EA Wants "To Be 90 Plus Metacritic at Everything"

[subtlefuge]

I'm still trying to understand all the vitriolic hatred being thrown around here. So they want to make quality games (or at least critically well reviewed games). They want to compete with Steam, which is a good thing, competition breeds excellence.

Nope. Excellence breeds excellence. People are forgetting Steam's biggest competitors: retail and direct download. You don't need a game client on the PC. Steam realizes this fact, and has always operated on trust. If they make it awful or unusable, nobody is bound to their platform.

Steam has been competing against the fact that:
a. Only small indie companies actually need them.
b. If they screw up, a hundred companies will be there to take their place.

Inferior platforms like GFWL and Origin draw exclusives and force you to play them on less secure, resource intensive, and inconvenient programs. Nothing good comes from competition unless the competition is actually good.

 

[Johann610]

Facebook stole a march on MySpace by being better. But Facebook MAINTAINED its place by innovating / changing / improving constantly (and not just the layout--can we not carp about layout--too late!).
Steam is under constant renovation / patching / "do you want to restart Steam?" Yes, in fact, I DO! Please show me what wonders I can find there (dead serious)! At this point, Origin has to be better than Steam and show that it will continue to improve. I doubt both things.
Aside the E.A. sports thing, I can't name one game where E.A. was a selling point. Snood. Team Fortress 2 ports that were broken at Day One. SimCity and The Sims spun out ad nauseam. Privateer 2. Enough sequels of any profitable franchise to make Ray Croc (McDonald's) envious.
The last good game I see in their catalog is Rock Band 2, 2008. Before that franchise, it's Command and Conquer, Red Alert 3, same year.
I cannot believe that they want to compete on the same level as Steam, and while I encourage them to try, I mis-quote Yahtzee: "That's the last thing [x] needs, but if that's what it wants, [y] is a pile of sodden cereal boxes tied together with string, and I would sooner recommend nailing your tongue to a subway train!"

Edit: x was "The Wii" and y was "The Conduit".

 

[Somebloke]

Have you never heard the phrase "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door"? They're trying to be better than Steam, the proverbial 'good mousetrap' that Origin is trying to be 'better' than.

I am sure everybody who have made the little observation are well familiar with that expression and recognised it.

However, as an analogy to the service, it IS strikingly close to what people have been saying about Origin since it started and I too was immediatlely amused with the choice. I believe: "Freudian slip?" were the first words that went through my mind.

We'll see whether Origin ever gets to a point where they can engage in honest competition, by simply providing a better service than Steam, but so far it has been all customer-trap and slandering the competition.

 

[an874]

Yes yes, EA and I want Anna Kendrick and Mila Kunis in a bubble bath, but I think it's time for you to set more realistic goals as well. Your value is down 50% from what it was in November. I think it's time to take stock.

 

[Avalanche91]

Let me look at the origin forum again shall I?

Announcements; topics: 18, messages 181
General discussion: topics: 511, messages 1673
Ideas and Suggestions: topics 1224 messages 5163
Bugs and Issues: topics 7741 messages 42180
Bugs and Issues (resolved) topics 390 messages 2361

Doing a bit of math thats about 78% of the topics and about 82% of the posts devoted to bugs and issues. By this, we can assume that Origin is in fact, a very faulty service.

I can't find the exact numbers of games availeble on Origin vs games availeble on Steam, but if I were to estimate 150 vs 1500? I do not have exact numbers for this.

Anyway, the punchline is that Origin just isn't that good and that EA somehow manages to sound terrible even with simple statements like this.

 

[malestrithe]

Personally, I'd shoot for scores of 80 because that's more realistic. Make good games, not great ones. By having such a lofty goal, it will doom most to fail.

Although this might be a good thing. Only NBA 2k12 and FiFa12 last year got metacritic scores of 90. so according to EA, it might mean that Baseball, Football, Hockey, and Golf will be retired.

Of course because EA is the big bad, some would go after them for having an opinion on this issue.

 

[theultimateend]

"over 12 million downloaded it"

Yeah, because you essentially stuffed it down their throats with the major releases of Battlefield and TOR. I wonder if your sources can tell you how many deleted the application and vowed never to use it ever again.

Unlike Valve, which offers matchmaking (not amazing, but alright), Community (good for messaging and organising events) and great customer support, all Origin offers is another platform for buying expensive games.

The Social platform analogy is retarded, because they are Free to anyone. The best way to appeal to larger audiences in the game industry is by being price competitive. But no, EA will enforce exclusivity and feels that fire sales "cheapen IP".

In fact, GoG, with their good faith business, will likely outperform Origin in the long run, simply by being nice.

Honestly, if I cant find the game I want on Steam, I usually find it on GoG.

The only reason I got Origin is because it replaced EADM, so when I wanted to re-download the games I had already bought from EA before Origin was even thought of, I had to download Origin.


Good thing after I downloaded and installed the games I was free to uninstall the piece of shit that was Origin.



But, yea, in many ways GoG is better than Steam while Steam is better than GoG if that makes any sense, while both are better than Origin.

GOG is the shit. I love it.

I would agree. GOG > Steam > Origin et. al

I say that because there are plenty of bad digital distribution services besides just Origin.

Yes yes, EA and I want Anna Kendrick and Mila Kunis in a bubble bath, but I think it's time for you to set more realistic goals as well. Your value is down 50% from what it was in November. I think it's time to take stock.

How do you know its unrealistic if you don't even try?

Send them both an email or something. I've got faith in you!

 

[Elyxard]

I don't even know what to add to this whole string of comments. I'm just glad to see such unanimous disparagement of EA. It's about damn time; I've been trying to rally people against them for most of a decade.

That metacritic comment is probably the most frightening thing I've seen from them yet. I think of every game that scored that high in the last five years, and so many of them are the most plastic, generic, mass appeal games out there.

The actual best gaming experiences don't always review so well. I think of my most favorite games of all time, and most of them score around the 7 to 8 point range. Sometimes games they have to be "flawed" in order to be brilliant. Absolute "perfection" is boring.

 

[Phlakes]

I'm still trying to understand all the vitriolic hatred being thrown around here. So they want to make quality games (or at least critically well reviewed games). They want to compete with Steam, which is a good thing, competition breeds excellence.

But it's EA! They're EVUUUUL! Everything they do must be underhanded tactics and corruption!

I don't even know what to add to this whole string of comments. I'm just glad to see such unanimous disparagement of EA. It's about damn time; I've been trying to rally people against them for most of a decade.

You weren't here for Mass Effect 3, were you?

Also that's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, just wanted to add that, you people are frighteningly quick and extensive in your hate.

 

[uncanny474]

removing the horror from Dead Space for action

Wait, Dead Space is a HORROR game?

No, I call bullshit. There's no way that someone could fail that bad at making a horror game. It's quite clearly an action game, albiet one with an interesting ammo-management system that does seem to be taken from the horror genre.

Any game where the primary weapon severs limbs cannot be a horror game. Hell, if you have a weapon at ALL, you're drifting from that spot.
.

Its a horror game.

I'm guessing that Alien, Dracula, Friday the 13th, Aliens and every other horror movie ever made are not horror movies or don't have horror in them because a gun/weapon exists?

Dead Space ain't terrifyingly scary but it certainly is horror whether you like it or not.

OT: EA making bold statements and fucking up what made Dead Space great.....*sigh*

I have no idea which Dracula movie you're referring to, nor have I seen Friday the 13th (to my shame), but you bring up a PERFECT example with Alien/Aliens.

Alien is definitely a horror movie. It's paced with a ton of tension and it's clear that the humans stand no chance against the monster. They're not equipped to deal with the situation, and they pay the price in blood. It's a movie with a genuinely terrifying atmosphere.

The sequel, Aliens is an action movie. It's a GOOD action movie, don't get me wrong, but it's definitely not a horror movie. It's about gung-ho marines armed to the teeth fighting alien monstrocities in outer space--basically the plot of every non-"realistic" shooter we've seen in the past five years. There's no tension, and if the marines were halfway competent, they'd have survived the attack without a single casualty.

It's really a difference of pacing and focus. Alien is about tension and isolation, and the pacing supports that, with lots of quiet moments, rape subtext, and phobias. Whereas Aliens is about shooting things with guns, with high-action scenes every few minutes, and a cacaphony of gunfire being the backdrop.

That's not to say that Aliens doesn't have horror elements, either; it does. But the focus of the movie is action, not horror.

Dead Space is somewhere between the two, but it definitely falls closer to Aliens than Alien.

EDIT: Whoops, forgot my second response.

It's more horror than what it's doing now, that's for sure! Dead Space 1 and 2 had tightly claustrophobic corridors in poorly lit rooms with monsters that appeared to be people fresh from a car accident into a nuclear power plant. It was at least trying to be horror, in the way that it's still about action, but horror is a main element.

EA comes in and wants to broaden the audience, with multiplayer that works against the horror, Co-op which gets rid of the isolation that you feel when playing the games and emphasizing action over everything else. Did you see the E3 footage? Giant monsters, boss battle against a loud and sparkling drill that is making the entire room move around in a very fast way. That's not scary, not even trying to be scary, it's just trying to be about dudes in big armour curb stomping monstrosities. It's Gears of War with mining equipment and no cover, that's what it is.

Calumon: ...I don't know what to say, I can't play any of those games. D:

I have not seen the E3 footage because I couldn't care less about the Dead Space franchise. I've been doing my best to boycott EA games for a while now, and while I haven't COMPLETELY succeeded, I've done pretty well.

As for the rest of your post: Fair enough. I'll admit that Dead Space is an action game with horror elements, even if I myself didn't find the monsters particularly scary. I can't judge Dead Space 2, as I haven't played it, but the first one does have some horror elements.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not defending EA's decision to "broaden their audience", since at this point, "broadening their audience" tends to mean "marketing solely to drunk college kids". Since I don't believe that a stable casual market exists for any platform other than smart phones, I'm not entirely sure WHY EA is marketing to non-gamers, but I will admit to not liking it.

And by "gamers", I mean people for whom gaming is their primary form of entertainment and who generally don't game with anybody else in the room.

Oh, and add 13-year-olds to that list of people they market to. "Your mom will hate Dead Space 2?" Really? I'm 20 years old, I don't give a DAMN what my mother thinks of my video gaming habits, and neither does anyone else who's legally old enough to buy that game. Marketing an M-rated game to underage kids. Class act, EA. You wanna sell them booze and cigars while you're at it? Maybe a porno mag?

 

[Elate]

I laughed so hard it caused internal bleeding.

Seriously though, I have Steam, GoG, and Origin. Honestly DESURA, AND GOG and more competition to steam than Origin is, it's a fucking joke.

What does Origin offer?:

- Games for MORE than they are in retail shops
- Getting banned meaning you lose all access to your purchased games
-- Getting banned through THEIR faults and not yours.
- I'm sure it probably tries to have some community feature built in SOMEWHERE, I can't use it if it does, that's generally a problem.

At the end of the day, I have 3 games on Origin (One I bought on EA downloader) the other I was forced to use origin with (BF3) and I bought ME3 on origin since it required it anyway, and it was the same price as stores.

I have about 7-8 games on GoG, it provides a pretty good service with no DRM, and so I can easily put those games into my steam library too and play them with the steam overlay and have them all in the same library (Makes it easier to keep track of what games I own)

I have roughly 310, games on steam (Hence why I need to keep track of games) gathered through indie bundles, and sales, if a game can be registered with steam, I put it on steam, because it has such a damn good service, and fantastic customer support. If Origin went the GoG or Desura way, and allowed me to purchase games DRM free and install them on my PC as I normally would, then put them in steam, I would probably use it, it's the fact that it's made it so damn difficult to use with my existing library, that I don't want to use it. This isn't MySpace v facebook, this is like when they tried to introduce those Micro-DvDs, and everyone laughed at them because they already had huge DvD collections, funnily enough, that never caught on either.

 

[Doom972]

Origin is very far from being able to compete with Steam. Its game library is still very small in comparison and it doesn't have many social features like Steam does.
One big problem I have with it is the support for older games on Origin: The games aren't downloaded with the latest patch for some reason and you can't download the DLC directly form Origin. It was very nice of them to allow the activation of older games, but why such poor support?

 

[Something Amyss]

Nice to see they're so unrealistic.

Metacritic is maybe the worst thing going on in the video game world today.

Nah. EA's far worse.

 

[Elyxard]

I don't even know what to add to this whole string of comments. I'm just glad to see such unanimous disparagement of EA. It's about damn time; I've been trying to rally people against them for most of a decade.

You weren't here for Mass Effect 3, were you?

Also that's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, just wanted to add that, you people are frighteningly quick and extensive in your hate.

It's not like it isn't justified. This isn't about them being evil, this is about them being a bad business. I don't think I need to write up the giant list of problems EA has caused to the industry over the last ten years, from the abandoned studios, to the disgraceful marketing, to the abusive DLC practices, and to the abysmal customer support. This isn't a quick or sudden bandwagon attack on EA, ME3 was just the final straw in an extremely long line of abuses for most people.

EA is a destructive studio and we need to keep calling them out on it.

 

[Doom972]

Origin is very far from being able to compete with Steam. Its game library is still very small in comparison and it doesn't have many social features like Steam does.
One big problem I have with it is the support for older games on Origin: The games aren't downloaded with the latest patch for some reason and you can't download the DLC directly form Origin. It was very nice of them to allow the activation of older games, but why such poor support?

Ask Steam the same question. My copy of Battlefront 2 still wont work with the sound on.

I was referring to auto-patching and DLC support, not game-specific tech support. I don't think any digital distribution service offers a good support on that. That's best left to the game developer.

 

[George Brundage]

I don't see it. They're a sales driven company not a product driven company. Hence games, like BF3 they produce for $25 million, release buggy, then drop $50 million advertising campaigns on while figuring out new ways to stick it to you through micro transactions...


Plus, their CEO is in way over his head.

 

[George Brundage]

Nope. Excellence breeds excellence. People are forgetting Steam's biggest competitors: retail and direct download. You don't need a game client on the PC. Steam realizes this fact, and has always operated on trust. If they make it awful or unusable, nobody is bound to their platform.

Steam has been competing against the fact that:
a. Only small indie companies actually need them.
b. If they screw up, a hundred companies will be there to take their place.

Inferior platforms like GFWL and Origin draw exclusives and force you to play them on less secure, resource intensive, and inconvenient programs. Nothing good comes from competition unless the competition is actually good.

First off, that's complete bullshit. Steam has problems, it's had problems for awhile now and since there are no real competitors to it, none of these problems have been addressed.

Yeah people aren't bound to Steam, except that you can't play any of the games you own through steam while not connected to the steam network.

Origin is at least trying to compete, they've stated that's their goal, and I think, so far, they're doing a pretty good job of it. They actually have a functioning offline mode for starters.

So does Steam... You can read all about it here: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-agcb-2555