008Zulu said:
Blitzwing said:
008Zulu said:
If these kinds of articles gain momentum and more sites write up things like this, the EA will have no choice but to see just how badly they are treating everyone.
Yea and maybe pigs will learn how to fly.
You dont think that prolonged negative campaigning that EA is currently using wont have an adverse affect? You'd be surprised what can happen if enough people complain.
And you'd be surprised as to what misconceptions people have about bad press. Heck, the most samey and unimaginative games ever to exist have gotten blasted several times over for pandering to the easiest audiences, you think people care? Hell no! So long as the game can work decently enough and fulfills that one thing you're after, they couldn't care less and sales are affected sooner by the *quantity* rather than the *quality* of the press.
Not to say that if multiple gaming press stations simultaneously cried foul, then the publishers and developers still wouldn't notice. But if you think that there is that one *special* reviewer who can make all the difference...you are dead wrong. I particularly got a foul taste in my mouth when MovieBob recently harped on how his and the EC and ZP reviews 'don't let them get away with mediocrity' - NEWSFLASH! You are not that important! All they do is provide criticism that may or may not be ignored. And maybe...just maybe, if you're extremely lucky, they'll actually contribute to a general outcry of multiple critics and reviewers that will finally pierce the ivory towers of the publishers (them moreso than the developers).
What EA was trying to do essentially seems to me that they were trying to have their cake and eat it too. As one poster pointed out, they have the Taliban named there long enough for the first wave of gamers to go "Fuck yeah!" but then swiftly back off when the Army comes calling, knowing that most gamers will not check the follow-up stories to the original Taliban announcement while still appearing 'reasonable' to those that opposed this move of theirs. Now...dishonest this might be in a big way and to critical appearances, this strategy is failing hard, though who knows...perhaps they have different consumer numbers that actually make them think something else. I know that what they do (as the 2nd largest publisher) ultimately affects the entire community and yes, I would truly TRULY love it if I woke up one day to see them reverting back to their original statement as read at the end of this week's EC.
I just think that this will never, EVER happen. And if it does, you can be pretty sure that critics and reviewers, no matter how incisive or worth listening to, will not be the ones to galvanize its beginning. Only the publishers and developers themselves can start that (again, publishers moreso), but frankly...the world of money is a very stale place where shining ideas are *always* given a 2nd place to the same, boring, repetitive approaches, that guarantee more money being made.
In this case EA marketing seems content to stick to pandering games not as art but as teenage chattel. Wether it is actually working for them is, I suppose, up to debate and yes - personally I would like to see them change this strategy. But the fact is that it's easier to buy out another studio and then fire the talent only so that you can claim the IPs that come with it, for example. Far easier than it is to actually bother trying to create something new or from scratch, like actually funding the training of a new studio with fresh talent for example. A shame, since EA is probably one of the few that could actually afford to take that risk - but as always, the bigger the business company is, the less likely it is to take risk for the fear that its $$$ will plummet.
And as of right now, marketing games as for hormonal teenagers is the 'tried and true' method. Wether the times have genuinely changed enough for it to not work anymore, however, only time can tell. Not us, who bang away at our keyboards in order to delude ourselves into thinking that words can actually change things. They rarely do and when delivered across the internet you can be certain that the chances drop down to a 1 in a million. But if you feel like you need to comfort your ego by thinking, that words typed or spoken across the internet actually matter that much or that a massive press barrage will in fact change the ways in which money is being made in this industry...go right ahead. Delusion is, after all, humanity's most favourite pastime I suppose.