What, specifically, has E.A. done? *I seriously don't know*
- Thread starter ShogunGino
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They represent everything wrong with the game industry. Can't put it any simpler then that.
Lets see.
1. They buy up then destroy properties and companies. One does not have to look deep into their history to see how often this goes down. Ah, poor spoony, I could feel the emotion when talking about what they did to Ultima...
2. They don't respect the customer. From the advertising campaigns that are outright offensive to gamers, to stupid statements released about being top dog in critic ratings rather then actually quality products, to releasing the same games year after year, to constantly bashing the competition... it all shows they don't think of the customer as anything more then a mindless drone with money. You don't want a quality game, you want what we say is the top game this year. We wont win you over with quality, we'll just bash the competition. You wont try something new, here, have the same shit repackaged, made more "mainstream", and so indistinguishable from anything else, you can't tell what game it is by looking at them side by side.
3. DRM. Nothing like preventing you from playing the game you paid for and own because of their insecurities, right?
4. Customer service is abysmal. That is all.
5. Over-saturation and lack of innovation or variation. Touched on before, but special mention is worth noting.
6. Offensive business practices. How many questionable legal moves have they done now, either to soot down or interfere with other publishers, game makers or anyone else? To say nothing about the rights of the gamers being non-existent in their eyes.
7. Annoying business practices. Worth mentioning just to add to the list. Day one/on disk DLC, content that shouldn't be locked since it came with the game itself and is just added to suck more money out of people. I don't think companies shouldn't be able to make dlc but some on, if you bought the game, you should get everything on the damn disk at least. If you are only selling part of the game, only charge me part of the price.
8. The heads of the company represent the worst attitudes in the industry. This is more specific, in that they are the ones not just encouraging but mandating the same behavior I have been listing up til now. It is these higher ups that cause the damage and it shows neither an understanding nor a care for ethical business practices, rather, a more money grub mentality where they are trying to squeeze the last cent before the holes in their money balloon let the last of their hot air out and they plummet to the ground, most likely jumping ship in a similar fashion as the people they seem to be having issues with at the moment. You know the ones who are being investigated for insider trading and the like.
Lets see.
1. They buy up then destroy properties and companies. One does not have to look deep into their history to see how often this goes down. Ah, poor spoony, I could feel the emotion when talking about what they did to Ultima...
2. They don't respect the customer. From the advertising campaigns that are outright offensive to gamers, to stupid statements released about being top dog in critic ratings rather then actually quality products, to releasing the same games year after year, to constantly bashing the competition... it all shows they don't think of the customer as anything more then a mindless drone with money. You don't want a quality game, you want what we say is the top game this year. We wont win you over with quality, we'll just bash the competition. You wont try something new, here, have the same shit repackaged, made more "mainstream", and so indistinguishable from anything else, you can't tell what game it is by looking at them side by side.
3. DRM. Nothing like preventing you from playing the game you paid for and own because of their insecurities, right?
4. Customer service is abysmal. That is all.
5. Over-saturation and lack of innovation or variation. Touched on before, but special mention is worth noting.
6. Offensive business practices. How many questionable legal moves have they done now, either to soot down or interfere with other publishers, game makers or anyone else? To say nothing about the rights of the gamers being non-existent in their eyes.
7. Annoying business practices. Worth mentioning just to add to the list. Day one/on disk DLC, content that shouldn't be locked since it came with the game itself and is just added to suck more money out of people. I don't think companies shouldn't be able to make dlc but some on, if you bought the game, you should get everything on the damn disk at least. If you are only selling part of the game, only charge me part of the price.
8. The heads of the company represent the worst attitudes in the industry. This is more specific, in that they are the ones not just encouraging but mandating the same behavior I have been listing up til now. It is these higher ups that cause the damage and it shows neither an understanding nor a care for ethical business practices, rather, a more money grub mentality where they are trying to squeeze the last cent before the holes in their money balloon let the last of their hot air out and they plummet to the ground, most likely jumping ship in a similar fashion as the people they seem to be having issues with at the moment. You know the ones who are being investigated for insider trading and the like.
Fact: EA is staffed entirely by Nazi Rapists who eat only puppies and kittens.
...Or so I've been told.
...Or so I've been told.
you know, you'd think it would be worst to be a racist rapist, but wouldn't that mean that they are pickier, thus fewer people are actually at risk?TIMESWORDSMAN said:
...sorry, just a thought xD
I'm not claiming they're going to shut Bioware down.Draech said:
However I am hearing about lay offs, several veteran developers leaving. SWTOR which was apperantly released too early, the microtransaction model is going to cost allot of fun if you look at EA CEO's views upon that. Changes in Dragon Age 2 to appeal to a wider audience combined with a short development cycle.
Time will tell what happens, but I think they're in for a bumpy ride.
I can't speak to the original post on the matter, but I have seen many cases of EA banning people from single-player content because of infractions made on their message boards. That has been a serious error, and was only rectified months after it was first brought to light by a fan who documented EA's messages to him and distributed them to every major gaming blog.Helmholtz Watson said:Um....how did EA know that they wrote those things?Moonlight Butterfly said:
The Origin software, specifically, is glorified malware that is known to stay on your system, has access to a large amount of your internal system files, and stays on the user's hard drive indefinitely even after being removed.
As far as its impact on games goes, the Origin interface with ME3 tracks changes you make to the single-player Coalesced.ini file (which is an internal file found on the game disc). It could, at one time, ban you from multiplayer for editing the values of single player-only weapons. It could ban you from multiplayer if you inadvertantly played on a modded or hacked server, or if you spent credits obtained on a modded server on Spectre Packs without realizing.
As far as I know, EA quietly fixed that whole "get banned from game if banned on message board" problem in April of this year (likely due to all the bad press), but it still has a litany of other issues that put it leagues behind Steam.
If I remember correctly, DA:O was already in production by the time EA bought Elevation Partners. DAII was done completely under EA's wing.Draech said:
That said, there's plenty of evidence the game was a rushjob. Brent Knowles (BW's lead level designer, was with them since Baldur's Gate) quit midway through development apparently because the publisher wanted the team to rush the product, and he didn't want to compromise. Inon Zur admitted in a Kotaku interview that the score was a rush job, and the game was thrown together in time for a holiday release. There have also been rumors I've read that say the game was a completely different project altogether that got kitbashed into the Dragon Age universe, and was thrown out the door in an "beta" state without final testing.
Partially because that would take an enormous amount of money, so unless you know of a few millionaires with a lot of spare money who all hate EA, it would require thousands upon thousands of individual people buying up all the shares. Then, there would be the massive difficulty of coordinating all of these people to forcing EA to change their policies, which would be a rather massive undertaking. Ultimately, the majority shareholders only elect the board of directors, and they are the only ones who can change company policy. Convincing shareholders to put their money in the riskier strategy of "quality over quantity" is much more difficult than it sounds.Roxor said:
It's a sad thing most companies can't/don't comment on rumours. Because refuting them would go a long way towards people using them as if they were fact, even though there's nothing backing the rumour up at all. And shed some light on the hidden, backend development process that a vast majority of gamers aren't privy to, but at the same time, seeing the results of a decision would have the studio being bashed over why did they cut out / keep in feature X over feature Y, or canceled project Z for whatever reason.crazyrabbits said:
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
But on the same note, instead of blaming everything on EA, how about looking at who actually worked on the games [www.mobygames.com/], and compare and contrast the list? Also see where they came from. You can probably skip the bulk employees and focus on the leads and seniors since they are the main decision makers.
They lied to us and didn't give us an apology. The whole thing about BF3 not being on Steam. I'm not saying that the whole thing about Valve making Steam have a restrictive ToS was a lie, but they said that they wanted to "provide the best possible experience to all Battlefield 3 players."
And yet, what about BF:BC2 and Mirror's Edge, among other games, which were on Steam? Isn't this implying that THESE games weren't high quality, and we didn't get the best possible experience? Don't get me wrong, I know this seems fucking stupid, but they didn't say anything about the quality of these games being less than great? Also, doesn't it mean that the content we got on PC wasn't as good as it was on PS3 and Xbox 360, because it was marred by Steam?
And yet, what about BF:BC2 and Mirror's Edge, among other games, which were on Steam? Isn't this implying that THESE games weren't high quality, and we didn't get the best possible experience? Don't get me wrong, I know this seems fucking stupid, but they didn't say anything about the quality of these games being less than great? Also, doesn't it mean that the content we got on PC wasn't as good as it was on PS3 and Xbox 360, because it was marred by Steam?