Uh...but I'm not giving EA a "pass".the hidden eagle said:
I specifically listed a host of egregious things EA's done over the years, even leaving quite a few out simply for brevity's sake.
So I'm not sure how I'm being hypocritical.
:/
Is EA Really That Evil?
- Thread starter LaSelaMelvins
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I specifically listed a host of egregious things EA's done over the years, even leaving quite a few out simply for brevity's sake.
So I'm not sure how I'm being hypocritical.
:/
Yeah, it's easy to rag on EA as gratuitously evil (or stupid), but who is the real villain(idiot): The faceless company who keeps pushing Less-for-More bloat and anti-consumer schemes onto the market, or the faceless masses who continue to financially validate their bullshit?
Atmos Duality said:
Because really, both are just as bad as the other.
Though, in fairness, given the sizable chunk of the market EA controls (directly or indirectly), one must forgo playing quite a number of series/franchises in order to boycott EA in it's entirety.
True, but I manage to do just that.Vigormortis said:
The last EA published game I bought personally was Hellgate: London some 6 years ago.
Prior to that was the C&C Collection for 20 bucks.
In hindsight, I am so, so glad I don't buy their games anymore.
Oh, I never said it was impossible. Simply that avoiding EA-touched games means avoiding a LOT of game releases.Atmos Duality said:
Some people have the self restraint to do so. Others don't.
Personally, it's not a matter of self-restraint for me as I don't have a problem with buying a game from a company that's made a game themselves[footnote]From inception to completed product.[/footnote] and only turned to EA for help with publishing. Provided, of course, said company retained sole creative control over what goes into the game; both on the backend AND the frontend.
However, a direct affiliate with EA; for example Bioware; is essentially just a rebranded branch of EA. As such, I tend to avoid buying their games.
Well said, that defines EA quite well.Naqel said:
They have made a lot of stupid decisions lately, but I wouldn't call them evil. Greedy, sure. Evil? No, that is not EA... Yet.
I was (AM!) a huge Wing Commander fan, and was quite bitter when EA ate Origin up & completely digested them into non-existence. Same thing with Sierra; I really liked the Phantasmagoria games!BloatedGuppy said:
Well their actual source of stupid is plain old greed, or in the modern capitalist vocabulary "attitude for success".
And they have no qualms about doing any action as long as it works towards their greed, now what parts you find good/evil is really up to you, I know two of my economist friends who would only ever describe EA's conduct as "business genius".
And they have no qualms about doing any action as long as it works towards their greed, now what parts you find good/evil is really up to you, I know two of my economist friends who would only ever describe EA's conduct as "business genius".
Personally, I think that the BIGGEST problem EA has is what they do with companies they acquire. Say you're a smaller game company, and you put out a few FANTASTIC games that everybody raves about. Later, some huge, monolithic company offers you a LOT of money to become a part of their corporation, which should vastly improve the quality of your already excellent product, as well as greatly expanding your distribution model. So, you agree, and now you are a part of WayHugeFuckAll Games, INC. At first, the relationship seems great; you get to do your thing with a MUCH bigger budget, and you may suddenly have access to a much larger talent pool than you had previously. And then, the other shoe drops. Your parent company wants you to change a few things with how your games operate. Day One DLC. Microtransactions. Restrictive DRM that makes your code all sorts of buggy. And then, they even start interfering with the STORIES, or forcing you to rush a game out before it's really ready, so maybe you have to take some shortcuts in the plot/story of your game, which completely changes the user's experience with it (YES, I'm talking about DA2 & ME3!). Since they're fronting the money, you have to dance to their tune.
So your game(s) are released by WayHugeFuckAll Inc., and they've got problems. Problems you didn't have when you were still in control of things. And your company takes most of the blame for them. Suddenly, you're "not profitable enough," and WayHugeFuckAll shuts you down, absorbing all of your IP, and smashing your dreams & ambitions, leaving you with jack.
What I think that EA needs to do is stop thinking that because they've put out a few successful games on their own, they are the be all, end all MASTERS of what makes a good game. They should allow the companies they absorb the freedom to put out their games THEIR WAY, with MINIMAL interference from EA. I'm sure that we'll never escape DLC, Day One or otherwise, and aside from Day One, I kinda like most DLC; it sometimes adds some pretty cool content to games that I've already beat, giving me another reason to play through them again. But EA NEEDS to stop telling the companies they absorb how to make games. Ea Wouldn't have bought BioWare (or Origin, or Sierra, etc.) if their games sucked; why can't they let BioWare (and other companies) continue to do their own thing? They'd probably be a LOT more profitable if they did.
So your game(s) are released by WayHugeFuckAll Inc., and they've got problems. Problems you didn't have when you were still in control of things. And your company takes most of the blame for them. Suddenly, you're "not profitable enough," and WayHugeFuckAll shuts you down, absorbing all of your IP, and smashing your dreams & ambitions, leaving you with jack.
What I think that EA needs to do is stop thinking that because they've put out a few successful games on their own, they are the be all, end all MASTERS of what makes a good game. They should allow the companies they absorb the freedom to put out their games THEIR WAY, with MINIMAL interference from EA. I'm sure that we'll never escape DLC, Day One or otherwise, and aside from Day One, I kinda like most DLC; it sometimes adds some pretty cool content to games that I've already beat, giving me another reason to play through them again. But EA NEEDS to stop telling the companies they absorb how to make games. Ea Wouldn't have bought BioWare (or Origin, or Sierra, etc.) if their games sucked; why can't they let BioWare (and other companies) continue to do their own thing? They'd probably be a LOT more profitable if they did.
It doesn't matter if EA is evil or not (they're really not) - because the internet has decided they're evil, and they will continue to be evil until the internet finds another scapegoat company.
I could spend my time writing up an essay but I have to get back to Zbrush soon. However, in quick summery before I embed a youtube video, they have throughout their history made some seriously dick moves that seems to repeat and become almost the industry standard. Not to long ago working at a few studios E.A. was described as almost inhumane and while it has definitely improved there appears to be some backtrack. As for the rest:
ultima 8 I agree with but what was incomplete about SI? I thought that was a great game with the slight issue that when you finally do get enough money there is nothing to spend it on because everyone is dead and it is a little buggy (like making it impossible most of the time to give the decorative platemail back to the queen)Seth Carter said:
Half EA's fault, half Origin. Here's the story of Ultima 9's fucked up development, if you're interested, courtesy of Hardcore Gaming 101:Seth Carter said:
For people that have kept up with Ultima since the early 80's, Ascension is simply tragic, a rushed piece of product rather than the denouement they've waited for. Interacting with Ultima fandom gives you the impression that a large chunk of it considers the series to have ended with Pagan, and that Ascension is simply not canon. This is all a horrible shame, because all the ingredients were there for an absolutely stunning game to make its mark in industry history, if only the development team had more time to fix bugs and a better plot to incorporate.
There are, of course, reasons behind how Ascension became what it is. It's not that Ascension had a troubled development history. Ultima VIII: Pagan had a troubled development history. Ultima IX: Ascension had the ninth circle of development hell.
The story of the game's development is long and twisted, and frankly makes for more interesting reading than the final product does. Planning for the game started as early as 1994, and went through various incarnations of both engine and game plot. The earliest idea seemed to be the use of the Crusader engine (a modified Pagan engine used for Origin's Crusader series) to create a similarly arcade-style Ultima but with a world that played more like the Britannia of Ultima IV and V. This changed when Pagan received largely negative fan feedback, causing the idea for Ascension to change dramatically (Garriott mentions in Fans.txt, included with Pagan's patch, that feedback has changed the idea for Ultima IX drastically back to classic Britannian role playing). A childhood friend of Garriott's named Bob White was hired as the game's development lead after that, and under White's direction the game adopted the current 'Guardian invades Britannia and Avatar engages him in final showdown' plot outline, while also continuing the Ultima tradition of ordering a totally new engine.
The new Ultima IX engine was isometric 3-D, rather like Pagan's viewpoint except rotatable and with fully 3D-rendered models instead of sprites (it appears to have been similar to the cameras used in many real-time strategy games in the 2000s, like Relic's Dawn of War series), and according to a Richard Garriott review for german magazine PC Player, the game would have used a skill tree system of development for characters like in Ultima Underworld. Unlike the released game, this version would have been a return to player parties; having Companions being one of Pagan's most missed features. The new plot, generally referred to by fans as the Bob White plot (though it was really written by Richard Garriott and several co-authors, with White only giving it some spit and shine), followed from Pagan with the Avatar returning to Britannia, and was essentially worked out in full by mid-1996; the 'bob white' plot for the game is available in full for anybody that cares to read it, and is rather more detailed than what made it into the final game. Progress for Ultima IX was going at a good clip until it suffered the setback which undeniably killed this version of the game for good: Origin's own unexpected success with Ultima Online.
Reportedly, the Bob White version of Ultima IX had actually reached an early alpha state (incomplete but playable) when the response for Ultima Online's first tests had proven unexpectedly positive. Electronic Arts chose to take advantage of what looked like a massive hit in the making and ordered the entire Ascension team reassigned to Ultima Online. UO was released less than a year later to massive history-making critical and player acclaim, but that's another story. By the time the rest of the Ascension team was back at work on it - the people that chose to return, since many did not - the game was looking distinctly dated and developer morale was at an all-time low.
Enter id Software's Quake II. Even before it was actually released in December of 1997, Quake II's hardware-accelerated 3D graphics caused a massive stir in the game industry, directly or indirectly sparking interest in the power of the new hardware-accelerated 3D graphics technology. Mike McShaffrey, one of the Ascension devs, managed to rejuvenate interest in the project by showing the rest of the team a version of the game running on 3Dfx's technology. The decision was made at Origin to overhaul the existing game to jump on this new graphics technology, and work on the game began anew, this time with a third-person action-platformer viewpoint for the camera in a fully 3D-modelled world.
The project lead for this version of the game was Edward Del Castillo, who previously produced Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer and Red Alert games. Under Castillo, the game's plot remained essentially the same as it had been under Bob White's leadership, but the game went through mechanical changes, some to accommodate the increased workload this new game would have on computers of the time and simplify production (it is at this point that player parties were removed as a game feature; as well, the option to be a female avatar or choose an appearance was dropped because it complicated the game's prerendered cutscenes). Ed Castillo had a somewhat different design philosophy than Bob White - under his leadership, the game became much more action-oriented and fast-paced. During this time, a teaser trailer for the game was released showing many of the game's cutscenes as well as video of the Avatar in combat, and this was the first glimpse of what the final product would eventually look like. (This is referred to by Ultima fans as the 'heavy metal' trailer due to the jarringly rock & roll music used, and is generally attributed to Ed Castillo's tastes and design philosophy).
For the second time the game was approaching completion, which per the rules of dramatic narrative meant it was time for disaster to strike again. Two of the key designers for Origin left the company on angry terms, leaving for former Origin and id Software programmer John Romero's start-up Ion Storm; Bob White followed them soon after, though he left Origin on rather more amicable terms. All three had creative differences with project leader Castillo's vision of the game. Little work was done on Ascension after this, and a month after White left, Castillo resigned due to a personality conflict with Richard Garriott. Ascension couldn't get a break; at least three times now it had been gutted right after making serious progress.
Richard Garriott at this point took direct control of the Ascension project. By now also, parent company Electronic Arts had become somewhat exasperated with the whole bloody mess and gave Origin a deadline for finishing Ultima IX: Christmas 1999, or else. This was not nearly enough time to implement the ambitious original script and all the features the developers wanted to incorporate in the final game. A period of frantic salvage work began: seven-day weeks, fifteen-hour days, developer nervous breakdowns, using every possible minute to slash Britannia's size, rewrite the plot into something more simplistic, and cut down the game's scale all so it had a chance of getting finished in time for the deadline. It's at this point where even a semblance of companions, most of the sidequests and all of the subplots, and NPC schedules were cut from the game, and it barely made it over the finish line, having won the race but lost its head and most of its limbs. The cut-up, unfinished and untested mess that EA published is the Ascension we have now.
The original version of Ascension is one of the most significant "lost games" in computer gaming, the CRPG equivalent of the Beach Boys' Smile or Harlan Ellison's third Dangerous Visions, and in the same league as the long-lost Black Isle Fallout 3, never-released Journeyman Project IV and canned Warcraft: Lord of the Clans. We can safely assume that the code and builds of the original isometric Bob White Ultima IX, or the in-progress Ed Castillo Ultima: Ascension are lost forever. Amusing, many elements of the original plot actually remain in the finished game, unexplained. Lord British's advanced age, normally unreachable but fully detailed areas of the dungeon Stonegate, a mysterious mirror in Lord British's bedroom, and many cutscenes which were re-purposed awkwardly when the events they were created for were removed.
There are, of course, reasons behind how Ascension became what it is. It's not that Ascension had a troubled development history. Ultima VIII: Pagan had a troubled development history. Ultima IX: Ascension had the ninth circle of development hell.
The story of the game's development is long and twisted, and frankly makes for more interesting reading than the final product does. Planning for the game started as early as 1994, and went through various incarnations of both engine and game plot. The earliest idea seemed to be the use of the Crusader engine (a modified Pagan engine used for Origin's Crusader series) to create a similarly arcade-style Ultima but with a world that played more like the Britannia of Ultima IV and V. This changed when Pagan received largely negative fan feedback, causing the idea for Ascension to change dramatically (Garriott mentions in Fans.txt, included with Pagan's patch, that feedback has changed the idea for Ultima IX drastically back to classic Britannian role playing). A childhood friend of Garriott's named Bob White was hired as the game's development lead after that, and under White's direction the game adopted the current 'Guardian invades Britannia and Avatar engages him in final showdown' plot outline, while also continuing the Ultima tradition of ordering a totally new engine.
The new Ultima IX engine was isometric 3-D, rather like Pagan's viewpoint except rotatable and with fully 3D-rendered models instead of sprites (it appears to have been similar to the cameras used in many real-time strategy games in the 2000s, like Relic's Dawn of War series), and according to a Richard Garriott review for german magazine PC Player, the game would have used a skill tree system of development for characters like in Ultima Underworld. Unlike the released game, this version would have been a return to player parties; having Companions being one of Pagan's most missed features. The new plot, generally referred to by fans as the Bob White plot (though it was really written by Richard Garriott and several co-authors, with White only giving it some spit and shine), followed from Pagan with the Avatar returning to Britannia, and was essentially worked out in full by mid-1996; the 'bob white' plot for the game is available in full for anybody that cares to read it, and is rather more detailed than what made it into the final game. Progress for Ultima IX was going at a good clip until it suffered the setback which undeniably killed this version of the game for good: Origin's own unexpected success with Ultima Online.
Reportedly, the Bob White version of Ultima IX had actually reached an early alpha state (incomplete but playable) when the response for Ultima Online's first tests had proven unexpectedly positive. Electronic Arts chose to take advantage of what looked like a massive hit in the making and ordered the entire Ascension team reassigned to Ultima Online. UO was released less than a year later to massive history-making critical and player acclaim, but that's another story. By the time the rest of the Ascension team was back at work on it - the people that chose to return, since many did not - the game was looking distinctly dated and developer morale was at an all-time low.
Enter id Software's Quake II. Even before it was actually released in December of 1997, Quake II's hardware-accelerated 3D graphics caused a massive stir in the game industry, directly or indirectly sparking interest in the power of the new hardware-accelerated 3D graphics technology. Mike McShaffrey, one of the Ascension devs, managed to rejuvenate interest in the project by showing the rest of the team a version of the game running on 3Dfx's technology. The decision was made at Origin to overhaul the existing game to jump on this new graphics technology, and work on the game began anew, this time with a third-person action-platformer viewpoint for the camera in a fully 3D-modelled world.
The project lead for this version of the game was Edward Del Castillo, who previously produced Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer and Red Alert games. Under Castillo, the game's plot remained essentially the same as it had been under Bob White's leadership, but the game went through mechanical changes, some to accommodate the increased workload this new game would have on computers of the time and simplify production (it is at this point that player parties were removed as a game feature; as well, the option to be a female avatar or choose an appearance was dropped because it complicated the game's prerendered cutscenes). Ed Castillo had a somewhat different design philosophy than Bob White - under his leadership, the game became much more action-oriented and fast-paced. During this time, a teaser trailer for the game was released showing many of the game's cutscenes as well as video of the Avatar in combat, and this was the first glimpse of what the final product would eventually look like. (This is referred to by Ultima fans as the 'heavy metal' trailer due to the jarringly rock & roll music used, and is generally attributed to Ed Castillo's tastes and design philosophy).
For the second time the game was approaching completion, which per the rules of dramatic narrative meant it was time for disaster to strike again. Two of the key designers for Origin left the company on angry terms, leaving for former Origin and id Software programmer John Romero's start-up Ion Storm; Bob White followed them soon after, though he left Origin on rather more amicable terms. All three had creative differences with project leader Castillo's vision of the game. Little work was done on Ascension after this, and a month after White left, Castillo resigned due to a personality conflict with Richard Garriott. Ascension couldn't get a break; at least three times now it had been gutted right after making serious progress.
Richard Garriott at this point took direct control of the Ascension project. By now also, parent company Electronic Arts had become somewhat exasperated with the whole bloody mess and gave Origin a deadline for finishing Ultima IX: Christmas 1999, or else. This was not nearly enough time to implement the ambitious original script and all the features the developers wanted to incorporate in the final game. A period of frantic salvage work began: seven-day weeks, fifteen-hour days, developer nervous breakdowns, using every possible minute to slash Britannia's size, rewrite the plot into something more simplistic, and cut down the game's scale all so it had a chance of getting finished in time for the deadline. It's at this point where even a semblance of companions, most of the sidequests and all of the subplots, and NPC schedules were cut from the game, and it barely made it over the finish line, having won the race but lost its head and most of its limbs. The cut-up, unfinished and untested mess that EA published is the Ascension we have now.
The original version of Ascension is one of the most significant "lost games" in computer gaming, the CRPG equivalent of the Beach Boys' Smile or Harlan Ellison's third Dangerous Visions, and in the same league as the long-lost Black Isle Fallout 3, never-released Journeyman Project IV and canned Warcraft: Lord of the Clans. We can safely assume that the code and builds of the original isometric Bob White Ultima IX, or the in-progress Ed Castillo Ultima: Ascension are lost forever. Amusing, many elements of the original plot actually remain in the finished game, unexplained. Lord British's advanced age, normally unreachable but fully detailed areas of the dungeon Stonegate, a mysterious mirror in Lord British's bedroom, and many cutscenes which were re-purposed awkwardly when the events they were created for were removed.
EA's contributions were...
1. Pulling the team off the game when it was still in the infancy of development to work on a higher profile project, thus effectively scuttling the first build.
2. Putting a real time strategy guy in charge of a storied CRPG franchise, whose "heavy metal/action" design philosophy sparked massive creative differences and team infighting and effectively scuttled another build.
3. Losing all patience with all the scuttled builds and setting a ludicrous hard deadline that couldn't possibly be reached with the game anything close to intact.
You could probably also blame them for the sycophantic, fawning reviews of the game that were not remotely representative of the actual product, which was a half-finished, buggy, crash ridden mess that stands tall as one of the worst games ever foisted on the unsuspecting gaming public, although the "gaming media" shares culpability on that one. Some plain manila envelopes must have changed hands.
EA is not evil, it just have a flawed track record and poor PR, which makes it a pretty easy target.
Personally, I don't think they are particularly worst than most other publishers out there, they just have more franchises people that people are about and have a bigger output, which makes them news worthy more often than others.
Personally, I don't think they are particularly worst than most other publishers out there, they just have more franchises people that people are about and have a bigger output, which makes them news worthy more often than others.
Dont forget EAs sports range Activison are horrific at killing franchises by milking them to death (so long Guitar Hero) and Ubi are doint it with AC but EA have been doing it for years and are still doing it.Jasper van Heycop said:
Its been a major criticism against them for as long as I can remember. Lots of people dont care I have friends who only play Fifa and COD, Battlefield and occasionally GTA5 (although that didnt last long).
Personally I loathe and detest EA more than any other gaming company ever since the early 90s I cant remember what they did to earn so much ire from me all I know is its still there.
Now as for whether they are evil it depends on how you view it I mean I doubt the higher ups are sitting there in their suits and going what woe can we bring upon gamers today. I personally see them as greedy scum with no morality who would act nice one second to gain your trust and then stab you in the back with their polished blade for a couple of pence as long as they think they can get away with it. Have there been and are there more evil corporations? well yes, dosent mean EA should get a free pass just because they arent killing kittens and babies for lols.
Oh as a side note I am ofc speaking of EA as a company as I have no doubt that there are a lot of talented and passionate people working for them who would like to release the best product they can that people would enjoy and thus earn money that way rather than make a game designed around gouging the customers pockets as much as possible.
Ruining and killing beloved franchises and developers.
Charging retail prices for their own games on their own online store.
Terrible customer service.
Deflecting legitimate criticism by labeling critics as "homophobes".
Using bots to vote during polls.
Reluctant to publish games on Nintendo's systems simply because they couldn't put Origin on their system.
Pushing for the half-assed multiplayer in single-player games, online passes, day-one dlc, season passes, etc.
I could list more, but I'd rather not.
There is no other company that I hate more. Not Activision, not Capcom, not even Microsoft.
Charging retail prices for their own games on their own online store.
Terrible customer service.
Deflecting legitimate criticism by labeling critics as "homophobes".
Using bots to vote during polls.
Reluctant to publish games on Nintendo's systems simply because they couldn't put Origin on their system.
Pushing for the half-assed multiplayer in single-player games, online passes, day-one dlc, season passes, etc.
I could list more, but I'd rather not.
There is no other company that I hate more. Not Activision, not Capcom, not even Microsoft.