SimCity creator Will Wright calls botched launch of latest game "inexcusable"

Will Wright is the veteran games developer who masterminded the early SimCity games, but was not part of the development team for the latest city-building game that suffered from crippling launch issues.

Now, speaking with GI.biz, Wright has shared his thoughts on the latest SimCity game, launched in March and hindered by server issues, game-breaking bugs and an annoying always-online internet requirement.

While Wright enjoys the game, it seems he anticipated many of the problems the game eventually faced, and the vitriol it shouldered from irate gamers.

“I feel bad for the team”, said Wright.

“I could have predicted – I kind of did predict there’d be a big backlash about the DRM stuff. It’s a good game; I enjoy playing it a lot.”

“It was kind of like, ‘EA is the evil empire, there was a lot of ‘Let’s bash EA over it,'” he adds. “That was basically inexcusable, that you charge somebody $60 for a game and they can’t play it. I can understand the outrage. If I was a consumer buying the game and that happened to me, I’d feel the same.”

We gave SimCity a score of 3 out of 5 in our full review, and while a number of the issues that plagued the game at launch have been ironed out, many still remain. As we concluded n our review:

“If we’re to believe we’re entering a time when games are seen as much as a “service” as an isolated product, SimCity’s first few weeks stand to show that the service has to be at least as good as the game mechanics it supports if you’re going to avoid a damaging backlash as a developer.”

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