EA is not evil.

[Agayek]

I don't think ME2 tries to follow the Hero's Journey. At all. Where are the elements of the Hero's journey in ME2? ME1 has a kinda-serviceable story, and its biggest problem is, actually, the already tired and old Bioware cliché of having to follow the Hero's Journey. There are many possible and good ways to structure a story and it doesn't have to follow the Hero's Journey all the time.

There's a decent breakdown of the HJ components of ME2 at the beginning of http://jmstevenson.me/2012/03/22/all-that-matters-is-the-ending-part-2-mass-effect-3/

The article itself is an analysis of ME3's ending, but about 2-3 pages down there's a good breakdown of the steps of the Hero's Journey for all 3 games.

If you don't wanna follow the link (though it's a good read if you're at all interested in an excellent analysis of ME3's ending), it comes down to as follows:

1. Ordinary World -
Mass Effect 2: Aboard the Normandy
2. Call to Adventure
Mass Effect 2: Shepard?s Death/Rebirth, Cerberus station attack
3. Refusing the Call
Mass Effect 2: Shepard?s reluctance to work with Cerberus
4. Meeting the Mentor
Mass Effect 2: Meeting the Illusive Man, given mission to Freedom?s Progress
5. Crossing the Threshold
Mass Effect 2: Mission to Freedom?s Progress
6. Tests, Allies, Enemies
Mass Effect 2: Dossier Missions
7. Approach
Mass Effect 2: Collector Ship
8. Ordeal, Death and Rebirth
Mass Effect 2: Attacking the Collectors, finding out Prothean?s fate
9. Seizing the Sword
Mass Effect 2: Reaper IFF mission
10. The Road Back
Mass Effect 2: Through the Omega 4 Relay
11. Resurrection
Mass Effect 2: Suicide Mission, Human Reaper fight
12. Return with the Elixir
Mass Effect 2: Experienced Team and resources to fight Reapers, Collector Base if kept

So yes, ME2 did follow the Hero's Journey, and the game should be judged accordingly.

Here you seem to imply that how well a story follows the Hero's Journey is, somehow, an "objective" measure of how good a story is? I'm sorry, but this is completely bonkers. If anything, "adherence to the Hero's Journey" can be a sign of poor writing. Film Crit Hulk, a critic I love even though he writes in all-caps and Hulkspeak, wrote a great piece about our current over-reliance on the Hero's Journey as a way to create new stories [https://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/tag/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/]. Campbell was writing about the patterns he saw in existing legends and stories as a way to analyze human cultures, he never tried to make it a prescription on how to write stories. As Hulk says, it's one of the most popular "paint-by-numbers" storytelling schemes we use today. He even cites ME1 (and many other Bioware games) in his piece.

That's not what I was trying to get at at all. What I meant is that a story that follows an established structure/style of literature can and should be judged by the rules of that structure/style. Bioware went with the Hero's Journey for both ME1 and ME2, and ME1 just did it better.

I actually agree with Hulk in that article, in that the Hero's Journey really needs to be put to rest for a while, but that's what Bioware was going for, so that's what they should be judged with.

I don't like Shepard dying very much, but it does impose some interesting consequences, the biggest of which is that now Shepard's indebted to Cerberus and must work for them. I think ME2 could have explored this better, but they actually used his death to do something which would be very hard to swallow otherwise.

It's hard to swallow, period. The whole shift to Cerberus being misunderstood good guys was incredibly ridiculous and damn near managed to completely shatter SOD. It was hackneyed, stupid, and it introduced a plethora of plotholes that they clearly didn't care to even think about.

Edit: Also, after Shepard died, nothing changed. The circumstances of the plot at the end of ME1 were: Nobody believed the Reapers were coming, Shepard had a ship and a crew and had to save the galaxy himself. After he died and was reborn, the circumstances were: Nobody believed the Reapers were coming, Shepard had a ship and a crew and had to save the galaxy all on his lonesome.

This is flat out bad storytelling. As I mentioned before, killing the protagonist is used to accomplish one or more of those 4 objectives. Bioware managed to accomplish none of them.

Also, I agree with you in that Bioware's strength was never in plot, but they can at least make serviceable stories that are made into something more by excellent characters. It's just that both aspects have been getting steadily worse in their last few releases.

 

[lunavixen]

I don't think that they are evil, just making some really stupid choices, and i think the blame lies more with the management and CEOs rather than the employees further down the food chain

 

[Olas]

I like that OP actually felt the need to create a thread entitled "EA is not evil".

No, they're not evil, just bad, really really bad.

 

[NiPah]

What then is the purpose of the publisher? You bring up several cases where publishers die after joining with EA but neglect to put any blame on EA's policy for their failure. Is EA giving these companies too much freedom? too little? all that can be said for sure is that under the wing of EA each of those studios ended up failing and being dissolved, sure they may not have been the shining examples of perfect developers before they were bought up but EA has to be pretty shit not to know how to turn a struggling studio into at least a marginally successful studio after all it's years of experience.

You also mention that EA is not evil, it's just a business trying to make money, well that argument can be made for criminals and that chick from Australia, the actions they take to become successful can be judged, I'm not saying EA is evil (the concept is a bit stupid since hardly anyone is actually evil) but the point does not work.

I like EA for the most part, sure I think their upper management are out of touch idiots who need to fire their PR team like a mofo, and I hate Origin for reasons I've stated many times before, but in the end I enjoy many of their games.

Lastly what is the use of a thread like this? most of your points are bastardized versions of points already made in order to more easily counter them without actually countering them, and people generally just hate EA, no amount of defending them by throwing mud at the studios they bought will help that.

 

[llubtoille]

I don't think they're deliberately malicious and probably don't have a room where they dismember puppies, so odds are they're not evil in the literal sense.
But they are a money orientated corporation with a pretty bad public image.

Go through all their quoted statements for the last year or so, and nearly everything they say is interpreted to their detriment.
They rarely have anything useful, interesting or positive to say, and take every opportunity to belittle their rivals.

It doesn't matter whether or not they make great games; they have an image of being an obnoxious jackass.

A bit like the Mel Gibson of game makers I guess.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I think Hanlon's Razor best sums up EA

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

They aren't eat a puppy evil (although they do engage in similar activity), they are are just incompetent morons.

 

[Yopaz]

Calling EA evil is ignorant. EA makes decisions which gives them profit and makes some people hate them. Just like other big companies out there. Evil is about deliberate wrongdoing. EA is run by people who do it for own personal gain. Not admirable, but not evil either.

I disagree. I don't really have much of an opinion on EA, but I'm pretty sure doing stuff for personal gain at the expense of other people is perfectly evil. Can you really turn around to me and say that Bernie Madoff ripping off all of his family and friends for the sake of being rich wasn't evil? Or hell, that Banana company that, when their pesticide of choice was found to be poisonous to their workers and was banned in America, continued to use it in countries other than the USA because it'd cost a bit of cash to swap pesticides (and not irreparably damage their employees), that's pretty evil. Or slavery, that's got to be evil right?

Yes, EA isn't anywhere near that bad. But saying the pursuit of personal gain at the expense of others is never evil seems a bit ridiculous.

Edit: Oh, and to those saying they need to do it to make money, wasn't there a news article on the escapist a while ago saying their stock was falling? It's clearly not working for them, perhaps they should be less daft. (unless of course I made this up to make myself laugh and to be able to make a point.)

I still don't think this or any of the examples you provided can be considered evil. All of them are morally bad and frankly the things some fruit plantations, fireworks producers, car companies and some companies producing hardware is actually disgusting. Workers getting serious injuries or health issues just because a company wants to save money by not providing proper protective gear. It's morally despicable. However evil is about intentions rather than the act itself. I am currently taking higher education order to get a job that pays better than what I could get without it. Thus I am doing it for personal gain, is that evil? People take jobs for personal gain rather than because they feel like they're saving the world. Yes, this is taking it out of a context and most people wont hurt others by simply taking a job, but the question stands. When does doing something for personal gain become evil? Is it when others suffer from it? Because getting hired for a job where 100 people applied means 99 people wont get a job because you got it. My goal for getting this job was personal gain, not to cause 99 people o not get the job. Evil would be if I was deliberately trying to prevent those people from getting a job just for for the hell of it.

Also EA's share prices are dropping. Their share prices had a massive drop from 2007 to 2008 (finance crisis) where they ended up with their stocks being worth one third of what it was previously worth. Now just a week ago they hit their lowest in a good while and the price was 10.80 I think. Their share price is fluctuation and their shares have had ups and downs. Now 2012 seems to be a bad year for them. How do you figure this is because of of their business practice? At the end of 2011 they had their highest stock value since the finance crisis. They also had the exact same business model in 2011.

You say EA is daft for not seeing the error of their ways due to falling stock prices, the truth of it is that they do what they have done for decades, more than 20 years using a business model one year with losses (except the finance crisis which wasn't their fault) means they have had 19 years of success for this one year with loss. Clearly this business model is working.

 

[Bloodstain]

Actually, I agree with everything you said and I don't dislike EA at all. Those who elected EA to be "America's Worst Company" seriously have some issues regarding perspective.

I don't have anything else to add, I just wanted to give you my support.

 

[Amaror]

I don't think that EA are evil - they're just incompetent.

This pretty much.
They need to make money but often it seams they don't have a single brain cell in the whole company.
They try to make money by making franchises have a broader appeal, which results in less quality games, which results in less money.
Best example is dragon age 2. With it's action focuss and horrible dead line, Dragon Age 2 was a mess, and therefore way less money than Origins.
Funny enough that EA announced before the release that they think Dragon Age 2 will make double the amount of Origins.

 

[Apollo45]

As for Westwood, first game they made after EA bought them was Tiberian Sun, which became the fastest selling EA game to date. The second? Red Alert 2.

What you fail to mention is that very shortly after making those two games they made Westwood push out Renegade as an attempted response to Halo. The failure of that game - not at all surprising to anyone who gave the market for C&C games three seconds of their time - led to the downsizing and liquidation of Westwood. Since then the Command and Conquer games, what Westwood was known for, have been markedly worse than those that came before.

The same thing happens with the other studios. Sure, they might have a few unsuccessful games before being acquired, but after being milked dry EA just shuts them down and lets the IPs rot. Look at the Medal of Honor IP, the progression of the Dead Space IP, and so on. Original or not, as IPs move on EA continuously attempts to make them more "universally appealing", and in doing so kills them off. If they don't do that then they rush deadlines and end up ruining games that way (Mass Effect 3? Or, more telling, Dragon Age 2?) Their insistence on adding multiplayer modes that no one really wants takes away time that could be spent making the core game better, and that only furthers the degradation of the games they're making/pushing.

 

[rob_simple]

I have always tried to point out to people that if these companies were so successful they wouldn't let a bigger company buy them (even if the top brass did it for the money, the actual talent at the company could easily go and start their own company,) it's nice to see I'm not alone.

I think one of EA's problems is that it's just too big, and the more money you make means the more money you need to spend to continue to grow and as soon as decisions are based on money and not the quality of the product it's the gamers that suffer.

And what do we do? Continue to lap up everything EA puts out, all the while shouting, 'you people are evil! You should be ashamed! I'll never buy your games again!'

 

[Smeatza]

I agree with those who say it's incompetence rather than evil.

Mainly because the company (or at least the higher ups) seem to be aware of the mistakes it persistently makes. Yet seem to keep making them.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/181974/ea-we-blew-it-with-bullfrog-westwood/#

 

[Yopaz]

You say EA is daft for not seeing the error of their ways due to falling stock prices, the truth of it is that they do what they have done for decades, more than 20 years using a business model one year with losses (except the finance crisis which wasn't their fault) means they have had 19 years of success for this one year with loss. Clearly this business model is working.

oh it works but what happens is that, as publicly floated "publishers" with shareholders who they are expected to provide year on year profit increases to in order to maintain their "confidence" in the company they are drawn to produce product that in their opinion (and cutting filtering by a market of opinion and demand before a product even gets to them) will turn a them more of a constant and reliable profit for as cheap as possible...and a corporate set up like that produces products that you could quite easily collectively call "pulp".

but a lot of the market for entertainment values "originality" and other such subjective manners and doesn't appreciate homogeneous corporate efficiency aimed at appeasing the folks with a share in the companies fortunes.

so far, in the birth of all the entertainment mediums, this has pretty much always happened.

that's what rock and roll was

and so ultimately a parallel distribution networks set up. some of whom will be closer to the original distribution of "publisher". Steam and the other digital distribution channels that are open to other developers (and even to a certain extent the console online services) are truer to the what a "Publisher" should actually be.

this is how you can listen to obscure metal or rap or Karen Boyle or Hungarian polka bands or whatever, see independently produced films at the cinema and read non "mainstream" novels while also being the same reason people can read "shades of grey".

Uhm, thanks for the information, but I already know all of that. I was trying to point out that their fall in stock prices is connected to that kind of thing rather than evil business practice. Your post made for an interesting read nevertheless and I agree with everything you said.

 

[At_The_Gates]

The thing that really amuses me about this is how poorly this companies stock price has performed over the last 5 years.

 

[Wolfhowl the shadow lurker]

Want to know why people don't like EA? watch jims videos, if you don't hate EA now you soon will

and no EA is not evil, they are just Arrogant fuckwits, you know who eise is a corporation? Valve and no one hates them

so people can and should hate EA, if they do something bad they should be called out on it

 

[Charli]

I'm still not 100% on EA but I know for a fact I want whoever does their PR to get their nuts/tits trapped in an elevator door. Inciting that much public ire is a talent that needs breeding out of the gene pool.

 

[Pearwood]

They're not evil, they are quite ruthless with their business practices and there are arguments for and against that. On one hand they get results; on the other their reputation suffers as do the smaller developers who rely on them.

and no EA is not evil, they are just Arrogant fuckwits, you know who eise is a corporation? Valve and no one hates them

There's a lot of bad things to say about Valve. Their development time should not be that long. I don't like the way Steam has such a huge influence on Indie gaming Valve's terms and conditions essentially put rules on what people can or can't put in their game if they ever plan on selling it.