Board Thread:Wiki Discussion/@comment-1370845-20150305231344/@comment-1073312-20150305233621

RIP Maxis.

Your games have long inspired me for most of my life, when I was young I played SimLife, SimSafari, and so on. Something about open ended simulation games has always fit well with my imagination, i.e. creating natural and dynamic worlds.

Though Spore was in many ways limited, I believe it retained its core facet in that we can build a story, our story. In turn we have all created (quite haphazardly but great non-the-less) a rich and diverse fiction universe. I recall Will Wright saying this is he envisioned players to get out of Spore.

If anything, games like Spore may in part have played a role among other things at inspiring me to go on and study various subjects at depth which are science, game design, modelling and animation and storytelling.

If EA has anything intelligent in its decisions, they should retain the unique and sometimes unconventional creativity of Maxis. Potential employees of Maxis has to demonstrate this appreciation. Furthermore, the simulation game/godgame/open world has never really been explored so deeply by a company as much for so long as Maxis. It is one that is growing outside the mainstream companies however. It would be foolish not to explore this genre. Yes, you could argue Maxis lost its touch in recent years. But EA obviously does not respect its employees, the players of its games, or the unique creativity of its subsidiaries.

The fascinating history of Maxis can be read here. The CIA once contacted Maxis because they were interested in using the code from SimCity.

It is nice to see the former developers of Spore are still keeping it up however Ocean Quigley has been designing an app game rather like the Cell Stage or Tidepool phase as a part of my nostalgia still calls it. See it here.