What, specifically, has E.A. done? *I seriously don't know*

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Never forget. You will be in our hearts forever!

Oh yeah, as well as those other guys.

'Specially Maxis.

They ruled.

*sniff* the pain never heals.

Also their marketing team is beyond terrible.
They are all talk no action when it comes to bring competitive with other companies.
But the worst thing about EA is what they used to be. Once the beacon for games as an art form and passion for the medium, corrupted by greed and corporate culture into the cancerous growth on the industry of today, devoid of the creativity it used to have it, now feeding of the creativity of others like a parasite.

 

[Arrogancy]

Pandemic Studios: The geniuses behind "Star Wars: Battlefront" and "Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction". Partnered with Bioware in 2005, making "Destroy All Humans!". Bought by EA in 2007 when EA bought Bioware. Went on to make "Mercenaries 2: World in Flames", "Lord of the Rings: Conquest", and "The Saboteur", all of which did not meet sales expectations, before being closed down.

Also, EA has a reputation for making the same game over and over, such as with "Madden NFL."

What you told me is that EA did not just shut down Pandemic. EA allowed Pandemic to fail three times before shutting them down. That's not evil. That's sound business sense.

Remember that you are only as good as your last project in a business model. It does not matter if these "geniuses" made three good games first. What matters is their final three games failed miserably.

Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and Rock Band are essentially the same game. EA has released them every year. Is is somehow better for the "core" approved games to be repetitive and not the much derided casual games.

You seem to have missed the point somewhat, I'll elaborate a bit further. Let's say I run a real estate company, and I recently acquired a subsidiary construction company. This subsidiary company has made perfectly good buildings beforehand, and there is no serious reason to believe that they will not continue to do so. I give this company three months to design and erect an apartment complex. This company fails to do so and the result is a poor building. I repeat this process two more times, all three times I cannot find buyers for the poorly made buildings. I then decide to liquidate the construction company. By your logic the failure was on the part of the construction company for not creating a good building, not me as a manager for providing outrageous expectations in a ridiculous time-span. This is exactly what EA does.

No one is mad that the studios failed under EA simply because EA owned them when they failed, what they're mad at is that EA sets these companies up for failure by giving them Sisyphean tasks that cannot physically be accomplished, then liquidating them. These companies did not fail because they produced a bad product, they failed because EA gave them no possible opportunity to succeed.

 

[Arrogancy]

EA are an Randian nightmare. Atlas Shrugged is a dystopian tale filled with corporations that operate similar to EA, and with similar results. They are parasites who destroy productive and successful companies in order to survive. Most of the people before me have summed up these thoughts, so I'll just leave it there.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Maxis: The mind behind "Simcity". After being bought by EA, they went on to make "The Sims", which has a reputation for being dragged down with expansion packs. "Spore" did not go over too well either, being massively pirated. Nowadays, pretty much nothing other than an EA brand name.

I so miss their unique sense of humor. The Streets of Simcity is still one of my favorite games. I haven't played a Maxis game since Simcity 4... I want my Maxis back!

This is the main reason why, summed up into one webcomic:

They don't allow studios independence. And once the acquired gaming studio has outlived its usefulness, they suck it dry of all its juicy IPs and kill it. They're parasites.

I was going to post this if it wasn't already. This is why EA is the most hated company in Americaland. They buy the talent, use it until they can't be useful anymore then disband it.

 

[Meatspinner]

I thought I'd never live to see an EA apologist.

Let me just hit you guys with some well thought out had hitting, indisputable facts:

EA is a malignant tumor in the heart of gaming....
It is a fevered ego festering and tainting the collective conscious of gamers...
EA sucks
It is the Nazi party of developers...
I've had more attachment to some of my most painful turds rather than EA
John Riccitiello is a furry

Now if you gentlemen would excuse me, I need to get back to mourning the Wing Commander series along with all the bullfrog IPs that got "saved" by EA.

Never Forget

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

snip

Well that's the creepy thing isn't it.

They obviously went and looked....

D:

 

[frizzlebyte]

They were founded promising to do their best to make good games as they could, and make art. They ar enow a money grubbing company that will buy and disssolve any less rich company that happens to make good games.

Pretty much, yeah.

I think one of the best examples of this recently is The Old Republic. Tell me an actual KOTOR III wouldn't have sold buttloads of copies.

I'm sorry, the whole idea of TOR was impressive, but to have eliminated any chance of non-mmo players from ever getting to see how KOTOR's storyline would turn out just doesn't make any business sense at all, because they completely alienated the avid fans of the single-player originals when they did that.

Mainly because EA thought: "Oh, Star Worlds of Warcraft's gotta equal $$$$$$$"

And the record time for changing an mmo subscription model to free-to-play is held by you guys because it was selling just great, right? Keeping those subs around for the long haul, right?

Oh yeah. Maybe not. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117159-EA-Blames-Casuals-For-Falling-Old-Republic-Subscriber-Numbers]

And because of the cock-up that is TOR, I firmly suspect that Bioware the company has only about 3-5 years left, if gamers are lucky. They sure as hell have ceased to be the company they once were.

Well, I had hoped to keep it civil, but this is about as civil as I can get when a company guts my favorite developer with a rusty spoon.

 

[ThriKreen]

I thought I'd never live to see an EA apologist.

Less "apologist" and more of "observing the situation and result with a realistic viewpoint and noticing that both parties are at fault".

And not being on a witch hunt.

But hey, if you want to rant and rave and wave your pitchfork and torch around, by all means.

I still have my original Wing Commander 1 box and floppy disks. I've played the first Red Alert, loved the hell out of Syndicate. While I mourn the demise of the studios, I realize that every publisher is just as bad and might have done the exact same thing. And that the studios might act the same when getting a sudden infusion of funding (indeed, could argue that hubris might get in the way with less restraint on funds - "Now I can make my magnus opus! Let's call it Too Human or ME3!")

While I don't like the end results either, at least I understand why it happened, and it's less the intentional evil puppy kicking that people always attribute to them. Incompetence perhaps, but not malice.

 

[J Tyran]

Productions: The original company of Peter "mouth too big for his own good" Molyneux. Bought by EA in 1995. Molyneux left to form Lionhead two years later, with Bullfrog closing down in 2004 after being merged with EA UK.

Bullfrog merging with EA wasn't that simple though, Peter Molyneux was EAs vice president before EA bought Bullfrog IIRC. The other Bullfrog co-founder became EAs European studio president too.

Whatever went on it wasn't so simple as EA eating up Bullfrog and closing it, with the co-founders getting executive positions within EA there was definitely more to it. EA are not the only publisher to buy and close developers either, they are all guilty of it. As soon as an in house owned developer has a few commercial failures job cuts and studio closures start to happen. Publishers will often change developers beyond all recognition, so much so that they might as well have closed them. That doesn't seem to earn them the same vitriol as closing a studio even though its as bad as closing it.

All of the things people accuse EA of are not unique to EA. There are a few good devs and publishers like Valve and CD Projekt but nearly everyone else has the same mixture of greed, incompetence and ruthless business practice as EA. EA are not the worst for DLC shenanigans, THQ and Capcom compete for that title. Bethesda where one of the first to kick off the whole overpriced DLC with the Oblivion horse armour. Other publishers gleefully use online passes. Activision-Blizzard where the first to start bumping up prices and are just as greedy as EA, look at what they intend to do with Star Craft 2. Finally you have Ubisoft, with horrible DRM that wont let you play your game and the way they persist on forcing a limited number of activation's.

I am not defending EA but am I not going to single them out as an object of hatred when nothing they have done is unique, neither are they worst for some of the anti consumer shit publishers pull. One thing I will say though is that EA have and do make good games, not all of their games are good but not all are bad either. Over the decades I must have had thousands of hours of entertainment out of games published by EA, just the same as some of the publishers I singled out earlier in my post. Those publishers have made many good games too.

 

[FalloutJack]

Well, I've been reading up on some of their happenings as per the board's funny habit of posting stories, and the thing that I most take away from it is that EA is fucking retarded. Like...Dilbert management retarded.

I cited this one elsewhere, I forget which thread.

It's a case of being evil and dishonest, but also stupid. Rather, it's BECAUSE they're out of touch with reality that they have to be so evil, as that is their only recourse.

 

[targren]

In short, I hate EA because they are an old fashioned, apathetic, profit driven, corporate and business-as-usual publisher in an industry where that attitude and approach ends up fucking the consumer and the developers. I've met EA's founder Trip before and he's the kind of douche that belongs back in the 60's.

That's particularly funny because, back before they became the Microsoft/800-lb gorilla of game development (back when their logo was a rectangle, a triangle, and a circle... not sure what the circle stood for...), Electronic Arts had a reputation of innovative and quirky games. I still remember "Fatal Rewind" on the genesis, which used the "time-reverse" mechanic years before PoP or Braid. The naval combat sim "Strike Fleet" on my C64 was also a long-time favorite of mine.


Maybe I should change my username to "GetOffMyLawn"...

 

[Sorryflip]

Say you are a beloved developer, and made a number of decent or critically acclaimed games. But then made a couple mediocre ones due to whatever reason (hubris, new features didn't work well, etc.) or were overshadowed by another developer, thus your sales were lower for the next titles. You're suffering losses as you have payroll to maintain, vs. doing layoffs.

A big name publisher comes along and offers to buy your studio up for $$$ due to your pedigree.

Then after the buy-out, you and other seniors cash out, leaving the inexperienced devs still at the studio to pick up the pieces, thus the line of mediocre games continues, and quality continues to drop.
OH HEY, sounds similar to what happened to Westwood! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westwood_studios]

In August 1998, Westwood was acquired by Electronic Arts for $122.5 million in cash. At the time, Westwood had 5% to 6% of the PC game market.[1] In response to EA's buyout, many long-time Westwood employees quit and left Westwood Studios.

If you look at the actual source of the wiki article: http://money.cnn.com/1998/08/17/life/q_ea/

You can read that the founders of Westwood both signed a 5 year contract. So no they did not abandon ship.

As to why many long-time employees were quitting, I think this article tells enough: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

This averages out to an eighty-five hour work week. The managers stopped even talking about a day when the hours would go back to normal. And the kicker: for the honor of this treatment EA salaried employees receive a) no overtime; b) no compensation time! c) no additional sick or vacation leave. The time just goes away.

If you question this article, it resulted in lawsuits forcing EA to pay tens of millions of dollars for unpaid overtime. Bottom line not a nice company to work for.

Stated motivation to sellout;

"We were courted by many companies, but in the end, we knew that EA would provide us with the best infrastructure and support that we need," said Sperry, Westwood's president and CEO.

Oh how wrong could he be....

My point why I hate EA so much is rather simple, as soon as EA gets involved with a title you know quality will decline. They sacrifise their product for some fast cash scarring it in the long run.

Tiberian Sun had an outstanding anticipation since the beginning of its development. It was the fastest selling game on the EA games label, selling 1.5 million copies within a month.

Tiberian Sun might even be my favourite c&c game. Yet if I read: http://www.petroglyphgames.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2554, it could've been so much more. C&c Renegade is one of my favourite multiplayer games ever, but given time could've been much better aswell.
Generals and Zero Hour were lots of fun but didn't really need the c&c tag.
Any c&c title since they tried to revive the series with c&c 3 is a bad joke imo.

 

[Charli]

Fired mah Momma when Bullfrog got ate.

That's reason enough coupled with all the bullshit above me.


But no seriously, all of the above. They also don't know when to shut up and just get on with their business when they've already dug a big enough pit. Nope, keep digging, soon enough we'll piss off everyone and then our life accomplishments shall be fulfilled.

At least I imagine that must be the mantra in giant text hung in the EA-PR Departments coffee room.

 

[Roxor]

If so many people hate the way EA behaves, why don't they form a user-run organisation to buy up shares in EA and boss them around?

 

[ThriKreen]

If you look at the actual source of the wiki article: http://money.cnn.com/1998/08/17/life/q_ea/

You can read that the founders of Westwood both signed a 5 year contract. So no they did not abandon ship.

The 2 founders did not, but we don't know the extent of the other senior employees as mentioned in the Wikipedia note, which your article does not mention. And founders tend to be somewhat removed from the development process.

If you question this article, it resulted in lawsuits forcing EA to pay tens of millions of dollars for unpaid overtime. Bottom line not a nice company to work for.

I'm quite aware of the EA Spouse fiasco. But having worked crunch before, it's a failure of the studio and its managers to set reasonable deadlines to maintain the health and well-being of their employees. Not the parent publisher who usually says "Here's your budget and deadline, go" and just cares about deliverables at various milestone dates. Of course the parent company would want people to work non-stop 24/7, but they're pretty removed from the actual dev process - it's up to the project managers to, you know, manage their people.

 

[Vivi22]

And it will soon be six studios if Bioware's performance is anything to go by.

One thing a lot of people seem to either forget or never noticed about Bioware is that since they were acquired, EA set up three other studios (I think it's three anyway. Pretty sure there are four Bioware studios now) in completely different parts of the world as their RPG focused division, and a lot of the flack that Bioware gets for bad games are because of games made by divisions other than the original Bioware. Now I never thought Bioware's games were that good, even before they were bought out, but it's easy to see that EA is doing all they can to dilute the brand name and make the name Bioware as worthless as it can possibly get. And all because they're doing everything in their power to pump as much cash out of the name as they can right now.

 

[everythingbeeps]

I can't think of anything EA did that Activision didn't do worse.

 

[Avalanche91]

First Flaw: EA has an incredibly stupid marketing department.

They don't know how to approach their audience. While I admit some of the Mass Effect 3 commercials were very well done....

-launching copies of ME3 into space is not a clever marketing tactic. It's stupid and expensive.
-Hiring fake protesters to act upset about one of your upcomming games is not a clever marketing tactic. It's stupid and insulting.
-Making a commercial where mothers act shocked about the images from the game, and market it to kids despite it's rating isn't a clever marketing tactic. It's stupid, insulting and incredibly poorly conceived.

Second Flaw: EA has an incredibly stupid PR department.

-Proudly announcing your horror game will stop being scary and more like Gears of War is not a good way to create brand loyalty.
-Calling the people who bought and critiqued your game entitled whiner fanboys is not a good way to create brand loyalty at all.
-Releasing a interview with a head-honcho of EA who says he is working out the plans to make a shooter where players have to pay for bullets is not a good way to create brand loyalty at all and will make gamers everywhere sick.

Third Flaw: Origin

-Has background programs that pretty much function as spyware from what I gathered
-Makes the same mistakes Steam made, YEARS after Steam made them.
-Smaller Catalogue then Steam
-More expensive then Steam
-Incredible amount of other bugs and issues (go to their forum. it's almost funny)

Fourth Flaw: Buying Developpers that do not fit in EA's structure

-Wildly discussed above (Maxis, Bullfrog, Pandemic, etc)

Article 5; other complaints

-Views gamers as consumers rather then costumers
-Cares about bottom line rather then satisfied customers
-Day 1 DLC
-Mass Effect 3 ending

*wheeze* okay I'm done.