Jimquisition: EA & Ubisoft: A Cycle of Perpetration and Apology

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

It is, indeed, getting tiresome, Jim. I'd really really really like you to shut up about this issue...

...Just as soon as there's no longer any issue to discuss. (Yeah!)

Unfortunately, the "cycle" doesn't suggest that day will come any time soon, does it?

The really frustrating thing is these companies actually make GOOD games - although I'm unsure as to how long it's been since EA has done so. Ubisoft, though, recently made "Far Cry 3", a game I'd really love to play (but I don't want the DRM. I got burned by "GFWL" already. Steam's bad enough. I don't want yet another system clogging up my gaming rig.)

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Don't let miniature fantasy Willen Dafoe anywhere near him! I can tell by the look in his eye... that dog's a born killer!

Fappy, worried about a dog? What a shock. xD

Isn't it partly Fantasy Willen Dafoe's fault for looking so chewable and tasty? ;p

OT:

Barnaby is a great dog name. It means, "son of exhortation".
Perfect description of such a cute beast. :3

Anyway, yes. Jim is very right about this. It reminds me of when Yahtzee compared fans of companies to people in abusive relationships.

They do something wrong to you, say sorry, make promises to do better while kind of putting the blame on other things/people (like you, the consumer), and then do more crap later. -_-

[sub][sub]Disclaimer: I am not equating abusive game company to consumer relationships to actual abusive person to person relationships. The latter is far more serious.[/sub][/sub]

Thank Dog for Jim!

 

[Master_of_Oldskool]

Jim, don't you live in the southern US? I thought pit-bulls were illegal in most of that general area. Which is utterly stupid, of course, anyone who isn't a total moron knows that aggressiveness is down to training rather than breed, but I'm surprised to see you own one.

...

He's so cuuuuuuuuuuuute!

*ahem*

Yes, video gamey things, quite, spot on, very true, corporate bullshit and so on.

 

[Mithcha]

SQEEE!!!!! Doggy!
I love dogs. What is he, bulldog? Bloody big fangs, looks Orcish.

Anyways... I have nothing substantial to say. Eh, thank god for jim (and his dog) etc.

 

[ThePurpleStuff]

The newest game I just bought recently was Shovel Knight. Yacht Club Games are great developers, I've seen them in interviews, live interviews. They're all just happy, fun loving people with senses of humor. I'm happy I bought their game and supported them. Their games great and the developers are great.

I will never buy a game from EA, Ubisoft, etc. ever again. I haven't for years and I won't start now since none of their games have any of my interest. I simply ignore them and no problems on my end at all. I am getting interested in Nintendo's products again though from people playing them and I see how fun they are. I may get a Wii u and 3DS someday when I can afford them. But we'll still see about that.

I don't support shitty publishers/developers bad decisions. I'm not an idiot and they won't take advantage of me.

 

[DoctorObviously]

Never change, Jim.

Never change, you beautiful man.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Jim, don't you live in the southern US? I thought pit-bulls were illegal in most of that general area. Which is utterly stupid, of course, anyone who isn't a total moron knows that aggressiveness is down to training rather than breed, but I'm surprised to see you own one.

...

He's so cuuuuuuuuuuuute!

*ahem*

Yes, video gamey things, quite, spot on, very true, corporate bullshit and so on.

........That's not a pit bull. That is clearly a bull dog. They're not the same thing.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Except that people are idiots because they keep falling for the insincere apologies.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

that is a nice dog jim

man, you dont know how it kills me sometimes to not buy EA games, there are some games from them i really want to try out, like the mass effect series and the first dragon age, but every time the thought invades my mind, i get reminded of the disgusting cancer theyve become for this industry and just how little they deserve my money

but its ok, i might not have mass effect but i still bought sonic all stars racing on the last steam sale, man its so good, how come there are not that many good kart racing games anymore? particulary on PC



as for Ubisoft, for the time being i can still stomach to buy their games, theyve gotten a lot worse lately, but they still havent reached the deeps of decadence EA has, i can only be hopelesssly optimistic theyll stop being so shit before its too late

 

[SnowWookie]

"The video game industry thinks you're an idiot... and you're not"

When it comes to the average gamer, all evidence would seem to point to the contrary. EA, Ubisoft (and let's not forget Activision!) keep pulling this shit and people keep buying their games. A glance at the top selling games and you're bound to find multiple games by these guys in the top 20 on any given week

 

[Eri]

I would prefer not?to see that dog again. Nothing wrong with your dog specifically (okay, the visible teeth

Are you aware that a dog showing teeth does not mean it's aggressive? Also that dog is built so that it kinda always has to show teeth.

Some dogs show a ?submissive grin? when they?re feeling extremely submissive. They pull their lips up vertically and display their front teeth (canines and incisors). This signal is almost always accompanied by an overall submissive body posture, such as a lowered head, yelping or whining, and squinty eyes. Only some dogs ?grin? this way. People sometimes mistakenly think a dog is being aggressive when, in fact, he?s grinning submissively and trying to communicate the exact opposite of aggression.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I would prefer not?to see that dog again. Nothing wrong with your dog specifically (okay, the visible teeth and the barking really don?t help). But I?m afraid of them.

For me, this video felt like a retread of old ideas (companies apologizing for shitty behavior to the public without actually stopping is not exactly a new phenomenon), but I guess there are probably viewers who somehow expected that EA and Ubi et al. love them and would never lie and for whom this video is be a revelation.

So, uh, keep up the good work? Keep spinning out largely the same points every year for the people who are too lazy to look through the backlog of this show, who are also probably the people who most need to be told that big companies lie? Kinda depressing really.

It bugs me (and discredits yourself) that you find the lies of businesses so commonplace or obvious.

Um, discredits me as what exactly? As a longtime viewer of Jim?s show? As an observer of things? I can tell you right now that I have seen nearly every episode of the Jimquisition and I have observed many a thing throughout my life.

Also, businesses. Walmart acting friendly and happy while gouging its workers and employing/buying from sweatshops to keep prices down. Oil cartels making up oil crises to keep gas prices high. Deregulated power companies in California lying about power supply issues and the causes of brownouts to keep prices high. Hucksters selling ?revitalizing tonics? made of heroin, lead, goat urine and radium before things like the FDA began regulating how much people can lie about what their products put in your body. Businesses have been lying since there were businesses, and it doesn?t surprise me that big video game companies are also businesses.

Punish the company, educate the customers. That's my take on the matter.

For conscientious gamers, saying that nickel-and-diming practices or excessively convenient apologies are both inexcusable is pretty standard stuff. We're aware of how the industry works. We care.

The thing is, there's a whole subset of the gamer populace that sets its collective eyes on a given title, decides it'll purchase it or pre-order it months in advance, and then buys the game without stopping to see the title's critical reception. From game to game, they don't find themselves invested in the practices involved - all they care about is the end product. That's what the big publishers rely on; the undying and unquestioning support of the "core fanbase" for Game Series Such-and-Such.

We need to educate these people in particular, get them to understand that if a car manufacturer treated its products the same way publishers treat their games, we'd be living in a world in which people would magically forgive horrendous incidents wherein multiple cars from a same model or line, say, had their fuel lines explode and turn the car into a giant, flaming ball of death. We *need* to ensure that no gamer, either casual or hardcore, just sits on the sidelines and complacently lets publishers have their cake and eat it.

Consumer advocacy needs to become a part of the gamer culture. It needs to be more than the province of some supposed malcontents who can't kneel down and say thank you.

 

[Groverfield]

Jim! I don't know if you're publicly shaming games or not anymore, but I thought you might be interested in "Steaming" fresh "Claire," which straight up steals graphical elements from Home, Lone Survivor, Metal Slug (I think) and several others that I just didn't care enough to identify. This piece of reconstituted game product being sold at a $10 pricetag comes to us from Hailstorm (As in they stole their name from a crappy girl-Nickelback band) Games, not Hail Storm (a storm whose primary form of precipitation is hail.)

 

[weirdee]

snip

people would choose to buy the console version because they could play it offline

 

[KazeAizen]

Really the only company I see not lying or slinging loads of bs is Nintendo. And when they admit mistakes they apologize and usually fix them. Hell when they realize things go bad they bite the bullet, take pay cuts instead of employee cuts and that sort of thing. Of course it helps that Nintendo rarely ever screws up big time. I mean they do occasionally, region locking I guess is a mistake, but they do it so inconsistently they don't get near as much flack for it because they will fix the problem if there was one.

 

[Nurb]

but people still buy their garbage and give them money. They can't even wait a week to hurt their launch numbers, then buy it.

 

[Metalrocks]

yeah, more of the dog please. just like lisa showing her cat more.

ok, @ topic.
i still think that ubi is getting worse than EA. sure, EA is far from being an angel but the new BF title is not even out yet so i think its a bit unfair to say that the next shit is coming. probably will be be but i think you should be optimistic about it. they know that BF4 failed (even when it took them over 6 month to admit it) and it would be utterly stupid of them to pull off the same crap.
you can say "the next shit" when the new BF has the same issues.

 

[Scars Unseen]

This is the one thing that gives me some shred of hope that there could possibly be a good Final Fantasy game again someday. Squeenix saw how people reacted to FFXIV's terrible release, apologized for it, and then went and rebuilt the game from its foundation. Maybe they were mostly sorry that people weren't paying them money, but the remorse was sincere enough for them to act on it.

 

[Lord_Jaroh]

EA & Ubisoft: A Cycle of Perpetration and Apology

The industry loves saying sorry without actually ever being sorry.

Watch Video

I have a question:

Why, if these companies keep doing their "thing" as you say, do the game journalists when speaking with them, never question them on it when the next bestest game ever comes out from them, nor take them to task for it, and warn people to stay away from said games as a "buyer beware" mentality? Why do they not, in their previews, ever give these problems any weight when giving advance "reviews" of an unfinished game?

This isn't a criticism of your video Jim, I just feel as you say, it's a bunch of wind until you are more than just a voice in the darkness unheard by the companies. This is part of the problem, and it won't be fixed until game publications stop promoting these companies shitty tactics. If you want the game industry to improve, you (you the Escapist company, not you in the vernacular), and everyone else in the hype machine, need to be a part of the solution.

 

[RicoADF]

the diablo 3 comment seems slightly weird in the context of the rest of the episode (Just saying sorry to boost sales, but not changing anything)
Blizzard removed the auction house and completely remodeled the lootsystem towards what customers wanted, instead of saying sorry and then bringing out RoS with the auction house intact to keep making money with it.


Not sure how much more they can do at the point where they realised their mistake.



I am still waiting for the "sry for the long wait times for our WoW expansions, we will do better!" apology to mean something though^^

They could remove the need to be online to play, you know like the console versions Seriously EA/Activions/Blizzard/Ubisoft etc are now all losing me as a customer simply because I'm getting sick of the bullcrap. Thankfully I already have more games to keep me busy than I can play and also there's plenty of other great publishers like Paradox, Deep Silver etc that I can always get my new game fix from. (not to mention indies)