Just to be clear this isn't a yet another "EA sucks" discussion thread and I really hope it doesn't devolve into one. I'm just asking, if theoretically enough people were boycotting all of EA's titles to the point where most of them were bombing left right and centre, would this force them to change their tunes and actually try to make better (non-homogenised rip-off) products free of the typical DLC and micro-transactions bullcrap, or will it just result in them closing a whole lot of studios, axing hundreds (if not thousands) of hard working game developers and just starting over with the new studios they just bought and will also run into the ground with the exact same practices.
I'm asking because in recent years EA has gained a reputation for thinking that it can do no wrong as evidenced by them having the balls to say that it's the consumers' fault for not enjoying Dungeon Keeper Mobile because apparently in EA's eyes a game that has all the hallmarks of following the leader was somehow "ahead of its time". The way I see it EA is currently being run by a collection of incompetent delusional megalomaniacs who are addicted to their own egos.
And I say incompetent not because they make the occasional bad (and/or price gouging with DLCs and MTs) game, but because they seem to have forgotten the golden rule of running a business "the customer is always (okay not always but most times) right" because they can't stop dismissing criticism and dodging responsibility for their mistakes, and even when they do apologise it's always so half-hearted and insincere (especially when they go and make the same mistake a few months later).
But their ineptitude of running a business doesn't just extend to their bad interactions with their customers but they also seem to have fallen asleep during Economics 101 specifically the part that says that demand for a product is inversely proportional to the price of the product as evidenced by the fact that they refuse to lower the prices of their games on Origin despite them cutting many costs involved with the physical distribution of the game. And if lowering the price is unfeasible then lower the costs, oh wait the do try lowering the costs though uncompensated crunch time except that they seem to have forgotten that worker productivity can't be maintained if the workers have a grand total of 21 hours of free time a week, resulting in an overall worse product. They're just terrible at management, PR and marketing period.
But EA doesn't care about those things and based on how they're behaving it won't matter how many games lose money overall, they will still do the same shit they do already and won't give a fuck about how many people they lay off to remain in business because as we already established everyone but them is at fault for their games not making any money, and they can say that the opposite is true all day long and they'll still come across like they don't really mean it.
All of this leads to my question, should we boycott EA (or any other publisher to which you can apply at least half the things I said in the preceding paragraphs)? Personally I've been boycotting them since they released the video game abomination known as Command & Conquer 4, (you were expecting me to say Mass Effect 3, didn't you?) and personally I'm getting tired of it all, I'm tired of them constantly running franchises and dev teams to the ground, I'm tired of them making the same stupid mistakes time and time again without any attempt whatsoever to remedy them, I'm tired of them lying through their teeth one minute and having someone else (that works for them) contradict them the next. And lastly I'm tired of boycotting them because I just don't see the point of it anymore.
But what do you guys and gals think?
EDIT:
And what exactly do you expect me to accomplish when you say I should get off my ass? Like I said they don't listen to us, they dismiss us and they think they are perfect. I can write a letter to them saying that I'm boycotting them because of such and such business practices and attitudes and there's nothing stopping them from just deleting it as soon as they see it in their inbox let alone read it. That's why I'm asking if we should boycott them? Because I don't know if it would make a difference whether or not they know why we're doing it.
I'm asking because in recent years EA has gained a reputation for thinking that it can do no wrong as evidenced by them having the balls to say that it's the consumers' fault for not enjoying Dungeon Keeper Mobile because apparently in EA's eyes a game that has all the hallmarks of following the leader was somehow "ahead of its time". The way I see it EA is currently being run by a collection of incompetent delusional megalomaniacs who are addicted to their own egos.
And I say incompetent not because they make the occasional bad (and/or price gouging with DLCs and MTs) game, but because they seem to have forgotten the golden rule of running a business "the customer is always (okay not always but most times) right" because they can't stop dismissing criticism and dodging responsibility for their mistakes, and even when they do apologise it's always so half-hearted and insincere (especially when they go and make the same mistake a few months later).
But their ineptitude of running a business doesn't just extend to their bad interactions with their customers but they also seem to have fallen asleep during Economics 101 specifically the part that says that demand for a product is inversely proportional to the price of the product as evidenced by the fact that they refuse to lower the prices of their games on Origin despite them cutting many costs involved with the physical distribution of the game. And if lowering the price is unfeasible then lower the costs, oh wait the do try lowering the costs though uncompensated crunch time except that they seem to have forgotten that worker productivity can't be maintained if the workers have a grand total of 21 hours of free time a week, resulting in an overall worse product. They're just terrible at management, PR and marketing period.
But EA doesn't care about those things and based on how they're behaving it won't matter how many games lose money overall, they will still do the same shit they do already and won't give a fuck about how many people they lay off to remain in business because as we already established everyone but them is at fault for their games not making any money, and they can say that the opposite is true all day long and they'll still come across like they don't really mean it.
All of this leads to my question, should we boycott EA (or any other publisher to which you can apply at least half the things I said in the preceding paragraphs)? Personally I've been boycotting them since they released the video game abomination known as Command & Conquer 4, (you were expecting me to say Mass Effect 3, didn't you?) and personally I'm getting tired of it all, I'm tired of them constantly running franchises and dev teams to the ground, I'm tired of them making the same stupid mistakes time and time again without any attempt whatsoever to remedy them, I'm tired of them lying through their teeth one minute and having someone else (that works for them) contradict them the next. And lastly I'm tired of boycotting them because I just don't see the point of it anymore.
But what do you guys and gals think?
EDIT:
Okay I never said that everything I said was wrong with EA applies only to EA. UbiSoft, Activision and Sqeenix also have their share of mistakes. I'm just using EA as an example because it's doing these mistakes much more frequently and on a much larger scale with considerably less shame (at least Activision ignores criticism instead of publicly dismissing it). And yes I know indie devs aren't perfect we've all seen enough proof that they can fail just as bad as EA, and yes they also churn out bad games just to make some kind of profit out of them. The difference in my opinion is that EA's dev teams could've made great games if EA would allow them to do so, but the indie devs behind Guise of the Wolf, Day One: Garry's Incident, Earth 2066 and The Slaughtering Grounds are just plain old incompetent and would've made bad games regardless of how much money they had either because of lack of ability or integrity. EA is doing bad games out of (a presumably wilful) ignorance of a better way, bad indie devs are making bad games on purpose because they literally can't make anything good.jklinders said:
And what exactly do you expect me to accomplish when you say I should get off my ass? Like I said they don't listen to us, they dismiss us and they think they are perfect. I can write a letter to them saying that I'm boycotting them because of such and such business practices and attitudes and there's nothing stopping them from just deleting it as soon as they see it in their inbox let alone read it. That's why I'm asking if we should boycott them? Because I don't know if it would make a difference whether or not they know why we're doing it.
