The serious bugs never being fixed dates all the way back to TS2, where there were tons of save corrupting glitches that were never addressed by the devs and left to modders to patch or find work-arounds for. For instance, you can't safely delete sims from the sims bin in a TS2 save without using mods to clean out the gossip and memory data related to that sim from the histories and memories of all other sims in the save. If you don't do those extra steps, your save will become corrupted over time and eventually become unplayable. Then, there's the bug where if Mrs. Crumplebottom gets turned into a vampire, your entire game (not just one save, the whole install) gets broken because she's a universal NPC, like Grim, but then NPC vampires can autonomously turn her. They never fixed either of those bugs, but the modders did.
That "don't spend time on bugs, the modders will fix it" attitude continued into TS3, and now TS4. Instead of having a dedicated bug fixing sub-team that can put out a patch in a few days or weeks after a bug is reported, they toss content out AQAP, then let the modders fix the mess unless enough people continue to badger them about it. I don't think it's because the devs themselves are lazy, though. It's because that's just how capitalism operates. Capitalism incentivizes cutting production costs by any means necessary for the sake of a bigger profit. This often comes at the expense of worker welfare and compensation and even the quality of the product or service they provide. If a company has a monopoly or near monopoly over a market, they are free to downgrade the quality of their product or service and jack the price up at the same time, because the people who need or want that product or service have no alternatives (or, at least, no suitable alternatives, like with cable vs. satellite here in the U.S.) to abandon it for.
And it's not just EA leveraging their monopoly over life sim lovers with how they've been doing The Sims dirty. Adobe, knowing that they had a near total monopoly on the creative software market, moved all of their products to an anti-consumer subscription model some time ago. Creative professionals groaned and paid up, as did students studying to be creative professionals, but they lost much of their hobbyist market due to their new "rent to work" business model. As time has gone on, other companies (like Affinity) have been putting out software that does everything that Adobe's does, but for a one-time purchase price instead of a cash-sucking subscription model and now, even professionals and students who once grumbled but gave in have been starting to drop Adobe for more cost-effective alternatives. Adobe still practically owns the market for now, but the more people become dissatisfied with what Adobe provides for their insane prices, more people ditch them and look for more cost-effective, professional quality alternatives. For example: Adobe Illustrator costs $239.88 U.S. per year before tax is applied, and is clunky and unintuitive for people who actually draw to use, let alone learn. Affinity Designer costs $49.99 U.S. before tax forever, does all the same things as Illustrator, and is more intuitive to learn and use for people who are used to physically drawing than Illustrator is. Both get regular updates, but one is a one-time purchase and you own it forever, while the other is an overpriced rental that you can't access if you don't fork over the dough. Which is the better deal to you?
I suspect that this will become the dynamic between The Sims and Paralives. As when Paralives comes out, you will see unsatisfied simmers begin flowing over toward it to see if it's a better alternative. At first, it will be a trickle of more experienced simmers who've been burned by TS4, curious game journalist, and YouTubers and Twitch streamers trying to scoop each other and snag some views. As time goes on (and if Paralives turns out to truly be a superior game to TS4 and eventually TS5), that trickle will evolve into a steady stream, and eventually a torrent of players dropping The Sims for Paralives. People don't like paying more for the same thing, let alone paying more for less. If a monopoly can be successfully challenged by a company with a better product or service, the same product or service at a better price, or even (Gasp! Shock!) a better product or service at a better price, then the monopoly has to either up their game or go down...which could create another monopoly and start the cycle all over again in a few more years. Capitalism, everybody...
Capitalism is great. If a company doesn't meet the demands of a customer they have dozens if not hundreds of other choices that will. Unlike someone who is stuck with Only One choice, and must accept the staus quo...oh, wait, there is only one Sim Franchise, that's why we need more and more capitalism to give us zillions of choices.
Yes, but the one flaw in capitalism is that, without strong anti-trust regulations, it's prone to eventually creating all-consuming monopolies, just like a state-controlled economy that only offers one choice to the masses. If you have competition between two companies in the same business and one massively out-competes the other and causes the less successful company to go under, or one of the companies becomes big and wealthy enough to consume the other through a buy-out or merger, that creates a monopoly in that business. If the business itself also is very expensive to get into in the first place (by default or thanks to legal and/or regulatory requirements, for example), or the monopoly manipulates or abuses the legal system or the government to hinder or ban competitors (which is incentivized by the profit motive), then no new competition can rise up and force that company to keep prices reasonable and quality of goods and services high. Pure capitalism (where companies and markets do their thing unchecked by proper legal limitations to keep competition going strong so that consumers have more choices of higher quality to pick from) is fine in the hypothetical, but it fails to take into account human psychology, which is why pure capitalism leads to robber barons and super-powerful monopolies in real life. Capitalism augmented by proper regulation, however, can be good so long as the wealthy company owners are not allowed to undermine the system by purchasing politicians whose sole job is to dismantle the safeguards that keep companies from becoming all-consuming monopolies.
Without a way to prevent monopolies from forming (either on purpose or simply by accident of how markets function), capitalism can devolve into either A) a system where you have one private company in each field ruling over the whole economy and squeezing it for all it's worth, with no room for any competition at all (or any significant competition) to nudge its way in and challenge the monopolies, because the monopolies are rich and powerful enough to either crush or consume any possible competition that comes along before it becomes a real threat to their dominance; or B ) an endless cycle of competition, monopoly, greed, consumer dissatisfaction, new competition, and monopoly again. Neither of these is particularly healthy for the economy because monopolies (state and private alike) are not particularly healthy for the economy. Of course, companies that are not competitors can still conspire with each other to fix prices and divvy up areas into territories where each one is "allowed" to do business (rather like common street pushers)...but that's a whole other can of worms entirely. Economics is WAY more complicated than supply, demand, and competition...
EA doesn't hold the patent on a character needing to use a toilet. Nor a character needing to eat or fix food etc. They thought they did but when EA and that other game company got through suing each other both had to remove games from FaceBook because both had 'borrowed' from each other. Yes, there can be companies that swallow up smaller ones and EA buys out a lot of them. However, they always had a choice not to sell. I guess they got offers they couldn't refuse. And the market (the consumer) decides who winds up with a monoply. If people stopped buying subpar, bugged games the market would decide it's not worth it. It has always been in the hands of the player. Competition is capitablism, but no one wants to take on EA because of the law suits they will surely endure. You and I have the power, we simply stop buying. And it's a flawed idea to think a company that hires thousands of employess is bad for an economy. No, it makes the world turn.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
I thought this was about simsian bugs, not economics. Let's hope the simstapo don't shut this down for being off topic.
But, every problem with the game industry today, including the lingering un-fixed serious bugs in Sims games, has everything to do with economics. If a company doesn't see fixing bugs in their games as a worthy investment that can boost sales in a significant way, they'll ignore bugs or drag their heels on fixing them. In this case, the only way to persuade a company otherwise is if a significant amount of either financial pressure (product boycotts) or social pressure (heavy negative attention from critics, general users on social media, or high-profile users like popular YouTubers and Twitch streamers) can be put on the company to change things will they reconsider the value of fixing the bugs. It all circles back to economics...
I thought this was about simsian bugs, not economics. Let's hope the simstapo don't shut this down for being off topic.
I'm pretty sure it was you who started off the conversation by comparing American work ethic to Germany's, so I wouldn't be so quick to point the finger at others. Just saying
I'm more concerned the moderators will close the topic due to the lengthy discussion of capitalism vs whatever that has been going on. They have done so for more trifling reasons. Standards of workmanship is a separate, and relevant, matter. Poor planning, bad engineering, and shoddy workmanship are matters of the lack of integrity, a universal failing quite distinct from political/economic systems. So, why are the bugs not fixed? EA lacks the integrity to design, produce, and support a high quality game - at least in the case of the Sims as we now know it. I don't play any other games by them, so cannot comment on those.
The serious bugs never being fixed dates all the way back to TS2, where there were tons of save corrupting glitches that were never addressed by the devs and left to modders to patch or find work-arounds for. For instance, you can't safely delete sims from the sims bin in a TS2 save without using mods to clean out the gossip and memory data related to that sim from the histories and memories of all other sims in the save. If you don't do those extra steps, your save will become corrupted over time and eventually become unplayable. Then, there's the bug where if Mrs. Crumplebottom gets turned into a vampire, your entire game (not just one save, the whole install) gets broken because she's a universal NPC, like Grim, but then NPC vampires can autonomously turn her. They never fixed either of those bugs, but the modders did.
That "don't spend time on bugs, the modders will fix it" attitude continued into TS3, and now TS4. Instead of having a dedicated bug fixing sub-team that can put out a patch in a few days or weeks after a bug is reported, they toss content out AQAP, then let the modders fix the mess unless enough people continue to badger them about it. I don't think it's because the devs themselves are lazy, though. It's because that's just how capitalism operates. Capitalism incentivizes cutting production costs by any means necessary for the sake of a bigger profit. This often comes at the expense of worker welfare and compensation and even the quality of the product or service they provide. If a company has a monopoly or near monopoly over a market, they are free to downgrade the quality of their product or service and jack the price up at the same time, because the people who need or want that product or service have no alternatives (or, at least, no suitable alternatives, like with cable vs. satellite here in the U.S.) to abandon it for.
And it's not just EA leveraging their monopoly over life sim lovers with how they've been doing The Sims dirty. Adobe, knowing that they had a near total monopoly on the creative software market, moved all of their products to an anti-consumer subscription model some time ago. Creative professionals groaned and paid up, as did students studying to be creative professionals, but they lost much of their hobbyist market due to their new "rent to work" business model. As time has gone on, other companies (like Affinity) have been putting out software that does everything that Adobe's does, but for a one-time purchase price instead of a cash-sucking subscription model and now, even professionals and students who once grumbled but gave in have been starting to drop Adobe for more cost-effective alternatives. Adobe still practically owns the market for now, but the more people become dissatisfied with what Adobe provides for their insane prices, more people ditch them and look for more cost-effective, professional quality alternatives. For example: Adobe Illustrator costs $239.88 U.S. per year before tax is applied, and is clunky and unintuitive for people who actually draw to use, let alone learn. Affinity Designer costs $49.99 U.S. before tax forever, does all the same things as Illustrator, and is more intuitive to learn and use for people who are used to physically drawing than Illustrator is. Both get regular updates, but one is a one-time purchase and you own it forever, while the other is an overpriced rental that you can't access if you don't fork over the dough. Which is the better deal to you?
I suspect that this will become the dynamic between The Sims and Paralives. As when Paralives comes out, you will see unsatisfied simmers begin flowing over toward it to see if it's a better alternative. At first, it will be a trickle of more experienced simmers who've been burned by TS4, curious game journalist, and YouTubers and Twitch streamers trying to scoop each other and snag some views. As time goes on (and if Paralives turns out to truly be a superior game to TS4 and eventually TS5), that trickle will evolve into a steady stream, and eventually a torrent of players dropping The Sims for Paralives. People don't like paying more for the same thing, let alone paying more for less. If a monopoly can be successfully challenged by a company with a better product or service, the same product or service at a better price, or even (Gasp! Shock!) a better product or service at a better price, then the monopoly has to either up their game or go down...which could create another monopoly and start the cycle all over again in a few more years. Capitalism, everybody...
Capitalism is great. If a company doesn't meet the demands of a customer they have dozens if not hundreds of other choices that will. Unlike someone who is stuck with Only One choice, and must accept the staus quo...oh, wait, there is only one Sim Franchise, that's why we need more and more capitalism to give us zillions of choices.
Yes, but the one flaw in capitalism is that, without strong anti-trust regulations, it's prone to eventually creating all-consuming monopolies, just like a state-controlled economy that only offers one choice to the masses. If you have competition between two companies in the same business and one massively out-competes the other and causes the less successful company to go under, or one of the companies becomes big and wealthy enough to consume the other through a buy-out or merger, that creates a monopoly in that business. If the business itself also is very expensive to get into in the first place (by default or thanks to legal and/or regulatory requirements, for example), or the monopoly manipulates or abuses the legal system or the government to hinder or ban competitors (which is incentivized by the profit motive), then no new competition can rise up and force that company to keep prices reasonable and quality of goods and services high. Pure capitalism (where companies and markets do their thing unchecked by proper legal limitations to keep competition going strong so that consumers have more choices of higher quality to pick from) is fine in the hypothetical, but it fails to take into account human psychology, which is why pure capitalism leads to robber barons and super-powerful monopolies in real life. Capitalism augmented by proper regulation, however, can be good so long as the wealthy company owners are not allowed to undermine the system by purchasing politicians whose sole job is to dismantle the safeguards that keep companies from becoming all-consuming monopolies.
Without a way to prevent monopolies from forming (either on purpose or simply by accident of how markets function), capitalism can devolve into either A) a system where you have one private company in each field ruling over the whole economy and squeezing it for all it's worth, with no room for any competition at all (or any significant competition) to nudge its way in and challenge the monopolies, because the monopolies are rich and powerful enough to either crush or consume any possible competition that comes along before it becomes a real threat to their dominance; or B ) an endless cycle of competition, monopoly, greed, consumer dissatisfaction, new competition, and monopoly again. Neither of these is particularly healthy for the economy because monopolies (state and private alike) are not particularly healthy for the economy. Of course, companies that are not competitors can still conspire with each other to fix prices and divvy up areas into territories where each one is "allowed" to do business (rather like common street pushers)...but that's a whole other can of worms entirely. Economics is WAY more complicated than supply, demand, and competition...
This is why in the US at least (I don't know about anywhere else but I'm sure other countries have similar), there are regulations to prohibit monopolies. Also companies can file against a company who has monopoly in their industry. Capitalism is still a great system when coupled with government intervention when needed.
I'm more concerned the moderators will close the topic due to the lengthy discussion of capitalism vs whatever that has been going on. They have done so for more trifling reasons. Standards of workmanship is a separate, and relevant, matter. Poor planning, bad engineering, and shoddy workmanship are matters of the lack of integrity, a universal failing quite distinct from political/economic systems. So, why are the bugs not fixed? EA lacks the integrity to design, produce, and support a high quality game - at least in the case of the Sims as we now know it. I don't play any other games by them, so cannot comment on those.
I've played older games published by EA when it was ran by previous executives - those games were REALLY good - games were full of excellent content and gameplay and stories were fleshed out and immersive. You can see that in the game that you love, TS2 and it was also in the game that I love, TS3. It kind of went downhill after the change in executives in 2013. The stock value of the company is much higher though, but I wonder how long that will last given that so many of the games produced after 2013 were quite poor and/or had unethical surprise mechanics.
Comments
EA doesn't hold the patent on a character needing to use a toilet. Nor a character needing to eat or fix food etc. They thought they did but when EA and that other game company got through suing each other both had to remove games from FaceBook because both had 'borrowed' from each other. Yes, there can be companies that swallow up smaller ones and EA buys out a lot of them. However, they always had a choice not to sell. I guess they got offers they couldn't refuse. And the market (the consumer) decides who winds up with a monoply. If people stopped buying subpar, bugged games the market would decide it's not worth it. It has always been in the hands of the player. Competition is capitablism, but no one wants to take on EA because of the law suits they will surely endure. You and I have the power, we simply stop buying. And it's a flawed idea to think a company that hires thousands of employess is bad for an economy. No, it makes the world turn.
But, every problem with the game industry today, including the lingering un-fixed serious bugs in Sims games, has everything to do with economics. If a company doesn't see fixing bugs in their games as a worthy investment that can boost sales in a significant way, they'll ignore bugs or drag their heels on fixing them. In this case, the only way to persuade a company otherwise is if a significant amount of either financial pressure (product boycotts) or social pressure (heavy negative attention from critics, general users on social media, or high-profile users like popular YouTubers and Twitch streamers) can be put on the company to change things will they reconsider the value of fixing the bugs. It all circles back to economics...
I'm pretty sure it was you who started off the conversation by comparing American work ethic to Germany's, so I wouldn't be so quick to point the finger at others. Just saying
This is why in the US at least (I don't know about anywhere else but I'm sure other countries have similar), there are regulations to prohibit monopolies. Also companies can file against a company who has monopoly in their industry. Capitalism is still a great system when coupled with government intervention when needed.
I've played older games published by EA when it was ran by previous executives - those games were REALLY good - games were full of excellent content and gameplay and stories were fleshed out and immersive. You can see that in the game that you love, TS2 and it was also in the game that I love, TS3. It kind of went downhill after the change in executives in 2013. The stock value of the company is much higher though, but I wonder how long that will last given that so many of the games produced after 2013 were quite poor and/or had unethical surprise mechanics.
1. Anytime you travel off the lot or exit the lot...the scheduled maid gets cancelled.
2. Also...anytime you leave your home lot...the assigned beds get reset.
Both are quite frustrating.