EA Turns Its Back on Single-Player Games

[Royas]

He actually thinks this is something to boast about? Thor's blood, this guy is a dunderhead.

 

[Turbowombat]

So what, the fact that in 2011 companies were printing money to the likes of Skyrim, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Batman Arkham City and Witcher 2 and that recently the makers of Spec Ops: The Line called the inclusion of multiplayer in their game a "cancerous growth" means nothing to EA?

 

[Reaper69lol]

So, how about them good business decisions?

Seriously, I don't think EA understand what their customers want at all. Hell, at this rate I wonder if they will even have any customers left.

 

[cerebus23]

Hmmm..

The name EA in the title? Check.
People basically not even reading the article and jumping to hate filled conclusions? Check.
Me not being surprised? Check.

I really have no issue with this as long as the connected content is thoughtful and well done. While I don't feel that the changes made to Dead Space are good, the always connected nature of a sports title or FPS is great, the multiplayer in ME3 was very fun (though tied into single player in a bizarre way), and having a facebook connected experience to supplement DA1/2 was kind of cool.

You and I have similar opinions on the matter. The title of the article is blatantly nerdbaiting. This is more like something I would see on Kotaku rather than The Escapist.

The market is heading in this direction, whether people like it or not, most games are going to be launching with at least SOME form of multiplayer. This isn't a bad thing. The Mass Effect 3 multiplayer was actually pretty good, and I look forward to seeing how it's implemented in Dragon Age 3 (I hope it's a co-op, like in BG).

It is a bad thing when good games could have been better if they dd not have to divert resources to an online component. Especially in light that many games do not fit well with multiplayer, especially deathmatch modes everywhere you look capture the flag clones.

Online platy is so dilluted now with endless clones, yearly games releases for the big cash cows shooters etc, guarantees that no game has any last about it.

I would take the early unreal and quake days to any of the game out today shooter wise, the sdks allowed people to make the game they wanted it, an endless choice of levels made by users, models for your character, full game conversions.

Where are those games today? now we get this years call of duty same as the old call of duty but different, sports games suffer the same fate of most years it just being 50 dollars for a roster update.

When we had those great shooters and the tools to make whatever we wanted, it kept those games going for years, even when quake 3 came out more of us stuck with quake 2 because it was a batter game, better dm experience period.

Now we will have more games with some online component shoehorned in weither the developers had any intention of doing so or not, how is that good for games at all?

Nevermind the spyware that origin is and all these games will require that as well.

 

[thebinaryone]

Will the hate be unjustified? Yes. Why? Because it's a videogame company that exists to make money off of videogames and various videogame related services. Perhaps I'm out of the loop here, but I don't recall ever hearing anything about EA kicking puppies or shoving grandparents. If you don't like the way EA operates as business, that's cool. Don't buy their games or support their products. Buy from people that you do want to support, but don't act like them making what they feel to be smart business decisions is somehow ruining your life. In this case, of course, I'm not referring to you directly but just more of a "you" being people who pop into any thread that mentions EA and immediately begin spouting off on how terrible and hateworthy they are. Put it this way, if a local restaurant stopped selling your favourite meal would you picket outside it's doors and make internet posts about how awful and terrible and hateworthy they are every time their name was mentioned? Or would you just go to the place across the street that serves what you want?

Was TOR a game with forced multiplayer? Yes, but it was an MMO albeit one of the most solo friendly out of the box that I've heard about in recent memory. Was it the right decision to make the follow up to 2 completely single player experiences a MMO? It certainly appears not right now, but there were a lot of people who were very excited about it a year or so ago. A lot of huge Star Wars fans, including some of my close friends, were sure it was going to be the second coming and couldn't wait to play it. The failure of the game from all I've heard, however, wasn't on the the game being a bad single player experience, it was on it being a bad (or at best middling) MMO. Most players got what they wanted out of the single player side and then stopped playing.

Oh, and yes, I did read the article. The only parts of it that actually say EA is stopping making single player offline only experiences are put there as author interpretations of what EA meant. And these interpretations are then clarified at the end of the article. Is Gibeau proud of the direction his company is going? I would hope so being that he's one of the heads of the company. Once again, that doesn't mean anyone has to agree with him but if he wasn't at least saying out loud that he likes the decisions his company makes he'd probably not have the job title that he does.

EA may be a business, but isn't a large part of "business" about trying to get as many people as possible to buy what they are selling? If every announcment they make leads to even more people getting angry with them, surely they are less likey to help keep that business in business i.e. give them money. Granted, only a small number of people will probably ever completely stop buying from them after any given event, but if that list of anger inducing statments keeps growing, they should really start getting worried.

I agree that it is getting annoying with the amount of times that people say how much they hate EA, or are never buying their stuff again etc. but sooner or later they will have to realise that this is gonna hurt their profits if they keep ignoring the almost contant outcries of rage from the community.

But to put in the same way as your analogy, EA is not a local restaurant. It is a huge chain, like Pizza hut. Imagine if they looked at a few studies saying that an individual pizza was a lot less healthier than a pasta salad, and, knowing that people have really gotten into being healthy reccently and a few competitors had had a few popular "healthy options" (without stopping selling the everything else on the menu) they say, "the only way we are going to serve any pizza from now on, is a third the size and with a large side salad from the salad bar which has been sitting there all day". there would be a lot of people saying, "I can sort of see what they're doing, but there are times when i want a pizza and there are times i want a salad, and those two times aren't necessarily the same time, all the time."

 

[MarsProbe]

"yeah, i really want multiplayer on DA3!"

-nobody.

there is nothing worse then a use MP component that nobody likes, because you wasted money, time and effort in making it.

I can see the "Kingdom Readiness" (working title only) meter already for DA3. Not got enough KR points to get through the games final moments? Better grind away at the multiplayer component for hours on end or play our "free" mobile game, Dragon Age 3: The Fleecing to up your rating!

 

[Mirroga]

Really EA? The last time I actually looked into your single player lineups, it was just the Dragon Age franchise and the Dead Space ones. And you killed those off in their sequels. I'm actually surprised they announced this especially when it's clear what moves they're putting to Dead Space 3.

You've never been good in single-player games, EA. So why declare your lack of talent as actual talent?

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

Not sure if Mr. Gibbo realizes what impact the nonsense he spouts could possibly have.

Somehow, I just got this picture in my head of Mr. Gibbo having a snorting session with his marketing speak folks, after which he had a near-death experience on the loo, complete with a rose-tinted vision of all the 'social' interaction on Friendface and all the optional crap of GTA IV being the future.

Let me play my darn game and keep your online crap to yourself, please.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

Well I'm kind of tired with being angry with everything that comes out of their mouths so all I really have to say is
There goes all my hope for future Mass Effect titles and Bioware in general...

 

[freaper]

Didn't Valve say pretty much the same thing a couple of months ago?

Indeed--but keep in mind that that refers only to Valve's *own* games--this is why they have a service that sells a couple of thousand other games, many of them single-player.

No you're right. I didn't exactly read the full article on EA, but I remember a statement from Valve saying their future games would always have some sort of multiplayer, or only that.

 

[Nurb]

Translation: "Multiplayer games allow for mandatory internet connection DRM, DLC, and microtransactions... why would we want to waste money on single player?"

I'd hope for pirates to bankrupt them, but piracy doesn't have any effect on major publishers

Gah! They better not screw up the new Sim City at least... Though that may be the last game I buy from them, now that Mass Effect's over.

-Online DRM
-Billed as a multiplayer game
-Cities built next to other players
-online store for microtransation ala sims 3
-"streamlined" interface
-won't allow mods despite modding community solely responsible for the franchise success after all these years

I'm terribly sorry, but it's going to be a stab in the back to every SimCity fan. I bought them all from the very beginning, but not this time.

There goes all my hope for future Mass Effect titles and Bioware in general...

Bioware is going to be closed or they're going to make multiplayer games and hope the Bioware name still means something to wring out every nickle and dime from players.

They're going to be shut down eventually, people saw that coming the day they announced being purchased by EA

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

Wow there are 7 pages of comments on this already ._.

While I'm okay with EA focusing on multiplayer games in theory because, well, they pretty much make all the sports games and that makes sense...when I hear the part about them boasting about not green lighting games that lack it I think "wow thats just stupid."

You are going to boast that you are killing new IPs potentially simply because they have a single player campaign at all? Or are they ok if like Dead Space 2 they tack on multi for no reason?

Are you just rounding up every developer you can buyout, just to shackle their creativity to YOUR way of thinking?

That must make you feel like a super important gaming god I guess, but when your games are shit and your public image continues to circle the drain of the abattoir you killed it in, all I can say is shut the fuck up and let game makers make the games they want to make. No one is going to kill themselves to make the best game they can if they feel like they had to conform to YOUR personal vision that every game should be.

They show up, say yes, bend over and take it, then collect their paycheck and die a little more inside and we end up with another brick in the EA wall of medocrity.

 

[I.Muir]

So they basically turned the all games should have some multi player or we don't think it will sell thing into a mandatory requirement

Each developer shall waste this amount of time and resources on a multiplayer project or we won't publish it
Pff you don't need to make better games, you just need to add more gimmicks
I imagine this is the thought processes going on at EA at the moment

 

[faefrost]

So people! This is why you don't let your children grow up to get MBA's. let them do something productive and useful to society instead. Like a Hobo or a petty thief.

 

[I.Muir]

I can't really be surprised EA is making more bad decisions
It's kind of sad a company that makes video games can't understand it's own medium
They should understand there are games in which multiplayer does not belong like ones trying for an immerse feeling of loneliness perhaps

 

[AD-Stu]

Wow. This is some seriously stupid shit, even by EA's amazingly low standards.

In a lot of cases, they're really just creating more work for themselves that can't possibly show a return.

Take Mass Effect 3 with its multiplayer mode, which I actually didn't mind and I think after they tried it most other players felt the same way too. But that multiplayer was hardly a deciding factor in anyone buying the game - I just can't believe that their sales would have changed in any significant way if they hadn't bothered to include it. So why go to the extra expense?

Captcha: be nice. LOL, I was

 

[BoredAussieGamer]

I predicted a while back that EA won't survive past next year.

I think this may be evidence that the estimate I made will come to fruition.

 

[Baresark]

Haha, what silly bastards. They should realize that they probably haven't green lit too many actual MP titles. They have probably mostly green lit games with tacked on MP bullshit components. But it's all good, as it turns out, they don't have any games on my radar at this point. I mean, I hate tacked on MP and mostly like SP games. They are just giving me an ever mounting bunch of reasons to not even look at what they are offering, let alone spend my money on them.

 

[TAGM]

I have to admit, I'm not really interested in EA games in general (What can I say, I have a shitty laptop and a Wii for modern consoles.) but it's hard to believe they're really this incredibly out of touch with just about every facet of gaming.

It's like they realized they were going down, so the managers and shareholders got together and said "Fuck it, if we're going down, we're going to go down in the most stylish and ridiculous way we can manage! Get EVERYONE to hate us so we won't be missed!"

Who knows? All I know is that I'll continue not buying EA games. Not because I hate EA or anything - I mean, I think they're saying and doing some pretty dumb things - but I just don't have the hardware to play anything they're offering up either way.

P.S.

Ok, this next song is for EA. It's called "We Hate You, Please Die."

Spoiler: Change a few of the lyrics (Or the EA manager's name, whichever you prefer) and I have just the song for you:

 

[Dr. Mongo]

Next on this channel:

Single players are turning their backs on EA.