EA is not evil.

[cerebus23]

I hate them because i have had to try to deal with their customer service over the years.

I hate them because i saw how they started to ruin games, watched as they ripped features out of games to resell them later, spit on the people that pay their wages, treat actual developers like crap, gut studios on a whim even with a top selling game out, so on and so on.

If you love getting fleeced more power to you. EA is a souless corporation run by someone who could not give a shit about games or gamers just how much he can bleed out of you all. Backed by a board that their main concern is how much money they can make, backed by shareholders that mainly like to see their investments go up.

Thank god for kickstarter and open source consoles, there are so many alternative means to make games and share games, and support games we like, it really may be a new golden age of games again, because as long as these mega publishers exist only to bleed you, then we all get skrewed, no matter if we love hate or feel completely indifferent.

Bottom line when money is the most important thing and the only thing that matters, that is evil, would go along the 7 deadlies of greed and gluttony quite possibly. So yes even if you say well they only a company and their main purpose in life is to make money when that is their only and sole purpose that is evil.

The best games have always been made by people that loved the game they were working on, where they put their heart and souls into what they were making, and gave us classics that lasted years, even the EA of old made games like that. Now days it just the most common generic baseline crap they can get aways with and then see how they can nickle and dime you and expansion pack you to death with stuff that back in the day would have been in the full game to begin with.

Just study the sims and its history to see what EA thinks of their loyal customers. Or reach back even further and EA sports which pioneered the recycled feature rebranding crap.

The idea that anyone can be actively pro EA is mind boggling to me because they do nothing for the industry, nothing at all, neither does activision the whole of the industry would be better of if they both collapsed overnight.

All those ips all those developers out there to reorganize and merge into new companies, some would be so awesome as to be mind blowing, then we would get a few decades of great games again until the next EA Activision mega corps manage to absorb, destroy, everyone else and then focus on fing over the consumers again.

 

[Madkipz]

Second point: Closing down studios.

I love this one. Apparently, EA is a vampire that sucks great studios dry, and casts their corpses aside in search for new blood. This ignores a few things. First, how can EA buy a studio that doesn't want the help? They can't.

Ok, first thing: There is another reason companies merge: because they realise they will be stronger if they combine their assets. Look at Activision Blizzard, the result of a merger between two successful companies and five years later they're both doing fantastic. Some of EA's buyouts didn't last two years!
This is an important point, because some of the companies merged into EA did so to take advantage of working within a larger company, and found themselves suffocated.

So, let's take an adventure into the seedy underworld of EA's corporate buyouts!

I'm using hidden text to centre this gif!

We'll start with exhibit A, otherwise known as Origin Systems: Founded by now well-respected game designer Richard Gariott. one of the first EA buyouts, and one of the worst. You are right in saying that they did end up in financial difficulty, and had to either sell to EA or go bankrupt, but what you may not know is that EA put them there. With frivolous lawsuits and corporate bullying they wore them down until they were in debt, and had to settle. Then EA bought them out, and the founder of EA when asked about the tactics they used to aquire it said "This is just business. This is the way we're going to win."

Let's move on to exhibit B, Westwood Studios.

Westwood had 7% of the videogame market share at the time they were bought out, EA had 11%. They were not a floundering company, they were highly successful and doing very very well. In fact they were halfway through the next C&C game. The reason for the buyout lies in money. $122.5 million in cash to be exact, which was what the owners of Westwood were paid by EA for their company. It was a quick money grab, and many of Westwood's employees registered their personal feelings about being betrayed by the owners, and most of them quit their jobs in protest.
What happened to the "awesome C&C" game they were in the middle of developing after EA bought them?

Electronic Arts, who had acquired Westwood Studios in 1998 and published Tiberian Sun, and had no direct part in its development, pushed for Tiberian Sun's release ahead of schedule, resulting in a number of engine and gameplay features being omitted from the game, some of which were later included in Firestorm expansion pack.

Rushed deadlines and putting features meant for the main game in an expensive extra content pack? Start as you mean to go on, I suppose.

And now for Exhibit C, I refer, Your Honour, to the joint acquisition of Bioware/Pandemic, and this juicy tale of corruption runs right the way to the top of the house!

Pandemic were partnered with Bioware, due to them being owned by the same private equity fund (V.G Holdings). By the way, this is another perfect example of two companies merging not because one is on deaths door, but because they realise they can do better together, and it worked really well! Until...

A certain man by the name of John Riccitiello became CEO of EA. He had a very impressive C.V., including working in Haagen Dazs, several previous upper management positions in EA, and co-founding a company called Elevation Partners.

Hold on to your ass, because things are about to get corporate.

Elevation Partners was a large Investment firm, meaning it held a lot of private businesses. Among these businesses was a certain "V.G Holdings". Yes, the same V.G. Holdings that ran Bioware/Pandemic. One of the first acts John made when he became CEO of EA was to buy VG Holdings for $620 million. This gave EA two top quality companies that were just exploding onto the videogame scene.
However, John still held a huge personal interest in Elevation Partners, and so he personally pocketed a $5 million personal bonus by Elevation Partners through his official role there for the merger.

What happened after EA had bought the two companies? Bioware did well... for a while. Now the team that made fantastic singleplayer RPGs are stuck perpetually maintaining a failing MMO loosely based on one of their most successful IPs. Pandemic are... dead. Because EA didn't really have a plan for them.
They lasted one year and a month. How does a company get canned so quickly, especially one that creates such a long term product as a videogame? The Duke Nukem Forever developers lasted ten times as long and they weren't even doing any work!
It's because EA never had a plan for Pandemic, they never had any games reserved for them to make, and they didn't bother to use their talents or name. They didn't factor into EA's business plan, and were canned at the first excuse.
The reason for the merger was John Riccitiello's 5 million dollar handshake, and you know what? For that amount of money you can't really blame him.

"Dear god. An informed consumer."

 

[Andy Shandy]

No, they're not evil. But some of their business practices sure as hell don't endear themselves to the average gamer.

 

[-|-]

I like EA too. They've published some good stuff. I liked DA:O and DAII, Dead space, ME, Crysis 2 etc.

I know they are evil cos people say business practices or some shit like that. But you know what? I really cgaff.

 

[DeimosMasque]

My personal two-cents on this (Warning I only read the first page so if I restate something others have said I apologize.)

EA is not evil. But then I don't think any modern corporation is evil. Short-sighted? Yes. Impatient? Yes. Uncaring? YES!

The sad thing is that EA was started by people who had a real passion for games and wanted to make them. But they were good at making games. Thus, they made a lot of money. Thus, they expanded. As such, the original creators of the company moved away from leadership positions. Then EA became more headed by businessmen rather game lovers.

This has and always will happen. For every three Nintendos: that was, until recently, run by a game lover... you'll get an EA.

One day, it will become about making money, rather than making games. If Westwood, Bioware, Bullfrog etc. etc. etc. were not bought out (BTW despite what people have said on the first page, buy outs need to be approved by the owners or the stockholders meaning it wasn't just EA swooping in and eating them. EA hasn't, to my knowledge, done a hostile takeover.) they would have eventually become similar to EA.

Proof in the pudding is Sierra Games. Sierra was formed by a husband/wife team that just loved writing and games. They made some of the most recognizable point-n-click games of a generation. King's Quest, Space Quest, Quest for Glory and Colonel's Bequest.

Okay no one remembers Colonel's Bequest... but I was making a "Quest" joke there.

They took risks with games like Leisure Suit Larry, Gabriel Knight, Phantasmagoria.

They bought up companies like Dynamix and Coktel Vision and Impressions Games. They helped them produce games as well.

And then they were bought out themselves. They did exactly the same thing as EA and they failed at it.

EA has succeeded.

And yes, Online Passes, DMR, Season Passes, etc. they are all mostly bullcrap. But those are recent additions (well not DMR but you get me)

BECAUSE of EA we got games like The Sims (1 and 2 were awesome... 3... less then awesome), System Shock 2, Ultima Online (the prototype for MMOs!), Mass Effect 2 and 3 (ignore the ending controversy and accept that it was a great game), American McGee's Alice and Alice: Madness Returns, Dead Space, Dante's Inferno... and more.

Those games would not exist without EA.

And that is why the EA hate makes no sense to me. It's honestly as stupid as hating Disney for buying Marvel and then complaining that Avengers was awesome.

 

[tautologico]

Remember that time in 2004 when EA was sued after the EA spouse incident? And they settled out of court for $15.6 million? Because one of the arguments was, with the wages paid, the workers were essentially paid slaves wages?

Good times. Totally a hallmark of an on the level, not evil company. But so long as they're a company, they need to make money right? Who cares if they don't pay their employees enough, or force them to work 110 hour weeks for months on end; it's just business. Apparently, that justified any and all actions on a moral level.

Why, we should just let the diamond trade in Africa go on as it is! Those mine owners are just out to make money for their companies.

That's ignoring the fact that most game companies work just like this, even today. This does not mean that we should think it's ok, but EA is not alone in this and very few companies operate without the crunches. The games you most love and cherish in your life? Probably 90% or more of them were created in this kind of work environment.

 

[DeimosMasque]

(ignore the ending controversy and accept that it was a great game)

Okay I know you're trying to make a point beyond this, i'm not trying to pull a Boudica here, but this right here bothers me. It's like saying "Ignore that the car has a busted broken engine and accept that it's a good car!"

I guess I'm saying it more because the ending never bothered me that much. And the EC solved it all for me.

It's like saying last Tuesday was great, except for that I overdrafted my account. It's a big deal but a minor deal in regards to what it means as a whole.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

By the way, I just wanted to drop in a post thanking you guys. Even if you disagreed with my points, you kept it mostly civil. Only two people actually attacked me directly, which was a lot fewer than I expected. So, good job, Escapist.

 

[ATRAYA]

I'm pretty sure it's easy to buy out any company with enough money.
See, because above ALL of the hardworking grunts that make the great products, there are the crafty, rhetorical people that string them along with financing, marketing, and all the other goodies that reality demands. They usually hold most, if not ALL the rights to the studio/manufacturer/business, and are pretty much only in it for the money, but because they DON'T have shareholders to deal with, they let the workers take risks and experiment, usually netting them a profit, one way or the other.
What E.A. does is swoop in, promise the guy(s) holding the rights a shit-ton of money, then assume the "throne" as it were. This would be fine if not for two new factors; shareholders are ALWAYS bad for business because they only want GUARANTEED success - anything less is considered failure - and E.A. can't direct a company worth SHIT.
Then they milk day-one D.L.C., I.P.s, and anything they can get their hands on until whatever studio they've bankrolled dries up, sometimes using said company's battered corpse as a meat-shield to defend against the onslaught of attacking fans.

Sorry, but both E.A. and Activision are still the top two on my boycott list, followed by McDonalds.

 

[ATRAYA]

ITT: A corporation that fucks us over is okay because it needs to make money. It's not like there are ones that fuck us over less and still make fat cheddar cheese.

Which corporations do? Surely you don't mean Valve, who has a clause in their Steam TOS that they can shut down your account at any time, for any reason, and recently put in a clause that states you cannot file a class-action lawsuit, right?

That's my point. A lot of what people hold against EA, other corporations do, but because those other corporations aren't EA, they get a pass. For example, when the stuff I just mentioned was revealed/pointed out, they just shrugged and moved on. In the case of the first, it was "well, that's just how digital distributors work, it's standard". For the latter, it was "well, were you planning to file a class action lawsuit against them?"

But when EA revealed that they would close down your Origin account if it was inactive for two years, people flipped out, talking about how EA had no right to do that. Can you see the double standard there?

Just had to stop by and point out that you can always, always, ALWAYS, under any circumstances, through any number of signatures or agreements, file a lawsuit. You have that right under both Canadian and U.S. law. Companies simply put that in to try and quell those who don't know the law, and will simply think themselves defeated.

*Ahem* Now that that is said; Bookworm, AWAAAAAY!

 

[tautologico]

There are objective rules of storytelling and literature that have been developed and furthered over the last 5,000 years, and both ME1 and ME2 follow one of the most common archetypes (coined as "The Hero's Journey" by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces). Using the rules and patterns laid out for such stories, ME1 is objectively better, insofar as a story can be.

I don't think ME2 tries to follow the Hero's Journey. At all. Where are the elements of the Hero's journey in ME2? ME1 has a kinda-serviceable story, and its biggest problem is, actually, the already tired and old Bioware cliché of having to follow the Hero's Journey. There are many possible and good ways to structure a story and it doesn't have to follow the Hero's Journey all the time.

Edit: Just for an example of the kind of discrepancy that I'm talking about in the quality of the story, when you look at ME1, you have a damn near perfect hero's journey, taking Shepard from ordinary dude to galactic savior. When you look at ME2, you have the protagonist murdered in the first 2 minutes. This is bad storytelling.

Here you seem to imply that how well a story follows the Hero's Journey is, somehow, an "objective" measure of how good a story is? I'm sorry, but this is completely bonkers. If anything, "adherence to the Hero's Journey" can be a sign of poor writing. Film Crit Hulk, a critic I love even though he writes in all-caps and Hulkspeak, wrote a great piece about our current over-reliance on the Hero's Journey as a way to create new stories [https://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/tag/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/]. Campbell was writing about the patterns he saw in existing legends and stories as a way to analyze human cultures, he never tried to make it a prescription on how to write stories. As Hulk says, it's one of the most popular "paint-by-numbers" storytelling schemes we use today. He even cites ME1 (and many other Bioware games) in his piece.

Killing the protagonist is a plot device used to accomplish one or more of a handful of things:

1) Raise the stakes
2) Introduce a new protagonist
3) An example of how depraved the antagonist is
4) Start making extreme changes in how the story is told

I don't like Shepard dying very much, but it does impose some interesting consequences, the biggest of which is that now Shepard's indebted to Cerberus and must work for them. I think ME2 could have explored this better, but they actually used his death to do something which would be very hard to swallow otherwise.

All in all, I don't think Bioware ever wrote really great stories in terms of plots, though of course some were a bit better than others. Their strength is in the characters, some good dialogue (along with some bad dialogue too), and, in the case of Mass Effect, I think it's a good setting. I wouldn't try to say that ME1's story is "objectively better" than ME2, especially not using the Hero's Journey as some kind of metric. But ME1 has a simpler, more well-rounded story than the other 2, even if utterly unoriginal. That's not a surprise, given that Bioware was doing the Hero's Journey over and over for a good number of years when they made ME1. When they try to go outside the structure of the Hero's Journey, things break down, which just proves how bad they are at story writing.

It's no surprise KOTOR2 has a much more interesting story than the first one.

 

[Agayek]

I don't think ME2 tries to follow the Hero's Journey. At all. Where are the elements of the Hero's journey in ME2? ME1 has a kinda-serviceable story, and its biggest problem is, actually, the already tired and old Bioware cliché of having to follow the Hero's Journey. There are many possible and good ways to structure a story and it doesn't have to follow the Hero's Journey all the time.

There's a decent breakdown of the HJ components of ME2 at the beginning of http://jmstevenson.me/2012/03/22/all-that-matters-is-the-ending-part-2-mass-effect-3/

The article itself is an analysis of ME3's ending, but about 2-3 pages down there's a good breakdown of the steps of the Hero's Journey for all 3 games.

If you don't wanna follow the link (though it's a good read if you're at all interested in an excellent analysis of ME3's ending), it comes down to as follows:

1. Ordinary World -
Mass Effect 2: Aboard the Normandy
2. Call to Adventure
Mass Effect 2: Shepard?s Death/Rebirth, Cerberus station attack
3. Refusing the Call
Mass Effect 2: Shepard?s reluctance to work with Cerberus
4. Meeting the Mentor
Mass Effect 2: Meeting the Illusive Man, given mission to Freedom?s Progress
5. Crossing the Threshold
Mass Effect 2: Mission to Freedom?s Progress
6. Tests, Allies, Enemies
Mass Effect 2: Dossier Missions
7. Approach
Mass Effect 2: Collector Ship
8. Ordeal, Death and Rebirth
Mass Effect 2: Attacking the Collectors, finding out Prothean?s fate
9. Seizing the Sword
Mass Effect 2: Reaper IFF mission
10. The Road Back
Mass Effect 2: Through the Omega 4 Relay
11. Resurrection
Mass Effect 2: Suicide Mission, Human Reaper fight
12. Return with the Elixir
Mass Effect 2: Experienced Team and resources to fight Reapers, Collector Base if kept

So yes, ME2 did follow the Hero's Journey, and the game should be judged accordingly.

Here you seem to imply that how well a story follows the Hero's Journey is, somehow, an "objective" measure of how good a story is? I'm sorry, but this is completely bonkers. If anything, "adherence to the Hero's Journey" can be a sign of poor writing. Film Crit Hulk, a critic I love even though he writes in all-caps and Hulkspeak, wrote a great piece about our current over-reliance on the Hero's Journey as a way to create new stories [https://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/tag/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/]. Campbell was writing about the patterns he saw in existing legends and stories as a way to analyze human cultures, he never tried to make it a prescription on how to write stories. As Hulk says, it's one of the most popular "paint-by-numbers" storytelling schemes we use today. He even cites ME1 (and many other Bioware games) in his piece.

That's not what I was trying to get at at all. What I meant is that a story that follows an established structure/style of literature can and should be judged by the rules of that structure/style. Bioware went with the Hero's Journey for both ME1 and ME2, and ME1 just did it better.

I actually agree with Hulk in that article, in that the Hero's Journey really needs to be put to rest for a while, but that's what Bioware was going for, so that's what they should be judged with.

I don't like Shepard dying very much, but it does impose some interesting consequences, the biggest of which is that now Shepard's indebted to Cerberus and must work for them. I think ME2 could have explored this better, but they actually used his death to do something which would be very hard to swallow otherwise.

It's hard to swallow, period. The whole shift to Cerberus being misunderstood good guys was incredibly ridiculous and damn near managed to completely shatter SOD. It was hackneyed, stupid, and it introduced a plethora of plotholes that they clearly didn't care to even think about.

Edit: Also, after Shepard died, nothing changed. The circumstances of the plot at the end of ME1 were: Nobody believed the Reapers were coming, Shepard had a ship and a crew and had to save the galaxy himself. After he died and was reborn, the circumstances were: Nobody believed the Reapers were coming, Shepard had a ship and a crew and had to save the galaxy all on his lonesome.

This is flat out bad storytelling. As I mentioned before, killing the protagonist is used to accomplish one or more of those 4 objectives. Bioware managed to accomplish none of them.

Also, I agree with you in that Bioware's strength was never in plot, but they can at least make serviceable stories that are made into something more by excellent characters. It's just that both aspects have been getting steadily worse in their last few releases.

 

[lunavixen]

I don't think that they are evil, just making some really stupid choices, and i think the blame lies more with the management and CEOs rather than the employees further down the food chain

 

[Olas]

I like that OP actually felt the need to create a thread entitled "EA is not evil".

No, they're not evil, just bad, really really bad.

 

[NiPah]

What then is the purpose of the publisher? You bring up several cases where publishers die after joining with EA but neglect to put any blame on EA's policy for their failure. Is EA giving these companies too much freedom? too little? all that can be said for sure is that under the wing of EA each of those studios ended up failing and being dissolved, sure they may not have been the shining examples of perfect developers before they were bought up but EA has to be pretty shit not to know how to turn a struggling studio into at least a marginally successful studio after all it's years of experience.

You also mention that EA is not evil, it's just a business trying to make money, well that argument can be made for criminals and that chick from Australia, the actions they take to become successful can be judged, I'm not saying EA is evil (the concept is a bit stupid since hardly anyone is actually evil) but the point does not work.

I like EA for the most part, sure I think their upper management are out of touch idiots who need to fire their PR team like a mofo, and I hate Origin for reasons I've stated many times before, but in the end I enjoy many of their games.

Lastly what is the use of a thread like this? most of your points are bastardized versions of points already made in order to more easily counter them without actually countering them, and people generally just hate EA, no amount of defending them by throwing mud at the studios they bought will help that.

 

[llubtoille]

I don't think they're deliberately malicious and probably don't have a room where they dismember puppies, so odds are they're not evil in the literal sense.
But they are a money orientated corporation with a pretty bad public image.

Go through all their quoted statements for the last year or so, and nearly everything they say is interpreted to their detriment.
They rarely have anything useful, interesting or positive to say, and take every opportunity to belittle their rivals.

It doesn't matter whether or not they make great games; they have an image of being an obnoxious jackass.

A bit like the Mel Gibson of game makers I guess.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I think Hanlon's Razor best sums up EA

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

They aren't eat a puppy evil (although they do engage in similar activity), they are are just incompetent morons.

 

[Yopaz]

Calling EA evil is ignorant. EA makes decisions which gives them profit and makes some people hate them. Just like other big companies out there. Evil is about deliberate wrongdoing. EA is run by people who do it for own personal gain. Not admirable, but not evil either.

I disagree. I don't really have much of an opinion on EA, but I'm pretty sure doing stuff for personal gain at the expense of other people is perfectly evil. Can you really turn around to me and say that Bernie Madoff ripping off all of his family and friends for the sake of being rich wasn't evil? Or hell, that Banana company that, when their pesticide of choice was found to be poisonous to their workers and was banned in America, continued to use it in countries other than the USA because it'd cost a bit of cash to swap pesticides (and not irreparably damage their employees), that's pretty evil. Or slavery, that's got to be evil right?

Yes, EA isn't anywhere near that bad. But saying the pursuit of personal gain at the expense of others is never evil seems a bit ridiculous.

Edit: Oh, and to those saying they need to do it to make money, wasn't there a news article on the escapist a while ago saying their stock was falling? It's clearly not working for them, perhaps they should be less daft. (unless of course I made this up to make myself laugh and to be able to make a point.)

I still don't think this or any of the examples you provided can be considered evil. All of them are morally bad and frankly the things some fruit plantations, fireworks producers, car companies and some companies producing hardware is actually disgusting. Workers getting serious injuries or health issues just because a company wants to save money by not providing proper protective gear. It's morally despicable. However evil is about intentions rather than the act itself. I am currently taking higher education order to get a job that pays better than what I could get without it. Thus I am doing it for personal gain, is that evil? People take jobs for personal gain rather than because they feel like they're saving the world. Yes, this is taking it out of a context and most people wont hurt others by simply taking a job, but the question stands. When does doing something for personal gain become evil? Is it when others suffer from it? Because getting hired for a job where 100 people applied means 99 people wont get a job because you got it. My goal for getting this job was personal gain, not to cause 99 people o not get the job. Evil would be if I was deliberately trying to prevent those people from getting a job just for for the hell of it.

Also EA's share prices are dropping. Their share prices had a massive drop from 2007 to 2008 (finance crisis) where they ended up with their stocks being worth one third of what it was previously worth. Now just a week ago they hit their lowest in a good while and the price was 10.80 I think. Their share price is fluctuation and their shares have had ups and downs. Now 2012 seems to be a bad year for them. How do you figure this is because of of their business practice? At the end of 2011 they had their highest stock value since the finance crisis. They also had the exact same business model in 2011.

You say EA is daft for not seeing the error of their ways due to falling stock prices, the truth of it is that they do what they have done for decades, more than 20 years using a business model one year with losses (except the finance crisis which wasn't their fault) means they have had 19 years of success for this one year with loss. Clearly this business model is working.

 

[Bloodstain]

Actually, I agree with everything you said and I don't dislike EA at all. Those who elected EA to be "America's Worst Company" seriously have some issues regarding perspective.

I don't have anything else to add, I just wanted to give you my support.

 

[Amaror]

I don't think that EA are evil - they're just incompetent.

This pretty much.
They need to make money but often it seams they don't have a single brain cell in the whole company.
They try to make money by making franchises have a broader appeal, which results in less quality games, which results in less money.
Best example is dragon age 2. With it's action focuss and horrible dead line, Dragon Age 2 was a mess, and therefore way less money than Origins.
Funny enough that EA announced before the release that they think Dragon Age 2 will make double the amount of Origins.