There’s really no way for me to avoid writing about Sim City in this week’s wrap-up, so I won’t even try. Thankfully past all the pitchforks and internet rage is a lot of humor that’s making this whole debacle a really enjoyable spectacle to watch. You know a company is in for a PR disaster when only a few days in people are already mocking them through YouTube, Reddit, and all sorts of other places around the web. The image above is only one such example and gives us a glimpse as to what would happen if Steam actually went out of their way to market their offline capabilities to their loyal community.
Thanks to this post on Reddit for giving me a laugh. It represents what would happen if Steam decided to have a sale on their entire city building catalog for as long as Sim City wasn’t working. Of course it’s just a joke, but I dare say it’s a joke that would actually do well for Valve and their developers if they implemented it. There’s still time actually, since by the look of things Sim City isn’t going to be fixed as quickly as EA and Maxis would have hoped. They better get their act together soon, otherwise the legacy known as Sim City will become a permanent joke told throughout the ages.
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The Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter seems to have worked its magic as the team released a twenty minute long video showcasing how far the game has come, and boy does it look really nice. I’m pretty surprised that they’ve come this far as it looks polished enough to be a beta despite the fact that they are still in Alpha. They seem to be at a point in which they are just fleshing out the details on their combat system which already looks like it is up and running. The music and sound effects are a bit cheesy so here’s hoping that they are placeholders, but other than that video has done a great job in getting me excited for this game.
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It wasn’t too long ago when it seemed that almost everyone had a problem with Anita Sarkeesian using Kickstarter to fund a project which explores the role of women in video games. Some even said she was a straight up thief, stealing the money from Kickstarter without working on anything at all. The yesterday she released the first part of her series called Damsel in Distress which explores how this common trope is used to portray women as helpless morons always in need of a man’s help. So it looks like she didn’t skip town with everyone’s money which means a lot of people owe her an apology. Knowing how the internet works however I doubt she’ll get one.
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Those who have been able to actually launch and play Sim City have already begun defacing the game by using the game’s newest feature, rounded roads, to turn fledgling cities into giant penises. It’s pretty much a rule of thumb that whenever you give players the ability to create and draw shapes in a game, there’s going to be some penises, somewhere, like the bathroom wall of the boy’s room in a high school. Yet it’s kind of always funny, at least to me who seems completely unable to grow-up in any sort of fashion. It’s also a pretty good way to troll EA, Maxis, and those who are lucky enough to play the game.
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You know things are bad when a company tell its affiliates to stop promoting their own product. Imagine if Coca Cola told supermarkets around the world to take down any of those polar bear advertisements because people were so pissed at seeing the word Coke printed on anything. Thanks to an internal e-mail snagged by Polygon, EA is hoping to make all of this bad press go away by simply telling those who are selling Sim City just not to talk about it. This is really a new low and completely contrary to any other release that I can think of. Apparently the old adage of “there’s no such thing as bad press” just doesn’t apply when things are this bad.