Don Hopkins on TSO’s failure: Maxis Lost Will’s Vision
by Alphaville Herald on 08/02/04 at 11:43 pm
In a recent blog entry, Don Hopkins, formerly of the original Sims development team, comments on how the lack of custom content in TSO not only is responsible for the failure of TSO, but is also at odds with Will Wright’s creative vision for the sims franchise. He writes:
“Will Wright’s original vision was enabling creative storytelling, by allowing players to add their own characters and objects to the game, and encouraging developers to program new objects and create tools like Transmogrifier and RugOMatic. Before The Sims was even released, Luc Barthelet sewed the seeds of its success by providing fans with content and tools like SimShow, so they could start making web sites and character skins. By the time it was released, you could already download a wide range of skins from many different web sites!
… Will Wright credits all the creative players as the primary reason The Sims has become the #1 selling game of all time.
I believe the starkly contrasting failure of The Sims Online has a lot to do with the fact that it doesn’t support player created content like the original Sims. One of the fundamental reasons that original Sims players have been disappointed with The Sims Online, is that Maxis never executed on the original plan to let online players upload and exchange their own skins and objects.”
trailblazer
Feb 9th, 2004
I believe another big mistake with TSO not only leaving out custom content was they released it without many of the objects from the expansion packs, how many people were disappointed when on playing TSO you discovered it had less objects than the non-monthly paid offline version.
TSO also should have gotten its own identity by providing content the offline version didn’t have, I am not talking pizza machines etc, I am referring to letting you customize your sim, maybe giving it a 3D engine, movement in the sim towns via just walking your neighborhood instead of transporting, TSO comes across as an inferior port of the offline version for online play.
Also the lack of new content and the very slow pace of getting any new content, the cut back on servers which has caused overcrowding and not allowing you to get into your city of choice, it’s almost as if EA has said, “Oh well TSO isn’t as successful as we thought cut the funding”.
I think TSO was a rushed product, if they would have waited and designed it on the Sims 2 engine it would have been a lot more successful, as it stands now the offline version seems to be a superior product, and will be vastly superior once Sims 2 hits the shelves.
RB
Feb 9th, 2004
There you have it folks. A former actual sims developer thinks TSO is doing poorly. What does this tell you when even past employees or developers say this?
The EA juggernaught swallowed maxis, And also the TSO dream apparently.
What is will wrights role in maxis now? is this genius creator merely a puppet of the large corporate bigwigs now?
Did the greed of a few sell out maxis and also stop what should have been another major score for maxis?
Disturbing sad thoughts indeed.
- RB
TSKELLI
Feb 9th, 2004
If you take a gander at EA’s annual report for last year, they are pretty clear that (1) they were really disappointed in the *initial* subscriber figures for TSO and (2) they, as a result of this, “consolidated” the formerly independent online division into the normal gaming division (meaning they fired a bunch of people and cut back on the development and support team).
I think that Maxis grossly overestimated the number of players that TSO would attract and retain. I agree that the failings mentioned above contributed to this, but it also seems to me that EA seems to have thought that since they had sold millions of units of the offline game, that it would be easy to attract a significant number of these buyers to the online game, and this is where an error seems to have been made. For while the game with the enhancements noted above would have ben more attractive, I think that nevertheless it is extremely challenging to take a successful offline game and convert it to an online platform and attract the same customers.
Most of the online gamers I know from TSO and other online games are just that … online gamers. They are a different segment of the gaming market than offline gamers are … there is some overlap, but nothing close to 100%. So many of the offline Sims players would not really take much interest in an online game, in any case. That was miscalculation one.
Miscalculation two may have been that TSO would attract people from other online games. That seems to have been partially true, but TSO wasn’t realy designed to appeal to the typical online gamer, either. Most of the succesful online games are RPGs, and while TSO has some RPG elements it isn’t really an RPG and it doesn’t play like one. So while TSO has been able to attract some of these players and retain them, there are hosts of other online gamers who are still playing things like Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies who are not interested in a platform like TSO.
So, I think that the commercial failure of TSO is due, at least in part, to a significant miscalculation on EA’s part as to how wasy it would be to take the great success of The Sims and translate it into an online game. The game could have been better with more player content, but I wonder if that would have substantially increased the number of players? It seems that the main attrraction of the game for long-time players are the people who are playing it, and it seems to me that you either want that in a game or you don’t … and that there seem to be relatively few players of the original offline Sims who really want that as the focal point of their game.
Kelli
Maria LaVeuax
Feb 9th, 2004
In the early days, on the pre-stratics boards, i used to councel Patience.
Comparisons with other on line games were all well and good, but they had the advantage of already having been on the market for a signifigant amount of time where TSO had only just opened.
More content was promised, and it came roughly on the times it ws promised for, BUT, I agree it was not coming fast enough.
Also, the Open ended method of play was, to me , Inrtegueing but for traditional on line gamers who are far more Goal oriented, the game seemed directionless. they got bored and frustrated after discovering there was no Princess to rescue.
To this i usually responded that here,, you interacted with People, and if you wanted a goal to acheive, YOU had do invent it.
I saw Potential in TSO, so i told people to be patient, and wait for that potential to Blossom.
One Year on, and Maxis seems to, itself, lost sight of the games potential. The Off line Version has had three major update packs developed for it in the last year, wherease TSO hasn’t received enough update material do equal even one of those suppliments. The Disparity is OBVIOUS. The Tools we have for Our Society building are Adequate, BUT, there needs to be more Variety. More Clothing, More Building elements. More Objects,(Both static and interactive.) MORE! (As for Custom content,, it works offline, but what is the point of designing for yourself the Flashiest suit of clothing or the greatest custom designer home if Only you can see it? Custom content would work ONLY if you could instantly upload whatever you created to all the otherplayers and houses in TSO. I think you can see the problems with executing that sort of program.) TSO players are, i think, feeling left out, forgotten, or worst of all cheated, as developement of the Offline game skyrockets, and we are left with crumbs. Now,, at this late stage of the game, it may be too late to reinject the potential it once had.
I love this game, Because i love the people i am interacting with. I will keep playing and hoping for the best, but i think now, for all my patience with Maxis, All i am doing now is Patiently waiting for the end.
Maria.
TSKELLI
Feb 9th, 2004
I think it has a lot to do with the product cycle for online games. From the business perspective, most of the software sales for any type of game happen in the first 2-3 months of launch, and much of that even in the first month. For an online game, the trick is trying to keep these buyers playing beyond the first, typically free, month, and hopefully for several months at least. I think that the gaming companies like EA know, however, that only a certain percentage of those who buy the software will materialize into players who play for several months, and so when the initial number of purchasers turns out to be relatively modest — as it was with TSO (at leastr in comparison to other online games) — red flags go up with the suits who are responsible for the financial viability of the product.
It’s telling how quickly EA admitted that TSO was disappointing … almost 2-3 months in, at the end of EA’s 2002-2003 Fiscal Year … they knew already that because they had sold relatively few units in the first few months that the total number of subscribers was going to be lower than they had planned and forecast, because the number of incremental software sales and new subscriptions, 5,6, 7 months after launch is an ever diminshing figure. So EA decided to cut its losses in a way that saved face, which was particularly important given the importance of the “Sims” brand to EA. And the way they did that was to really starve TSO of staff, development budget and so forth in favor of the more commercially succesful offline Sims game, and the ongoing development of TS2. There may have been — I would be willing to wager there were — voices inside EA who at least pondered the idea of discontinuing the game (it likely doesn’t make much if any money for EA after taking into account the upfront development costs), but this idea was likely dismissed because EA did not want to take a hit with respect to the brand name “The Sims”, which is one of the strongest brand names in computer game history, and certainly a key element in EA’s business strategy.
Another element is expectations. It appears that EA had budgeted and forecast a much more robus return on investment for this game than it got, and part of that has to do with EA itself, and how pampered it is given its many successful software titles (The Sims and expansions, SimCity, the sports products, just to name a few) that its own internal expected return on investment is high. When you have the capability of producing the kind of return on investment thaht the offline Sims line has, or the sports games, it’s hard to get excited from the business perspective about a product that is only marginally profitable, or perhaps a loss-maker. Other folks may have been happy with the subscriber numbers that TSO had, and has, realizing that not every online game has to be Everquest in order to be a success. But when you are EA, you are the 100-ton gorilla, in a sense, and you expect to swing for the seats with your software titles … the expectations are higher, and these were factored into the forecast, and when it became clear that this forecast would not be achieved, EA took swift action to stem its losses.
My own guess is that TSO will remain online for some time — EA won’t kill it as long as there is a relatively stable, consistent monthly subscriber base, given the importance of the brand, and perhaps some thought that killing the game would alienate some or many of these who may be potential buyers of TS2. As for what happens after TS2, well that is anyone’s guess … if EA continues to devote little or no development time and modest support levels for the game, perhaps EA keeps it alive at even after TS2 at a modest loss due to the importance of the brand.
Kelli
m. tovar
Feb 9th, 2004
TSO reminds me a little bit of the spongebob cartoon where spongebob and patrick play in an empty box. all kinds of things happen in the empty box that are really only happening within the minds of spongebob and patrick. squidward, who is standing outside the box throughout the game, is anxious to understand the source of the excitement within the box, but never really gets it.
people playing TSO are inside the box. they set up a community and create relationships within that community. EA does not appear experience the TSO community as a community of persons. EA appears to experience the TSO community as a product: it stands outside the community and tries to exert control over a product that is, in reality, an event that appears to be essentially outside the realm of control because of the large number of possible variables (80,000 potential players who are persons, rather than collections of line commands, is a lot of variables).
because players experience TSO as a community of persons as opposed to a product, there appears to be an assumption of the part of the players that ordinary human rights experienced in RL will be extended to sims, such as the right to freely express themselves, the right to freely assemble, etc. EA, on the other hand, experiences TSO as a product. products & product parts do not ordinarily have human rights extended to them by mgmt.
i say this because i think this is where EA appears to have made an error: the TSO product invoked the element of human relationship, but apparently EA either discounted the power of human connectivity or didn’t do its homework in the human factors area. that people would scream when EA stomped on human rights to free expression and free assembly could have been predicted.
that speaks to a larger failure re handling of TSO by EA.
Dyerbrook
Feb 9th, 2004
I could only say “amen” to this story. And the word on the AV streets is that Will Wright was taken off TSO months ago, and is working on Sims2 and other projects. It seems ditto for Chris Trottier, the other prominent TSO developer. You have to wonder…
It would be nice if they allowed custom items, even just the tiles and the wallpapers and skins, but I could even do without that, in terms of telling a narrative, if they would make entertainment lots truly be places where you didn’t have to green, or at least so often, and if they fixed the problem of blinking and annoying balloons that make it hard to read the player’ captions especially if more than 2 people are talking on a lot.
Cocoanut
Feb 9th, 2004
There is the chat log. Lots of people are unaware of this, due to the fact that there is nothing anywhere that tells you about it. Just press control-h and a box comes up with the chat in it. You can make the box smaller or larger by pulling on its sides, and you can move it around the screen. We couldn’t do games at the Game Show Channel without it.
“TSO players are, i think, feeling left out, forgotten, or worst of all cheated, as developement of the Offline game skyrockets, and we are left with crumbs.”
You said that exactly right, Maria. I personally feel the suits absolutely doomed the game themselves, starting around December of 2002. That was a point when – had I been running the show – I would have thrown all kinds of money at advertising the game and putting new things in it. I really expected them to do that. They didn’t.
Instead, they seem to have always been continually stingy with it, at that and at other points where an infusion of funds would have done a world of good. So maybe they arrived at the decision, in their suit-like wisdom, that the game was not performing well enough to give it enough funds even as long ago as directly after its release and the Christmas rush.
Maybe they were spoiled, in a 100-ton gorilla way, and expected a huge rush to a game that had already received bad press from being released too early. And when they didn’t get it, they just turned away like spoiled brats.
The new content and updates were slow – WAY slow – in coming. Later on, we got a bunch of new stuff (albeit little of we had asked for or expected from the original game design) for New and Improved, and everyone said, “Ok, great, now advertise the heck out of it!” Of course, they did the opposite and didn’t advertise it at all.
If they had worked a little harder and put in more money and stuck with the game and given things to the game, I think it would have had far more subscribers than it does now. Instead, they look like they gave up on it way too early.
It’s that sort of half-way effort this whole time that has kept subscription rates low. I mean, if you are going to do something, why not do it right? I know from my own activities in life that yes, you can do just a little, but that will not be a hit. Given a good idea, if you pull out the stops, do the work, and spend the money, you will have a guaranteed hit. If you are stingy with it or your effort it, at best you will just strangle it slowly, even if you have an audience eager to enjoy it.
Even worse, I feel EA’s corporate attitude has always clearly been that the subscribers are a nuisance, that they (EA) always know best, and that they are above communicating with their subscribers. This attitude – an unwillingness to give even the appearance of caring about the subscribers – along with their cutting of funds to the game way too early means I don’t have much hope for much improvement either.
But – we will see. And I know, too, that Sims Online is just the beginning of what is possible in virtual environments, and in the next twenty or fifty years we will be able to do amazing things in virtual homes, on virtual streets, and in virtual neighborhoods. Somebody will come along and do this right, even if EA drops the ball. The beauty and the humor of the Sims and their environment, however, may never be equaled again.
coco
Dyerbrook
Feb 9th, 2004
Coco, of course I know about chat logs, and ctr-h, duh, that’s the kind of thing everyone learns after 30 days or earlier. But I don’t like it as as an option. The log covers up the action and the Sims underneath, you can’t see them. You can move it around, but it’s in the way. And I actually like the idea of running around and having captions come out of our mouths like living cartoons. It’s just that I wish they’d figure out how to make them milder, less blinking, less annoying especially with so many people on the lot. The chat log removes the blinking, but it looks just like what it is, a chat log, and then I feel merely that I’m inside Yahoo Messenger, and not a virtual world, making a story…
I wonder if anyone can comment on just what prohibited Maxis from allowing in custom content. They had elaborate plans for it, there were even some advanced players who were preparing lots to sell the customized wallpaper from some kind of machines/devices. I was told by some of these savvy players who claimed to have insider knowledge of Maxis (who knows) that Maxis was afraid that the customized items would introduce exploits, that people would immediately use T-MOG or a version of it to make $0 versions of the pianos or the Egyptian sculptures or whatever the highest-end items were, and that would mean corruption would enter the game. Well, I hardly think *that* should have been a concern of makers whose game is already flooded with map bots, third-party cheats, ebay simoleons, pet frenzy, etc. etc. Maybe $0 ugly Maxis statues would appear, but they’d be accompanied by interesting original custom items made by players who would have their custom articles cost more and introduce that kind of motivation to earn money in the game that we’re all supposed to have. I don’t get the real technical or philosophical arguments against the custom content, but I was always told that they existed.
trailblazer
Feb 9th, 2004
[quote]I wonder if anyone can comment on just what prohibited Maxis from allowing in custom content.[/quote]
I am guessing they dropped it due to the budget cuts, more than likely they also moved some of their programmers over to Sims 2, everyone asked about it on the stratics board and have not recieved an answer, it’s not listed on the upcoming content either, if they do finally say it was dropped it will probably be for “technical reasons” same with blackjack and video poker, and they will refuse to elaborate what “technical reasons”.
If Blackjack and Video Poker is too daunting for their programmers, custom content will probably seem like trying to build a cold fusion device.
BigRed
Feb 10th, 2004
Most of the delaying of new objects to the game (and custom content) were because of budget cuts. Why? Because there are no new and exciting things in TSO to keep most ppl in the game so they lost buisness. If they would just put the new things in when they were schedualed, even if they loose money they would have profited and made up the money they lost. So, in other words: Maxis and EA Damned themselves.
Maria LaVeaux
Feb 11th, 2004
Ea won’t put more money and manpower into adding more features to the game until the subscribership is signifigantly larger.
But.
The Consumers won’t buy into (Or return to) the game until EA adds more content.
But.
Ea won’t put more money and manpower into adding more features to the game until the subscribership is signifigantly larger.
But.
The Consumers won’t buy into (Or return to) the game until EA adds more content.
But.
Ea won’t put more money and manpower into adding more features to the game until the subscribership is signifigantly larger.
But.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
Catch 22.
Koiyashi Maru.
No Win Situation.
And the Inevitable end result, No More TSO.
UNLESS, Someone in EA eventually thinks outside the corporate box, and Puts TSO Developement back on track.
Maria.
TSKELLI
Feb 11th, 2004
i agree that it seems to be a ase of self-defeating thinking involved here. i think that the “book” on online games is that if you don’t have an initial goodly number of subscribers a few months in, you will never recover no matter what you do, and that any gains in subscribers subsequently will be incremental in nature. that’s the “book”, and it seems like EA is playing it “by the book”. one can rightly wonder, however, whether thinking beyond the book may have been able to boost subscriber numbers … at least in the sense of retaining something closer to the 80k number that is bandied about or reattracting some of these … in monyths 3,4,5,6 after launch. we’ll probably never know, but it is an interesting question.
kelli
AMZ
Mar 12th, 2004
Not to go against any of the comments posted here on the site, but I don’t know if any of you actually play the game. First of all, it requires a commitment. Ive been playing TSO for about a year and as couple months now, and Ive not only made frieds, but have found something to do in my spare time. The game runs on a Client that gets updates from EA every time you play, and since I started playing there has been over 100 to 300 objects added to the game. I feel that TSO has a surprising amount of people, and was recently improved. This game isn’t like the offline. First of all, you are interacting with real people. Ive played and collected every expansion pack for TS and ive gotten bored, because theres nobody to talk to. I think you should carefuklly reconsider your thoughts about this game.
Urizenus
Mar 13th, 2004
I think the real concern here is not with the number of objects (only a handful of new objects have been added since Sept. by the way) but the fact that users are unable to introduce custom content like they can with offline sims. It’s not a question of number, but of control, and it speaks to our ability to engage in creative activity. I agree that being able to interract with others is a plus, but of course you can do that in There, Second Life, and every other MMPORG in the world, not to mention chatrooms. The other MMORGS also allow users the freedom to create their own skins and objects, and according to D. Hopkins it would be easy for tso to do the same. Well, why won’t they?