I don't think EA needs defending. It's got a slew of lawyers to do that.
If anything EA is still, like any company, deserving of some perspective. Shamus Young said it best: EA isn't greedy, it's just clueless. Considering the size of the thing and the fact that it's a publicly traded company, I'm not surprised.
EA's innermost whims aren't dictated with people with a deep-seated love of the medium driving them; they're dictated by non-gamers who have chunks of the company in their retirement fund, by investment firms who only care about growing the stock so they'll sell it at a profit, or by people who bought a piece of it for the very same reason. The Board of Directors doesn't give two shits about player experience; it wants to see smiles on the shareholders' faces. Everything else is utterly trivial.
With that in mind, let's take a look at what makes Little Baby Potential Investor cry...
- reduced profits
- profitable franchises slowing down significantly
- bad PR
- ineffectual PR
- lack of sales altogether
SimCity was designed to curb reduced sales by way of DRM and always-online features. Every single copy sold is a copy legitimately bought, which means sixty dollars more divvied up between EA and Maxis. Everybody's happy. Then there's the fact that SimCity as a franchise had been silent for years. They probably observed a decline in sales outside of the new "core" franchises the publisher keeps doting over (Battlefield/Dead Space) and figured it was time to reverse the trend by pulling out an old and beloved franchise out of the mothballs. Discussing it brought up the unavoidable issue of piracy and, well - full circle.
The intent was to turn SimCity into a new cash cow à la The Sims 3. That much is obvious. Bad and utterly ineffectual PR, however, would botch this up, along with poor planning on their part. You can be sure Bradshaw's had her ear chewed off over the last few days.
Even so, the game wasn't a complete wash for EA. It sold, despite the horrible Metacritic and Amazon reviews.
So what do they take away from all this?
Probably that angering an old fanbase is fine and dandy, provided you've got enough tech savvy and money to weather the initial storm. Failing that, they just might shutter Maxis or at least sack Bradshaw - which would be a shame.
So honestly? EA isn't evil. It isn't a Snidely Whiplash character who's out to empty your pockets while cackling with evil relish. It isn't an Orange Lantern in the making, looking at your wallets and mindlessly lusting for your cash. Does that excuse what they've been doing? Of course not.
All this tells me is that Corporate is no longer able to reason like your average gamer. If EA's original founders are still onboard, something intrinsic to the company's initial intent is now gone. The electronic artistry that's suggested in a title like "Electronic Arts" has been replaced with cold and impersonal fiscal predictions.
On the other hand, can you really blame EA? Can you really blame any of the Big Three? Budgets are bloated, the average consumer's demand for cutting-edge graphics and mechanics is superseding story design to the point that we end up with Mass Effect 3-esque debacles; budgets are getting so fricking huge that we're about to see 70$ price tags for games become the norm even though inflation hasn't quite caught on -
Honestly, it isn't EA that's deserving of hatred. It's the entire industry's general outlook.
If anything EA is still, like any company, deserving of some perspective. Shamus Young said it best: EA isn't greedy, it's just clueless. Considering the size of the thing and the fact that it's a publicly traded company, I'm not surprised.
EA's innermost whims aren't dictated with people with a deep-seated love of the medium driving them; they're dictated by non-gamers who have chunks of the company in their retirement fund, by investment firms who only care about growing the stock so they'll sell it at a profit, or by people who bought a piece of it for the very same reason. The Board of Directors doesn't give two shits about player experience; it wants to see smiles on the shareholders' faces. Everything else is utterly trivial.
With that in mind, let's take a look at what makes Little Baby Potential Investor cry...
- reduced profits
- profitable franchises slowing down significantly
- bad PR
- ineffectual PR
- lack of sales altogether
SimCity was designed to curb reduced sales by way of DRM and always-online features. Every single copy sold is a copy legitimately bought, which means sixty dollars more divvied up between EA and Maxis. Everybody's happy. Then there's the fact that SimCity as a franchise had been silent for years. They probably observed a decline in sales outside of the new "core" franchises the publisher keeps doting over (Battlefield/Dead Space) and figured it was time to reverse the trend by pulling out an old and beloved franchise out of the mothballs. Discussing it brought up the unavoidable issue of piracy and, well - full circle.
The intent was to turn SimCity into a new cash cow à la The Sims 3. That much is obvious. Bad and utterly ineffectual PR, however, would botch this up, along with poor planning on their part. You can be sure Bradshaw's had her ear chewed off over the last few days.
Even so, the game wasn't a complete wash for EA. It sold, despite the horrible Metacritic and Amazon reviews.
So what do they take away from all this?
Probably that angering an old fanbase is fine and dandy, provided you've got enough tech savvy and money to weather the initial storm. Failing that, they just might shutter Maxis or at least sack Bradshaw - which would be a shame.
So honestly? EA isn't evil. It isn't a Snidely Whiplash character who's out to empty your pockets while cackling with evil relish. It isn't an Orange Lantern in the making, looking at your wallets and mindlessly lusting for your cash. Does that excuse what they've been doing? Of course not.
All this tells me is that Corporate is no longer able to reason like your average gamer. If EA's original founders are still onboard, something intrinsic to the company's initial intent is now gone. The electronic artistry that's suggested in a title like "Electronic Arts" has been replaced with cold and impersonal fiscal predictions.
On the other hand, can you really blame EA? Can you really blame any of the Big Three? Budgets are bloated, the average consumer's demand for cutting-edge graphics and mechanics is superseding story design to the point that we end up with Mass Effect 3-esque debacles; budgets are getting so fricking huge that we're about to see 70$ price tags for games become the norm even though inflation hasn't quite caught on -
Honestly, it isn't EA that's deserving of hatred. It's the entire industry's general outlook.