Most of the people on this thread have no clue what EA did, it seems. Sad. Let me clue you newbies in.
EA corporate policy was largely responsible for the destruction of Origin Systems [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_Systems]. Westwood Studios and Bullfrogs demise was a result of similar EA mismanagement. Basically, EA was buying the best names in the business and running them into the ground with sheer heavy-handed idiocy, just as they did with Origin.
Origin Systems used to turn out Ultima, Wing Commander, the original System Shock, ect. They were the "we create worlds" team that really meant something. They were perhaps the foremost North American game development studio on the planet, bigger than Blizzard and making far better games - no exaggeration.
However, after Ultima Online started churning in subscription money, EA's brass had big dollar signs pop up in their eyes, and told Origin's many-faceted talent, "Origin is the Ultima company now." A lot of the big name developers got pissed off and left, including the Ultima guy himself (Richard Garriott), starting their own game companies (Destination Games, Digital Anvil, ect). Now, all that's left of Origin is a basically a small development team that strings Ultima Online along on life support with expansions.
It gets better. Ultima Online had a sequel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online_2] in the works, and it was looking fairly awesome (at least by 2001 standards).
I was involved with providing feedback on the developer's forums over on the vault network, and I know what they were working on was some pretty pure gaming magic. However, the game was canceled, perhaps setting back MMORPGs to be nothing more than EverQuest clones forever. Why? No official explanation, but the developers were apparently so pissed off they trashed the studio they were working in, and a rumor surfaced that apparently EA was afraid of developing a game that would compete with themselves. Incredibly, they repeated this process again in 2004 with Ultima X.
(Most of the development team for Ultima Online 2 moved on to Star Wars Galaxies and Shadowbane, neither of which worked out real well - in Shadowbane's case it was on account of joining halfway through and getting behind a boneheaded single-computer server architecture, in SWG's case it was because pleasing the Star Wars License with Ultima Online 2 innovations turned out to capture too small of the target audience.)
There was also a major stink risen from EA Spouse [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EA_Spouse], who was pissed off about EA essentially working her husband to death with a massive amount of unpaid overtime. The courts agreed: she was able to successfully sue EA [http://www.gamespot.com/news/6148369.html] for $14.9M in damages to be distributed among EA employees. This lends more credibility to a belief that EA was basically taking gaming's development's best and brightest and crushing the soul of out of them.
So, do I and the rest of gamerkind have good reason to hate the name of EA? Yes.
However, I put down "indifferent" because the backlash from their actions had become so pronounced that they began major reforms. Today, it's hard to say just how bad they remain, but their treatment of Mythic in developing Warhammer Online was encouraging. Well, there were the recent layoffs [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/88816-Warhammer-Online-Dev-Responds-to-Layoff-Rumors], but who isn't? I know Mark Jacobs well enough to say that if EA was mistreating his baby, he'd be the first to say it.
So, despite the downright evil shit EA was up to around the turn of the century, much of which set back the gaming artform untold years of progress, there's hope yet.
EA corporate policy was largely responsible for the destruction of Origin Systems [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_Systems]. Westwood Studios and Bullfrogs demise was a result of similar EA mismanagement. Basically, EA was buying the best names in the business and running them into the ground with sheer heavy-handed idiocy, just as they did with Origin.
Origin Systems used to turn out Ultima, Wing Commander, the original System Shock, ect. They were the "we create worlds" team that really meant something. They were perhaps the foremost North American game development studio on the planet, bigger than Blizzard and making far better games - no exaggeration.
However, after Ultima Online started churning in subscription money, EA's brass had big dollar signs pop up in their eyes, and told Origin's many-faceted talent, "Origin is the Ultima company now." A lot of the big name developers got pissed off and left, including the Ultima guy himself (Richard Garriott), starting their own game companies (Destination Games, Digital Anvil, ect). Now, all that's left of Origin is a basically a small development team that strings Ultima Online along on life support with expansions.
It gets better. Ultima Online had a sequel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online_2] in the works, and it was looking fairly awesome (at least by 2001 standards).
I was involved with providing feedback on the developer's forums over on the vault network, and I know what they were working on was some pretty pure gaming magic. However, the game was canceled, perhaps setting back MMORPGs to be nothing more than EverQuest clones forever. Why? No official explanation, but the developers were apparently so pissed off they trashed the studio they were working in, and a rumor surfaced that apparently EA was afraid of developing a game that would compete with themselves. Incredibly, they repeated this process again in 2004 with Ultima X.
(Most of the development team for Ultima Online 2 moved on to Star Wars Galaxies and Shadowbane, neither of which worked out real well - in Shadowbane's case it was on account of joining halfway through and getting behind a boneheaded single-computer server architecture, in SWG's case it was because pleasing the Star Wars License with Ultima Online 2 innovations turned out to capture too small of the target audience.)
There was also a major stink risen from EA Spouse [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EA_Spouse], who was pissed off about EA essentially working her husband to death with a massive amount of unpaid overtime. The courts agreed: she was able to successfully sue EA [http://www.gamespot.com/news/6148369.html] for $14.9M in damages to be distributed among EA employees. This lends more credibility to a belief that EA was basically taking gaming's development's best and brightest and crushing the soul of out of them.
So, do I and the rest of gamerkind have good reason to hate the name of EA? Yes.
However, I put down "indifferent" because the backlash from their actions had become so pronounced that they began major reforms. Today, it's hard to say just how bad they remain, but their treatment of Mythic in developing Warhammer Online was encouraging. Well, there were the recent layoffs [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/88816-Warhammer-Online-Dev-Responds-to-Layoff-Rumors], but who isn't? I know Mark Jacobs well enough to say that if EA was mistreating his baby, he'd be the first to say it.
So, despite the downright evil shit EA was up to around the turn of the century, much of which set back the gaming artform untold years of progress, there's hope yet.
