E.A. is destroying the gaming business?

[Joccaren]

So, what you are saying is that buying great companies and "turning them into piles of crap" or their prohibitively consumer-hostile business practices which they are pioneering for other companies like DLC, Day-1 DLCs, Online Passes, Microtransactions in SinglePlayer Games, Forcing "Online Elements" into all their games, Always-Online DRM etc. don't do any harm to "the industry"?

For consumers its not necessarily good news. For the industry itself, far as I've heard videogame sales are generally improving, companies like Activision haven't been effected by EA's idiocy, and the industry itself is doing quite well, so I'd find it hard to say EA has actually harmed it. Maybe it would be better if EA were everyone's chum buddy, and it would have improved by greater amounts, or maybe it wouldn't have.
The greater industry hasn't suffered that much of an adverse effect thanks to EA so far as I can tell. Its mostly just EA itself that has its stock prices constantly falling and who constantly loses consumer trust.

 

[Yabba]

As much as I hate EA I don't think they're destroying the gaming business, at least not on their own. I think most publisher's are destroying the gaming business. EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Square-Enix, Capcom, they're all guilty. As Jim Sterling said, they twish new and innovative ways of doing things to match old and archaic ways of doing things to the point of alienating their customers. On top of that there's the draconian DRM that we all hate. So yeah, EA on it's own is not destroying the gaming business, publishers in general are destroying the gaming business.

Also no, I don't buy EA games anymore, but due to financial situation I'm not buying many games at all right now.

Wait, what did Square-Enix do?

 

[blackrave]

EA aren't destroying the game business. They are slowly destroying their own business. The game business is doing fine.

^this

I personally stopped at ME3 only because I wanted to know how the story ends
Now there is nothing EA can hook my interest
They ruined C&C franchise (Generals2 can go and die in a fire as far as I care)
I'm done with Mass Effect
Only thing they could do to interest me would be releasing sequel to Battlefield2142 (the Titan was the most badass mode ever present in any Battlefield game). Also the story was more fair- both EU and PAC were assholes that were grabbing all warm territories they could get. Basically they were jerks out of desperation.
But since all american "bros" likes to jerk off on present day military hardware and portrait themselves as hrrrros that kill all the evil foreigners, it is unlikely

Edit:I just realized why there were no US in BF2142- at that time they were steamrolling and occupying all the countries at South America without any challenge. And that paints them in negative light- we can't have this, no sir we can't.

 

[DioWallachia]

- EA Bioware is under constant fire (Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 2)
By a relatively small demographic in an echo chamber yes (relative to the number of customers). Yeah thats the problem with the internet. You can easily find yourself in a bubble.

Quick Question. Since most of your answers DO have some basis in facts, this one seems the weakest one of all. Where do you get the idea that is only a minority?

And while we are at it, where are the people that DO like those games and look at them objectively? because otherwise they are just saying that they like it for no apparent reason (they may as well play Gears of War if they are only for the shooty bits)

 

[Gergar12_v1legacy]

I got only one thing to say for this Not...As......Much.......As........nintendo. Ea may be bad with the used games, Dlc etc, but atleast they are not the king of milking cashcows to death a few hundred times, but if ANY other game companies do this they get vindicated.

 

[Your Gaffer]

The only thing EA is destroying is itself.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Later Ricitiello became CEO of EA again and bought the developer duo off of Elevation Partners for $860 Million, they likely got a high payoff for their stock, but at that point they didn't really have any choice, no matter how they felt. If anyone made lots of money off of the deal it's likely Riccitiello. Just imagine first brokering a deal to buy a company for $300 Million and become their CEO, then turning around and leaving to become EAs CEO and broker a deal to buy the very same company for $860 Million nearly two years later, almost tripling the initial investment.

I'd just like to add this juicy nugget of info. to your pretty awesome quote; You wondered just how much Riccitiello benefited from the Bioware/Pandemic deal, I can tell you it was a straight up $5 million personal bonus from his VG. Holdings shares.

Heck, if I was personally offered that amount of money, screw principles, I'd close down Valve!

 

[Anathrax]

I honestly despise them for calling their distribution software Origin. They are basically saying "Hey! Remember that awesome gaming company back in the old days that we massacred?"

 

[DioWallachia]

Sales figures compared to stuff like petitions.

Now this isn't completely concrete and the margin for error is quite large. But it is still better than just going by what topics are hot on forums.

And while we are at it, where are the people that DO like those games and look at them objectively? because otherwise they are just saying that they like it for no apparent reason (they may as well play Gears of War if they are only for the shooty bits)

Now this one goes into the category of it "no one says a thing before something is wrong" it is a lot easier to get complaints than it is to get shoulder claps. Now that doesn't mean that this is the case. A large part may be apathetic about changes. I am not trying to claim there is some big majority with true objectivity out there. Nor am I trying to claim I possess it.

Mnn... that sounded really weird, almost like "no one was complaining until the ending came and made everyone go batshit" even when there are people complaining about ME since ME2 came out (2010):

http://www.youtube.com/user/smudboy/videos

Anyway, the way i see it, its more easy to complain because:
1)People are so jaded and so tired of being constantly harased by the sheer stupidity of the companies that they will not hold back anymore.
2)It seems that some people are under the notion that there are things that gaming (or storytelling in general) should have overcome already but developers keep doing it over and over.

Take for example horror movies that STILL open with the couple having sex and being (predictably) killed in the first minutes:


TL;DR: People grow up and now everything looks like shit because they are smarter now. They expect fiction to catch up to them and surprice them with the same child-like wonder of before.

3)90% of everything is shit: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SturgeonsLaw

 

[Canadamus Prime]

As much as I hate EA I don't think they're destroying the gaming business, at least not on their own. I think most publisher's are destroying the gaming business. EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Square-Enix, Capcom, they're all guilty. As Jim Sterling said, they twish new and innovative ways of doing things to match old and archaic ways of doing things to the point of alienating their customers. On top of that there's the draconian DRM that we all hate. So yeah, EA on it's own is not destroying the gaming business, publishers in general are destroying the gaming business.

Also no, I don't buy EA games anymore, but due to financial situation I'm not buying many games at all right now.

Wait, what did Square-Enix do?

Well to be honest, that one I'm going on the word of our resident Jim Sterling, but apparently they've turned that mobile Final Fantasy game into a Free 2 Pay type thing, IE you buy the game and then you have to buy more through microtransactions.