My wife recently bought me a copy of SimCities Societies, produced by Electronic Arts. At first glance, it looked like a long held wish had been granted and someone had finally come out with an updated version of SimCities that would bring back some of that old magic and take advantage of all the new nifty hardware. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get the game to run for more than an hour without it locking up my entire computer and forcing me to reboot.
My first shock was when I loaded up the game and started it up. It was incredibly slow! The mouse didn’t even move at more than a snails pace. Now, I’m using an nVidia 6600 video card on a 3.0 GHz Pentium with 2G of memory. I’ll admit, it’s no quad core, but my venerable computer still has a bit of juice. But apparently, not enough juice for SimCities Societies.
I went to the options panel, to turn the graphics on low, and suddenly heard a single loop of music playing over and over again, telling me that my computer was locked up. Again, I tried all the usual stuff, including Ctrl-Alt-Delete and swearing vigorously. In the end, I had to power off and reboot my computer.
On my next attempt, I turned all the graphics down to low, but figured I could run my usual menagerie of programs. Windows XP is supposed to be a multi-tasking operating system, after all. But, fifteen minutes later, I was rebooting again.
I gave it a rest for a few days. I didn’t want to do anything drastic, like throwing a computer monitor at the wall.
Today, I tried again. This time, I turned off every program I could get to, except the browser and the anti-virus. Things looked good for about an hour. Then, once more, it crashed and my computer became completely unresponsive.
I’ve been around for a while, so I’m no stranger to games failing to work out of the box. I performed all the usual voodoo. I upgraded my drivers, I downloaded the patch, more on that later, and I shut down every program on my computer except for my browser and my virus checker. No matter what I did, my computer locked up sooner or later.
I loved Maxis. One of the reasons I loved them was that they made great games and I almost never had problems with them. The people there really seemed to want to build fun interesting software. I especially enjoyed SimCity and subsequent titles. I even enjoyed the series after Electronic Arts, EA, bought Maxis, for a little while. But it’s been clear for some time, that EA doesn’t really care about much more than profits. And on this game, apparently they didn’t believe there was any particular reason to ensure it would actually run properly, before shipping it.
Now, I’m not unaware of the difficulties facing software publishers. The PC platform is difficult. There’s all kinds of different hardware and configurations, not to mention all the different versions of Windows. But, you know, somehow, everyone else seems to be able to write programs that work on my computer. And few of the other software publishers I deal with are nearly the size of EA. Yet, with all the resources at EA’s disposal, they can’t get this software working correctly on my machine, even though they are on patch #2.
Worse, it appears they shipped the software, knowing it was incomplete. The latest patch includes 3 “new” game modes, that actually turn SimCities Societies into a game, rather than just a sandbox, which is what it was, before.
It’s too bad, because the game does look like it could be a pleasant enough experience. As in the old SimCity, you build a town and have to manage resources. Buildings generate or consume varying amounts of productivity, creativity, spirituality, authority, knowledge, etc. You can steer your society towards any of several types of civilization. It’s disappointing that I can’t tell you more about it.
I don’t know who to blame, for sure. It could be sloppy programming, poor quality assurance, inept management, or a combination of all three. It’s even possible that this program works fine for most people, and I’m the only one who has a problem, although a brief perusal of their boards indicates there are plenty of others who have a non-functional game, as well.
This reminds me of the way Detroit was building automobiles back in the 1970s, when they were absolutely sure that they had complete control of the market and didn’t have to worry about any of those pesky foreign companies. I’ll keep hoping that EA learns their lesson and starts producing software worth buying. For the moment, though, I would recommend staying away from this particular game.
Did you ever get your problem resolved. Not only did I have the same problem, now I can’t get it to load at all. It says that it is, but I can’t get of the screen that shows when it’s loading. I’d be interested to hear your suggestions.
No, I still haven’t gotten my problem resolved. Even the last patch failed to help. I’ll be getting a new computer in a couple of months, maybe it will work on that one.
I’m sorry it took so long to reply to your comment. I’ve been kind of busy. If you figure the problem out, please post again.
You are right on about EA games. Before I read your article I bought a download version of Simcities Societies. It turns out they require you to use their E A Manager to download it.
So I did that, downloading the manager was no problem but….
When I installed download manager it kept telling me my “PC appears to be offline” which it obviously was not.
So I E-mailed their customer service on my “offline” PC telling them the situation and what I had tried. They contacted me back with very little additional help and the things I told them I had already tried.
To make a long story short the worthless piece of garbage they call the EA Download Manager never did download and I have found multitudes online who have had problems with the EA Download Manager.
As to EA learning their lesson and start producing software that works.
Don’t hold your breath.
PS I never got my game and the way you describe it that was probably a good thing
I’m two weeks into a similar situation with EA’s SimCity Societies. To date, I can put the first item in my city and CRASH. For me, this is the end of a LONG relationship with SimCity. I won’t try future products from the line or from EA in general. I hope one day to get Societies to run – I’m going to apply the “latest” ideas from their support this evening and try again. Wish me LUCK, I’m gonna need it!
I purchased this game and was playing it on a high performance gaming system with vista premium on it. This game is garbage hate to say it, its a fun game but running on a geforce 8600 video card this game should have no problem. Memory well over exceeds the amount needed to play. This is an ea botch job they just put out when they had down time from the sims2 and working on there newest sims3. I think they should refund everyone who bought this game because they knew it did not work apparently or there website wouldnt come up with 3 patches in a months time.
This game is a big disappointment. I am using IMB Lenovo R60.. so, at first, thought that was the problem. Now I know better. 1. The play was clunky to begin with. 2. Then it started crashing my Laptop (horror.. with the blue screen). 3. I looked for and downloaded the most recent patch( #5). Interestingly, the patch tells me that I do not have SimCity societies (..lol) and fails. We had bought this game from Best Buy. I would not recommend this game to ANYONE.
yeah i have had this game i have a quad core and a 200.00 geforce card and a 100.00 special gaming sound card 4gig ram special cd blue ray player this game is just garbage it crashes my system as well
i played the original SimCity in the 90′s and until now i still play the latest version of SimCity:,`
Yes, I’ve had almost the same problem! I downloaded it and at first it was ok, a bit sliw but not too bad, but after a few plays it started crashing on me and now it won’t even load at all! I click ‘play’ in the EA download manager, but then it does nothing, just closes the manager but never loads the game! It appears to do somthing the first minute, but no, it never actually loads anything. I tried installing on my laptop, and that’s only a year or two old, and has more than enough in terms of requirement, and on their I get to a stage where I have downloaded, but when I click the install button, it pops up with a window saying install, you click it, but it does nothing. It’s a shame because what u did see and play if it was really good! Even more annoying is that EA had nothing of this in it’s FAQ or suchforth!
would not reccomend
simcity is my all time favorite game, my dad even played that game ~.-
SimCity is the best, so damn addicting game. i used to play the original version when i was just a kid;;*