EA is going to die - and that will improve gaming

[Sansha]

All developers are still struggling after the Recession of 2008, but EA is the one who's hurting the very most, looking at their still falling stock prices and growing hatred from gamers.

This needs to continue.

Personally, I despise EA and will absolutely not associate with them. I will never again be one of their customers; the last EA-published title I purchased was the last Sims2 expansion.

I grew up with the SimCity franchise. I absolutely adore it, right up until SC4. I really do want to play this new one - it looks like the game I remember and love, and that I'd have a barrel of fun playing it. This goes the same for The Sims 3 and Battlefield 3.

But I will not do business with EA. I am boycotting EA until they have filed for bankruptcy and have sold off their assets to better companies. I'm willing to give up games I love because I cannot morally justify doing business with such a horrible corporate entity.

I don't understand why people are surprised by the unacceptable server issues, crippling DRM and compromises in the gameplay from EA. I don't understand why people are still giving them dollars in exchange for the garbage they're firing out, their borderline sociopathic customer service and ridiculous PR, seen in interviews, press releases, putting the blame on piracy and excuses for their shitty behavior.

Why does any of this still surprise you?

Why do you still purchase EA-published titles? To support their real developers, or because you don't care and don't mind allowing this to happen?

I believe the second gaming crash is coming, and while the titanic names from history will barely survive, Valve will come out still on top, for their exemplary business practices, customer service, quality games and, of course, Steam.

But the only way this situation will actually improve is if you, like the gamers of the 80's, stand up for quality and breathing life into the industry you love. Not rolling over and accepting shitty releases and being given broken promises by customer service.

EA is trying desperately, clawing at the cracks in the well, trying to keep from drowning, but really they deserve to die, and I'm proud to be one of few contributing to its demise by refusing to add my string to its lifeline.

I love gaming far too much to stand for this shit any longer.

 

[Zhukov]

Yeah, you show 'em Che Guevara! You'll save us all with your steadfast determination to not buy Dead Space 3! Victory through sacrifice!

...

Ah dear. The hyperbole is strong in this one.

If they die then they die. I don't see much point in getting excited about it one way or the other. Personally I don't buy many EA games for a much simpler reason: EA doesn't publish many games I'm interested in.

Thing is, me passing on Dead Space out of indifference will have zero effect. Your little boycott will have zero effect. The brutal fact of the matter is that none of this will be decided by us, by the people who post on forums and get into arguments about whether or not that achievement in the new God of War is sexist or not. It will be decided by Johnny the twelve year old getting bored with FIFA 2014 or your aunty Megan getting annoyed because she can't get that nice new non-violent city game that she bought for the kids to work.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

While I see your argument, I don't agree with it. Vocal fanbases can have an effect. The latest God Of War game changed the name of one of its trophies simply because of one guy's review, the stink that it caused. Sure Adam Sessler's a pretty well known gaming journalist, but he's still just one guy.

Bioware ended up completely rejigging the ending of ME3 simply because of how vocal their fanbase were.

Money is of course the final word. Always will be. But that doesn't mean being vocal, and talking about why you're not buying from a company, can't have an effect. If EA want to know why people aren't buying their games, a glance at any online forum will show hundreds and hundreds of debates raging on about how their practises, their policies and their image all suck.

I genuinely hope EA die off. Not even because of their policies towards gamers. Enough developers such as Brian Fargo have come out of the woodwork and said how shitty the big publishers are to their own development staff, that it's clear that the exploitative, parasitic practises of EA and their ilk simply aren't conducive to a long term healthy industry. EA are currently trying to ride out the remains of a 'boom' period in gaming by pushing for as much short term profit as possible, but in doing so they're simply making things much worse for themselves when things inevitably go bust.

Eh, he's right. It's getting old. We don't need a fresh jeremiad every 24 seconds about how EA is evil, etc, etc. I think it's widely accepted that EA is evil.

And before you start in with "But people are still buying the games herp" the games are not universally bad, and people are gonna do what they're gonna do. The solution is not to turn on the hyperbole valve full blast. I'm gonna go full hipster here for a moment...I HATED EA BEFORE IT WAS COOL. And these threads are almost turning me into an EA sympathizer, because they're so extraordinarily emo. I miss the days when we could just have a chuckle about how crappy EA was and go on with our day. Not have these "WE MUST TAKE A STAND" and "NEVER FORGET" circle jerks on internet forums.

Maybe I'm just cynical. But I think it makes the participants look like clowns.

Captcha: HAVE COURAGE

Shut up, captcha.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Also, here is another thing: EA doesn't hold every little creative right over the games. It wasn't EA's fault for the changes in the new SimCity: It was designed that way by Maxis itself. Not EA. MAXIS. The servers? Owned by EA, but managed by Maxis. There are many ways you can manage a huge load on a handful of servers. Mind you, none of them are easy and I am still learning myself, but the fact of the matter is that Maxis, NOT EA, was the one mismanaging the servers. They even admitted to it.

Maxis has been owned by EA for almost two decades. They are a complete and total subsidiary of EA. The Maxis name exists only in the abstract, now.

Ok, perhaps not everybody. Nintendo have been just fine without EA for years. But if EA do end up going bankrupt, that will have a huge knock on effect. Bioware, Mythic, DICE, Visceral and Maxis would all be gone, and with them a huge number of games that make up the current gaming library. Sony and Microsoft would lose possibly the biggest third-party supporter of their consoles. That would have a negative effect by virtue of decreasing the number of games available for PS4 and Nextbox. Nintendo can sell a console without third-party support. Sony and Microsoft can't.

Most likely you'd see another THQ situation. Other publishers would step up to purchase the prime talent, and things would continue much as they had before. There will never be another video game crash like the one we saw when 95% of the industry was Atari. It's way too diversified now.

SimCity? Legitimate fuck up. Not only have they screwed over their consumers, their stocks are going to take a hammering. And right now, the last thing EA needs is another hammering on their stock prices.

Totally. And SimCity purchasers should continue to beat on them like drums until they get a functional product. Angry posts on third party websites will likely have the net effect of zero change. If you want EA's ear, you're most likely going to need to be an EA customer.

 

[TheBelgianGuy]

looking at their still falling stock prices

I'm sorry to burst your bubble here, but their stock prices are doing fairly well. While they're far from their 2008 height, they're recovering very well from their latest crisis from what I can see.

http://investor.ea.com/stockquote.cfm



Yeah, yeah, EA is evil, needs to die, etc.
Fact is, I can remember people 'taking a stand' against EA, 'never going to buy any EA games anymore', etc... since around they f-ed over Westwood Studios back in 2003.
That's 10 years by now. 10 years people have been hating on EA, 10 years EA was supposedly soon to die.

Take a chill pill. EA is here to stay, unless you take up a pitchfork and start a communist revolution to get rid of our current capitalist economy, or something.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Technically the same is true for Bioware now as well. Which makes me look at my copy of Jade Empire and sigh...

As Bioware loses more and more of its original talent and has it replaced by new hires, they will eventually just become EA's RPG division, yes. Some cynical folks would claim that has already come to pass, and they'd have a cogent argument. DA3 should tell the tale.

Maybe. I don't see it that way. The industry is more diversified, true. But it's still largely in the hands of large companies, and those companies are not in a good way financially.

We're in the middle of a global recession, though. I just don't see it happening. I know angry gamers who think they're being hornswaggled (even though gaming is now cheaper and more plentiful than it has been at any time in my 30 years of gaming) are desperate for it to crash, so they can do the Nelson laugh and say "See, you should have listened to me all along, stupid companies!", and imagine men in suits crawling to them on hands and knees, imploring forgiveness. But I think there's more than a little fantasy fulfillment going on there. A big industry titan or two might fall, but the remaining ones will rush in to fill the gap. Smaller publishers like 2K or CD Projekt might gobble up the prime remnants and become big publishers in their own right. And then 20 years from now you can listen to your kids moan about how evil CD Projekt Red is, and wipe a wistful tear from your eye.

Believe it or not, companies do pay attention to forums.

Well, I don't believe it, because it would be madness. 90% of the time forums are echo chambers for the howler monkeys of the gaming community. We produce a lot of Sturm und Drang, but very little in the way of constructive feedback. If they're mining for data anywhere, it's almost certainly Reddit, and they tend to keep to the most sane and positive threads even there. I highly doubt some EA employee is going to hang out in the "EA is going to die" thread and think "I better take this crucial data back to home office...these angry gamers are going to rally behind this charismatic revolutionary and finally take a stand!".

 

[Fappy]

I really don't see the entire industry crashing all at once. It is distinctly possible that the next console gen will be met with crap sales which would definitely facilitate a huge decline in AAA market share, but I don't see it as being a death sentence for every publisher out there. Some will fall and if EA doesn't adapt to the changing environment I agree that it will be the first to go. But look at the mobile market, the indy scene and the plethora of seasoned developers who are pursing crowd funding/self publishing. Look at Steam. These facets of the industry are growing at an alarming rate and it is only a matter of time until publishers are going to be force to change their ways as their market share diminishes. Any wise company will take the hit and learn from it and I'm confident there are enough of those to keep the market afloat.

I don't think the industry needs to crash... it just needs to get the shit kicked out of it. Looks like that's already happening.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

The crash is entirely possible. Especially with new consoles on the way and gamers none too happy about the state of the industry. So they have to be careful with their next-gen titles. Not just EA, most publishers and developers need to think things over for the transition to next-gen. People need to adopt new consoles. They're not gonna do that if you keep fucking with them.

 

[Esotera]

I thought EA had its finances in really good shape because morons keep buying their games, despite them being consistently awful.

Boycotts rarely work as not everyone sticks to them, and if their crappy practices make some gamers happy, then fair enough, I don't care, as I never buy any of their games.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

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I agree with both you guys.

If the industry crashes, at least I don't have to listen to hyperbolic rhetoric any more

 

[aguspal]

Meh.


As I have already stated a couple of times, I kind of like EA. I dont want them to die anytime soon, nor do I think they will.


That begin said, if they DO somehow die, well it isnt the end of the world either, theres other companies you know...

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Thing is, an industry crash doesn't mean that no-one's going to be making games for a period of years. Plenty of companies were making games, even in the immediate aftermath of '83. Nintendo did better than ever, if I remember my history right.

Revenues dropped by 97% in '83. If people were making games, no one was buying them. We're never going to see a crash of anything close to that magnitude again.

I've said as much myself in the past. The founders are gone. Many of the old-guard writing team and creative leads are gone. At the very least, they're not the same Bioware they were ten years ago. And yeah, owned and controlled by EA, I'd say they're little more than EA RPG now. With the accompanying decline in quality you'd expect *makes a break for the nearest window*

Well, wait for DA3 before throwing the towel in entirely. Bioware is showing signs of fairly obvious decline, but the fat lady hasn't sung yet. It's not like EA owned studios are incapable of creating quality games, they just have a more erratic track record than most.

Thing is, you don't need every company to go bankrupt in order to cause a crash. You just need to be at the point where the industry simply isn't profitable for the majority of the major players. As I said above, not every company stopped making games immediately after the '83 crash.

Whoops, I guess I replied to your reply to the other guy. You kinda DO. For the crash to be anything close to the previous one. I think what we're looking at is a slump. It's a slump that might cost a company or two their existence, and it might cost some people their jobs, but it's a recession, yeah? Gaming can still be an expensive hobby, and it's a luxury. People are going to gravitate to cheaper options.

Even if you take a dim view and look at IOS as the future of gaming, it won't be long until those games rapidly grow in sophistication and depth as the technology improves. I've been hearing about the death of traditional gaming at the hands of the casual hordes for DECADES now, and if anything it's making a kick-started comeback. We have an X-COM reboot! We have Total War: Warhammer on the way! Times are good. If this is an impending crash, I'll take it.

Oh don't get me wrong, they're not going to be basing large scale corporate decisions based on the online forums. But any company worth a damn has at least one ear to the grapevine, and in gaming, that grapevine is the online forum community. They don't have to do a lot in response to that community, and in EA's case they clearly haven't. But if you want actual feedback of how a game has been received, beyond pure sales figures, forums are where you'll want to keep an eye. Sure, they're a cesspit of bickering and fanboyism, but you still get general trends and common opinions regarding any topic in the gaming industry.

Also, I'm pretty sure there was some bruhaha a while back when it was implied EA has hired people to go into online forums to try and drum up some grassroots support for their games. I'll see if I can find anything on that.

There are most definitely forum plants. We have one or two fairly obvious ones here (and no, I am not referring to the people being up front about being ex-EA employees).

Could you imagine having the job of data-mining useful information from the average internet forum? That would be a soul destroying job.

 

[Weaver]

I stopped watching that youtube video 40 seconds in when it flagrantly assumed I knew nothing of the video game crash in the 80's.