EA Wants "To Be 90 Plus Metacritic at Everything"
- Thread starter The Wooster
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Good on em I guess, nothing wrong with wanting to have quality products. I guess the real worry comes from whether or not they're "buying" reviews... I don't know where to go from there, I tend to READ reviews rather than just look at numbers.
EA has shareholders to please first. While Valve only has Fans to please. Lets face it EA. You are NEVER going to be anywhere near Steam or valve's reputation. Just accept your second place in digital distribution and last place in Fandom.Seriously guys wtf... Mass effect was my favourite franchise and now i'm boycotting the third because of that bullshit ending. The extended cut gave us either more fighting or the plot holes we had already figured out.
Just every company, politician, and debate ever.Jack and Calumon said:
EA has carved themselves into a financial hole with its exorbitant production costs and thinks that charging for petty ad-ons can stave off their collapse. However, I think that EA sees Origin as its way out of all of this.
People treat Valve and EA like polar opposites in the gaming industry. Whenever people ask what EA can do to become better, 80% of people respond with, "just copy Valve." Ladies and gentlemen, you reap what you sow. EA is trying to become just like Valve. Each company seeks to use its digital game distribution service to become the backbone of its income, meanwhile producing games terribly inefficiently, quality notwithstanding.
EA have no idea what they are doing. Their handling of Origin is just horrible. I bought Crysis 2 at Half Price Books for $7, popped in the disk, installed origin, installed Crysis 2, uninstalled Origin, and proceeded to play Crysis 2 online. It didn't even notice I circumvented Origin. EA actually forgot to make some kind of connection between the game and Origin to make sure you're using it. Yeah. They have no idea what they're doing.
Silly EA, that's why you're paying off reviewers!
And 12 million people have downloaded Origin because it's an invasive program that somehow forced itself onto my computer. So I downloaded it, yes, but for the sole purpose of getting it to shut the fuck up every time I boot up.
I've never used it, I never will, and it sucks that EA is such a shitty company because I do want to buy and play Battlefield3 and the Sims 3, but I refuse to do business with EA.
And 12 million people have downloaded Origin because it's an invasive program that somehow forced itself onto my computer. So I downloaded it, yes, but for the sole purpose of getting it to shut the fuck up every time I boot up.
I've never used it, I never will, and it sucks that EA is such a shitty company because I do want to buy and play Battlefield3 and the Sims 3, but I refuse to do business with EA.
After years of seeing what happend to EA Games, I miss old NFS and C&C. 
I feel pity at Bioware and Mythic since they own them. Well, I'll laugh a bit. I know EA, I played SWToR, and watched ME3 on my brothers PC (glad I didn't buy it, I boycotted EA after SWToR, I should have done it earlier after NFS and C&C problems). But to make my point brief below:
If you have to have a competitor say something about you to validate yourself, you already are in a bad spot. I uninstalled Origin after downloading SWToR, it is annoying in how it is made and doesn't go the extra mile to make you want to like it. It's EA anyway to me, won't happen.
I feel pity at Bioware and Mythic since they own them. Well, I'll laugh a bit. I know EA, I played SWToR, and watched ME3 on my brothers PC (glad I didn't buy it, I boycotted EA after SWToR, I should have done it earlier after NFS and C&C problems). But to make my point brief below:If you have to have a competitor say something about you to validate yourself, you already are in a bad spot. I uninstalled Origin after downloading SWToR, it is annoying in how it is made and doesn't go the extra mile to make you want to like it. It's EA anyway to me, won't happen.
Your both right and wrong. The best definition between Fantasy and Horror I've ever read is that in Fantasy the heroes are generally equal to the challenges they face, in Horror they are not. The inclusion of suspense and doubt (dramatic tension) does not actually make something horror, nor does a lack of definition in of itself. Ideally horror has to come from an understanding and definition of something to be afraid of, if only a phenomena.Terminate421 said:
Of the works you mention, "Friday The 13th" probably comes closest to being horror in general, because it has a known, terrifying quality, and the protaganists are never a match for Jason Vorhees/The Curse Of Crystal Lake, though admittedly some installments were fantasy as they included elements that were a match for him even if he wound up with an edge (such as fighting a psionic, or being in space where he battled a robot). In "Alien" Ripley and the other crew members are strong/talented enough where the threat they were facing could have gone either way, indeed it could be argued that they only reason they had such a problem was the X-factor of their android having another agenda. In "Aliens" the Marines were more than a match for the aliens, the real tension coming from them not being able to use their weapons properly to begin with due to feat of damaging the reactor ... which set the stage for putting them on the defensive after losing a good part of the unit. Had it not been for the corperate "X factor" and had they gone in properly to begin with, that entire scenario would have played out differantly... again it's more "dark fantasy" than horror by this definition.
In "Dead Space" I really never have much doubt as to whether Issac can deal with the situation, while the Necromorphs are ugly and can kill him, so can a lot of things, and with his arsenal most of the time he's more exterminating them when they get in his way than anything. Sure it has an atmosphere where a lot of people died, but so does a war movie.
Another important area to consider is that horror also has to take people out of their comfort area and scare the person seeing it. Something few creators are willing to do because they fear contreversy. This is one of the big problems with these properties. In Dead Space for example nothing about "OMG, there are space monsters" is outside of the comfort area of a player of a video game because we've seen it all before. Heck, when you get down to it "Dead Space" isn't all that differant from the game "Xenophobia" from way back in the day, it's just stylized differantly (ie less cartoony and without the Star Trek theme).
For a video game to really be horror it has to get into things people are not comfortable with. Rape, torture, ultraviolence beyond what we see, and of course most importantly putting the protaganists in a position where they seem constantly vulnerable and are themselves probably victimized. Pretty much a lot of the things you see people freaking out about now are what a horror game needs to include, and push the envelope with, which the industry is generally unwilling to do because of the uncontrolled contreversy and how upset genuinely scared people who aren't horror fans (and enjoy it, at least retroactively) are going to be.
Even if a story involves turning the tables and "winning" in the final act, the entire situation should seem like a torment filled non-win scenario before that, wheter you can fight and win to againstg some of the threat or not (and being able to do so makes sense in many cases, the point is that in horror being able to take out a monster shouldn't nessicarly feel like it matters that much. Unlike Dead Space where you have clear objectives, so despite the numbers, clearing them out before you do whatever is a clear victory and brings you closer to dealing with the entire problem).
I'll also say that in many horror stories there isn't a video-game like "victory" involved. The protaganists merely manage to escape, OR wait for some kind of timer to wear down, such as a scenario where a bunch of people at a halloween party in some stupid location unleash a horror that is allowed to kill at will for that specific night, and in the end the survivors keep breathing because they manage to barely stay alive until the next day. Likewise, while being able to "kill" a monster that is physical makes sense, in a lot of horror that is at best a temporary solution as it just reforms, or gets back up after a period of time. At least to begin with "Nightmare On Elm Street" was horror, especially when it was new as an idea. Freddy gets his arse kicked multiple times in a lot of the movies, but the thing is that he ALWAYS comes back and once he knows what to expect he's going to adapt to you better than you can adapt what you have to him, clobbering Freddy is a temporary solution that tends to work exactly once if you can pull it off (and not everyone can, several people who try wind up losing during the initial confrontation) the notable exception of course being the so called "Dream Master" which is about the time it stopped being horror and turning into fantasy as you wound up with more of a hero/villain dynamic with people dying in the crossfire. Once they defined that relationship/opposition fully it kind of became a situation where you'd wait for an inevitable hero/villain confrontation more than anything.
Well, steam got shoved down a lot of people's throats, but atleast it's useful, and I haven't heard a spyware claim on it yet.Ragsnstitches said:
OT:
I just can't stop laughing at how arragont EA is.
They are just kind of denying that they've lost the dd market.
Hell, even gamestops DD has deals like weekly, I've heard of something like this on origin ONCE.
Thats true. I had a lot of grief getting steam running (no internet) when I got Half-Life 2 on retail (on release). Steam was also a pretty shoddy platform when it first launched. Maybe I'm being too harsh on them (EA).MASTACHIEFPWN said:
Of course steam didn't have any competition, was backed by a company who has far less of a muddled and dingy history and has actually done wonders for the PC community rather then ditching them for the upcoming Console generations (only now seeing the value of having a core PC audience that transcends generational tech). EAs origin seems to want a piece of Steams pie... but seems to be making every step a misstep.
In a market with figures like Steam, Direct2Drive and Good Old Games, Origin is the one that stands furthest apart... as the big obnoxious block head who is throwing a tantrum because they don't have their hands in every cookie jar imaginable.
I'll put it another way. There was no shit flinging with any of the early platforms, but as soon as EA enters the fray, they flung there first shit at Steam... by of all things claiming they were cheapening IP with there sales.
With their history, that is some fucking gall.
Sadly, facts are, Origin will beat GoG, purely because they're so big and people will keep on handing over money to EA, no matter how many hoops they're made to jump thru to be allowed to rent a game for a while from them.
In a way, there's nothing really wrong with aspiring to get 90% scores at a review site, but perhaps don't say it publicly.
I remember working in a music store, and we had great service, we'd recommend new bands , learn regular customers' likes, let em listen to new stuff in store, etc, and of course, our store died on its arse because we don't have the buying power of supermarkets, who, instead of stocking 5,000 different titles so customers have a wide and interesting choice, stock the top 20 and discount them by buying 10,000 copies of each.
It's a shame, but being the good guy can't beat being the biggest. In the end, it seems customers won't assign any value to customer service, if they can save a dollar.
Our own hope is, that being in the video game market, us as consumers can be a bit smarter and a bit more educated about things, and take our money to companies that aren't screwing with us.
In a way, there's nothing really wrong with aspiring to get 90% scores at a review site, but perhaps don't say it publicly.
I remember working in a music store, and we had great service, we'd recommend new bands , learn regular customers' likes, let em listen to new stuff in store, etc, and of course, our store died on its arse because we don't have the buying power of supermarkets, who, instead of stocking 5,000 different titles so customers have a wide and interesting choice, stock the top 20 and discount them by buying 10,000 copies of each.
It's a shame, but being the good guy can't beat being the biggest. In the end, it seems customers won't assign any value to customer service, if they can save a dollar.
Our own hope is, that being in the video game market, us as consumers can be a bit smarter and a bit more educated about things, and take our money to companies that aren't screwing with us.
Ok you are comparing movies to games, not a wise decision. In an interactive medium such as a game there is a sense of security to yourself for having a weapon and being able to chop the monsters up effortlessly. This is not horror, this is action.Terminate421 said:
Games that smother you in guns and protection are not horror, they are action games.
"More horror" Horror. If Hl2 had "more puzzles" would it become a puzzle game?Jack and Calumon said:
I'm seeing a lot of Metacritic critisism that I don't quite understand. The website is nothing but an aggregator, sorta like Rotten Tomaotes, giving a verdict in precentage based on what most game critics think about a product.
The website can hardly be blamed for affecting game sales when all they do is accumulating opinions expressed by other journalists. There will always who'll let bad reception keep them from buying a title, and they'd still be doing that without websites like Metacritic, and without it, they'd jsut search and find their reviews themselves. That might even be worse as they will base their decision on less sources than Metacritic would've provided.
When we understand this, the statement by EA games seems at least slightly less preposterous when really, all they're saying is that they wan't to game games that are received well by critics. With other words - they want to make good games. Doesn't seem like such a controversial thing to me.
The website can hardly be blamed for affecting game sales when all they do is accumulating opinions expressed by other journalists. There will always who'll let bad reception keep them from buying a title, and they'd still be doing that without websites like Metacritic, and without it, they'd jsut search and find their reviews themselves. That might even be worse as they will base their decision on less sources than Metacritic would've provided.
When we understand this, the statement by EA games seems at least slightly less preposterous when really, all they're saying is that they wan't to game games that are received well by critics. With other words - they want to make good games. Doesn't seem like such a controversial thing to me.
The denial is so thick I could beat a goat to death with it.
And am I the only one who found it a little disconcerting that DeMartini referred to Origin as a "mousetrap"? I know it was a metaphor, but damn . . .
And am I the only one who found it a little disconcerting that DeMartini referred to Origin as a "mousetrap"? I know it was a metaphor, but damn . . .
