Ex-Maxis Emeryville employee here with a little bit of dirt for

tell me your secrets

bump, keep going OP

>>603060349
show me wat you got

keep 'm coming op

>>603060349

Fuck EA

>>603060349
yes

keep going OP
also, why not go to /v/ with this?

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Continue...

>>603060349
kewl
it'll be advertised as fuck, and be bought by all the faggots who've been playing xbox the past 5 years and haven't seen the internet, which is already yelling about star citizen.

EA will make only a little. Not enough to warrant a sequel, but not enough for it to be a complete failure.

>>603060709
>>603060489

OK. Well it's worth noting that all the "bugs" and problems with SimCity were actually fixed internally mere months after release. EA clearly had plans we didn't know about at the time and essentially filibustered our updates.

EVERYTHING from the roads, economy, online bugs, multiplayer bugs, agent fixes, megatower fixes, ALL of it was ready to go... submitted... and put on 'hold' by EA. They totally fucked us, and people hate Maxis for it.

In addition, EA is going to be announcing managerial changes in the coming weeks.

>>603061643
well their loss, sim city was the game that told me to never buy any EA game again

>>603061643
>>603060349

EA is also currently working on retooling the Battlefield Franchise. I'm not 100% sure what they have planned, but there were a few artists at Maxis tasked with creating futuristic assets for a future release... It looked a lot like BF2142's style. Specifically they were asking for futuristic weapons and vehicles that "inspire awe" (words from EA). In addition, "mech-like" robotic assets were requested, but only concept art.

Fuck EA! With you OP!

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>>603060349
you magnificent bastard.

OP got fired cause his faggot ass couldn't make a good fucking game.

>>603061966
dubs confirms.
cities skylines ftw

as if OP, at least show us the EA date rape bonus point card WITH TIMESTAMP

bumping for great justice

>>603060349
Nostalgia'd when I saw he maxis logo

>>603060349

There are an endless amount of managerial fuckups I'd love to share as well. The amount of incompetence I saw from EA is staggering. In my 7 years at Maxis I never once met someone from EA that played games, or even knew about Maxis products.

We were treated like dogs with no respect given to the truly incredible creative teams at Maxis. It shows how shortsighted they really are ditching us, and ditching a really incredible team of people.

They even had a nasty habit of calling us "Maxus" in internal memorandum. It really was as if we were one of a million companies they buy and sell like used cars.

>>603063059
Skylines is literally everything sim city was supposed to be. It's glorious.

>>603063059
Down with EA
Up with Paradox

the only reason anybody still cared about maxis was in vain hope that they'd make another simcity game like SC4 but better. then they did, except it was watered-down garbage, and as a result the simcity franchise is dead forever

>large universe

I kekd a litl

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>>603060349
>wats a nondisclosure agreement?
>why do people think I am full of shit?

>>603063812
that translates to 16*16 buildings on two planets if you play with two activated copies of the game + addons + all dlcs (yes, both of you)

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>>603064014

>>603063450

Most of my Maxis friends on Steam are currently playing the shit out of Skylines, myself included. There's no doubt it's a great game, and we'll be the first group of people to tell you.

Like I said, SimCity was fixed, but EA didn't want it to happen. Why? Above my pay grade. If I had to guess they saw the writing on the wall and wrote it off.

Also, we had NOTHING to do with SimCity Build-It... nothing at all. It has NOTHING to do with Maxis or SimCity for that matter.

The Sims team has been rolled into another location, but downsized considerably. Expect more bullshit content for that game that comes from minds other than Maxis- starting with this new expansion pack.

We had very little to do with that expansion pack, and very few of our ideas were actually "approved for sale" by EA internally. Believe it or not, they love easy to make (and easy to sell) assets. The stuff we like to do takes time, something EA isn't willing to provide.

Seriously... fuck EA. It's not just hipster trendy bullshit to say that, they genuinely are the worst thing in the gaming industry right now.

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>>603060349
Keep it comin'

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>>603064192
>the worst thing in the gaming industry right now

>>603063929

I actually didn't have to sign an NDA for the Star Wars project.

However I did for SimCity, but I don't care at this point.

>>603063672

I hate that you say that but I totally get it. The original idea behind SimCity was that smaller cities would lead to shorter games where we could add competition into the mix, but it never happened. If you launch the game there's actually a challenges section.. the goal was to really flesh out Challenges to make them really intense, short games.... but once again EA iron fisted it. Our Challenges idea was pared down to unrecognizable bullshit and thus the game felt a lot smaller than it could have.

Believe me we aren't proud of how SimCity turned out, but please understand it wasn't Maxis that fucked it up.

>>603064192
>>603064192


What is your take on the Online gameplay mode only. It was the decision that fucked the game, because they fucked the launch because of it. Was that an EA decision or an internal Maxis one??

If so that person deserved to lose their job. What a fucking disaster!!

P.s. I FUCKING HATE EA

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>>603064705

>>603063929
People lie.
People break contracts.

I want to believe~

I really loved SimCity. Im dissapointed in City skylines. Its been marketed so well, but it actually misses out on A LOT of key features of a city which SimCity had, such as TIME OF DAY (peak hour traffic, if you knew anything about planning cities you would know this is seriously in the top 3 issues of any metropolis), its missing key industries such as tourism and electronics, any form of trading, SINGLE PLAYER ONLY?
This city skylines game is literally marketing bred CANCER and has overlooked MANY details that should be in a modern day city sim.

Honestly if you are ex maxis and theyre working on a star wars sim city, it better fucking work on release, so we dont get copycat, lower budget games down the line that SEEM better, but actually arent.

>>603064014
>>603064014
>>603064014
>>603064014
>>603064014

>>603060349

Hey OP, im in Emeryville. Let me buy you a beer.

>>603065065
>open
>mods
>regular updates

the bait is real

>>603064988

Believe it my friend, this time OP is doing his best to not be fag.

>>603064891

From the START SimCity was pitched as a multiplayer heavy title, but due to time constraints EA ordered us to launch without it. The whole "online only" thing was EA getting their panties in a wad over license control. They wanted every client to essentially "check in" every X amount of time as a way to curb piracy... but obviously that's a load of shit. We were given ridiculous instruction from that company making the end result completely unrecognizable from our original pitch.

We couldn't say shit, and EA controls absolutely every aspect of public perception of a title... so we couldn't exactly bring it up.

I will be lurking this unique and interesting thread. Thanks op.

So when are you going to tell us about their IT systems and network? Isn't that what /b/ loves?

>and people hate Maxis for it.
I'm pretty sure the whole SimCity fiasco drummed up more hatred for EA than anyone
They're really damn good at shooting themselves in the foot, too bad their sports games make it impossible for them to ever die

>>603065744

Sorry I kinda FUBAR'd that sentence... what I mean to get at is that the game originally was standard fare- offline single player + online multiplayer, but EA had other ideas to "cover their asses."

Fucking retarded.

>>603064807
Oh, no, I'm sure EA was entirely responsible for fucking it up. But it's just really disappointing that it had to happen. I've yet to see anything from a third party that really comes off as a true successor to SimCity. It seems like EA didn't think SimCity could be successful without "mainstream appeal" even though "mainstream" gamers never had much interest in the franchise, so it seems like they were continuously alienating their only audience in search of a more lucrative audience that didn't exist. First with Societies, then with the new SimCity.

>>603065744
i like how they said that the constant connection is due to "heavy calculations" as if their server handles the whole shit. shortly after someone got into the traffic and it was just some statistical data being transfered

>>603063929
>what is anonymity
You gonna tell EA what a bad boy he's been?

>>603065868

What do you want to know? It's not a whole lot different than any other major company in terms of number of IT staff, equipment, NOC size, monitoring tools, etc... It's all industry standard stuff. I'll tell you what I can if you ask something specific.

>>603066231
most of us knew it was BS from the moment it fell from EA's mouth anyway

>>603065665
You are full of shit if you think that this stuff is going to be easy too add. You see how fast day cycles are in this game? Your traffic literally moves once every few days. If you think a few "updates" are going to fix these massive underlying issues, you are from from it.

The fact that you have bought a game to rely on a mod community is also just as bad. You are literally a product of city:skylines marketing. Atleast simcity knew what goes into planning, running, maintaining and profiting off a city. Skylines feels like HURR ZONE THIS AND THIS WOW NOW THERES NOTHING TO DO

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OP, dude, you fucking rock.

>>603066405

Can you log back in take all the code and just release it to modders?

Give it a few weeks and then we get the game sim city should have been, free open source anyone can do anything, if the source-code gets out. Just dump it somewhere

No spore?

I hope you're behind at least seven proxies. EA doesn't play about leaks.

>>603063929
>implying anon isn't anon

>>603066231

There is some partial truth in this, sorta. Understand that the Glassbox engine mandates that each asset be treated as an individual "agent." Each car, each building, each residential zone, all of it is independent from the simulation as a whole. Most of these calculations are done locally on your PC, however any even that incorporates multiple regions is calculated "on the server" so to speak.

So, yes, at one point that was true. However we had the agent streamlined by about 5-6 months after release- fixes that were negged by EA.

>>603066405

Names of AD domains
Preferred Server Vendor (HP/Dell/Cisco/IBM/etc)
Preferred Storage Vendor (EMC/3Par/etc)
Preferred Network Vendor (Nokia/Cisco/etC)
Details of VPN solution (Nortel/Cisco/Nokia/MS/etc)
PKI Infrastructure (public and private)

Details of DMZ infrastructure as well - number of tiers, firewall make/models, etc

>>603066594
>implying I've bought the game
it's not even been a week since release, why would I have bought it yet?

i was only pointing out how much more promise it shows. and that it has gone further towards being the successor to SC4 than SimCity has managed in two years after its own release.

>>603066405
How come it seems impossible to (mod or otherwise) have a sim directly murder another sim
Why can't we have serial killers

>>603066594
>The fact that you have bought a game to rely on a mod community is also just as bad.
GMod

>>603067195

I'll do my best... We used EMC storage, mostly Cisco/Brocade networking equipment, firewalls were usually Palo Altos, OpenVPN to connect to the office, servers were a mix of custom built from SuperMicro and the older stuff was dell.

That's about as specific as I recall... I'm tech savvy sorta but that wasn't my department.

>>603067519
There was a mod in the Sim's 4 to have a Barrett .50 cal. Insta-death, it worked like a camera.

>>603066750
>>603066750

Understand that SimCity was NOT designed for compatibility with custom content or mods, at all. There is no mod tools pack, or an SDK for people to use.

Which leads me to another thing... that whole announcement of "mod support".

We absolutely wanted to design it, from scratch, to be easily moddable. EA of course disagrees, and thus we worked on the assumption that it would never happen. After initial feedback after release it was clear that people wanted mods, so we proposed making some easy to use development tools.

EA once again disgreed, but decided to throw us a patronizing as fuck bone instead in the form of announcing "mod support."

More bullshit man, that's what it comes down to.

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omg you guise r so stupid for beleiebing this 9gag 4 lyfe

>>603060349
is EA making only sequels?
boring shit games they have

Hi OP

Care to post some kind of picture to proof you worked in Maxis? You must have something

>>603060349
c'mon don't let this shit die.
Tell us more about EA fucking up OP!

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>>603060349
Bump with tiddies

battlefield 2143 info? gimme gimme

>>603060349
PLEASE TELL ME THE SIMS WILL LIVE ON

>>603060349
Can someone bring this to the attention of EA's competitors (Tweeter or something gayse)...

>toprol 4 lolkek incumming ahhhhhhh
>AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

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>>603060349
Lurking, keep going OP

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>>603060349
Basically what you're telling me is that they sabotaged your game, so your company would go bankrupt, stole your content and imported it to another studio, because they assumed the rights of your company by driving it into bankruptcy?

They declared your company a loss tax wise, and moved your content to another company that will then become profitable soon. A company that no Maxis employee will be a part of, and perhaps the only similar investor is E.A.

They are doing this so Disney and E.A. can make money at the expense of Maxis going Bankrupt so E.A. can perform a hostile acquisition without anyone finding out?

Do you know if they plan on releasing info about this game at the next E3

Pic related?

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Bumpin for Op.

>>603069400
>AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YEA
@lilfag

I don't believe but, keep going.

>>603069400
you're freaky

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>>603069537
Down with EA

>>603069400
DUBS

WE MUST OBEY

>>603060349
>SimCity style game set in the Star Wars
>Star Citizen-esque IP

whatever it is they are making i dont give a shit
all they sell unfinished broken pieces of shit

>>603064705
She's not in the gaming industry. They're called "Indie" because they are separate groups.

>>603060349
Why was there never a more modern version of SimAnt, or fuckin' RoboSport? Those games were the shiznit.

>>603070505
expensive unfinished broken pieces of shit

>>603070804
EA didn't want to take the risk obviously. The original Sim-ant wasn't a blockbuster like Simcity.

OP already said they shot down all of Maxis' ideas.

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>>603070804
SimAnt
>dem nostalgia

OP, do you have any insight on the simulation engine behind sim city?

>>603071506
I miss SimEarth and El Fish

>>603071188
Yeah. I was just hoping it was at least pitched.

Also, imagine RoboSport with modern graphics and AI. That game would be full of win.

>>603071506
I know, man! So old, but I still dust it off now and then.

>>603060349
Anything on a new Dead space?

>>603069400
The most under-rated post in this entire thread.

Let's start a shitstorm and get OP busted, faggits.

>>603072123
Anything we can do to really piss off EA?

>>603060349
Anything you can shed on the production of The Sims 4? I'd love to know how much EA meddled and were responsible for its current state. Also, anything about its future would be interesting also. The new EP looks incredibly lacking in content, was this EA?

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>>603060349
can you respond to
>>603069537

And also, can you tell me more stories about shitty management, I collect the stories I hear about incompetent management in multi billion dollar companies I work in, or I meet employees from. I once found out an employer of mine bought an entire kilo of coke to sell, into the work place, and all the managers and staff who were his friends finished it before he could sell any.

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Its ok OP.

This is the Maxis we'll remember and love.

pic obviously related is obvious

Why did you guys fuck spore so hard. I thinks you deserve it.

>>603072261
Not OP but Sims 4 started development in the US and finished 3-4 years later in the Czech Republic.

>>603060349
Future predictions.

>hugely hyped
Check.
>widely advertised
Check.
>released unfinished
Check.
>day 1 DLC that is in fact a huge story changer
Check.
>forgotten a month after release till the next game they make
Check.

Ever since the Mass Effect series I've never bought another EA game. Putting such an important character as DLC, for that price too, then bringing out and unfinished game, also with the endings wtf was that. Bioware would probably have been better in the hands of Microsoft.

I don't care how hyped one of their games is, or how much it looks like an awesome game. I'll never buy an EA game, or by one of their divisions ever again. Time after time after time, they do the same thing, and people still fall for it.

>>603060349
Were you the one posting on /v/ a week ago or something?

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>>603073132
>>603071506

Did EA get OP?

EA sent in the assassins after they backtraced OP

RIP OP

porntipsguzzardo

>>603074712
Was it DICE? They really know how to kill things

>>603074890
like the battlefield series

>>603075005
Mainly Battlefield 4, but thank god for DICE LA

>>603074809
>>603074366
>>603074712

Sorry guys still working, but I swear I'll answer all your questions in the next few minutes.

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>>603075005

>>603075423
We shall endeavor to keep the thread alive. If not, make a new one with the Maxis logo again.

>>603072221
Nobody wants to hurtOP, they're all NEWFAGS

bump fgts

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>>603072221
Scum of the Earth.

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For glory! And fuck you guys wanting to mess with Op, at least he delivered.

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>>603073132
B me, 4th grade, 1995.
>Teacher shows us new game on the classroom computer.
>Its SC2000.
>I immediately realize that this is the coolest fuckimg game ever.
>Take.home Scholastic order form, literally beg parents for thos game.
>Meanwhile teacher sees me so interested in this game that he lets me stay inside for recess and play it.
>Dad finally breaks down and shells out close to $50 for thos masterpiece. play it nonstop for years.
>Never played or cared about any other SimCity game.
>Literally played it until 2009, bought a 64bit PC and the game would no longer work.

>Id wake up at night as a kid and read the fucking manual I was so obsessed with it.

>Build huge cities, turn disasters off and leave speed on "african sparrow (or was it swallow?) " for days.
> Come back to game, it be year 9124432 and ive literally got trillions of dollars.

Mfw nostalgia is killing me

bump you faggits

ass

titty bumbs

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OP idnt combing bach id hee

>>603078810
that is truly awful.

>>603078827
If he doesn't he is no better than EA

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OP is kill.

>>603078827
Fucking kek. touche anon touche

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>>603078827
maybe he's slippin'

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>>603060349

what were the effects of the community's hatred for the new sim city?

will i ever get a true sim city on the scale of simcity 4?

>>603077238
im sure you can figure out how to get it working some way

>>603063365
it's a shame. maxis deserves so much more

>>603060349
How's the combat fit in?

>>603064705
Actually
>The biggest sexuall troll bait of all time and every single one of us took it, thus creating gamergates popularity

>>603073132
I loved SimCity. Was one of the best games ever. I played the shit outta 3K Unlimited.

I also remember using 2K when I still had a Windows 95.

Damn, now that's some nostalgia.

Sadly, though, I was never able to get SC4 to really work, because by that time, I only had working laptops, and they don't have graphics cards, only integrated.

>>603060349
OP, what specifically did you do at Maxis?
I'm an artist based in Oakland, California (Emeryville is walking distance away) who'd likely be able to get you another job, if you're up to the task.

>>603077238
I salute you, friend. That... is inspiring.

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>>603080359

>>603069400
Im not OP and i literally can recreate his tone/diction... if i wanted to be an ex-member of activision id have you all believing it, as much as you unintelligent angsty autists think your "so rebel its cool xDD" you still fail to actually think before you act...

>>603079980
i always hated that little faggot

>>603080334
sc4 is on steam now

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>>603081073
>your

>>603064807

what you type there about challenges and a competitive aspect to sim city, if indeed that was your (maxis's) idea, shows how disconnected you are from the fan base of that game. people play sim city 4 to create massive sprawling cities, typcally cheating for cash while at it.

1 simple pole to the community would have told u anything competitive was a dumb choice.

>>603081287
>implying i was paying attention

>>603081456
Then you must have low self-standards.

>>603081456
>implying your post made any sense.

>>603077238
The installer doesn't run but the actual game does. Once you have the extracted/installed files (install it on a 32bit system and copy them across, or just download it), you only need to run a quick registry fix and it works great.

I don't have exact instructions cause it was a while ago, but I've definitely played it on x64 Win7. If you download it, be sure to get the Windows special edition, there are tons of downloads containing the inferior DOS version.

>>603077238
you can get it working man,its not the 64x computer,its the multiple processors,go to task manager -> processes,find the simcity proccess and set affinity->core 0
and it will work great! thats what i did
windows 7 x64
amd fx 8350 8 core processor

>>603081641
>Defends working for Activision (which probably isn't even true)

Yes, very low standards.

>>603064807
proof and timestamp

maybe a business card or something?

>>603081803
Oooo, that's interesting!

I should try that for some of my other games.
(Not the guy you replied to, though)

>>603060349

OP is a gigantic faggot and is only regurgitating shit that is publicly available from all the game dev rumor mills on the internet, while mixing in some very vague "things to come" which paint with such a wide fucking brush that the chances of them being right are good so he can look like he was actually giving inside info when in reality he was and still is a gigantic fucking faggot.

>>603081909
>not reading the entire post
oh look, someone with lower self standards than me