Ex-Maxis Dev on EA - Great Place to Work, Maxis Was Closed Due to The Sims Overshadowing SimCity

DSOGaming writes: "Reddit’s member ‘vertexnormal‘ – who is a former Maxis developer – has talked a bit about the closure of Maxis Emeryville, and shed some additional light to it. According to vertexnormal, Maxis Emeryville was closed because the SimCity series was it suffered from The Sims’ huge success. And even though the older SimCity games made a profit, they were not even close to what The Sims had achieved."

[-Foxtrot]

Guess EA still has their Sniper Team on Maxis employees

SimCity wasn't being overshadowed, it was being hated on because of what you guys did to it. The same is happening to the Sims. Only a matter of time

[Mankey]

Agreed. SimCity wasn't a good idea with Bad Execution.

It was a bad idea with bad execution, not to mention Spore and Dark Spore had interesting ideas and had some good mechanics, but were overall not what they had been promised to be.

But before that, the Maxis that existed before 2008, had an amazing track record of good games.

It's just a shame they never got to fully redeem themselves and make another amazing title. You always hope to go out on top, not at the very bottom.

[Thehyph]

SimCity 3000, although I absolutely adored it, did not live up to the hype that was created for it. Initially, they showed the game as having street level 3D integration with the player having the ability to interact with residents in their dwellings almost to the level that The Sims would offer later.

I am truly upset at the whole situation though. These guys created some of the best games of my youth. I guess they're just an addition to the great history of PC Gaming like Ensemble, Black Isle, Lucasarts, Raven, and iD et al.

[Iceball2000]

Agreed! Wonder how much EA is paying them to say good things about the worst company in America!!!

[lelo2play]

Yep. EA/Maxis really screwd up the latest Simcity. Such a pitty, it has nice graphics but the game... * shakes head *

[THC CELL]

They should of gone back to theme park and hospital loved them

[BitbyDeath]

That was Bullfrog.... another studio EA killed.

[lelo2play]

Syndicate... * weeps *

[annoyedgamer]

EA gutted and burnt that studio as well.

[DJ]

First time I've seen DRM kill a studio. Lesson learned.