Can you imagine a world *without* EA?

[Emiscary]

This is more or less the scene that runs through my head every time the topic of bloated game publishing conglomerates comes up.

And when it does, there's inevitably *somebody* who cries:

"What!? How on Earth would we get on without overstuffed companies trying to stereotype an entire generation of people into a neat little 'demographic' and sell them homogenized products!?"

(My bias is showing, but W.E.)

Point is, I don't see the need for these kind of companies anymore. At all. I could be missing something entirely- but there it is.

 

[targren]

Do you mean a world in which EA never existed? Because that would honestly kind of suck. They put out some great games back in the day. I still remember "Strike Fleet" on the C64 back before most of the users on this board were born. Fatal Rewind on the Genesis was really cool, too. It did the "time rewind" mechanic long before Prince of Persia or even Blinx. I think never having had EA would be pretty crappy.

If they were to cease to exist now, on the other hand? I do imagine it, every night in my greatest dreams.

 

[Emiscary]

The latter, yes. They've served their purpose and they need to die quietly

 

[tippy2k2]

Yah, ANOTHER "Hey, don't you all hate big publishers?! [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.374797-Poll-How-much-would-you-pay-to-punch-John-Riccitiello-in-the-face] I sure hate big publishers! [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.374829-Poll-The-Effectiveness-of-Boycotting-EA-ME3-Edition] Who agrees that big publishers are bad!?! [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.374736-Official-battlefield-servers-vanishing-another-EA-money-grab]" thread...

*Fun fact: All three of those link's are from the first ten pages in The Escapist Gaming Section (so within the last three days as of this post)

Seriously, without EA, the gaming world would be a much worse place. They're one of the few big companies who are actually taking some risks with IPs (all of these are new IPs either developed by or published by EA within the last five years):

Crysis
Spore
Skate
Army of Two
Dead Space
Dragon Age
Mirror's Edge
Dantes Inferno

(For fun, here is a list of EVERY EA game created: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_games If you can look at that list and tell me that not ONE of their games is a game that you have loved, I will take this all back and join you in your "I Hate EA" campaign).

Sure, not all of these were home-runs but they're pumping out original IPs (with big risks such as Mirror's Edge) at a much faster rate then just about any other publisher or developer and this is just present day stuff. They are also expected to release two new IPs this year (Secret World and Overstrike).

There is plenty of room in this world for the big dogs AND the tiny one person garage developers. ***** and moan about EA all you want but the reality is that big publishers ARE necessary in today's gaming world. Don't like it? Don't buy their games.

 

[Emiscary]

Oh yay, ANOTHER "Look at me I can get pissy about cultural trends!" guy.

Seriously, EA contributes little innovation and risks NOTHING.

Crysis- Super high def shooter.
Spore- Stripped down to a glorified art program.
Skate- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater's most recent bastardized descendent!
Army of Two- A shooter. But with co-op!
Dead Space- Resi Evil in space. Oh, but you're shooting off limbs instead of eyeballs/faces.
Dragon Age- Standard RPG. Don't even pretend it isn't.
Mirror's Edge- Didn't play it, don't care about it, and it was supposedly a commercial/critical/cult failure anyway.
Dantes Inferno- Failure on multiple levels and had the worst and most obnoxious ad campaign of any game in recent history.

For fun, go look up that meme listing studios EA's metaphorically capped in the head.

 

[Vault101]

is it me

or are people more negativly biased against EA/Bioware than they are gainst Activision/Blizard..Im not seeing so many Diablo 3 hate threads

 

[Emiscary]

Oh I dislike Activision plenty. Diablo 3's ending makes no sense whatsoever for a Diablo game, the "Angels" are contrived and ridiculous now, and the whole "health blobs" thing still doesn't sit well with me.

Still not as bad a fuck up as ME3'd ending/squadmates though, so it stands to reason there's a discrepancy.

 

[Berenzen]

Here's the thing. Publishers are needed, despite what you think of them, they actually put out some quality games- even if they're somewhat rehashed from the previous version. There are more shitty indie games out there than there are shitty AAA games, and the poor AAA games typically are better than the poor indie games.

Not to mention without publishing studios, many of the developers of what people call 'quality games' would quickly dissolve. Bioware? Gone. Bethesda? Gone. Obsidian? Gone. Any company with over about 12 people would quickly disappear and for the most part, the entire hobby of gaming would completely disappear. Asking what would happen if all publishers disappeared is like asking what would happen to the comic industry if Marvel and DC disappeared.

Do the publishers need to fix up how they treat their customers? Hell yes, but having even just one of them totally disappear would be a major setback to the industry. For example, look at THQ- they've fucked up and mismanaged, and as a result a chunk of games that could have been good might never get made.

So no, I wouldn't want to see EA go. I'd rather that they clean up their act in how they treat their customers.

 

[kingthrall]

EA reminds me of an ancient religion, it will always exists and was once great inspiration to a lot of people. However the only way to truly remove its weighted presence is to just simply ignore and turn your backs on it.

 

[Zaik]

Yep.

In this parallel dimension with no EA, there'd either be an equally irritating publisher, or the current dev teams would be divided up amongst currently existing publishers.

Also, this thread would exist there too, only it would reference one of the other publishers. I wonder if I'm over there right now, typing out a response detailing a hypothetical publisher called EA.

 

[Zhukov]

Without EA in particular?

Sure. If nothing else, I'd like to see Bioware free of their influence.

Without any big publishers?

Nah. Games are expensive to make. Someone needs to provide the capital. (And no, Kickstarter isn't up to it.) If all publishers were to spontaneously vanish the developers would just seek out other parties to bankroll their projects and new publishers would emerge from them.

 

[daveman247]

If there was no EA activision would run amok.

That is a terrible parallel universe

 

[Atmos Duality]

I remember when they didn't order developers to their deaths with ridiculous timetables and money-making schemes.

Back before they merged with Infogrames.

So yes, yes I can imagine a world without the EA we know today.

 

[Lancer873]

While I do have a rather high contempt for EA, some of their games (yes, their new ones, and even one yet-to-be-released one) make me less spiteful of them. They're publishing Overstrike (By Insomniac. Do want. So much want.), so there's that... They published Shank 2 and The Fancy Pants Adventures... Deathspank... L4D2. On the other hand, there's also a certain contempt that even their cool publishing selections bring about... Take Fancy Pants Adventures. I love the guy who made it because of how smooth he makes his controls, how well-polished everything always is, etcetera. Yet when FPA came out, I couldn't help but get the feeling that it was a bit rushed. The same thing happened with his Mirror's Edge 2D game. It was still great, but I mean... blarg...

Generally, I don't quite like them, but on the other hand I don't hate them anywhere near enough to boycott them or anything, especially given many of the games they publish.

 

[Zen Toombs]

EA are much like cerberus...a necicary evil

"Necessary"? They're cartoonishly incompetent and evil in Mass Effect 1, only slightly less incompetent and evil in Mass Effect 2 (with the sole exception of bringing Shep back from the dead), and in Mass Effect 3 they lose some of their incompetence and gain triple that in evilness.

 

[Lucem712]

As bad as publishers can appear, it's not all bad. (Even though I don't approve of EA's tendency to buy out a dev and puppet it around while milking its IPs until they kill it.)

Games, more so than any other medium, take not only years and years to develop (If it's not a yearly iteration without much modification) but the cost to develop games is astronomical in the AAA scene, so we need big publishers to fund those projects.

 

[this account is gay]

-sneep-

(For fun, here is a list of EVERY EA game created: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_games If you can look at that list and tell me that not ONE of their games is a game that you have loved, I will take this all back and join you in your "I Hate EA" campaign).
-sneep-

Found some interesting games in there. Diablo for the PS1, James Pond. Also, the Orange Box for PS3.

But if the games that I previously loved, but now hate count, I would not have succeeded this challenge.

But with my current game opinions, I like none of those games. Do I win a prize?