This is kind of a rant I made for lolz while talking to a friend about EA. I understand not all the information provided is completely accurate so you don't have to pick it apart. Though I do realize that on some level the only reason you are here is because the term techno vampire sounded cool.
I hate EA, I've made that pretty clear over time to anyone that's bothered to ask. There exist a problem therein that I still love many of the smaller studios the entity we call EA has actually come to represent though, thus I am to an extent forced to deal with EA if I want to play the games made by these studios bioware would be a big example there.
At one time, not so long ago, one could get EA games on steam.
Not long before Battlefield 3 went beta however, EA started making ridiculous demands of valve/steam and now we have origin in charge of every aspect of the game. I don't really have a serious problem with origin. It does work even if I find the themes, scaling, message system... let's just stick with 'steam is better'.
No the problem is I have 100's of friends on steam playing dozens of games I can jump in with at any time. This list has been built up over many years. I'm sure many live users feel the same way as that system has been around for a bit now too. What I'm driving at is now I have origin, and 3 friends. ...that are never online. This has destroyed battlefield 3 for the average/casual player, (and whatever I am... 'moderately serious gamer' I guess) as the com system only functions between origin friends. Forcing me to set up teamspeak for each server, and having another background app running in addition to the 4 other game related tray icons I'm forced to use these days. Instead of having squad coms as battlefield 2 did. This new system is horrible, and compounds my problem greatly. I can't talk to people in game, that's kind of a corner stone of many of the really great fps multi-players. It's what set counterstrike apart from so many other games for so many years. Hell people still play the original version in pretty fair numbers even though the engine is over a decade old. Why change this?
It took me a while to realize what it really was about steam that bothered EA so much. It's the community, anyone that has played source engine games should know how massive community support in the form of mods and customizations are. Innovation/modification seems to go against EA's business model, they somehow seem to believe that having complete control over everything solves problems. When in fact it kills fan enthusiasm and their sales are going to start declining far more quickly. The only place they have really diverged from this is with their huge 'The Sims' which accepts modding and customizing pretty well. It's also, interestingly enough the only thing they are really producing themselves anymore.
For the longest time I figured the concern was for copy protection, but that's not the case it would seem. I mean sure that's part of it, trying to manage drm that doesn't hurt the legitimate customers as much as the pirates has become somewhat of an art form.
All that really is just rant though, the core of the matter is the loss of my massive collection of friends, that is useless to me now because EA and Valve couldn't play well together. I'm not saying Valve is completely without fault in this however, if I was in their place I wouldn't be willing to make massive sweeping changes to a system I spent years developing and tweaking only so it could be stolen and recycled by all the other major game distributors.
My question to the EA guys would probably have to go something like this.
Dear mommy and daddy, (as I can only assume this is how they see themselves)
why are you making us move again? We just got settled and made tons of friends! You never think about what we want or need anymore. I hate you, I'm running off with some crazy goth chick that thinks she's a 'techno vampire'. She'll probably rip out my heart eventually too, but at least she'll look me in the eyes while she's doing it.
Signed,
the kid.
Have I made a point yet?
Probably not, but who cares, techno vampires are hot.
lolz
C_F
I hate EA, I've made that pretty clear over time to anyone that's bothered to ask. There exist a problem therein that I still love many of the smaller studios the entity we call EA has actually come to represent though, thus I am to an extent forced to deal with EA if I want to play the games made by these studios bioware would be a big example there.
At one time, not so long ago, one could get EA games on steam.
Not long before Battlefield 3 went beta however, EA started making ridiculous demands of valve/steam and now we have origin in charge of every aspect of the game. I don't really have a serious problem with origin. It does work even if I find the themes, scaling, message system... let's just stick with 'steam is better'.
No the problem is I have 100's of friends on steam playing dozens of games I can jump in with at any time. This list has been built up over many years. I'm sure many live users feel the same way as that system has been around for a bit now too. What I'm driving at is now I have origin, and 3 friends. ...that are never online. This has destroyed battlefield 3 for the average/casual player, (and whatever I am... 'moderately serious gamer' I guess) as the com system only functions between origin friends. Forcing me to set up teamspeak for each server, and having another background app running in addition to the 4 other game related tray icons I'm forced to use these days. Instead of having squad coms as battlefield 2 did. This new system is horrible, and compounds my problem greatly. I can't talk to people in game, that's kind of a corner stone of many of the really great fps multi-players. It's what set counterstrike apart from so many other games for so many years. Hell people still play the original version in pretty fair numbers even though the engine is over a decade old. Why change this?
It took me a while to realize what it really was about steam that bothered EA so much. It's the community, anyone that has played source engine games should know how massive community support in the form of mods and customizations are. Innovation/modification seems to go against EA's business model, they somehow seem to believe that having complete control over everything solves problems. When in fact it kills fan enthusiasm and their sales are going to start declining far more quickly. The only place they have really diverged from this is with their huge 'The Sims' which accepts modding and customizing pretty well. It's also, interestingly enough the only thing they are really producing themselves anymore.
For the longest time I figured the concern was for copy protection, but that's not the case it would seem. I mean sure that's part of it, trying to manage drm that doesn't hurt the legitimate customers as much as the pirates has become somewhat of an art form.
All that really is just rant though, the core of the matter is the loss of my massive collection of friends, that is useless to me now because EA and Valve couldn't play well together. I'm not saying Valve is completely without fault in this however, if I was in their place I wouldn't be willing to make massive sweeping changes to a system I spent years developing and tweaking only so it could be stolen and recycled by all the other major game distributors.
My question to the EA guys would probably have to go something like this.
Dear mommy and daddy, (as I can only assume this is how they see themselves)
why are you making us move again? We just got settled and made tons of friends! You never think about what we want or need anymore. I hate you, I'm running off with some crazy goth chick that thinks she's a 'techno vampire'. She'll probably rip out my heart eventually too, but at least she'll look me in the eyes while she's doing it.
Signed,
the kid.
Have I made a point yet?
Probably not, but who cares, techno vampires are hot.
lolz
C_F
