My second-hand understanding of the arrangement is that from 1997 until roughly the mid 2000s, Maxis's autonomy was mostly protected by Will Wright's personal clout (plus possibly some terms around the acquisition, if there were any). He was high-profile, a charismatic media figure, and very against moving to EA's main campus in Redwood City—partly to retain Maxis's autonomy, and partly just because he lived in the East Bay and didn't want to commute to the Peninsula.
It helped that the first post-acquisition new title from Maxis was The Sims, a massive financial success, which allowed EA to feel comfortable taking a hands-off approach and allowing the studio to do weird things, so long as the weird things brought in piles of revenue.
From the mid-2000s, though, EA started merging bits of Maxis in, closing the Walnut Creek office and moving those staff to Redwood City, but still leaving a smaller Maxis remaining in Emeryville, which continued to be headed by Wright, with considerable autonomy. He used that autonomy to lead the Spore (2008) development, an ambitious concept that was not a financial success (though it arguably kicked off the current resurgence of procedural content generation in games). And then he left the company in 2009. At that point I think many people in the industry considered it inevitable that the remaining Maxis would be moved to the main EA campus sooner or later.
Your second hand understanding is pretty accurate.
In the case of Maxis, it's not accurate or fair for the person to say that EA's strategy is to "Buy studio, make them shovel a couple incomplete games out of the door, close studio, repeat."
That ignores the fact that EA buying Maxis enabled Maxis to successfully finish and ship The Sims, which became the best selling PC game of all time. And that The Sims division was a major part of EA (one of three main studios), which made a huge amount of money over a long period of time.
You're correct to say that Maxis and The Sims franchise enjoyed autonomy and protection thanks to Will Wright, while he was at the company. But after he left, he didn't have much to do with it, and it was on its own.
Many of the people working The Sims and SimCity franchises were the original people from Maxis or the early days of The Sims at EA, and they did a wonderful job of carrying on without Will. The infamous problems of latest SimCity release were actually Origin's fault, which the Maxis people unsuccessfully fought against, and had to take the rap for.
Lucy Bradshaw managed The Sims and SimCity since EA acquired Maxis, but EA threw her under the bus by insisting that she make public statements that simply and obviously weren't true, in an attempt to justify Origin's idiotic and non-negotiable mistakes that they pushed on Maxis.
Ocean Quigley was the lead artist for SimCity and The Sims at Maxis since before EA acquired us. Ocean invented the beautiful yet practical hybrid z-buffered 2.5D / real time 3D "holodeck" technology that enabled The Sims 1 to run well on non-accelerated low-end PCs in 2000, which enabled it its widespread success and appeal to casual gamers and young kids (who inherit their older sibling's low end PCs).
Ocean's technical and artistic contributions were as important as Will's game design contributions, and he stuck around for much longer. He led the ground-up redesign of SimCity (2013), which I think was both true to the original game, and took it into a totally new territory, away from the terrible tiles, and re-oriented around free-form roads.
Ocean and other Maxis employees were rightfully frustrated by Origin's interference in SimCity (specifically their insistence on online play, and their initial public pretension that offline play was impossible). After the release, Ocean left to pursue his own projects. After working on Will's ideas for so many years, he has a lot of his own original ideas that he wanted to work on. He explained how it was time to step out of Will's shadow in this article [1], which I empathize with.
Maxis hired me in January 1997 to work on The Sims (before it was given that name), then EA bought Maxis in July 1997, then we shipped The Sims 1 in February 2000, and I left soon after the release.
Then I did some contracting for EA to develop user created content tools like The Sims Transmogrifier, and I worked for Will's own company, the Stupid Fun Club, while he was still working for EA on The Sims expansion packs and Spore.
At the time, SFC was just Will's side project for, well, doing stupid fun stuff. We did things that were outside of EA's scope like robotics and reality TV shows, including Empathy [2] and Servitude [3] (which were never aired), and researched and developed some of his entertainment, toy and game ideas.
After Will finished Spore, he left EA in 2009, and EA invested in SFC. Then I joined SFC full time, where we worked on various projects including producing a viewer-scripted TV show, Bar Karma, with Current TV. [4]
SFC was shut down after problems spinning off a company called HiveMind, that ended in lawsuits due to the melt-down and failure of a self-described "Serial Hackerpreneur" (cough, cough), who neglected to pay the rent, let alone secure the investments he was contractually obliged to, after which he baselessly accused Will of "atrocity" and "genocide", then failed to deliver on his blustering threat that he tweeted: "Looking for PR professionals to build awareness for "THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT WILL", an exposé documentary, releasing on YouTube 6/2012."
>It was announced in early June 2012 that the entire project was on hold due to ongoing legal disputes between company executives. Said Wright, "Hivemind is still a company. But it has no money. No nothing. It's just sitting there because of the litigation. It is frozen. It's so complex and there's quite a bit of disappointment... We have to find out where this is going in the near term." On October 26, Wright and HiveMind co-founder Jawad Ansari stated they had settled their disagreements regarding the company. Wright said, "We are pleased to have reached a friendly and respectful resolution. Jawad’s entrepreneurial energy, passion for the expansion of the online game industry and tenacious execution brought the necessary elements together to build Hive Mind to where the operating team can take the Company forward."
>Game pioneer Will Wright’s personal gaming startup falls apart in litigation (exclusive) [6]
>“It didn’t work out at all,” Wright said. “Hive Mind is still a company. But it has no money. No nothing. It’s just sitting there because of the litigation. It is frozen. It’s so complex and there’s quite a bit of disappointment.”
>Ansari withdrew his lawsuit in Alameda, Calif., and in Delaware, the court appointed Wright, Randy Breen and Ansari as the board of Hive Mind. The litigation is still ongoing.
>To give you an idea of just how ugly this is getting, the guy who started all this, Jawad Ansari, recently tweeted that he’s looking for PR professionals to help him plug a YouTube “documentary” called “The Inconvenient Truth about Will”. Yeah, Jawad, if you have to start with the smear tactics, we’re just going to go ahead and assume you don’t have much of a case and are a bit of an ass.
>SimCity creator Will Wright settles lawsuit over Hive Mind studio control [8]
>Ansari released his own statement, adding: "During my 18 years in the business I have never met anyone who has the creativity and vision of Will Wright. Over the period of several months working with Will Wright, Will's mentorship helped me develop a deep understanding of players' psychology and thus the ability to see the world in dimensions that I did not know even existed. For this I would always be thankful to Will!"
Yeeeeeah, and he's sooooo sorry he took the money. [9]
