EA: Some Gamers Just Don't Like Change

[the_green_dragon]

There are many games that are great that arn't services. They are trying to make them services to rake in more cash. People hate it for a reason.

Diablo 3 anyone?

 

[The_Waspman]

Y'know what? I feel the need to apologise. To everyone here. Yes, especially you (you know who you are.)

Why?

Because I have been doing my best to ignore all of this bullshit for so long. Yes yes, it is cool to rag on EA. And they're raping the industry, etc etc. We should vote with our wallets and not put up with this shit.

And y'know what? I ignored it. Fuck man, I wanted Mass Effect 3. I bought the special edition with the extra character that even people who bought the regular edition had to pay for (more fool me, as it turns out, because the latter option was cheaper) so I felt like this didn't effect me.

Well yes. Now it does effect me. Because its not just EA doing this shit anymore. Its everyone. I bought Darksiders 2 yesterday. I'd preordered it, so I got the special edition for my trouble, with all the extra content (which I had to enter codes for - which, judging by the size of the files I was downloading, was nothing more than content that was on the disc already), I got a few other bonuses which I had to log onto the Darksiders website to get the frigging codes for in order to enter them in the PSN store to download. I had the Terms of Service agreement to plow through (I always make a habit of reading them nowadays, just to see which of my rights I have to willing sign away, because if I don't I'm not allowed to play the game - the wording of which is getting increasingly close to 'if you bought this game preowned, you're not allowed to play the game) then I have to sign up for a THQ account, because if I don't have that, I'm not allowed to play the game.

Long story short, from the moment I put the disc in my PS3, to when I actually started playing the game, 40 frigging minutes had passed. Now I'm no stranger to this, because I own a PS3, and thats normally how long it takes a game to install data on the hard drive, but this runs entirely off the disc!

I know that companies are fucking obsessed with their intellectual property rights these days, which is why 'We' dont own the games, 'we' just own a license (and even then thats only as long as we follow the strict guidelines the company lay out which they can change at any time without warning - and if we dont like it, we wont be allowed to play the game anymore) for said game, but come on! I cant remember the last time I played an original game! Fuck, Darksiders is about as unoriginal as it gets! It so brazenly copies so many other titles it amounts to plagarism.

But I stood back and let it happen, because 'it didn't affect me'. Well, I promise, from now on, I am going to do something about it. I'm going to stop buying games with these ridiculous terms of service. Not because I'm 'afraid of change', but because I do not like the direction these changes are taking us as consumers.

Anyone with me?

 

[Something Amyss]

1. Make Origin and its EULA less obnoxious and more like Steam

Most of the complaints against Origin are things Steam does. The justification for the complaints are that "it's EA" and therefore it's bad. The moral of the story? Valve's client is good because it's Valve and Valve can do no wrong. EA's client is bad because EA can do no right. On this level, it IS sorta cool to rag on EA.

2. Have sales and quit publicly going on about how much you dislike them (seriously, what the fuck? do you not like money or something?)

They've had sales. They've had sales since that comment. They've NOT had more comments like that.

4. Cut it out with the obnoxious DRM and limited downloads and installations for games. Let me tell you a little story about the current state of PC gaming for me: I have a mac, and on it I have Windows dual-booted on a part of the drive I specifically set aside for Windows. But...that side for Windows is only 100 gigs. When you're like me and enjoy games like Mass Effect, Skyrim, and Saints Row the Third that 100 gigs doesn't go very far. So in order to play these games, I have to uninstall them to play new ones, and then reinstall them when I want to play them again (and conveniently enough, the Steam Cloud also aids this process by preserving my saves as well).

Honestly, this is probably for the best. It'll ween you off the notion that you have any ownership of your games.

And this is really true of every PC gamer, because nobody's hard-drive is infinite. Everybody is going to have to clean house at some point. So if you want any long-term customers on the PC gaming market, then you're going to have to cut out this limited installation nonsense. As I saw one person on the Ubisoft forums put it: If you're going to treat us like pirates, we might just start acting like them.

This is EA. They kill single-player content for old games. Do you think they're going to give a damn about long-term installs?

5. Take the shit out of your development process. There isn't a need for game budgets the size that you make them, and you certainly shouldn't be needing to ship 5 million units at $60 apiece in order to just get your original investment back. It's clear this isn't helping your game's quality or their marketability, so there is no point in you keeping this process around.

This is more about the industry as a whole, because budgets are out of control. EA's problem is that it's largely "winning" that arms race. 5 million is unrealistic for Dead Space 3, though. This is still an industry where non-EA devs are being shut down for having successful games that just weren't COD.

6. Learn these words "You are right, we are wrong." The customer is always right, even if they are wrong.

If only people would apply this to Steam and Valve. Valve at one point had three F ratings with BBB branches for customer service. Not sure where they stand now, but at that time, people defended Valve.

7. Stop making stupid public announcements about how you want to be 90+ on Metacritic all the time or whatever. If that's what you want, great. But those words mean nothing and earn you no admiration until you actually step up and accomplish that.

I appreciate that they are mustashioed villains. I just wish they wouldn't flaunt their evil ways and then whine about how it's cool to hate them.

Yes, it is sort of popular to rag on EA, but never think for a moment the criticism is undeserved. Further denial will only lose you more customers.

Yes, like the Mass Effect 3 debacle where it sold amazingly despite about a billion boycotts. All that they've learned is that Day 1 DLC sells, they can price as they want, and Origin-exclusives work.

 

[cidbahamut]

Games as a 365 day a year service huh? If EA wants to make an MMO so badly maybe they should just do it already.

Oh wait...

 

[Retardinator]

In other news, some people don't like to eat broccoli.
Yes, it is your job to make your games appeal to someone and give them reasons to buy it. You just aren't very good at this job.
And no. It's not *cool* to rag on EA, it's just *the right thing to do*.
Now why don't you bitches shut that loud mouth of yours, get off your asses and give us, the customers, something that we would want and actually like paying for. Because otherwise, no matter what anyone from your PR department says, you are not doing your job.

I don't get it. Can't these guys take a fuckin' hint? It's like a big cycle, just like Jim Sterling said. EA says something, then does the exact opposite, and then they act all surprised by the backlash. What the hell is wrong with them?

 

[Squilookle]

"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, or -if it was good enough- forever, because you enjoy it as much now as you did when you got it, so being able to do so remains a high priority. And you owned the game. It was all on the disc. That you owned."

Just a bit more tweaking there for you- needed to set straight another point there.

 

[Vie]

When a company starts telling it's customers what they should want, rather than listening to what they actually want, and proceed to bring the product their customers have informed them they are not interested in to market...

Worked out great for Ford.

And Nokia.

And Microsoft come to think of it... ..not that they learnt much from the experience.

Have we spotted a pattern yet EA?

 

[Hero in a half shell]

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.

i don't consider the "we wouldn't have this if it wasn't dlc" to be a valid argument as i have not seen evidence that such a thing is or isn't possible without the presence when compared to the actual game's value, unless the game has so little content that such a thing could be possible (coughsaintsrow3)

Okay, there's this thing called "money". Companies tend to make their products with this "money" in mind. Are you with me so far?

So they make the games with a clear idea of how much of this "money" its worth. They plan the game, they develop the game, they refine the game,l and they release the game for the amount of "money" they originally planned for.

These companies are not in the habit of spending extra time on something that isn't going to signifigantly change the quality of the overall game, and so would likely not do that.

Someone already mentioned the tonnes of content Blizzard created for Warcraft 3, some purchasable, some for free after the game was made. I'll give another example:

Westwood were a company that rose to success through RTS games. They were the first ones to put minimaps in RTS. They pioneered use of real actors in cutscenes (which never caught on, but it gave us this [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a0/Cc_kane_shot.jpg/256px-Cc_kane_shot.jpg] guy)
Their command and conquer series in the 90's had another great innovation: the ability to play your friends in LAN matches. Unfortunately this would require two copies of the game, one for your computer, and one for your friend. They thought this was a bit unfair, because if you didn't know anyone else with the same game you would miss out on an awesome part of the game. So they put two copies of the game in every CD case. They gave away a free copy every time someone bought the game, just on the off chance that some of their customers might possibly have a friend who wanted to play them but didn't have the game.

Now, these are extreme examples we are talking about, I don't expect every developer to stick multiple copies of the CD in their games, or release a pile of extra content for no extra cost after the game has been released, but I would like to see more of this attitude in our developers.

A company that tries to give their customers the best product possible, even to the point that it results in the company making sacrifices.
Does that describe the Ubisoft and their messy DRM? Does it describe EA and their obnoxious marketing, online passes, withdrawal of online services for old (and new) games as soon as legally possible? Does it describe Blizzard's Diablo 3 fiasco with the real money auction house?

How about setting the game deadline back a bit if the content isn't ready? Sure it would be a bit of a logistical headache, but refusing to do it led directly to the crappy cliffhanger Halo 2 ending, the buggy rushed and cut KOTOR 2 game, and most recently the challenging, unique and emotionally engaging[footnote]according to EA's marketing division[/footnote] Mass Effect 3 ending, which was in no way an absolute shambles.
But profits come above all else, so Diablo 3 is released without an endgame which has to be patched in, Halo 2 had levels characters and content cut and rushed out the door, Dragon Age 2 had copy pasted map assets so often it was like a deja vu simulator. etc. etc. etc.

Why shouldn't we ask the best of these companies that we are paying premium money to buy their product oh sorry, I mean rent their service from?

I don't mind change, what I don't like is paying full price for a sub-standard service, which is what many games have lately become, being unfinished, undersized, undertested, and in the cases of DRM often unplayable underwhelming experiences.

Shut up EA, you will never be half the company Westwood was, because they cared about the products they were giving their customers, and sometimes in order to make a game great, that's all the change you need to make.

 

[Murmur95]

Woot EA said it was alright to Rag on them.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

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?

You mean like this?

Rockstar:

Bioware:

Interplay:

If you're going to be patronizing and arrogant, at least be somewhat correct.

 

[Fappy]

Why do they keep letting Moore think on his own? You'd think they'd be smarter about letting him shoot his mouth-off twice in one week.

 

[immortalfrieza]

EA, Activision and corporate gaming can't crash and burn fast enough.

That's probably because if EA and Activision-Blizzard go out of business, the North American gaming industry will die. They own 70% of it.

Who would be left? Valve? They're a retailer. Their meal ticket dries up if the two companies that fund most games disappear. And when their meal ticket dries up, so does Steam, and by extension half the indie gaming industry. And when that happens, Microsoft and Sony will see no reason to continue in the console market and go back to being standard electronics and software developers.

The only thing left will the Japan, who's biggest companies are Konami, Nintendo, Namco, and Square-Enix, and Canada with Ubisoft and BioWare (and if EA tanks, BioWare might tank as well). The only things that would be left would be Zynga's social games, and Free to Play MMO's now that WoW and SWTOR are out of the picture.

Will it recover? Anything is possible, but unlike in 1985 any fledgling games industry would have to deal with trying to rebuild it's finances in the prescence of spoiled brats for an audience who think everything should be free. Because a games industry with far less money to spare can no longer afford things like free games or patches, at least not for a while.

EDIT: Wow, looking over that, that was kind of a downer.

What would happen if EA and/or Activision went under is the same thing that would happen in any other industry. Another better company that rose to prominence because they were filling the vacuum the falling companies left behind because they do NOT screw over their customers (at least as much) would buy out the failing company or just provide that service themselves, or the crappy company would turn around and start treating it's customers right so they don't fall to begin with. Regardless, at least for a little while the industry as a whole would improve.

A industry only fails for sure if the service or product they provide is no longer useful at all, (for instance how video stores are dying off entirely with things like Netflix and Gamefly around) it doesn't die or go through any real problems just because 1 company no matter how big decides to go belly up, one of the other guys that's not failing just steps up to replace them, and this makes the industry better, bit by bit.

This is, of course, what happens only if the Government doesn't decide to butt in and bail the failing company out, but that's another matter.

 

[tehroc]

This comes off more like:

There are no valid grievances.
There are no issues with our games.
There is no objective opinions except ours.
There are no superior business practices to ours.

Everything is alright. You are just wrong and that is alright, we will make things better.

They make millions and millions of dollars, of course they are right and we, the consumer, are wrong. Don't you live in America (or at least heard of it)?

 

[GAunderrated]

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.

 

[Irridium]

"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."

This is not a bad thing. I doubt he meant it as a bad thing, but I really want to just state that in the old days when you bought your game and owned everything on the disk is not a bad thing. There were plenty of bad things about games of old, but this was definitely not one of them. I miss the days where we weren't charged money for DLC that's on the damn disk. Though to be fair, it doesn't happen in much games. Still, it's a dick move.

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.

I'm not knocking DLC that adds to the gameplay, or DLC in general. I merely said back then when we owned everything on the disk it was not a bad thing. And then I said content that's on the disk that they lock away to try and sell you again is a dick move. Not sure how that means I hate all DLC. I don't hate all DLC.

I don 't recall GTA III, Fallout 2, Spider-Man or KOTOR ever offering expansion packs. Meanwhile the series that actually did offer DLC? Starcraft, The Sims, those gmaes? What a fucking coincidence, they have expansion packs that are still $40 a pop, same as they've always been.

Well, just going by the games you mentioned, they may not have had expansions. But they had spin-offs, which were another way for companies to get you more of a franchise somewhat faster than normal.

GTA had Vice City and San Andreas and Vice City stories and Liberty City stories.
Fallout 2 had Fallout Tactics
Spider-Man doesn't, but Spider-Man is always getting games, and they come out pretty regularly. So there's that.
KOTOR actually had DLC. Yavin Station it was called.

I don't hate DLC. I just don't like when content on a disk is locked and I'm told to buy it to use it after I already bought the game. And I would rather have spin-offs and expansions than a bunch of small little things. But that's just me. Others may want that stuff, to pick and choose what they want so they don't have to pay a big price for everything. That's fine too.

 

[Ghonzor]

EA had someone say something stupid that completely misses the reasons why people hate EA?

In other shocking news, the sky is blue.