SimCity:Societies

SimCity: Societies (SC:S) was intended by Electronic Arts (EA) to be the successor game to SimCity 4 (SC4): the long-awaited SimCity 5. The game was originally announced in _____, 2006, and was the subject of heavy speculation in the community prior to its release, primarily at Simtropolis (ST). EA contracted the game to California game developer (Caesar IV, [other examples]) Tilted Mill (TM).

During the spring of 2007, TM acted as if it was making efforts to reach out and solicit input from the community. It became apparent, though, that this was simply a public relations effort on the company's part, as little, if anything, offered by the community ultimately worked its way into the the game as released. SC:S made its debut on _____, 2007. It was a disaster from day one. SC:S, aside from being unplayable for more than a few minutes without crashing or freezing, was probably among the worst PC games ever offered to a mass audience. Its sales were dismal, and EA very quickly began treating it like a red-headed stepchild.

SC:S was greeted with almost universal revulsion, if not nausea and vomiting, by the SimCity community, which quickly filled the TM SimCity:Societies forums with complaints. Since the game's release, TM has tried futilely to make it work, posting five "patches" as of January, 2009. The company also developed an expansion pack: SC:S Destinations, which was so lame EA elected to not even distribute it on a disk. As an amusing aside, EA, in the fall of 2008, bundled the original SC:S and Destinations along with SC4 on a single disk that sold for the same price as SC4, which remains among the top-selling PC games years after its release, sold for previously.