EA 'destroying' gaming - Minecraft creator

super_furry

EnterNow wrote: »

But if you replace the word FIFA in your post with CoD, the same thing still applies surely?

See that's the thing, I really think it does and would view CoD's multiplayer almost as much as a sports game as FIFA, and I'd say the same about Streetfighter and even Starcraft. I understand the hatred for both series - they're both yearly updated titles and two of the biggest gaming franchises in the world, but I also think they're both great games.

Beefy78

I've been playing football sims since Emlyn Hughes' International Soccer & Microphose Soccer in the mid 80s, through Kick Off 2, Sensible Soccer, GOAL (a personal favourite of mine), SWOS and then onto Pro Evo. FIFA never got a look in because it was crap, lazy and too interested in getting official licences and shiny graphics instead of a solid engine and enjoyable gameplay.

Then EA, a company I'd never had a huge amount of time for, decided that even though they were making a lot of money every time they just polished their turd and stuck David Beckham or Thierry Henry's face on the cover, they were going to make an actually very good game. FIFA 08 stunned me when I played it with how good it was. They've taken that core game and built on it every year since. FIFA 12 fundamentally changed the way that football sims handle defending. This was a massive change to a a part of the game that is taken for granted and which could have backfired on them.

It's this willingness to improve the gaming experience for its players and refusal to just put out any old crap each year which sees that series sell so many copies each year despite their being a core group of gamers out there who would naturally gravitate towards buying Pro Evo instead of FIFA because of the historic reputation that EA has. EA have been able to overcome this problem and win people over through solid gameplay and relative innovation.

Lemming

TheDoc wrote: »

I wouldnt be suprised if EA approach to business bcomes a case study in universities in years to come.

It is already, and is referred to as "Walmart".

If anybody has done even a modicum of examination on how Walmart conducts business they would be concerned with EA's growth & dominance of the gaming market. Succinctly put, getting into bed with Walmart is a double-edged sword for any supplier. The company are ruthless in their view of suppliers & pricing demands. If you can meat their continually evolving demands you will do very well, if not it's a case of "burn baby burn, disco inferno ... "

BlitzKrieg

Lemming wrote: »

It is already, and is referred to as "Walmart".

If anybody has done even a modicum of examination on how Walmart conducts business they would be concerned with EA's growth & dominance of the gaming market. Succinctly put, getting into bed with Walmart is a double-edged sword for any supplier. The company are ruthless in their view of suppliers & pricing demands. If you can meat their continually evolving demands you will do very well, if not it's a case of "burn baby burn, disco inferno ... "

I would have thought the big studio systems in the film industry would be a better comparison to EA then Walmart.

Lemming

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

I would have thought the big studio systems in the film industry would be a better comparison to EA then Walmart.

No. EA would appear to behave more like Walmart in terms of acquisition & then subsequent behaviour over the last decade. Westwood was decimated, Dice have been undermined at every opportunity with needless EA "executive" statements in the run up to BF3's release, and what should have been two massive flagship products for Bioware have suffered controversy & slips in standard (for Bioware products) due to being pushed for release by EA.

Getting into bed with Walmart as a supplier is a double-edged sword. Whilst their ever-revised contract demands can be met by a supplier/manufacturer, said supplier will do very well. But as soon as difficulties start to arise with meeting the ever increasing demand at ever narrowing margins, it's goodnight Vienna. Walmart have a pattern of picking a particular product industry and hammering it with loss-leader pricing until the suppliers are decimated & Walmart can then just scoop it all up and control it. In keeping with that little bit of analysis on Walmart's behaviour, EA have done some very dubious things in their time regards DLC and/or "price models" for customers and where they ultimately want to get to is subscriptions for multi-player gaming whilst selling you things that really should be part of core game releases (also I suspect why they aren't playing ball with Steam right now ... )

gizmo

Lemming wrote: »

No. EA would appear to behave more like Walmart in terms of acquisition & then subsequent behaviour over the last decade. Westwood was decimated, Dice have been undermined at every opportunity with needless EA "executive" statements in the run up to BF3's release, and what should have been two massive flagship products for Bioware have suffered controversy & slips in standard (for Bioware products) due to being pushed for release by EA.

I really don't see how EA can be blamed for everything wrong in the above cases. The Westwood founders, as I pointed out earlier, were quite happy to not only go along with the acquisition but also stay on board and watch as Rome burned around them. With DICE, EA have been the publisher for every game released in the series thus far so outside of the Origin requirement, I can't see why people would think EA are suddenly jumping in and forcing changes which are deemed detrimental to the game. And as for Bioware, maybe they just made the wrong decision themselves? I mean they were owned by EA during Mass Effect 2 after all and the move away from core RPG games to their more action orientated approach begun several titles before the EA acquisition so why is it all their fault?

Lemming wrote: »

Getting into bed with Walmart as a supplier is a double-edged sword. Whilst their ever-revised contract demands can be met by a supplier/manufacturer, said supplier will do very well. But as soon as difficulties start to arise with meeting the ever increasing demand at ever narrowing margins, it's goodnight Vienna. Walmart have a pattern of picking a particular product industry and hammering it with loss-leader pricing until the suppliers are decimated & Walmart can then just scoop it all up and control it. In keeping with that little bit of analysis on Walmart's behaviour, EA have done some very dubious things in their time regards DLC and/or "price models" for customers and where they ultimately want to get to is subscriptions for multi-player gaming whilst selling you things that really should be part of core game releases (also I suspect why they aren't playing ball with Steam right now ... )

The reasoning for the absence of EA games on Steam is well documented at this stage. It's a combination of EA wanting to handle their own DLC purchases without giving Valve a cut via Steam and, of course, having their big titles launch exclusively on their own platform. Just like Valve do with Steam as it happens.

Lemming

gizmo wrote: »

I really don't see how EA can be blamed for everything wrong in the above cases. The Westwood founders, as I pointed out earlier, were quite happy to not only go along with the acquisition but also stay on board and watch as Rome burned around them.

As with Walmart, once you're on-board, you're on-board and thre ain't no getting off the train at your earliest convenience. The founders of westwood would not have been able to just 'back out' once they had signed on the dotted line and to argue such is a bit foolish. Besides of which, regardless of what the prior owners of westwood did or did not care for, I can hazard a guess that that their staff were most certainly not happy with EA's stewardship of the company. The punters most certainly were not - and are not - happy with EA's stewardship of Westwood's IP.

With DICE, EA have been the publisher for every game released in the series thus far so outside of the Origin requirement, I can't see why people would think EA are suddenly jumping in and forcing changes which are deemed detrimental to the game. And as for Bioware, maybe they just made the wrong decision themselves? I mean they were owned by EA during Mass Effect 2 after all and the move away from core RPG games to their more action orientated approach begun several titles before the EA acquisition so why is it all their fault?

I can hazard a guess as to why Dice were given so much free reign up until it became apparent how strong an IP license EA were sitting on after BF2's continual dominance of the PC multiplayer online gaming market for several years. Everybody & their dog has been anticipating BF3 for a long time, and EA saw just how much money could be spun from the game. That is the only rational explanation that I can see that explains EA's behaviour towards both Dice & BF3, vs BF2.

As for Bioware, I don't buy the suggestion of an otherwise consistently performing company dropping the ball so consistently across multiple titles without outside influence. Can't comment on ME2 other than to suggest that EA didn't stick their oar in since they had only just bought the company soon after ME1 was released. I can only comment on the controversy surrounding ME3 judging by the behaviour I saw surrounding TOR (and from within the closed beta groups). On both titles, EA kept putting their foot in it and undermining the developers publically with "announcements" regarding pricing models & release dates. Why?

Regardless of any guess work around Dice or Bioware's latest products, the fundamental point regarding EA's corporate behaviour remains the same. There is over a decade's worth of systematic behaviour to go on, and a leopard does not change its spots.



Edit: On reflection, it's unfair to lay everything that happened to TOR at EA's feet since LucasArts would have had a very strong hand in goings on, as they did consistently with repeatedly poor decision-making during the lifecycle of StarWarsGalaxies; I refer specifically to the "NGE" debacle; everyone blamed SOE but it was really LA cracking the whip on that one

BlitzKrieg

Lemming wrote: »

No. EA would appear to behave more like Walmart in terms of acquisition & then subsequent behaviour over the last decade. Westwood was decimated, Dice have been undermined at every opportunity with needless EA "executive" statements in the run up to BF3's release, and what should have been two massive flagship products for Bioware have suffered controversy & slips in standard (for Bioware products) due to being pushed for release by EA.

Ahh I see

for a moment there I thought you were actually going to use economics or law to argue why EA should be compared to walmart over say comparing it to something like Fox or Paramount. but no it's whats's been covered and pulped through in this thread already.

Once more, in the manner of the economic model they run, the games industry has more in common with the film industry from development to distribution and maximising sales as a IP focused industry, as such EA and Activision being the big companies on campus are actually quite comparable to the modern FOX, paramount, warner brothers studios. While at its height you could make comparisons with nintendo/sega/atari to the earlier studio lot companies, in fact the nintendo = disney of the video games comparison is actually strong considering how the two companies operate and handle their copyright.

As for your case of Dice being undermined you just got to open up any book by a film director and you'll see the same practices committed by film studios. Or hell just talk to a screenwriter. I know Micheal Johnson who wrote the screenplay for Sherlock Holmes (2009) and the finished film is nothing like the script he wrote, the script got taken off him and passed through 5 other writers until it was finished. If you want needless *executive statements* you just got to listen to the crap Michael Bay spewed out when it got announced he was producing the next TMNT movie.


The only *Walmart* tactic I'd give to EA was how they treated their workforce in the early 2000's they were notorious for pushing developers well beyond their means and not paying overtime. But that practice brought them so much bad press that they've ceased it.


Also I love that people are bitching about EA for BF3 yet seem to ignore that DICE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN UNDER EA so it took them 8 battlefield games and an original unique title before EA decided to interfere?

Lemming

BlitzKrieg, with the film industry; studios tend to be the ones fronting the money for a film. The director is brought on board with their say so. They control the purse strings from the word go generally speaking.

EA are buying up the development houses that produce games so they can exploit the IP of the respective dev. houses. In that regard their behaviour owes far more to walmart's business model than the film industry.

johnny_ultimate

The biggest problem with the Walmart analogy is the existence of competition. There are plenty of small, medium and large publishers out there - from XSeed to Activision. Just because EA are the biggest doesn't mean they're the evilest. No ones denying they have made objectionable decisions, but far fewer than the likes of Activision or even Capcom. EA at least have the decency to make good games every once in a while.

If EA was the only game in town, forcibly crushing the competition, then yes a Walmart analogy would work. But they aren't, and game publishing is a rich and competitive industry in which EA just happens to be one of a number of major players. Their commitment to high quality is to be admired when you contrast it to the shovelware crap someone like Ubisoft is more than happy to peddle.

Overheal

Walmart analogy is alright I guess? Walmart does some ****ty things, especially to it's employees, and to competition, but it does have to be said they can do decent offerings. Which is why of course, they are so profitable. Now if I could just get them to quit putting pensioners on the express checkouts I'd be fine. And I've never seen more than a handful of registers open, out of 40. WTH?

gizmo

Lemming wrote: »

As with Walmart, once you're on-board, you're on-board and thre ain't no getting off the train at your earliest convenience. The founders of westwood would not have been able to just 'back out' once they had signed on the dotted line and to argue such is a bit foolish. Besides of which, regardless of what the prior owners of westwood did or did not care for, I can hazard a guess that that their staff were most certainly not happy with EA's stewardship of the company. The punters most certainly were not - and are not - happy with EA's stewardship of Westwood's IP.

Well outside of pointing out that they could have not signed the deal in the first place or perhaps left shortly after the acquisitions, I think doing anything other than what they did would have been preferable. For example...

Maybe I could do what Louis Castle (co-founder of Westwood Studios) did when EA bought the company? Stay on and watch the franchise crumble around me and then become so incensed at what happens when the studio is closed that I become Vice President of Creative Development at EA LA for another 6 years before eventually ending up at Zynga as their VP of studios.

As for the rest of the development team, well they showed their displeasure at the deal by leaving almost immediately. So yea, to reiterate, Walmart comparison or not, EA cannot be the only ones held accountable for what happened at Westwood.

Lemming wrote: »

I can hazard a guess as to why Dice were given so much free reign up until it became apparent how strong an IP license EA were sitting on after BF2's continual dominance of the PC multiplayer online gaming market for several years. Everybody & their dog has been anticipating BF3 for a long time, and EA saw just how much money could be spun from the game. That is the only rational explanation that I can see that explains EA's behaviour towards both Dice & BF3, vs BF2.

Outside of the executive announcements you mentioned above, I'm interested to see what change in behaviour you're referring to.

Lemming wrote: »

As for Bioware, I don't buy the suggestion of an otherwise consistently performing company dropping the ball so consistently across multiple titles without outside influence. Can't comment on ME2 other than to suggest that EA didn't stick their oar in since they had only just bought the company soon after ME1 was released. I can only comment on the controversy surrounding ME3 judging by the behaviour I saw surrounding TOR (and from within the closed beta groups). On both titles, EA kept putting their foot in it and undermining the developers publically with "announcements" regarding pricing models & release dates. Why?

Why not though? Dragon Age II, for instance, came at a time when the studio had moved fully to its action-orientated RPG direction causing the designer of the original game to leave the company. Chronologically speaking, I can't see this being EA's fault. What you could blame them for is the incredibly unrealistic deadline of less than 15 months between the launch of DA1 and DA2 which would have severely hurt the project.

Mass Effect 3, despite the issues with the ending, saw improvements in nearly every other area of the game from it's predecessor. The ****tiness of the ending isn't really something I can see being enforced by EA.

And as for ToR, well unfortunately I'm not into MMOs at all so can't comment on those issues at all.

Lemming wrote: »

BlitzKrieg, with the film industry; studios tend to be the ones fronting the money for a film. The director is brought on board with their say so. They control the purse strings from the word go generally speaking.

This is exactly what happens in the games industry.

BlitzKrieg

Lemming wrote: »

BlitzKrieg, with the film industry; studios tend to be the ones fronting the money for a film. The director is brought on board with their say so. They control the purse strings from the word go generally speaking.

No

no

no

That's only on blockbusters and IP already owned by the studio. It's the same practice that is done in videogames. Just look at Konami with the silent hill franchise, they front the money and bring on a development studio with their say and control the purse strings from the word go.




Most films actually get developed and fundraised by smaller studios & independents and the larger studios come in and purchase the option so they can distribute them at a later point.

So earlier in this thread someone named the game Bulletstorm

which was developed by Epic

But EA bought the rights to distribute the game.

Similarily Juno was a film that was developed by a smaller studio called mandate pictures which was then optioned by 20th century fox and distributed under their fox searchlight logo

by the way mandate pictures would later be bought out and acquired by lionsgates pictures.

Which means all mandate films will from then on be distributed via lionsgates pictures, much like the EA/DICE relationship.

EA are buying up the development houses that produce games so they can exploit the IP of the respective dev. houses.

Just like how film studios buy up the options of franchise so they can exploit that IP, that's why fox is able to make x-men movies but columbia make spiderman films. It's a bit why Marvel in a tiff went and formed their own movie studio to hold on to this rights.

Then you got the film companies just outright buying other companies wholesale for their rights. Warner brothers taking DC comics ensures all films made about DC comics have warner brothers fingers in the pie.

Or acquire smaller studios and the rights to their catalogues or projects currently in production, such as how sony ate columbia pictures so they now hold the rights to ghostbusters and a few other classic 80's films not to mention the option on spiderman.

This practice is not unique to video games or walmart or even film. It's the standard practice in all the IP industries, music, literature and television all do it too.


The matter is that because they are both industries that involve created mass media the business practice of both industries is quite similar. They deal with the same issues, the same copyright requirements, the same type of egos and the same audience.