Why EA? Just why?

[ThriKreen]

...Nice way to dodge everything relevant there...

And way to miss that I view things differently than most people in this thread do, since I've been on the "other side", so there's no real point in addressing anything individually. I might not like some things, but at least I understand them from a business perspective (even though I've stated I don't like some). Most in here just think they're doing it to milk the customer, or are evil and just want to buy and shut studios down like some evil overlord or something just because.

But fine, I'll bite about your milking via DLC stuff, and point out that people complain about DLC and microtransactions, but seem to gloss over that the system changes every year! The whole market is still in its infancy and publishers and studios are still experimenting with what is and isn't acceptable for its price and delivery by the gamer audience.

Case in point, the NPC in Dragon Age: Origins advertising the Keep DLC, lots of outrage, so its not done anymore. Yet meanwhile you see lots of DLC skin packs for Dawn of War II - because the players ask for them. They're responding to market demands, you just have to be more aware of it.

 

[ThriKreen]

but I cant believe you will actually try and sell this shit as a publisher replying to demand.

DRM is still there, did we ask for that too? Just one example of many.

It still is responding to market demand, I just never said from whom.

(Retailers. I'll let you think about that for a bit.)

 

[Fappy]

but I cant believe you will actually try and sell this shit as a publisher replying to demand.

DRM is still there, did we ask for that too? Just one example of many.

It still is responding to market demand, I just never said from whom.

(Retailers. I'll let you think about that for a bit.)

Retailers asking for online passes?

lolokaybro

I'd imagine retailers that don't sell used games don't mind it.

 

[Atmos Duality]

From 12 years of observations, I figure that their business model goes something like this:
"If our in-house can't compete with it, initiate a hostile-take-over to acquire it. If we can't do that either, just try to clone it and hope it sticks. If we *can* acquire the original, then we milk them until they collapse, recouping our investment on their first series of games. Once we're done with them, we fire the developer BUT (important) keep their IP so they can't rebuild on anything but their reputation."

There's a laundry list of developers who were taken apart by mismanagement and the inhumane timetables. To the point where they were SUED BY THEIR OWN EMPLOYEES OVER IT. This isn't idle speculation, this shit went to court.

So yeah, I might have just a WEE bit of a reason to dislike their practices.

I can cite examples. Such as immediate and noticeable changes in agenda within a developer or sharp drops in quality upon being acquired; and I'm not inclined to believe that this happened by magic nor were they ALL coincidences.

The only developer who had what could be called a "noble death" was Maxis, but even there EA's insane mismanagement had more to do with Maxis' failure than Maxis (Remember Spore? I bet you're now thinking of either the DRM or the ridiculous pricing more than the game itself.)

Food for Thought: You know who else maintained similar business practices and still became inexplicably powerful within their market, despite being nearly-universally hated (and rightly so)?

Microsoft (Bill Gates era)

 

[wintercoat]

Why EA? Because making fun of Bobby Kotick got old.

 

[Lucem712]

Er, you know your business model is bad when you are doing every possible thing to money grub and you are still failing.

People are tired of their favourite devs being eaten up and/or abused, not just by EA but by all publishers. EA is just the focus point because of ME3.

 

[Calcium]

but I cant believe you will actually try and sell this shit as a publisher replying to demand.

DRM is still there, did we ask for that too? Just one example of many.

It still is responding to market demand, I just never said from whom.

(Retailers. I'll let you think about that for a bit.)

Retailers asking for online passes?

lolokaybro

I believe there was an episode of the Jimquisition that touched on that. Not to say that it's therefore the one and true truth but it did make a fair bit of sense.

It's been a while since I saw it, but I believe it was along the lines of: DRM is used so that shareholders who know very little of what goes on ask executives "What are you doing to stop piracy?" so the execs can say "Oh, we have this fabulous DRM that means you have to be logged in with a legal copy to play our game" so they get their bonuses and funding from said shareholders and so on.

Edit 1: Of course I'm not sure if I make sense comparing shareholders to retailers. Probably not.

Edit 2: Oh, the DRM episode may have been about used games and not piracy.

 

[bfgmetalhead]

Because Bullfrog.

Because Westwood.

Because Bioware.

Because Criterion.

Because Lands of Lore.

Because they fucking ruin every single thing they touch.

Amen brother. Why Westwood!???? WHYYYY????!! *cries*

 

[chuckdm]

Without EA, many of the games we play would simply not exist, at all, period.

Pray tell, when has this ever been a good reason to keep anything around?

Do you frankly believe that just because EA didnt exist there wouldnt be games to fill in their spots?

Do you honestly believe that Without EA Gaming would be worse off?

If you do I would love for you to provide more backbone to your statement than "Because I say so" or "look at these games" because EA has yet to actually make a game from their own core not subsidized from another company, that has actually pushed gaming innovation forward.

If you can name just one, ill back off and accept you claim as valid.

I hope someone has already said this, but...

Minecraft. A game made (at least started) by a lone developer with zero funding, self-published, and frankly, even if you hate it, the idea of digital Legos is pretty damn innovative. Especially when even the ACTUAL Lego games don't let you build things.

And I don't want you to back off and accept anyone's claim as valid, but I do wish you'd concede the point that, without EA, we'd somehow be worse off. Westwood was turning a profit AND good games before the EA buyout. I know. Tiberian Sun is head and shoulders better than Red Alert 2. This isn't opinion, it's fact. Right now, my copy of Tiberian Sun is running fine on Windows 7, and Red Alert 2 dies on launch. The fact that older game on the same engine runs while the one EA had a hand in dies is very practical proof that EA messed up a game. The same basic ideas can be said for EVERY studio EA has bought. The games got more flashy, more expensive, more movie-like, but the mechanics, and even the rate of bugs, have gone downhill drastically in every game EA has a major hand in. Personally? I'd rather have a game with solid mechanics, no bugs, and 2002-era isometric 2.5D graphics than the cutscenes-in-a-can EA sells now and calls games. Sure, sometimes I want a spectacle. Guess what? That's when I load up Unreal Tournament 3 - better graphics, same solid gameplay. EA has no analog to this.

But this makes sense anyway. EA has never been about producing video games. They produce interactive stories. They produce movies that require you to rapidly tap the fucking A button to keep watching them. Nobody at EA cares if the game has solid mechanics - as long as it can render something gorgeous for 30 seconds for marketing to place in a TV ad, they think it's a RTM-grade game. And this is why we hate EA - because it's Electronic Arts, not Electronic Games. We don't mind spectacle. We enjoy it too. But Spectacle should be IN ADDITION TO good gameplay, not a REPLACEMENT for it.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Because Bullfrog.

Because Westwood.

Because Bioware.

Because Criterion.

Because Lands of Lore.

Because they fucking ruin every single thing they touch.

They killed Pandemic as well. I'll never forgive them for that one.

 

[Lunar Templar]

Without EA, many of the games we play would simply not exist, at all, period.

and yet .... nothing of value would be lost if EA vanished. i can think of nothing EA has made that would be missed for more then 5 minutes, at best

Do you honestly believe that Without EA Gaming would be worse off?

i think I'd be better off with out a few big publishers actually. they do more to hurt gaming then anything else imo

 

[LiquidSolstice]

Now, games feel like a constant investment. You have the initial "deposit" and then fork out for DLC, addons, expansions and whatever else have you.

What game requires you to do this? I can't seem to remember the last time I felt forced to get the DLC for something.

 

[Rawne1980]

What game requires you to do this? I can't seem to remember the last time I felt forced to get the DLC for something.

At what point did I say forced?

Point out to me where I said forced....

I said they feel like a constant investment not you are forced to constantly pour money on them.

At one point, we paid for the game and that was it. There was no DLC or added content.

Now if you want to see all a game has to offer then it's done through DLC.

Thus it feeling like a constant investment.

At no point did I mention it being forced.

 

[ResonanceSD]

EA buys developer. EA ruins developer. EA closes developer when no one buys now-shitty developer's games.

 

[Lugbzurg]

So much EA-hate. They've done a lot of really stupid things on so many levels, ranging from lying, overpricing and insulting our intelligence. But, why single them out? They aren't the only ones. Sega, Microsoft Game Studios and Activision are also very guilty of this, too.

Am I going to boycott any of them? No. I'd like to get Sega's new version of Sonic CD, I'd like to try me some Gears of War sometime, and see what all the hype is about, I'm anxiously-awaiting the arrival of [Prototype 2] and I'd also like to see what Crysis is like.

Hate goes one way, hate goes another. The more you push it, the further the cycle presses on.

Captcha: "Mumbo Jumbo". Eekum-Bokum. I want Rareware back.

 

[Krantos]

Because Bullfrog.

Because Westwood.

Because Bioware.

Because Criterion.

Because Lands of Lore.

Because they fucking ruin every single thing they touch.

You forgot Pandemic in there.

No mercs 3? Why? WHY?

 

[TheVioletBandit]

EA's not your girlfriend. Why do you care if she's being picked on?

I agree with this statement. I have never understood people running to defend such things. The question, EA doesn't care about you, why do you care about it comes to mind?

 

[Tanakh]

For me what broke the camels back were the bans for modding your single player games (here), after that i cancelled that (seldom used) SW:ToR account and will avoid doing buisness with EA as much as possible, which is a pain because in mexico they sell all their 60 USD titles for around 47 USD.

And no, Activision doesn't do this, Ubisoft doesn't do this, Capcom doesn't either, AFAIK no one has ever banned users from their online distribution system for modding their freaking single player ini files nor has done DRM software specifically to prevent modding. Fuck EA.

So here you have this brilliant multiplayer combat game with a shitty single player mode and an absolutely hair pullingly frustrating online interface, all because of EA.

And they don't even provide dedicated servers... sigh. Though to be fair nowdays their online interface is just bad and looks amateurish, not horrible and totally broken. And don't remind me of Punkbuster killing my PC till i changed some stuff in the system...
A shame, BF 3 with the proper support could grow to epic proportions.

 

[gundamrx101]

Because Bullfrog.

Because Westwood.

Because Bioware.

Because Criterion.

Because Lands of Lore.

Because they fucking ruin every single thing they touch.

Also Origin Systems. That tanked the minute EA picked them up. Or do I have to talk about Ultima 8 and 9? Among other games they pumped out that were crap.

 

[Lugbzurg]

For me what broke the camels back were the bans for modding your single player games (here), after that i cancelled that (seldom used) SW:ToR account and will avoid doing buisness with EA as much as possible, which is a pain because in mexico they sell all their 60 USD titles for around 47 USD.

And no, Activision doesn't do this, Ubisoft doesn't do this, Capcom doesn't either, AFAIK no one has ever banned users from their online distribution system for modding their freaking single player ini files nor has done DRM software specifically to prevent modding. Fuck EA.

So here you have this brilliant multiplayer combat game with a shitty single player mode and an absolutely hair pullingly frustrating online interface, all because of EA.

And they don't even provide dedicated servers... sigh. Though to be fair nowdays their online interface is just bad and looks amateurish, not horrible and totally broken. And don't remind me of Punkbuster killing my PC till i changed some stuff in the system...
A shame, BF 3 with the proper support could grow to epic proportions.

Actually, I didn't say that. You're quoting MichiganMuscle77. It's ok, I accidentally did that the other day.