to thank all Maxis employees for the work that they have put into the new city builder.
She adds, “I feel like I let them down, this was my responsibility, but I tell them what we all know: SimCity is a wonderful game and that we should all be proud of the effort that went into making it. I’m taking every step possible to bring the game to stability so that the rest of the world can enjoy all of their hard work.”
SimCity is an always-online game, which means that players need to be connected to Maxis servers for some game elements to run and in order to save progress.
When the game launched in North America, the infrastructure was overwhelmed and many were unable to access their game or had cities that simply disappeared after being saved.
The problems were reduced when SimCity also launched in Europe and since then, Maxis has further improved the situation by adding servers.
A modder has recently discovered that at least some part of the game can be played without a link to official servers.