EA: Some Gamers Just Don't Like Change

[Ickabod]

So basically they are tuning everyone out and just convincing themselves that they know what everyone wants.

Change isn't a problem, change for the sake of change is.

Interestingly enough though, the change they bring to games is generally to make them all the same as other games. So they change IP's to conform more with other IP's that have sold well. We as the consumer ***** about it, and then they say it's because we don't like change. It's because we liked the differences in the other games that made them unique.

Innovation > Change And they aren't the same thing.

 

[Emiscary]

It's not a "direction we're not used to" it's a direction we DON'T WANT. As soon as you're ready to admit that to yourselves EA, people will stop hating you. Till then, fuck off and die. Thanks.

 

[Spartan212]

If it's cool to hate EA, then this site is Fonzie

OT: I kind of agree with him. I don't understand the DLC debate going on in this thread. He says that gamers hate change, and people are talking about expansion packs that are a decade old. 10 years ago. You know, when games STILL cost $60. How many things can you name that are still the same price that they were in the 80s? Not many. They have to make money to take on larger projects. Would everyone rather they just start charging $80 for a game and give you nothing? Because you know what? They could. And people would still buy them

 

[Khada]

Go on EA, put your foot in it once more. Each stupid press statement is another hole dug in your grave.

 

[grigjd3]

So it's clear that the nature of gaming is changing, but 1, Peter Moore has found the most dickish way possible to say that and 2, EA makes it feel like they are abusing these changes to extract more money out of us. My interactions with EA always feels like I am having something stolen from me, as if some bit of my innocence is slowly drained away every time I even think about purchasing an EA game. I am fine with the move to a digital distribution model (I love Steam and GOG). I'm happy that people get continually updated gaming experiences. I just don't think EA is the company that delivers the best product and they certainly don't treat their customers with an ounce of respect.

 

[GonzoGamer]

"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.

Yea, I think gamers embrace change (especially when it comes to games becoming bigger and better) as long as that change isn't designed to loot them for all they're worth. The problem is that a lot of the changes we've seen in gaming lately lately are just in terms of how much will the consumer be willing to pay for...

The greatest argument against games being art is that the game industry is mutating capitalism like every other industry:
http://pandodaily.com/2012/08/07/looterism-the-cancerous-ethos-that-is-gutting-america/

EA I actually like change. You changed your business models to try and rip me off as much as possible so I changed my purchasing habits to make sure you get minimal profits from me. I used to pre-order and buy nothing but new games to support the developers but you know, things change.

Any EA game I want to try I use gamefly for it and keep it (buying used) if its worth keeping. Sure I may lose some content with the project 10 dollar but not enough to make me care.

If I want to really buy a game made by EA I just give it a year or so and buy it cheap on amazon or steam for 5-10 bucks.

Therefore the company see's minimal profits and I get to enjoy my experience. I used to feel bad for the developers but honestly if you tie yourself to a disease eventually you are going to catch the sickness (bioware, blizzard, etc etc). There are many developers worth supporting that arn't in league with this BS just yet.

Anywho thats my 2 cents on EA's comments about us not liking change.

Agreed with everything you said there except that if you do keep a gamefly game that has an online pass, they send you the original passcode with the case and manual.

 

[Auron]

EA can always dig a bit more on their big hole can't they? Seriously, we've been playing online and discussing it online since the late nineties wtf is wrong with this guy?

What's changing is that games became more expensive at 60 dollars and then they expect us to spend even more on 10+ priced dlc, just look at fucking Battlefield 3, total price is 120 dollars if bought at release and then going premium, the dlc is just a bunch of maps and guns.

 

[Treblaine]

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

I don't honestly know why I'm bothering, but I'll try to explain this in as simple terms as I can, so even you can follow.

The games I listed were from studios, series or genres that have no concept of the expansion pack, and yet have delivered award winning DLC campaigns. This indicates that clearly, what works as DLC does not work in most of the successful cases as an expansion pack. Therefore, attempting to draw the line between an expansion pack and DLC is clearly baseless and deeply flawed.

Do you get the point yet, or will I have to resort to pictures?

Back in the day, maps were almost never premium because they knew it would only split up the player base so the only time people could play was when they had the same maps.

If there was any upgrade then it would be a SINGLE upgrade, not 5-6 separate packs which leads to hundreds of different permutations amongst a group of friends. Any map needed to be easy to download on a relatively quick basis, that was as true for official maps as user generated custom maps. This is a big problem for COD and Battlefield now. Maps are worthless as you can't play with many people on them.

The problem is not with DLC in itself, the problem is the PREMIUM part. Yes, the charging people money.

We have all heard the argument "ooh, there is down-time from going gold to shipping" well that's not a problem for Valve, releases all their maps and new weapons for free on all their games. If you were working on this content continuously as part of the same development process, then it should have been released as a free patch.

One problem with premium DLC as it currently is, that it's so hard to distinguish between what is genuine extra content and what is shovelware.

Diablo 2 had one, count it, ONE expansion pack. Simple. But a mountain of separate DLC from little fragments of narrative to weapons to items is bullshit, you can't tell what you need for the full experience and what is extra shit.

Another problem is games that are quite clearly nothing but expansion packs being sold as full price sequels. Modern Warfare 3 is a blatant expansion pack to a blatantly unfinished prior game, so much of it is old assets remixed in unimaginative ways. COD: Modern Warfare 3 should have been called Modern Warfare: Episode 3 and sold for $20-30, not $60+ DLC.

Games are too expensive. It made sense when they were printed on inherently expensive circuit board ROM chipsets but not when it's just freaking data. And things add up to more than the sum of their parts, just because they play a game for 2 months and they can easily save up $60 over 2 months that doesn't mean they can put down $60 at any one time, this makes people fanatical about games as they need to justify throwing down $60 for ONE thing!

I'd get DLC if it cut down on that $60 price point but it doesn't.

 

[FalloutJack]

-Yo-

Here's an uplift: Companies may come and go, but gaming (in any region) has far too much money in it to die. It's just too big a thing to actually collapse now. Yes, there was such a case in the 80s, but that was during a greater struggling period for video games over all. Now? There is so much gaming going on that you would have to do more than collapse a company or two in an area, or all over the world even. The demand would bring about a response almost immediately. Who from? It's hard to say, but that's what would happen, I'm sure.

-Massively Condescending-

We're not interested because you've been officially laughed off of the stage.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

"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.

Moore... You are 100% correct. Most of the hate and bile is by people who have no understanding of why they hate you other than superficial reasons and because it's a popular opinion, and that is completely unfair.

You guys are still the closest thing to fascists in this industry though. Maybe do something about that, huh?

 

[chuckdm]

anc[is]

Yeah, the difference was we never got the DLC in the first place.

Give me one good reason that having extra gameplay available for purchase is somehow worse than not being able to get that gameplay under any circumstances.

No, don't go into your fantasy about how if DLC wasn't a thing, developers would have totally included the content just for kicks, stick with reality.

Except we did, they were called expansion packs. It was a good time, when we got more than cheat codes or skin packs for our money. I even hear tales of when map packs were not called map packs, they were just new maps, and they were free.

We also had Mods. Nothing is better business than letting an army of volunteers add content (and thus, add value) to your game. UNPAID volunteers. Doing your work FOR YOU. For FREE. Of course, if you let them make mods, then you rapidly discover that half the modding community is better than your own developers and can make BETTER content than your own official DLC and then people will quit buying DLC and instead install free mods. Though, that said, Dawnguard seems to be selling very, very well. So maybe not.

And also, I wanted to say I didn't always hate EA. When EA bought westwood was the first time I was really even aware EA existed. I heard horror stories from a friend about how the old C&C team was treated, and many left, so I was upset at first. Then, I played Red ALert 2, and then Yuri's Revenge, and for a time, I thought EA was all sunshine and glitter.

Then they made some other dick move, and another, and another, and I forget which game it was, but the DRM from one of their games (Sims 1, maybe?) started making my desktop bluescreen once an hour, every hour, on the hour. That was the day I quit buying EA.

So no, I decided it was cool to hate EA, but I decided that FROM EXPERIENCE, not peer pressure. I mean, fuck, I'm a geek. I'm immune to peer pressure.

 

[MetalDooley]

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?

Actually I'm pretty sure that THQ were the first company to use online passes.EA just picked up the idea and fucking ran with it to the extent where they're showing up in games with no online component.

Kindly remind me again EA why my single-player only offline copy of Kingdoms of Amalur required an online pass?

 

[SnakeoilSage]

For a company that pretends to be above fan criticism they sure like to say so a lot.

 

[NiPah]

No, it was multiple incidents that I've read about from various sources, and no they weren't all about the "single instance" but a myriad of instances, each followed by poor automated customer service. Thank you for bringing Steam into the picture, since you mentioned it no I haven't read a single story of them banning every user associated with the computer of a banned user, nor have I heard them perma banning a player for quoting offensive words on a blog.

I stated originally that it was seemingly easy to be permanently banned from their game library, I did not as you say "parade it as the norm", all EA has to do is show me that steps have been taken to make sure another user won't be banned in the same way and I'd be happy. Instead I get EA being rather presumptuous stating that I'm afraid of change, all the while sounding very much like a prick.

Source? Back your statement.

Also: you get tone from a written article? You must have ESP or something.

Sources are hard to come by since they've just been what I've read over a long period of time, but from what I can find:
http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-3/1456285-banned-ea-support-banned-origin.html
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2210668
http://www.destructoid.com/ea-will-ban-you-from-games-if-someone-else-swears-at-you-217219.phtml
http://www.destructoid.com/ea-forum-bans-are-still-locking-users-out-of-games-215767.phtml
http://www.destructoid.com/ea-accidentally-bans-player-from-dragon-age-ii-196272.phtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKMCf-CQZxo
I can't find the source on the "entire computer ban" story but I believe I originally read itt on Destructoid.

I'm not sure how many if any of these are true, or just random people riding the limelight of EA hate, what it does create (at least in me) is a sense that randomly innocent people can be banned and lose their game library. What I wish EA would do it comment on these stories, or at least state that they have implemented fail-safes to prevent issues like this occurring.

But no, I get EA stating gamers (like me) hate EA for innovation since gamers (like me) just don't like change... and yes the whole thing comes off as sounding very prick-ish, don't need ESP to read that much into it.

 

[piinyouri]

I don't fear change so much as I despise companies telling me what I can and cannot do with my property.

 

[NiPah]

-snip-

It was like you said a problem mainly with an automated response system. Main problem being tieing forum accounts to game accounts and banning one as well as the other. Other problems included false positives of hacks and cracks that would made complete bans of the account.

Steam had a similar, thou a lot less serious problem at one point (mainly involving hacking of games and VAC). Was fixed relatively fast.

Either way like you are saying it wasn't a question of change, it was a question of competence and the issue has been resolved (to the best of my knowledge).

That being said there is a large amount of information out there of "Questionable" quality out there, involving everything from bans of accounts because of having a critical blog to abusive support staff. There is a large amount of people riding hate wave for EA. While it is bound in an actual issue the amount of false information out there serves to undermine that position.

Anyway You were more or less right on the money with your original post. While I do believe a lot of gamers have an issue with change, I it isn't the issue they ahve with EA.

Yeah I certainly understand a lot of the information out there is questionable. I wouldn't call my avoidance of Origin an informed decision, more one guided by confirmation bias and rumors. What I really wish EA would do is have Peter Moore come out and state their pledge to prevent this sort of thing from happening (even if it's all just false rumors).

I know no one is calling for Gabe to come out and do this, but then again Gabe isn't coming out and stating why gamers hate Valve (or maybe he is).

 

[4173]

I thought this was going to be a reasonable defense of yearly sequels.


Silly me.

 

[FalloutJack]

I thought this was going to be a reasonable defense of yearly sequels.


Silly me.

Wait, wouldn't yearly sequels of samey FPSs be considered a case of anti-change?

 

[Erttheking]

...I wonder if EA is ever going to admit that people hate them for reasons.