Jimquisition: Why Do People Hate EA?

[The White Hunter]

Everything wrong with EA can be summarised by playing Bad Company 2 for a few hours.
Then play Battlefield 3.

See the difference?
I thought so.

Not a Battlefield fan but I have both and played both for some hours, what's the difference?

Played both for many hours.

BC2 is more it's own thing, it's alot more unique, whereas BF3 borrows alot more crap from COD.
I don't dislike COD but BF doesn't need to copy it to succeed and I found BF3 alot less enjoyable than BC2 as a result of the "must-beat-COD-at-COD" mentality that seems to possess EA these days.

 

[Hitchmeister]

In defense of the "they're just a business" comments: that's not supposed to excuse what businesses do, but point out the naivety of expecting anything better from a business. Yes, occasionally a Valve comes along and offers better than you would expect from a business, but that's just it. They deliver what you shouldn't expect.

The sad thing is, both EA and Activision started out as champions of the consumers. There was reason to love them when they started. Activision first appeared making games for the Atari 2600. They actually gave the programmers credit, which was unthinkable to Atari, and attracted better, more motivated programmers to make better games for the players. It was wonderful. EA started as a distributor for small innovative computer game developers that couldn't get their games out to as wide an audience as the games deserved. By working together, really good stuff got to the hands of grateful players everywhere and EA was seen as a wonderful thing. Given enough time, however, both companies grew into the thing they originally hated and were designed to fight. Because they got so big they had to become the type of business you should never expect anything better from.

(Please hold the shirt. It wouldn't fit me any better than Jim.)

 

[Tamrin]

This is pretty much an episode version of his GameFront article "Why Electronic Arts Makes Me So Mad" from last December . I loved reading it then as much as watching it today.

 

[Terramax]

Also, i dont want the shirt, Jim does nothing for me and i already have a tent. ;-)

Damnit! I can't 'thumbs up' as this isn't facebook.

 

[MB202]

Reading the description and watching this video, I found another reason why people hate IGN as well as EA.

 

[quantumcat]

Yikes. It's hard to defend EA when you hear a list of their sins all in a row.

[I would like a Gravity Rush shirt please. Also Jim is sexy.]

 

[Paul Barclay]

In some fo their earliest advertising, EA asked the question, "Can a computer make you cry?" They must have been having problems with that, so they decided to see if a computer could make me swear at it or throw pieces of it across the room.

http://chrishecker.com/Can_a_Computer_Make_You_Cry%3F

[Also, I would like the shirt, but could you go ahead and send me that "threatening or bad" other thing as well?]

 

[punipunipyo]

I thought I loved Deadspace 1, and 2... Oh.. wait.. you are now referring to the new "we want to sell 5Mil copies of Lost-Gears-of-Dead-Planet3?" oh THAT EA, yep, "Let it die, let it die, let it shrivel up and..." I am still MAAAAD about the stupid "Colorific ending of ME3" and EA NOT GOING TO FIX IT....

 

[Theopenmindedgamer]

I really started to hate EA when i saw what is probably the most asanine Ad for a game i ever seen. The Dead space 2 "your mom is gonna hate this" Ad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jri8LFci4xQ

THEY MARKETED A M RATED GAME TO MINORS! Not only that, but this trasvety of an Ad futher reinforce the sterotype of gamers been shut in`s that stays in their mom`s basement. What in the hell was the marketing team at EA thinking!? They were out of their goddamn minds (And probably still are). Not long after seen this, i heard about the marketing that they did with Dante`s inferno. They ran a contest call "Sin to win" in which you had to "commit acts of lust with any booth babes, prove it and repeat", again further tarnishing the image of gamers. For christ sake there`s already enough problems with the image of the gaming community and EA is making it even worse! Some people view gamers as shut in`s losers with no lives and EA is giving them more reason to think that way! This kind of marketing hurts EVERYONE. It hurts the gaming community, it hurts the game industry and it most definitely hurt EA itself.

 

[Thoric485]

What really annoys me about the IGN article is that not only the interviewer entirely avoids mentioning the half a dozen prolific studios EA has killed, but then the smug suited up fuck he's talking to goes out of his way to say "the highway of innovation is littered with roadkill, developers and publishers that just couldn't figure it out".

Of course, no comment follows, no mention of Origin Systems, Bullfrog, Westwood, Mythic or even Pandemic, who were acquired together with BioWare and are already 2 years gone.

IGN are not journalists, they're sluts.

 

[comadorcrack]

It makes me sad that one Englishman cannot win a shirt of another....

I really want to know where about's from the UK Jim is now... To the google!

 

[DoPo]

Wait, I know EA is evil, but what does activision do, besides the whole CoD schmuck?

Bobby Kotick - Activision's CEO, gained some fame a couple of years back. Fame of the bad variety. It was because of the things he said and did. Seriously, that guy was like the personification of Satan in the gaming industry back then, partly about CoD, partly about some other bad practices, partly because of the utterly stupid things he said (some of them misquoted, but still), to the point where if anybody came out and said "Bobby Kotick sacrificed 1000 people today because it was Tuesday" nobody would had been impressed, really.

[I don't want the T-shirt and I'm in the UK anyway, but Jim is still a sexy man]

 

[KeyMaster45]

And yet I think that asking EA why people hate EA isn't exactly a bad thing. Why? It all depends on what you're set out to point out or describe with your article. I think asking EA why people hate EA gives us a pretty good understanding of how they think, how in touch they are with their audience and how it influences them. Of course we all know the answer to those questions now.

Ideally they should have asked both the consumers and EA. That's if they were looking to actually write a non-biased article which explored the disconnect between the two parties. Instead they opted for lazily going to EA and saying "People hate you...why?". That's like asking an abusive parent why they beat their kids because they're response is inevitably going to be "I don't beat my kids, I just discipline the little bastards when they step outta line. Every parent disciplines their kids, so why criticize my methods?"

I would say I hope IGN reprimands the article author for shitty journalism, but if they did that I imagine it wouldn't have been published like it is in the first place.

 

[DrScoobs]

I too also remember when EA used to be "not as bad as activision. I have since refused to buy either companies games FULL STOP. Vote with your wallets people!

p.s. Also, i would like the gravity rush shirt please! And Jim is sexy.

 

[Aureliano]

Delicious episode, Jim. The knee-jerk 'EA by definition can't be a bad company because what they do is make video games' response has always irked me and I think this is a nice laundry list of reasons why a company that doesn't make bioweapons can still be doing shitty things.

[Don't really need the shirt, but Jim gives me a boner.]

 

[joshthor]

I completely agree. I used to avidly defend EA around 2007 when they made mirrors edge and were actually doing cool things, not burning guitar hero and call of duty into the ground like activision. Then, they put out origin. FUCK origin. I love some of EAs games (dragon age, mass effect...umm.... well i like bioware) but its getting harder and harder to justify a purchase of the game when im fueling a war machine. Ill buy thier game if it hits a steam sale, or ill rent it and play it.

[Also, I would very much like that shirt because Jim is sexy and it touched his knobby hands.]

 

[Liono324]

Don't know if you've noticed this Jim, but EA is having a massive price slashing on Origin. Let's pretend it's because they were watching your videos
Though it was nice to pick on Dead Space 2 for 5 euros, instead of 50-60$ elsewhere, still not sure if it makes up for their behavior and I'd rather see them coming out and start listing the ways they're going to dig themselves out of the ditch they've fallen into.


P.S.
[I would like a Gravity Rush shirt please, also, Jim is sexy. All of that in one... thing. So do that]

 

[RJ 17]

I forget which part of the video it was, but one of the numerous times Jim says "That's fucked up" it shows a picture of a shrimp...what's the deal with that?

As for EA, yeah, I saw that article first in a topic someone had made here and thought that it would be IGN asking gamers why they hated EA, not a fluff piece designed to help EA try and exonerate (spelling) itself by saying "Yeah, we do a lot of shitty things, but other people do it too! We need moar monies!!"

That's like asking Obama why people think he's doing a bad job with the economy.

It's like asking Waffle House why everyone considers their restaraunts nothing but places you go to only when you're vomitting-on-yourself drunk at 3 in the morning.

It's like asking Jerry Sandusky why everyone seems to hate a guy who has a pile of evidence declaring him to be a child molestor.

In situations like these, you can't go to the source of a problem and ask it why everyone thinks it's a problem. It'd be one thing if the story was two-sided, interview EA but only after surveying numerous gamers for their opinions, then bring those opinions to EA and ask them to address them. Nope, IGN just went to EA and said "We're going to give you an article, tell us how you want to defend yourself."

I just think the most telling part of EA's commitment to selling that homogenized grey sludge that Jim mentions is Dead Space 3. Co-Op campaign with Isaac teaming up with a space marine to give it "broader appeal"...broad enough to sell 5 million copies or the franchie will go under. Well, since it's no longer set in Space, guess that just leaves it as Dead...much like the franchise itself. Thanks again, EA, for another ruined IP.

*pulls a string* "The Sentient Captcha says: "Strike Three"."

 

[melikeyshootey]

Biggest reason I hate EA is for their stupid online passes. No EA, I don't want to play $10 for something I should already be able to play! Also, EA is likely the company that ruined Mass Effect 3's ending, if not Bioware. Even if that wasn't their fault, there is no way the Day-1 DLC wasn't EA's idea.

 

[AyaReiko]

Asking EA why everyone hates EA is like asking Hitler why the Jews hate him.

And really, what isn't there to loathe about EA?

[And I want sexy Jim's sexy shirt.]
[...Or that plush Skyrim helmet.]