the-sims-online posts

The Maxis studio at Electronic Arts apparently has more up their sleeves than the Spore related action-RPG that's set to be announced during Comic-Con next week. A job listing on EA's web page indicates that the development studio is prepping to do something a little different.

The job listing is for a Developmental Director at Maxis that will work on a "."unannounced next-generation Online simulation game." It sounds like this could be a PC exclusive game since one of the requirements for the gig is for the applicant to have helped ship "at least one online PC title." The requirements also state for the applicant to have helped ship a game with an "online financial model, including online stores and DLC'." Maxis' last major game with a big online element was The Sims Online which pretty much crashed and burned when it launched and finally shut down a few years later.

[Via superannuation]

Last Friday, we gave our picks for the best PC games of the last decade. But where there's a ying, there's also a yang. While there were plenty of PC game titles that met or even surpassed expectations, there were also games that, while not necessarily all bad, simply didn't live up to the hype.

Big Download has picked 10 PC games that were released in the last decade that, for a variety of reasons, ended up being massive disappointments. They serve as lessons that even the most talented game developers can sometimes create flawed games.

Editor's Note: Steven Wong contributed greatly to this article

Click on the image above to continue reading The Top 10 Most Disappointing PC Games of The Decade (2000-2009).

The folks who write about games for a living can be very guilty at times for hyping a game before its release. Sometimes theymake it sound like it's a done deal that it will be the greatest game ever made when it come out.. Heck, some folks even give out awards at E3 for games that are not even completed or just shown in trailer form. So you have to expect that on occasion a game comes out that, for whatever reason, doesn't quite live up to all of its promise, previews and PR.

In the past decade there have been many such PC games like we have described. These are titles that are not bad per se (that would be Daikatana) but just didn't have what it took to live up to the expecations that gamers and especially game journalists had for it. Big Download decided to pick 10 such games from the past 10 years that, for one reason or another, had high hopes but just couldn't cut it.

Click on the image above to continue reading 10 games that didn't rise above the hype

When The Sims first made its foray into the online space via The Sims Online things didn't turn out so good in the end. Even with its less-than-stellar performance the game and its publisher Electronic Arts kept the online world around for a long time. Electronic Arts recently attempted to re-brand the game as EA-Land, although that venture's lifespan was far shorter than The Sims Online's original jaunt into the multiplayer space. So when the head of EA's Sims division Nancy Smith talks about future possibilities with online content in The Sims series, we're a bit skeptical.

Granted, there's apparently a lot ton of money to be made in said online space. So maybe it's not too crazy to think that Electronic Arts could be reassessing their options for a spiritual successor to The Sims Online. Who knows? Maybe The Sims 3 has some online features yet to be divulged. Although we would wager that such an online component would probably be featured in an expansion pack, as per the series' standard stratagem.

Well that didn't take too long did it? Just two months ago the MMO failure that is The Sims Online got revived as a free-to-play game and relaunched as EA-Land. Now it's been announced that the revival has failed as well and as a result The Sims Online/EA-Land will shut down for good on August 1. The game, which still had optional subscriptions and microtransactions, will no longer be accepting money so the 12 people who are apparently still playing the game get a free ride until the end of the road and subscribers also get a $15 discount on any Electronic Arts game or three months of free premium time on their Club Pogo casual game service.

This pretty much makes EA's failure to capitalize on the MMO space complete. After the huge success of Ultima Online from their Origin studio (now shut down), EA tried twice to make a UO sequel and canceled both games before their planned release. Majestic, Motor City Online and Earth and Beyond all got shut down soon after their debuts and now it's finally The Sims Online's term. Will Warhammer Online finally bring EA their MMO hit? We will see.

[Via Joystiq]