EA Plans Free-To-Play For Every Major Franchise

[TiberiusEsuriens]

The same thing holds true of always-on gaming, which Moore said is now a part of everything EA does. "We don't ship a game at EA that is offline. It just doesn't happen," he said. "And gamers either want to be connected, so that your stats and your achievements and whatever you do certainly reflect who you are, or you want the full multiplayer experience on top of that. We don't deliver offline experiences anymore."

I'm with evevryone saying this is bull. I don't like stats. At all. In fact, the best multiplayer games in my experience are all about the heat of the moment. There are always dicks on the internet, but once you factor in win/loss and kill/death ratios people cease to play the game for fun. Everything is suddenly about the stats and people will often intentionally screw a match just so they can try to get their k/d a little higher. EA, I don't want your stats, I don't want your 'online experience.' I stopped buying your products for these very reasons several years ago. Your services are getting better, your PR is working again, but your products need to improve. If you're so focused on making a wide reaching, versatile product, why are you limiting that versatility by intentionally crippling offline play?

Like them or not, free-to-play and always-on gaming can succeed or fail depending on their implementation, as illustrated quite nicely by Mass Effect 3. The multiplayer component implemented a free-to-play mechanic that allowed hardcore fans to dive in without punishing more casual players, but the forced integration of multiplayer as a part of the single-player experience could be frustrating and even infuriating for people who couldn't, or didn't want to, jump into the action.

This is the key part. There is nothing here saying that all their games will be entirely F2P, just pieces of them. The success/failure all depends on which piece(s) they choose to push this on.

 

[Racecarlock]

Why are stats always so heavily marketed? If I wanted to look at numbers, I'd look up math classes on youtube.

I'm so glad the only things I'm attached to are amusement park videos and abridged series(es) on youtube.

 

[Charli]

Oh theeeres the dickery I know and come to expect from you EA. Glad to see I haven't debased myself by buying into any of your shit still.

I'll make my response short and to the point and it is directed ooooonly at that 'we don't ship offline games anymore' crap. Ahem.


Fawwwk yooooou.
- Sincerely every poor sod who lives with unstable internet.

 

[Fox12]

Eh, not surprised. What will it be next week?

"You see, all gamers today want to either club baby seals, or else bathe in the blood of a virgin while reciting Mein Kampf backwards, and we want our products to reflect currant consumer needs. That is why, from now on, no EA title will ship without these features included."

I'm not even angry at them anymore, I just don't care. I don't purchase their titles anymore, and feels good to let go of the hate. Thank God for Indie games. There are still great companies out there I can support, I left EA behind a while ago. It's still funny to keep up with them, so I guess they succeed in keeping me entertained, albeit not in the way they intended.

You could always go the Microsoft route.
"Fuck you for buying our game! Fuck you for buying our system!"

 

[ASnogarD]

EA *sigh*

Puts Single Player into Multi Player games (BF3 and 4) but no one really wanted it.
Put Multi Player into Single Player games (DS3) not many really wanted that unless I am really mistaken.

Puts all the Free to Play aspects into some of its titles, just not the Free to Play parts.

Makes a Single Player title that players mess with offline between serious gaming sessions... into a MMO, and doesnt add the MMO parts, just the always online and can deliver DLC straight to your machines.

Takes a fun and easy game with a interesting slant that appears on every platform, and turns it into another shooter on mobile and iPads.

Where did they get these idiots from ? I bet they would take the beans out of a bean cannery as well, or the booze out of a brewery.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

From a single player focused gamer: We are done. Go away. Don't even breathe on me.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Oh, EA. You were doing so well.

Eh. Just as long as these free-to-play iterations aren't considered as full-fledged entries in their respective series - and just as long as EA retains the lesson it learned from SimCity's debacle....

I'm hoping they'll at least retain their promised offline features for The Sims 4. I absolutely do not want to get stuck with a pay wall thrust in my face for a game I paid full price for.

 

[Tazzman]

I think EA have forgotten that they make more than just battlefield and Fifa. I mean I would love to have the multiplayer for those two games for free (even if fifa didn't have the right names for the players) but F2P just won't work for lots of games, dragon age being a prime example, because the microtransactions just hamper the experiance. I mean imagine having to pay £0.50 everytime you wanted to equip new items on a party member or you'd have to wait for 24hours to pass in game time

 

[MrBaskerville]

Luckily i don't own a single EA related game and that's probably not going to change in the future.

 

[RJ Dalton]

Yeah, I don't see this being a successful business decision. But then, it wouldn't be EA if they weren't fantastically stupid.

 

[Slash2x]

Hey the headline was wrong
EA: Now taking advice from local crack dealers.
There you go, all fixed.

"Here are some of our more popular games, but this is just a taste. If you want more it will cost you.... Heaven knows it will cost you....."

 

[Ldude893]

*genuinely excited squeal*

YES! Yes yes yes YES YES. Oh my god, it's going to happen again. The explosion at EA's face that was Sim City was one of the most fun and beautiful things I've ever watched in all my gaming years, and they're going to make even more bombs.
Yes, it'll be sad that EA's franchises will be a shadow of their past selves, but hey: those franchises didn't have much of a chance the moment they had the EA label slapped on them. Let the dumb chef cook his food, he might just learn once he sets the kitchen ablaze a couple more times.

I need to stock up the popcorn. I'll be very okay if EA immediately retracts the statement after realizing how stupid they were making themselves, but GOD do I love to see them suffer again.

 

[iniudan]

the booze out of a brewery.

Marmite is the answer to this one.

 

[RJ 17]

There was a time, long, long ago, when a studio made a game and released it, and gamers purchased the game and played it, and if all went well they looked forward to the sequel and played something else in the meantime. It was a simple system, for a simpler era; but times have changed, and Moore says the days of "fire-and-forget" game development are over forever.

Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy gaming traditionalist...but I much preferred "the good ol' days" to these new-fangled "micro-transactions" and "subscription fees" and "you have to be online" requirements. Seriously, what ever happened to the expression "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? That's one of the main reasons why I REALLY don't have much of a desire for either the XBone or the PS4. I want a game console. I want that game console to play games. I don't want a game console that also makes breakfast, phone calls, plugs into social media that I don't even use, shines shoes, mows the lawn, measures my heartrate, reminds me to brush my teeth, and does my taxes.

I want a box that plays videogames...nothing more, nothing less. And honestly it's statements like these where the executives of the gaming industry emphatically insist "The old ways are dead and gone. Get used to it because we're never going back to that way now that some genius discovered that a lot of people are willing to pay $5 for a shiny hat on their character that we could have put into the game anyways but decided we wanted to charge for it instead."

Really just makes me want to slap said executives right in the mouth.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Well, at least their plans for Always Online will some technical merit now.
I mean, I don't see many F2P games out there that aren't online multiplayer-centric.

Whatever. I don't plan on playing anything EA puts out by default, but even if that were not the case, I'm still not entirely on board with F2P games for practical reasons (my shitty internet being one of them; I'm lucky if the connection plays nice with LoL when I'm the only one on the network. If I have friends over who want to do a match of LoL, it's just not happening. Fucking Verizon-Comcast duopoly bullshit...)

Wait a sec... free to play using Mass Effect 3's multiplayer as an example?

Since when does ME3 multiplayer qualify as free to play? You have to buy the game to get the multiplayer component of it, therefore it is not free to play. Or am I missing something?

I was wondering that myself.

Maybe EA means that the ME3 multiplayer was "free-to-play" in that you didn't have to pay more to add multiplayer to the game.

In which case, it means EA is trying to redefine yet another industry term.

Addendum: Rereading the article, I believe this is the case.

The "multiplayer component" is described as "free-to-play".

Nevermind that it requires the base game for $60.00.

Wow. I actually didn't catch that the first time I read the article.
That's fucking hilarious if it was an honest mistake, but at this point that kind of twisted logic and half-truth corp talk is exactly what I've come to expect from EA.

 

[SilverUchiha]

"And gamers either want to be connected, so that your stats and your achievements and whatever you do certainly reflect who you are, or you want the full multiplayer experience on top of that. We don't deliver offline experiences anymore"

I'm a gamer. I don't care if people can see my achievements, trophies, skulls, dicks, or whatever else. To me, those don't really mean much other than person X completed fun side challenges in games. And many don't actually equate to actual skill. Second, I don't always want a full multiplayer experience. Especially in games that don't make sense to have multiplayer.

Welcome back to the top of shit mountain EA. Microsoft saved a seat for you over the summer. Good to see the status quo as returned.

 

[webkilla]

Oh this is going to be great

No really - I like this bit of news: I think it could very well signal the begining of the end of EA

 

[RJ 17]

I mean imagine having to pay £0.50 everytime you wanted to equip new items on a party member or you'd have to wait for 24hours to pass in game time

Well first you'd have to pay $5 in order to get that character in the first place, and another $3 to have access to their inventory/equipment.

Or you could go for the bundle! Pay $40 for all the characters and an additional $5 to have access to all their inventories/equipment! Yes that's essentially admitting that we could easily get by with selling full games at less than $60, but that's besides the point!

 

[Dante dynamite]

Oh yeah fuck designing games to be engaging no design games to monetize and fuck everyone with a bad connection (like me) regardless of where you are in the world my ass.

Edit: and if your achievements and rankings are that important to you must have serious priority problems.