News is spreading like fire through city streets of an EA survey that has been sent out to SimCity players today, containing questions hinting that Maxis are considering making an offline mode available in the always-connected city builder game.
The survey, as reported by Penny Arcade, asks for player opinion on a variety of subjects that players have already made themselves rather clear on. Aside from the issue of offline capabilities, the survey also asks players to “imagine city spaces that are 2X the current city size, to build larger cities”. There’s also questions on a co-op mode to build a city with a friend, the ability to use cheats as in SimCities of years gone by, and land plots without boundaries.
Unfortunately the survey is market research for a potential expansion pack, meaning should anything in the survey come to fruition, you’d have to pay for the pleasure of it, alongside the dollar you slapped down for the main game, which wasn’t exactly cheap.
The other important element that Penny Arcade note is that there’s been no confirmation from EA that the survey is legitimate. The address the survey is sent from is [email protected]. It seems reasonable to think that @em.ea.com sounds a bit weird – why not just ea.com? The survey is also part of SurveysOnline.com, an online survey creator. You’d think a company with signifcant IT resources, say EA, would be able to make their own survey. But who knows? Watch this space, we’ll update you as soon as we know the full deal.