Twintix said:
Hey, EA. You know that thing you do when you open your mouth and words come out? You should probably stop doing that, we're drowning in this flood of bullshit you keep pouring over us.
"Too innovative"? How about "too shitty"?! Why is it so fucking hard for people to admit that they're wrong about something?! Why do they insist on making these games follow a business model that nobody likes?! Actually, the answer to the last one is probably "greed"; They choose business models that can get as much money out of the consumers' pockets as possible.
They've been voted The Worst Company of the Year, there's no way that they can be unaware of this, or the reasoning behind it. (Even if I think that there're worse companies out there who probably deserve that award more) It's rather horrifying, actually, that a company can be so detached from its customers and choose to blame them for everything that goes wrong.
The latest game published by EA that I bought was Dead Space 2. Looks like it's also going to be the last.
I think "greed" is the easy way to explain this. An easier term for people to digest. Unfortunately I think that is why they keep getting away with it, because people create their own definition of "greed". This makes it hard to keep everyone on together and sort of misses "why" exactly this is so much worse than it really is.
Yeah, I'm probably going to sound like a conspiracy theorist here but whatever. I strongly believe every company
like EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft (for example) has an end goal in all this. They aren't playing to what the market demands or wants. They're insisting it for everyone solely because they eventually want a world where they can do as little work as possible and gain as much benefit to themselves (the people at the top of the company) as possible. They want you buying every little bit of content and want you coming to them for everything.
Now that goal in and of itself can pretty much explain humanity. Wanting easier isn't always bad, its more about who it affects that makes it bad. Good being if everyone benefits (gets more/or work is easier while still maintaining the same original benefits) and bad is if only some benefit while at the same time others detriment. If say I want to create a new device that makes it easier to grate cheese, then no one would say anything bad about it. Obviously I've not hurt anyone or tried to manipulate anyone with this idea. Then my plan grows to say I love this so much I want to share it with the world. People would probably be ecstatic, unless someone saw my concept and already built something similar for the masses. But this is where the dilemma comes in. When I
want to share this future with the public, under what terms do I mean that? If its to get it to as many people as possible and therefore I lower prices every so often since development becomes easier and I've already made a profit (in this money based society at least) then most would assume that I'd done no wrong, or at least believed I had reached a point of happiness with selling said thing. And of course if people don't like it then I let it be and go back to the drawing board. Almost everyone wins in this scenario.
However, if I go a different route with this concept and say that I want everyone using this product, whether they need it or not because I have future plans of making other products to sell, that's when you start to head into problematic territory. I'm now deciding that people's needs don't matter anymore. Only mine do. I begin to sell said good, and then if it gets on enough for me to profit, instead of being happy and continuing to improve I then buy out patents for other cheese graters and store them away. Or I pay stores extra to carry less of other cheese graters and more of mine and then go even further. I then decide that I'll make my cheese graters more cheaply so that they'll break faster and cause people to eventually have to buy more and more. I've now taken things too far. But this shouldn't be the point people look for in my fault, they should ask how I got there in the first place. Then look at similar trends from other business' (looking beyond just what the advertisement says) to see if they're going similar routes or making similar decisions and stop buying from them and me if they notice a pattern.
Psychologists and Documentaries have begun referring to most corporations as Sociopaths. There's a reason for this. Sociopaths seek reassurance and attention to such a degree that they believe no one else should be allowed to interfere with their attention. You here concepts against piracy and companies alike saying "those were
my/our sales." Or "these are
our customers." These companies have individuals in a position of believing they don't simply own a good and are producing it, no, they own the rights to sell to individuals exclusively. "These people
should be buying OUR products", you'll here from executives at meetings with investors. Most of us take this terminology and wording for granted, but its very real that business schools and companies teach people to think that you should force people's attention from other things and that this is fine. And once you have attention that you are obligated that attention/buying/subscription/etc. forever. And anyone who gets attention other than you is "stealing" it from you. And you can't allow that, so you get your DRM and your subscription fees and your accounts on every. single. website/game/service/etc. to try and make it hard for a customer to want to do multiple tasks without feeling worn out from having to create yet another account or sign up for yet another card or pay yet another fee. These companies aren't fighting piracy, or free goods, or even each other. They're fighting against you, the customer. Trying to make it so horribly inconvenient for you to switch out of their plan or make you feel as though your betraying them in order to keep you on board. Its a terribly manipulative process, but its why we mostly refer to corporations as sociopathic. Disasters and wasting are also reasons but its the underlying mindset of a sociopath that creates the desire to do any of these things. And not only do we teach people to be this way in schools, but also we actually reward these mindsets and the resulting actions (money, more power, appraisal from other corporations and politicians). The more manipulative, the more money you get and we allow it. It goes on and on...
