EA: The Business of Telling People What They Want

[zellosoli]

No idea how many of you are old enough to remember retro Simpsons quotes, but here goes. Remember Homer's half brother Herb? The one who owned an automotive company? At one point he found himself yelling at his engineers:

"YA HEAR THAT YOU DUNDER HEADS!? YOU'RE NOT LISTENING TO WHAT PEOPLE WANT, YOU'RE *TELLING* 'EM WHAT THEY WANT!"

And the topic came up when Homer was trying to describe the kind of car he'd like to drive, and every time he described a feature he wanted the engineers shot in down. IE:

Homer: I'd like a big car.
Engineer: We don't have big cars.
Homer: Well why not?
Engineer: Because Americans don't want big cars.
Homer: Oh...

And it reminds me ever so much of EA, because they love to pitch lines like that. They barge in on IPs, gut them for parts, and then re-purpose them into grey washed samey crap packed full of micro-transactions. And then when people complain they just up and shut them down, or ignore them completely.

Maxis Customer: I'd like an elaborate, transcendental life simulator please.
EA: Gamers don't want complexity. They want simplicity.
Maxis Customer: Oh...

Bioware Customer: I'd like a complex, choice and characterization driven story please.
EA: Gamers don't want story. They want cover based shooting.
Bioware Customer: Oh...

Sane Gamer: I'd like tasteful marketing campaigns that represent my tastes and sensibilities please.
EA: Gamer's don't want class. They want obnoxiousness. (IE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKkPFDEiC6Q , http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/26/dantes-inferno-team-apologizes-for-sin-to-win-booth-babe-cont/ , and a few other godawful examples I can't recall off the top of my head...)
Sane Gamer: Oh...

Informed Gamer: Wow, it's really not surprising you guys won an award for shoddy business practices.
EA: We will continue to make games beloved by all and free of flaws.
Informed Gamer: ... I'm gonna go to the publishers across the hall now. Y'all take care.

Ha ha ha! You know I was just thinking that

 

[Cranky]

Whatever the case is, even if I wanted to flame E again, I keep realisaing most of my modern games I like are published by them.

Damn.

 

[getoffmycloud]

And the topic came up when Homer was trying to describe the kind of car he'd like to drive, and every time he described a feature he wanted the engineers shot in down. IE:

Homer: I'd like a big car.
Engineer: We don't have big cars.
Homer: Well why not?
Engineer: Because Americans don't want big cars.
Homer: Oh...

And it reminds me ever so much of EA...

As much as it pains me to say something which might be misconstrued as a defence of EA, but...
The car Homer designed was a hideous monstrosity that ruined Herb's company.

Your sir win this thread.

And to be honest that is exactly what would happen if a developer or publisher let the community make all the decisions for a game it would be truly awful.

 

[flames09]

After what they did to my favorite franchises such as BF , C&C, SimCity just to name a few I don't think I will be buying anymore games from them, just borrow them of friends or by other means.

As a gamer who has really tried to get along with the new EA, I just do not see it working in the future.. they have screwed us over way to many times.

 

[Zipa]

Oh it's this thread again , seriously stop beating the dead horse .

 

[RJ 17]

And the topic came up when Homer was trying to describe the kind of car he'd like to drive, and every time he described a feature he wanted the engineers shot in down. IE:

Homer: I'd like a big car.
Engineer: We don't have big cars.
Homer: Well why not?
Engineer: Because Americans don't want big cars.
Homer: Oh...

And it reminds me ever so much of EA...

As much as it pains me to say something which might be misconstrued as a defence of EA, but...
The car Homer designed was a hideous monstrosity that ruined Herb's company.

Which forced Herb to come up with the baby translator which let everyone understand such wonderful baby thoughts as:
"This leash demeans us both."
and
"I have soiled myself...how embarrassing..."

It's called focus testing.

Of course, design something by committee and it always sucks, as it attempts to cater to all demographics and never really excels at any one feature/genre/whatever.

But then if the developer designs how they want, you get the gamers who go "ZOMG I wanted a RTS game, why did you make it a FPS game?!?!"

Funny story about that. When Blizzard outsourced all the design and programing and coding and pretty much everything for the making of Star Craft: Ghost, that's pretty much exactly what happened. They were looking for a stealth-based 3rd person action game, inspired by Metal Gear Solid type crap.

Turns out the 3rd party company that was making the game for them ended up making it too much like just another generic 3rd person shooter. Annnnnnnd so the game got the axe because Blizzard was too lazy to make it themselves.

 

[ThriKreen]

There is an article on this site about origin and how they fucked themselves over by doing the same thing. EA bought them out and gave them a giant budget. They expanded and tried to make tons of different games and failed horribly.

Article in question [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_14/87-The-Conquest-of-Origin]. It wasn't that they made a lot of games, but expanded way too fast and staffed the new projects with inexperienced people. I'm not a business person, but doubling the projects (10 to 20) and employees (200 to 400 people) in under a year, is still a bad idea. While I can't say what % was who's fault, it's a safe bet to say that if EA was red and Origin was blue, the resulting colour is definitely a purple. I'm sure it's the same for all the other closures, but we have some people around here who keep insisting it's red no matter what.

And of course, the bit above about cover based shooting, EA didn't buy Bioware/Pandemic until Oct 2007, and ME1 was released Nov 2007 - no way you can affect the game in a month when it's practically done cert and about to hit gold at this stage.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

How about the whole deal of liquidating entire companies and making sure their former employees will never be able to make a game again by holding on to the IPs?

 

[Vegosiux]

But like that stops the gamers from acting like my example. Maybe this would be a better representation:

Devs: Hey we're going to offer you an apple, it's going to be delicious and juicy and you'll love it!
Gamer: YAY! It's gonna be awesome!
Devs: Here it is! A granny smith!
Gamer: WTF, why did you give us an orange!
Devs: Uh, we said we were giving you a really good apple, not an orange.
Gamer: It might as well be an orange! I hate granny smith!
Other gamer: Uh, hey, I like granny smith apples...
Devs: See, some people like it. You might too.
Gamer: Shut up, I wanted the red delicious! I was expecting a red delicious! You suck!
Devs: But we never said we were giving you a red delicious, just 'an apple'.
Gamer: I don't care, I want a red delicious! I'm contacting the BBB and complaining that you're engaging in a bait'n'switch!
* Devs facepalm.

*facepalm* Seriously, now you're just being silly on purpose. But hey, that's okay, I always give people all the respect they're due.

However, you do realize I could come up with a similarly silly anectode and spin it so that the devs are the ones acting all retarded and the gamers being reasonable; and it would be a "representation" just as accurate as yours, right? Well, lucky for you, I'm currently feeling above such silliness.

 

[ThriKreen]

*facepalm* Seriously, now you're just being silly on purpose. But hey, that's okay, I always give people all the respect they're due.

Am I? You're doing what my gamer example is doing, picking and choosing what I'm saying, putting your own spin on things and believing that is it and ignoring the rest.

However, you do realize I could come up with a similarly silly anectode and spin it so that the devs are the ones acting all retarded and the gamers being reasonable; and it would be a "representation" just as accurate as yours, right? Well, lucky for you, I'm currently feeling above such silliness.

You know what, I challenge you to go right ahead, it'll be interesting to see how you view the dev perspective.