EA: Some Gamers Just Don't Like Change

[duchaked]

*eye twitch*

Excuse me, I have to go add Peter Moore and John Riccitello's faces to my avatar.

hahahaha

yeah and to point I haven't heard much about Kotick lately. maybe that's a good sign (esp for Activision's PR if he really is keeping his gob shut). that or he's just busy rolling in the CoD cash pile...

 

[tetron]

"And rightly or wrongly we think it's our job to provide reasons every day to go play that game and enjoy that game. Technology is enabling that. Hardware is enabling that. Different game experiences like open world experiences are enabling that, and we're trying to react to what we believe is what gamers want."

I do not now nor have I ever needed a reason to play and enjoy video games all day. And I did it when I had a SNES same as I do now. You should make it your job to make good games, not take it upon yourselves to do something completely unnecessary.

 

[Something Amyss]

I fear for the day it becomes uncool to rag on people who are damaging to an industry you love.

 

[weirdee]

it's not extra time or money. they typically use the period when the game has been submitted for approval to do the dlc that they had planned in advance, with the whole game's life cycle staying roughly the same as before, but with that portion of time allotted to dlc, rather than the core game, whose development has been made shorter to accommodate for this change

it'd be a cold day in hell before a company would give extra time or resources before the release of the game, because nobody wants their budget to look larger when they could simply cut into the development time to get the extra payoff

 

[Fr]anc[is]

Listing off a random sample of games that don't have expansion packs as if that somehow has any relevance

I could tell you weren't going to be reasonable, but that's just funny

 

[teebeeohh]

We dislike publishers trying to decide for us what we want based on what is best for their profit margin.

Also:CHANGE, YOU GOT CHANGE?

 

[FalloutJack]

-Not Proof-

anc[is]


I could tell you weren't going to be reasonable, but that's just funny

May I join you in this laugh?


Hit the benches, Fooly-Cooly, before you hurt yourself.

 

[Baldur Moon]

"I think people are worried gaming is going in a different direction than they were used to with N64, Sega Mega Drive, PlayStation and PlayStation 2," he said. "Everything was dominated by consoles. Pretty much everything was offline. You bought the game. You sat down. And you played the game until you got tired of the game. It was all on the disc."

"Games are turning into 365 days a year live operation experiences," he continued. "And rightly or wrongly we think it's our job to provide reasons every day to go play that game and enjoy that game. Technology is enabling that. Hardware is enabling that. Different game experiences like open world experiences are enabling that, and we're trying to react to what we believe is what gamers want."

"I can filter out hate, vitriol, rants, it's cool to rag on EA, it's cool to rag on Zynga, it's cool to rag on Bobby Kotick, it's cool to rag on Peter Moore," he added.

I... I can't even... ughhh.... *sigh*
It's like you WANT people to hate you

Hit the benches, Fooly-Cooly, before you hurt yourself.

Dat reference

 

[weirdee]

which is more likely?

model 1: developer spends time and most as usual, and then develop full expansion packs during and after the game's release, spending more for their development. the game goes live, and they make money, and then get residual sales from the dlc packs after they're released.

model 2: developer spends time and money as they did before to complete a full game, and then works on dlc during approval phase after the development, spending the extra time and money on the dlc. the game and dlc go live and they make more money because the dlc was released on the first day, plus they only spent a small amount of time on it compared to full release expansion packages so profit margins are higher.

model 3: developer keeps the whole budget and timespan the same, and the publisher cuts the difference out from the main game. the game and dlc go live, and they make roughly the same amount of money as the previous model, because no one customer can quantify what the game has had removed. customers who almost can figure it out are not in the target market to begin with.

compare to these additional models

model 3: developer makes the game as usual, but then the publisher takes the game, splits it up into chunks, and markets the smaller chunks as dlc, while leaving the bare essentials at 60 dollars. since the "additional content" has already been completed in advance, there is no need to keep the people around afterwards to develop it, and manpower is either removed or repurposed. in addition, publisher also decides to market buying the entire dlc package at once as an "all access pass" which portrays being charged twice for the content that was already paid for as a great deal (as opposed to being ripped off three times for buying each item individually).

model 4: the same arrangement as above, but the developer keeps a skeleton crew onboard to mush pre-existing content together in ways that are unrecognizable to most customers to continue milking the game. any actually new assets added to the game are created at a negligible cost to the publisher compared to how much they charge for those features, considering that these assets are intangible and unlimited.

model 5: the same arrangement as model 4, but the developer puts those assets in a randomized format that makes customers pay for a chance to acquire new content. the publisher is in full control of the odds and therefore can adjust distribution at the highest possible profit.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I can handle change EA provided it's not all at once and it's for the better, the changes you're talking about are definitely NOT for the better.

 

[The White Hunter]

How about we talk about how all of the people who were early adopters of Battlefield 3 have to pay $50 for Battlefield Premium so we can get all of the expansions to your wonderful game while you're selling Premium and BF3 for $70. How can we ever be comfortable with change with Publishers jackknifing all over the place?

Not to mention the pay-to-win unlock packs, the steadily more fucked up game balance (it was fine before the first patch, then they broke the USAS and it all went downhill from there...), the greedy and ridiculous rent-a-server option essentially ruining the experience on consoles, the overpriced map packs that come with overpowered unbalanced weapons (fucking FAMAS was broken for months and nobody can convince me otherwise, I know, I used it > >)(can't speak about close quarters since i didnt buy it), premium can just fuck off frankly it seems on paper to actually be slightly inferior to COD Elite, at least a lot of Elite you get free and it's definately more functional than Battlelog.

 

[Bloodstain]

"I can filter out hate, vitriol, rants, it's cool to rag on EA, it's cool to rag on Zynga, it's cool to rag on Bobby Kotick, it's cool to rag on Peter Moore," he added.

Oh, this very thread proves him so very right.
I'm fine with EA and DLC and so on because I understand that large game companies are businesses that need to make money.
Above all, however, I am fine with all of that because I still enjoy EA's games, which really is all that matters. Enjoyment.

"I think people are worried gaming is going in a different direction than they were used to with N64, Sega Mega Drive, PlayStation and PlayStation 2," he said. "Everything was dominated by consoles. Pretty much everything was offline. You bought the game. You owned the game. You sat down. You owned the game. And you played the game until you got tired of the game. And you owned the game. It was all on the disc. That you owned."

There, I fixed that quote for you, Mr. Moore.

You're welcome.

It's not that gamers "fear change" it's that they fear donkey-helmets like you trying to rip them off, which you seem to be doing more and more often these days.

By that logic, you should hate Steam, because you don't own your Steam games. Which is why Steam can take your games away if you don't agree to the new TOS. The games are not your property.
And I don't think this is a bad thing. This is the future.

 

[Lieju]

I do like change.
I don't like paying 80 dollars (60 + dlc prices) for what I would have expected to be in a 60 dollar game 5 years ago.
Saints Row 3, I'm looking at you in particular. And you too ME3.
I don't mind paying for extras, but when you take out the core or weaken the core for the purpose of selling it later you are doing me a disservice.

My thought exactly.

I love the idea of DLC, getting more content for a game I love, that will make me interested in the game again. Maybe a mini-sequel, or what would have been called an expansion before.

But my fear in general is that we are getting less and less content for our money.

Also I'm sure online-multiplayer is great, but it's not something I want in a game. So it annoys me when it bleeds in otherwise single-player oriented games. At the very least, it's not the kind of content I get any enjoyement out of.

 

[Sis]

DS and ME multiplayer are blatantly tacked on to appease the MP crowd, buttmunch. Learn to make proper MP's before you make an interview like this.

 

[EnlightendDead]

-Horrible Attempt at Proof-

May I join you in this laugh?


Hit the benches, Fooly-Cooly, before you hurt yourself.

You guys mind if I join in to?

 

[unLucky500]

{By that logic, you should hate Steam, because you don't own your Steam games. Which is why Steam can take your games away if you don't agree to the new TOS. The games are not your property.
And I don't think this is a bad thing. This is the future.]}

Thanks for saying what I was thinking. You can't get angry at EA for not allowing you to "own" your games when Steam has been doing the same thing for years.
Not to say you can't get angry at EA for other things, and I do agree the whole on disc DLC thing is a bit of a joke.

 

[ScruffyMcBalls]

Just gonna throw my hat into the circle for a second; EA blows, it's not because we don't like change, we don't like shit change. We don't "rag" on EA because it's cool, it's because EA and others like them genuinely piss us off to our cores. We aren't whining over invalid grievances, we're complaining over perfectly valid bullshit.
Oh, and does anyone else suspect that this whole "extending play-time well beyond the couple hours it used to be" thing is just a shade indicative that the industry has run out of ideas it's willing to run with / doesn't know how to make money off of smaller titles? Or is that just me?

 

[Syntax Error]

Says the head of the guy whose introduced online passes to games. To prevent Used Sales. Where's the "You don't have to be online..." for that?