SimCity Social is full of frustrating time constraints

Social games, particularly those on Facebook, are largely a waste of time if you don't want to endlessly pester your friends with requests. Since I am an Internet hermit most days, playing anything that requires me to interact with others is just annoying, but for the sake of my friends I try to engage with them.

The prospect of a streamlined, casual SimCity experience tricked me into trying to play the social version for a couple of days. I'm very sorry to all the people I must have inadvertantly spammed with "free gifts" and requests in that time period. I'm not that kind of person, really....

Like many Facebook games, SimCIty Social relies heavily on "energy." Everything you do in your city costs a certain amount of energy. Have a lot of buildings and shops but just want to collect money off of them before moving on with your day? Well, if your constantly ticking move meter runs out, you'll have to wait for real-world time to pass or start bugging your friends for help.

I get that the primary motivation for any social game is making money. Artificial time constraints like the slowly replenishing energy bars are nothing new, but SimCity Social is far too quick to tempt you into buying more time or mass-marketing free stuff to you friends. The push for new users and all the money those users might spend in-game casts a shadow over what should have been a project like iOS game Tiny Tower meets SimCity.

Instead, you're encouraged to send out mass invitations and posts to your friends no more than 10 minutes into the game. Expanding your city in a meaningful way takes a lot of energy, and SimCity Social is balanced to make you run out of steam just before your project is finished.

The shameless transparency turned what could have been a time-based sim game into a great example of why overly demanding social games won't have a place in this world much longer.

I think developers can find the perfect balance between constantly encouraging players to market their product for meager rewards and suggesting people buy new items or time. I'm much more likely to share a game with my friends if the monetary investments are largely avoidable.

Tags: SimCity Social

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Ed Grabowski

July 10, 2012

And this is why I don't play, or "get", free to play games. I just don't understand them. I've tried. I've tried many times. I have since promised myself that I will never, ever, ever play any free to play game again. I am a very stubborn person, and I will follow through on that promise I made to myself even if it means I have to quit gaming if everything goes free to play.

Every singe time I tried one, I was bombarded with things to buy. My progress was stopped short way too soon because of some ridiculous time restraints or depleting energy bar. And then, I found out that every single one of them was bombarding my friends on Facebook. I hate Facebook, and I only joined to try some of the free to play games so I'm sure the 2 friends I had on there didn't mind much, but that isn't the point.

Everytime I tired to enjoy myself, the game would make sure to put a stop to it. If I wanted to enjoy myself any more, I had to drop some dollars....I don't think so. What get me is how blatant these games are. How they were clearly designed, not to be fun, but to mil as much out of the idiots who play these things. I call them idiots because I believe they are just that. I can't imagine any sane person actually giving these anti-consumer pieces of "entertainment" a single penny.

Why encourage them? EA is the worst company to encourage when it comes to free to play games. I have watched them remove paid games from the app store, only to reintroduce them as "free" games that cost 100 times more to get the same content you used to be able to get for $1. I have watched them ask $60 to $100 for micro transactions in these "free" games. I have watched them use every anti consumer trick they possibly could. And then they wonder why they won worst company...

I killed off my short lived Facebook account after a few weeks of trying these games. I tried the ones people recommended, and every single one was just so insulting. I have come to the conclusion that, if I can't walk into a store and buy your game outright, I want nothing to do with it. I had nothing but horrible experience after horrible experience with Facebook and ios "free to play" games, and I won't put myself through that again. I will not give these companies the satisfaction.

Heck, I even instantly traded in Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3 was I realized that both games had micro transactions in their multiplayer. And guess who published both of those games? That's right, it was EA, the company that's so downright evil, they put micro transactions into PAID games. Hence why they've been on my blacklist for a while. Every EA game I want to play is rented, borrowed, or purchased used.

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Jonathan Oyama

Heh, EA has so many problems with their free-to-play formula. The simulation games especially force people to plunk money in and send invites just to expand the city. It's extremely irritating and it also annoys many people who have to receive my invitations.

I actually think Battlefield 3 isn't the worst money machine out of all the multiplayer games. The Close Quarters DLC was a big improvement because it actually added a cool new mulltiplayer mode and some diverse maps. Before that, though, they released Karkand. That DLC only had maps and not much else. And then there's all the useless microtransactions to plunk in money to unlock guns. It's a money-based system that still annoys the heck out of me.

At least I didn't buy into EA's Tetris app when it first came out. The company literally pulled their old version off the shelf and forced people to buy the new one. And of course, it has microtransactions. Yeah, EA sucks.

Speaking of which, someone should just write an article about how EA has grown into a money-sucking vampire.