SimCity’s Social Media Crisis

The SimCity series of games began in 1989, originally released on the Amiga, Atari ST, and DOS-based PCs. Between ’89 and 2003 three sequels followed, along with countless spin-offs and adaptations. Notably, SimCity was the origin of The Sims; the fifth highest selling game franchise of all time. The decision was made, by publisher Electronic Arts (EA) and developer Maxis, to reboot the series. What would have been SimCity 5 was released two weeks ago simply as SimCity. Unfortunately the launch has been anything but simple. Over the last two weeks they’ve faced technical failures, a reviewers’ revolt, criticism from their customers, and ultimately the resignation of their CEO. Let’s look at what happened, how they responded, and whether they could have done anything differently.

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• Category: Social Media
• Tags: crisis, game, simcity, social media