SimCity BuildIt landed just a year after the disastrous online-only launch of SimCity 2013 on PC, which meant EA was very aware of the stakes. The mobile version — a freemium city builder for iOS and Android developed by EA Tracktwenty — had to clear both storefronts simultaneously, with all the in-app purchase compliance, regional commerce regulations, and soft launch territory certification that entails. After what had happened with the PC SimCity, getting this one right out of the gate mattered.
Back in the day, before studios started shipping bugs as features, I worked through the full certification process on the other side of the screen — testing games for Electronic Arts. Certification & compliance, which sounds dry but basically means being the last line of defense before a game hits the shelves: making sure it doesn’t crash, doesn’t cheat the rating system, and does exactly what it says on the box in every region it’s going to land in.
It wasn’t glamorous work, but it gave me something most designers never get: a really intimate understanding of how games break, and why. Every bug report I filed was a small lesson in the gap between intention and execution — which, turns out, is pretty much what design is about too.
