Mike Sellers: EA didn’t Anticipate TSO Problems with Griefers
by Alphaville Herald on 08/04/04 at 4:38 pm
In an interesting article in Reason Magazine Online (entitled “Hobbes in Cyberspace”), Mike Sellers, former lead designer on the Sims 2 develpment team and now Chief Alchemist with Online Alchemy offered that EA didn’t understand key differences between offline and online versions of the Sims, and hence never expected the problems with griefers that have since emerged. From the article:
‘So is this the world a free people starting from nothing would live in? Or is it simply the world they’d like to pretend to live in? Or was this just a matter of bad design — of something wrong with the game world’s incentives and structure? Sellers thinks it’s the latter. The designers didn’t recognize the differences between online and offline games, he argues. In particular, “They didn’t think they were going to have the same kind of griefing problems that other online games have had.”‘
Maria LaVeaux
Apr 30th, 2004
Someone at Ea/Maxis DIDN’T Understand what they were doing???
~Hands over my mouth in shock~ SAY IT ISN’T SO!!!
I think we can place this article in the “NO S**T” file.
Their whole History with TSO has been not only Not understanding what they were doing, but NOT LISTENING to those who Did understand.
Willful, and consistent Ineptitude.
Maria.