A few hours ago, I learned that Restaurant City, one of the games I developed while working at Playfish, will be taken off-line soon.

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As the only artist on the development team back then, I pretty much drew everything in it until it launched, and was maintaining it along side of Pet Society for quite a while, until new people were hired to the company. I have always been quite proud of what we have achieved with it with the resource we had.

It is not a triple-A title type of game. Some hard-cord gamers/developers may not even consider it a "real" game. Nevertheless, it is one of the most genre-defining apps on FB, and had set the bar for that particular playing field.

Millions of people have played it. Many of them are casual users who have not played a computer/video games in their life before this, were converted into FB users because of it, and some of them are still playing it, after all these years. It is a game that had been loved, and is still loved by some of my friends and relatives.

After the public announcement, I have been reading the comments on community forums and taking in the players' emotional reaction. Players often assume that developers don't care. Truth is, many of us get into the business of making games because we want people to enjoy, and usually because we are game players ourselves. It's equally sad for us when things like this happen.

A game is after all, like our child. It could be an ugly child. But still we have some love for it - well maybe less than what we would have for the prettier ones, but still.

Oh well. Bye! Now, maybe I need to draw Maggie just for one last time...