Electronic Arts: Greed Is Not the Problem

[mavkiel]

I was talking about how they make DRM free games. I can buy the Witcher 2 of the shelf and install it without some shady company "needing" my private information and having to install a "service" on my computer. I can then resell or give it to friends or family when I´m done with the campaign.

Don´t tell me EA can't do that, as they already did exactly that until some time after the release of Mass Effect 2. Then they of course had to follow Valve and lock their shit behind DRM, as EA is very good at following bad examples (see also attempting to copy Call of Duty)

I'm guessing you weren't around for the Spore debarkle then?

Before EA used Steam and eventually Origin they loaded their games with a DRM system called SecuROM which limited the number of installs you could make and often mistook upgrades as a different PC, which would after a set number (usually 3 or 5) and kill your 'licence' of the game. It also remained even if you uninstalled the game, rather like a rootkit.

If memory serves secrurom also had a "small" issue of destroying your cd drive in some instances. Or that could have been one of activisions little gifts. It was a long time ago. In short, the drm screwed with cd rom in such a way that it was essentially bricked.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

EA's biggest problem is that they are a publicly traded company. This means that they (unlike Valve) have to appease stock holders. For some businesses, this isn't a huge problem; largely because they sell something that's easier to quantify. For a gaming company, however, it's damn-near suicide, because the games industry is still in a very-much experimental state. In the past 30 years or so, games have undergone several drastic changes while they work their way into a comfortable niche. This means that gaming companies need to be free to experiment and take risks to keep-up with the new trends. I mean, really, look at just about any product 30 years ago and usually it's sold in the exact same way today as it was back then (which is to say, you go to your local department store and buy it). Meanwhile games have hopscotched between arcades, home consoles, portable devices, and PCs at seemingly random intervals, and digital distribution is just a whole new element to add to the jumble; and every failed experiment is millions of dollars lost.

In short, EA is doomed to its current fate until the gaming industry settles into a nice groove so that the investors can use their charts and figures to know the best way to market a game, rather than having to constantly play catch-up every time the trends change.

 

[Jumwa]

And this is the true difference between EA and Valve. EA are beholden to shareholders and everything they do is to add value for those shareholders. Executives flail about trying anything they can to satisfy the hoards baying for more and more profit. Valve however, are beholden to no one. Publicly listing a company is a good way to make some money in the short term for those that founded it, but it is hardly ever a good move for the actual company involved.

I would be very hard pressed indeed to come up with more than a handful of positive outcomes from the system of public stock trading we have. It seems to push otherwise healthy, well-functioning companies to take destructive actions on a regular basis. The human cost to employees that are constantly "downsized", shuffled about or tortured with unreasonable expectations is immense, not to mention the hurt it often does to consumers as well.

 

[Kajin]

Intellectual Property is the most valuable asset a videogame company can have. Talent can come and go. Machines and software are regularly replaced. But creating and maintaining titles and brands is how you make your money.

Gonna have to disagree with you on this one. Saying that an IP is worth more than the talent that made it is like saying Zero Punctuation is more important than Mister Croshaw, the man who does the video. That's like saying Movie Bob isn't important and that people will still come to see Escape to the Movies if you fired him and put some random schmuck off the street in charge of those videos.

Valve was able to make the new IP because they trusted themselves to make good content because they had top notch development talent at the helm. They knew that whatever they made would sell because the people who make their stuff are a group of the most talented individuals in the industry.

 

[mavkiel]

EA's biggest problem is that they are a publicly traded company. This means that they (unlike Valve) have to appease stock holders. For some businesses, this isn't a huge problem; largely because they sell something that's easier to quantify. For a gaming company, however, it's damn-near suicide, because the games industry is still in a very-much experimental state. In the past 30 years or so, games have undergone several drastic changes while they work their way into a comfortable niche. This means that gaming companies need to be free to experiment and take risks to keep-up with the new trends. I mean, really, look at just about any product 30 years ago and usually it's sold in the exact same way today as it was back then (which is to say, you go to your local department store and buy it). Meanwhile games have hopscotched between arcades, home consoles, portable devices, and PCs at seemingly random intervals, and digital distribution is just a whole new element to add to the jumble; and every failed experiment is millions of dollars lost.

In short, EA is doomed to its current fate until the gaming industry settles into a nice groove so that the investors can use their charts and figures to know the best way to market a game, rather than having to constantly play catch-up every time the trends change.

I disagree that its problem is that its public. Its that its badly run. Its hard to think of a metric where EA is considered a success. Compare https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:TTWO and compare it to ea (just click the box)

Just off hand I think everyone here would consider the makers of Grand theft auto much better then EA. (Even considering rockstar thinks all pc users are thieves like EA).

 

[WarpZone]

Electronic Arts: Greed Is Not the Problem

I don't have a problem with companies making money. I don't think "greed" is a bad thing. I don't have a problem with people getting rich. What I do have a problem with is wasted potential and disgraceful incompetence.

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Well said. But just try to get anything actually changed.

The idiots in charge of EA will stay in charge indefinitely because the only skill they have is "Fail Upwards." Who's gonna make the bloodletting happen at this point? Consumers? Shareholders? Lawmakers? Industry partners? EA's management has them all fooled. They could win Worst Company On Earth ten years in a row and it wouldn't stop frat boys from buying Madden, and by god they are going to run every single IP they can get their filthy hands on into the ground until ten years after the well dries up.

You see, Shamus, in the minds of many young people, "Greed" is a shorthand for "old rich stupid people doing pointlessly cruel things for incredibly short-term gain and acting indifferent about the consequences." And actually, we probably need to unpack that a little bit further, because I said "old" when I meant "out-of-touch," "rich" when I meant "in charge of incredible wealth and power, such that they have the anomalous power to make their own rules," and "stupid" when I meant "willfully ignorant." Man, the vernacular English can get crazy when we use it emotionally, eh?

So all that shit I just said gets abbreviated as "greed." Once you understand that, a lot of seemingly misguided populist statements make a lot more sense. Why did the BP oil spill happen? Greed. Why are so many atrocities happening in North Korea? Greed. Why does EA suck so hard? Greed.

The assumption is that EA knows better, and they willingly chose this path anyway, because surely nobody's stupid enough to honestly think that they games they're putting out are good.

The idea that a room full of drooling fucktards somehow came into control of the most powerful video game company in the AAA industry is somehow too crazy to contemplate.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

So here's my thoughts on the matter: Greed is specifically when you feel entitled more than what you deserve to have. This is why I don't really see Valve as greedy; they deserve to have the money that they have. EA, on the other hand, constantly craps-out lousy content and expects you to pay top dollar for it. Then, when a game does poorly, they act like it's anyone's fault but their own when they don't get the money that they don't deserve to have.

So while we might disagree on a semantic level (I'd say that greed is exactly the problem), we do agree on the fundamental issue.

 

[darth gditch]

I very much enjoyed your article, Mr. Young.

It really encapsulated everything I feel about EA; specifically, that EA really has no idea how to run a game corporation and just randomly flails about, relying on accumulated IP.

I do wonder if some of the differences between the two companies has anything to do with the fact that Valve is an in-house developer/publisher while EA is really just a holding company for a whole stable of developers. I would think that Valve is inevitably going to be a more focused and nimble company-able to understand its consumer base and respond to it quickly-while EA is going to be pulled in multiple directions by its many wings. After all, BioWare and EA Sports are very different developers making different games for different audiences, yet the both answer to the same EA management staff.

I think EA is too diversified to successfully respond to its audiences. Unless EA truly decentralizes its operations, it will never be able to make the smart decisions that Valve does. There are far too many departments and layers to a business the size and scale of EA for it to be plugged in to the wants of its customers.

For another counterpoint, look at Zenimax. Zenimax is also a huge publisher-but the studios that Zenimax actually *owns* (i.e. Bethesda) tend to stick to a handful of genres and strong I.P.'s.

Valve too sticks to a handful of genres and strong I.P.'s-after all, we don't see any sports games or party games or real time strategy games coming out of Valve.

 

[Matthi205]

You're MOSTLY right in that respect. But you do need to keep pressure on the devs. When it comes down to it Video Game are a business. If your devs have no money left, are begging you for a few more months to polish up a new IP that has no real hype or guarantee of selling then that's when the business side has to come in and push it out the door in hopes of recouping your losses.

NO NO NO. If a game comes out that isn't polished and is incredibly buggy AND it has no brand inertia going for it, then it's just fucked. So rather give developers more time to finish a game and polish it to a mirror shine (see: Titanfall, Team Fortress 2, Guild Wars 2, L4D/2, Half-Life 1).