In a contemporary blog post on Maxis’ website, Maxis Emeryville general manager Patrick Buechner reveals the future of SimCity. The foremost notable of the announcements is that the studio is exploring an offline mode for the title.

On March 15, 2013, recently promoted senior vp Lucy Bradshaw posted extensively on why SimCity is an internet experience. “We keep the simulation state of the region up to the moment for all players,” Bradshaw states.  “Even if playing solo, this keeps the interactions between cities brand new in a shared view of the realm.”

This statement follows a post on December 12, 2012.  “GlassBox is the engine that drives the complete game – the buildings, the economics, trading, and in addition the whole simulation that could track data for as much as 100,000 individual Sims inside each city,” Bradshaw writes. “There’s a massive amount of computing that goes into all of this, and GlassBox works by attributing portions of the computing to EA servers (the cloud) and a few at the player’s local computer.”

Later in that very same post, Bradshaw states explicitly that SimCity “wouldn’t be possible without the technology that powers our game.” Now, seven months later, fans are being told that an offline mode may well be possible in any case.

While this is often excellent news for those was eager for the way to disconnect from EA’s servers and play at their leisure (and faraway from Internet access), the potential of an offline game is counter to what Maxis said throughout the game’s troubled launch.

In addition to exploring the potential of giving SimCity players the prospect to play offline, Maxis is asking at a far better structure for DLC. Unfortunately, the small, resource-limited cities won’t be growing. Buechner cites “the confines of the engine” because the factor limiting the cities to the small footprints.

The team continues working to enhance the core game, and has a separate team engaged on a “Cities of Tomorrow” update.

[Source: Maxis]  

Our Take
SimCity had some of the catastrophic launches in EA history. As someone who purchased the sport and suffered in the course of the launch (i think your pain, GTA Online fans), i’m disappointed to benefit that the critical online processing required by Glassbox could have been a myth.

We knew that hacks had enabled offline play. Throughout that period of revelation, Bradshaw and other Maxis leadership suggested that the workarounds were counter to the design philosophy.

Now, SimCity is basically a far off memory for all however the most diehard players. Will an offline mode bring some people back to the table? Maybe, but on the cost of a reminder that EA and Maxis’ weren’t entirely up front in regards to the ought to connect online. Not that much has changed with regards to processing power until now seven months.