Poll: Do you think we're being too harsh or Unfair on E.A's Games recently?

[Abomination]

EA produces great games. They are often well polished and have realiable mechanics and good strong development behind them. The problem is EA has terribly consumer-unfriendly practices and games are a whole 'part and parcel' deal.

If I don't want a multiplayer component I want the option to not pay for it, but EA will include it anyway and charge me for it while also having devoted extra time to it reducing the quality of the single player that I actually do want.

The push towards microtransaction and always on DRM, not to mention this whole SimCity debacle and issue for a game that would only need the ability to share city results as a social feature, nothing else. But they have gone full hog and decided that Blizzard had something awesome going with how Diablo III worked... which even an 6 year old could tell them is a bad idea.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

The thing is there are tons of games where there literally is nobody who plays then online for days on end. Its idiotic and a waste of money to keep running those servers

But they don't need to keep running any servers. Me and my friends still play Unreal Tournament and Jedi Academy fairly often and just host the match ourselves. This costs the developers/publishers nothing and we can still play our game.

 

[Liquidcool]

Welcome to the EA Acquisition Crash Course. This time with 50% less bias (I'll reign it in for this thread.)

Thanks for the thoughtful post. It was very enlightening.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

Why stop at EA? The big name gaming industry as a whole largely disgusts and depresses me.

 

[Zenoss]

I think it's okay to be angry at the publisher when it becomes apparent that their business practices are negatively impacting the game.
It's the only way to explain what's happened to the new Sim City. No underground rail/Subways and tiny cities. And this is obviously so they can be added in as microtransactions after the fact.

In the mean time, the game is crippled.

 

[Snotnarok]

Sorta, I enjoyed the games I got from them but I don't buy all their titles, Mass Effect and the Dragon age games? I've enjoyed them all greatly. (I didn't get super far into Dragon Age 2 however so don't quote me calling me an idiot, well okay go ahead but just say it for a different reason at least!)

But going by sim city?

This looks like a bit of a problem, a recurring one given I hear the Sims games have been including less and less content and a lot more expansions.

 

[Louzon]

I would have said "debatable" until I heard that Crytek had a port of Crysis 3 for Wii U with a new engine for the system ready to go, and EA cancelled it because they wanted their online service with it, and Nintendo and EA don't get along since EA got denied with the Origin thing. Now, it's completely "Screw you, EA".

 

[Weaver]

When they start making games again instead of weekly DLC platforms to suck money out of consumers like a milk cow then I might cut them some slack.

 

[Denamic]

It's not about their games; it'a about they treat their customers. If they're not treating their customers like shit, they're holding parts of your game hostage for purchase.

 

[Doom972]

The harsher we treat them for their policies, the faster they'll become better. No, I don't think we're being too harsh.
EA seemed to have improved slightly after they got the "Worst company in America" award, and some time after that, they went back to being awful again. They obviously need some more negative reinforcement.

Are you worried about people hurting EA's feelings?

 

[LordLundar]

Nope, because I'm treating them using the same excuse they give time and time again.

Every time that they are called out on their at best questionable business practices they fall back on the same excuse that they are a business. So I treat them as one. As such I call them out on their questionable practices as being short sighted and unfriendly to the customer and refuse to buy their products for the same reason.

A lot of the people who have walked away from them are less the "spit acid at" type and more "reap what you sow" type. When you treat your customers like shit, they stop purchasing from you and no amount of requests for loyalty are going to change that.

They're a business, I treat them as a business. That is what's biting them in the ass.

 

[ResonanceSD]

No.

Dragon Age 2

Mass Effect 3's ending

MoH Warfighter

Crysis 2

Wedgewood

Sim City.


Take your pick of any of those and tell me why I'm being "harsh or Unfair".

 

[WoW Killer]

On EA? No. They're not friends of consumers. On their games individually? Yes, a bit. It's this internet trend of having to paint everything as black and white. Games can have political issues like DRM, but still have solid gameplay. The gaming community of t'Internets will however inevitably call that gameplay into question the moment said game becomes popular to hate on. We should be clear about what it is that we dislike, so that we don't send the wrong messages to the industry.

 

[sXeth]

Well, I have't really delved into their games much in the past decade anyways.
They have a bit of a stigma for mucking up the entire closing trilogy of Ultima to facilitate its MMO version. And killing off Dungeon Keeper. They published the Rock Band series, which I never had any trouble with. C&C took a really abrupt turn with #4 that I don't understand, but until then was doing alright enough under the EA banner. Can't say if I just got off Simcity, or it changed substantailly, but never could really get into them past 2000.

Bioware was always overhyped, and well on their way to mucking up before EA got them, for my personal two cents, so can't really be bothered either way there.

 

[NightmareExpress]

EA is a scourge, the developers are plague victims.
That's how I see it.

You can never be harsh enough to EA, whereas you can definitely be too harsh to (some of) the poor saps underneath them.

 

[Joccaren]

No, not really.

I don't judge EAs games based of EA. Hell, I just got off writing a post saying that an EA game could potentially be good, but the business practices around it are shit and that's why I'm not going to pay full price for it.

Thing is though, most of their games that I've played recently HAVE been shit. Warfighter, Mass Effect 3 [IMO], Battlefield 3 and probably a couple of others that don't instantly come to mind. Games like Dead Space don't interest me. They look like generic shooters and I here a mix of things when it comes to how they handle the horror aspect so, never really gotten into them. Racing games and sport games IDGAF about. But EAs recent games that I have bought? Disappointing. I'm not being too hard on them, and neither are a lot of people that I see.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

In my opinion, here's the thing, some good stuff comes out of EA.
To list a few things that I like:
Army of Two series
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Dead Space series

I LOVE these games but I really don't like the company they come from.

 

[Joccaren]

The real issue is that people just like to hate on EA. EA gets all the blame when a studio releases a poor game but none of the praise when the studio releases several of their best games in a row while under EA.

I call bullshit for 2 reasons.
1. I never see this happen. No studio has released better games after being bought by EA that I can remember.
2. People do support EA when their developer releases a good game. Dragon Age Origins as an example, people were like "Wow, EA didn't ruin something for once!". A lot of people did the same for Mass Effect 2. After that though EA ruined things and the hatred overtook any praise of EA.

Is there a difference between not being able to play online because EA closed the server or not being able to play online because nobody is online anymore?

Yes. I don't want to play online. I want to play single player. Sadly, I have to play single player online because EA made a game with Always Online DRM. If there was nobody online to play with, it wouldn't effect me. EA closes down the servers, I can no longer play my game. Yay.

 

[Jandau]

Nope, we haven't.

I dislike Dead Space 3 on its own merits, regardless of the microtransactions, I don't care about NFS and while I wasn't quite so outraged by the ending of Mass Effect 3 as many appear to have been, I did find the whole final section (attack on Earth) to be a complete letdown - rushed, unfinished and unsatisfying.

EA's approach to long running franchises is deplorable, attempting to homogenize them to the greatest possible extent and killing them in the process. Over and over and over again, apparently unable to realize that it doesn't work that way. Yes, CoD and BF bring in tons of money, but you can't make every existing series more like them and expect more money to come in. Modern Military shooter fans often don't care about those games and the actual fans of the series being changed are unhappy with the changes.

The notion that just because you published someone's game and it turned out popular that you now somehow know what good games are like and what should be made is ridiculous, but you can't get that past the skulls of morons in EA, so we get to watch more and more development studios being driven into the ground and then killed off simply for following orders, when they could have been productive and profitable if they'd just been allowed to make their games.