jklinders said:
is pretty anti consumer right now. I believe they are right that AAA games are a little undervalued on the consumer side right now given how expensive it is to make them, but it is madness to suggest that they are trying to tackle the issue in a way that is fair to the consumer.
Bad DRM, forcing the use of Origin and letting IP they own rot on the vine rather than trying to use it are good reasons to hate them. Killing more than a few good classic studios and churning out the same copy/paste games year after year is another good reason(who the fuck buys a new football video game year after year after year? a co-worker who was getting into game design told me that these titles are so rehashed that there is code more than 20 years old in these pieces of shit).
I don't buy a lot of their crap because...it's crap. Bioware is about the only reason I have to purchase from them, especially since 38 Studios is dead.
But the worst in America? Really? There are companies that have been implicated in horrific environmental disasters, economic failures and outright embezzlement on a scale that makes anything EA has done X 1000 seem like the taking of school lunch money from a kid once, by comparison.
Pretty overblown if you ask me.
Which I think you did.
Dryk said:
jklinders said:
But the worst in America? Really? There are companies that have been implicated in horrific environmental disasters, economic failures and outright embezzlement on a scale that makes anything EA has done X 1000 seem like the taking of school lunch money from a kid once, by comparison.
The western world really needs to get its shit together in this regard before we end up killing ourselves or worse. Especially the US *shakes fist* try leading with a
positive example for once ya bastards.
I think Dexter111 has already answered why EA beat out the companies that crashed the economy and polluted the planet for the award this year. If you click on the link in his quote, he explains that all those companies have already won the award, and he even sources his info. Kudos. Basically, EA was the worst company that hadn't already won.
Dexter111 said:
Well, they bring up some good points that I kept iterating over too, like for instance when this came up back in the day: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.369872-Why-EA-Just-why#14335463
I just don't agree with the conclusion.
I don't think that companies should be there and inherently exist to "just make more money", I don't think that's a healthy way of conducting business and there should be company values, business ethics and morals to uphold.
And I don't think having those would drive them bankrupt or anything of the likes, just have to look at other companies like Valve and CDProjekt and they've seemed to manage fine so far without employing business practices that piss of a large part of consumers and without gouging either, not to talk about smaller development studios or indies.
In the end, I'm happy that EA seems to be going down the crapper and their share prices are ever so often reaching new all-time lows:
And I welcome the new power of KickStarter and similar to self-fund games I (and other people) want to play. I believe the gaming world would be better off without Activision and EA, maybe not bigger or more profitable, but certainly better off in the long-term.
If they wanted to "better themselves" and be more attractive to consumers and get some good PR for once, they could always trim down all the fat to keep development costs lower and maybe save some money from those $100 million marketing campaigns to give them on to their customers.
They somewhat tried some of that in ~2007-08 by introducing a lot of new IP and trying to cut down on the gouging, but rather soon turned around to more of it.
Whenever they are somewhat getting into monetary trouble they aren't looking for a fault in their business models but
with the customer, surely by charging more, gouging with microtransactions and offer more cut out DLC to buy at Launch, as well as producing ever more sequels and shortening the development cycle to a year or two tops they're going to fix that right up.
OT: I haven't been able to afford any new games recently, and I don't game on PC so I haven't had to deal with Origin. I haven't played Mass Effect 3 yet, so I don't know how bad the ending supposedly is, and I have done my best to avoid spoilers. From what I've heard, it seems to me that people are mad because the ending supposedly makes all the choices you made in the series up to that point meaningless, which is a bad thing for a series where your choices carrying weight was a defining feature. If at the end you ask yourself, "The path I took, did it
really matter?" I can see how that would be terrible for Mass Effect. It would rob the experience of what is arguably its most appealing aspect and make the whole thing feel like a hollow shell of itself at the end. But as I've said, I haven't played it yet, so I can't really comment with any authority on the matter, that's just the general vibe I get.
I've never played Dragon Age so I can't comment on that.
I personally don't
hate EA, but I haven't had to deal with any of its recent transgressions personally. I have heard of some of its business practices and I disapprove, but my disapproval carries no weight with them as this is the first time I have made it known, and even if I had made it known earlier and directly to them, they can afford the disapproval of one guy (or several million it seems). The article from IGN does make a few valid and understandable points, and some of the rational comments in this thread also make some good points, but what some (not all) of the people defending EA fail to realize is that despite some rather vocal opposition from its consumers (you know, the people who make them a successful corporation and should be treated with respect because of that fact) EA continues to engage in deplorable and disrespectful business practices that alienate and unnecessarily inconvenience consumers and insults those consumers who bring this fact up. And part of the reason people are so mad is that EA is a successful enough company that it doesn't need to engage in these kinds of practices at all. I understand that shareholders carry a lot of weight with a company and its policies, but the consumers should carry at least as much, if not more, weight because it is the consumers that fuel a company's continued success. Then again, I am not a Business or Economics major or specialist, so maybe I am too ignorant on the subject to understand the complexities of the problem. Maybe I'm just not thinking this through enough, but I doubt anyone is going to expect my opinion at 4 a.m. to be so logically sound as to be airtight.
A question (not topic related): if I quote someone who has quoted somebody else, do they both get a message?
Sorry for the long post, I would have snipped some of the quotes, but some of the points bear reiterating and I didn't want people forgetting the context.
