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Posted By Robert G. about 8 months, 1 week ago
Editorial: Fiction Over Fact, or Why EA is Destined to Lose (Deserving or Not),
Let's be honest, everyone seeing this picture thought it was accurate, right?
A sort of disclaimer before I begin: It is not every day that I throw myself out there with the purpose of starting a conversation on more general issues in gaming culture, but with the calm before the holiday storm and little news to really report at the moment, now is as a good as time as any to really sink my teeth into something that has been troubling me for a while now. As a pseudo-journalist, I tend to over-value truth and integrity to the point where I am sometimes gobsmacked at the reactions of the general gaming audience. Take today’s example for instance, as we go down the road of discussing the merits of Electronic Arts.
Yes, good old EA, the “cancer that is killing gaming,” according to the internet. Not that they are, mind you, but because the belief is so widespread, it has become a sort of universal truth based on a perpetual myth. As is such a case, it is quite easy to stack the house of cards against the corporate entity and erode its image by spewing hatred ad nauseam. It’s hip to be a hater of a game company on the internet, and because of that perception, EA will always be fighting a losing battle.
What do I mean by this? Well, wind the clock back a week, and you see what I mean. It was recently reported that EA was under fire for promoting the idea that single-player games were no longer going to be developed under their label. At least, that is what the spin doctors of sensationalist titles took from the comments by EA Games President Frank Gibeau. For example, Destructoid’s own Jim Sterling ran with the quotation and used it to call doom and gloom for the company based on the singular sound bite, which is as follows below:
“We are very proud of the way EA evolved with consumers,” he said. “I have not green lit one game to be developed as a singleplayer experience. Today, all of our games include online applications and digital services that make them live 24/7/365.“
Sterling thus penned the article titled, “EA Boss Proudly Refuses to Publish Single-Player Games,” and in an instant, EA loses. Just like that, they no longer have credibility or clout to counteract any dissenting voice on the internet.
Of course, upon closer examination of the quote and the context it was said, things are not as dark as Mr. Sterling, and other journalists in the gaming-sphere, would lead you to believe. For starters, the remarks were taken from promotional materials for a cloud-gaming conference, a place where the talks would likely reflect the discussion of online applications and digital services, as described in the quotation. It also doesn’t distinguish what digital services are considered “non-singleplayer.” Not that my opinion matters so much in this case, but non-single player can have several meanings, from online leader boards found in score games like Rock Band, to applications tracking single and multiplayer progress like Halo 3. Of course, multiplayer and co-op modes have also made appearances as well, some correctly implemented and some not. But does this truly lead to the death of all single-player games?
To be fair to Gibeau, this is not an earth-shaking stance for him, as he has spoken in similar terms since 2010, discussing how social interactions and connectivity are the way to go. In fact, EA as a company has been fairly vocal about this idea of social interaction. COO Peter Moore has stated his opinion on the future of gaming as it transitions into the more lucrative free to play model for everything out there. See, the trick is to differentiate the multi-player aspects, something that looks to be in the forefront of Gibeau’s mind when he replied to the criticism made by his comments on Kotaku.
Gibeau chuckled at his own example and continued to explain what the shape of EA’s game-making approach will be moving forward. “What I’m saying is if you’re going do it, do it with an open-world game that’s a connected experience where you can actually see other players, you can co-operate, you can compete and it can be social. Everything that we do, we see the telemetry coming in telling us that’s the best way to build our business and that’s the best way to build these experiences and be differentiated from others. Yeah, I’m not suggesting deathmatch must be in Bejeweled. It’s just… You need to have a connected social experience where you’re part of a large community”
It should also be noted that Gibeau’s stance on social interaction is nothing new in the industry, since several high profile leaders in the industry have described similar ideals in different ways. Essentially, Gibeau is discussing gaming as a service over a commodity, echoing the stance of giants such as Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata that having a critical social component is mandatory for the future of gaming. Valve’s CEO Gabe Newell also is a proponent of this ideal, having said that, “the needs of gamers and developers are evolving. Specifically, it‘s not just about chips rendering pixels or calculating nav meshes, it‘s about giving gamers a complete, social connected experience.”
No wonder EA wanted to buy Valve–they think alike on this issue.
This new development philosophy may also be the reason why Half-Life 2: Episode 3, is never going to come out, since Newell once said back in 2011 that Valve has finished experimenting with episodic content. And we can see this “gaming as a service” model used by Valve without much penalty. Team Fortress 2’s entire Manconemy is emblematic of this change, creating a drop system, a barter system, and an online store in the blink of an eye to add to the service model, and longevity, of Team Fortress 2. It offers microtransactions and interactions with players, all of which adheres to the service model Valve has adopted. This has all been met with pure praise by fans.
I personally dislike EA. But I would love to see Command and Conquers 2 turn it around though. But I am not going to lie, C&C Red Alert 3 was bad with its weird coop general system, and online only $20.00 campaign expansion (12 missions?!) but then they turned in the mother of all non-campaigns for C&C 4. How can you make C&C 4 with no Scrin? And 7 missions for NOD/GDI (14 missions, for a main game!), and no real base construction at all? It was like going back in time to play Military Madness on the TG16, your base has a certain supply, you make a number of units, and must then destroy the enemy base which also has the same amount of unit supply restrictions. I paid $50.00 for what amounts to a gigantic [bunch of expletives] on everything C&C once was.
Not to mention what Spoony has showed me that they did to the Ultima series with IX. And I have seen Angry Joe rage on about how ME3 ended.
For me though, its always been about C&C, which besides Starcraft is my second most enjoyed RTS. And they have literally ruined it with the last two games.
Command and Conquer Generals is the only one of the three franchises they haven’t messed up yet. And it looks like they will. No single player is insulting to old fans of the series. (Not that Generals had much plot compared to the other two franchises, but it definitely succeeded as a game that greatly expanded what it meant to be an RTS at the time).
Wow bro you really are blind to all the terrible things EA has done, like hiding clauses in their EULA that allow them to scan your computer files, to banning people for saying they like modern warefare over Battliefield. To just not giving a shit about their fans. It must suck being so ignorant all the time. Plus their archaic DRM that really only hurts the buyer rather then the pirate. I guarantee I can go right now to certain sites and get the entire EA library. If I so chose. (now EA isn’t the only shit company with garbage DRm, but that’s more icing on the cake.”
There are valid reasons to dislike EA as a company and the effect of how it decides to run its business has on the rest of the gaming industry, but depicting them as vile agents of doom out to get your money at any cost is a stretch.
I never took the view from that article that EA was never going to make a singleplayer experience ever again; I took it that they were never planing on making any further singleplayer *only* games (there’s going to have to be some kind of multiplayer component in there somewhere). I still feel like it’s not a particularly bright idea as there are still SP games with no online friends list, no co-op, no multiplayer components and yet they not only receive critical success, they also do very well financially (See Skyrim, or The Witcher 2); from that, I still think it’s a narrow point of view from Frank G.
I love the swarm of people trying to justify their
hatred for EA.Yet in doing so have just solidified the point of the article.
Well Robert you certainly managed to get a lot of the haters out of there caves for the day so congrats on that I guess.
I enjoyed reading this article very much, its about one of the most intelligent contributions to the EA discussion I have read in a long time.
I am no stranger to some of the annoying practices of EA in regards to DLC, preorder bonuses etc etc however I find it hard to simply hate a company for that when some of the biggest and best games ive played this year and last have had the EVIIIIIIIIIIL EA tag stamped on them.
So we have a company, who I trust with giving me a fair deal about as much as i trust a priest to give me reliable information about the universe, however its not as if every single game they have released has been a flop or a betrayal to the gaming world.
Given that fact is it fair for us to all just go after EA like we are the Westboro baptist church when they do anything? Or Do we give them shit when they fuck up and praise them when they do well so they know what we actually want instead of being a group of whining children with no direction or focus to our anger?
Thanks for the article anyway, a good read.
Oh dear. Attempting to compare Valve and EA on a blank slate is misguided to say the least. Where do I even start. They’re doing the same thing? Well, yeah, they are companies, their purpose is to sell games and make money. The fact that they’re doing it in different ways is the most important one.
EA buys successful studios and cannibilizes them by abusing their popular franchises to drain every single penny they can out of their customers until people get sick of it, at which point they simply sack the studio. Case in point, Origin and Bioware. I won’t even bother to talk about Ultima IX. If you think that the ending to ME3 wasn’t because of EA’s executive meddling cutting down the development time of the game you’re probably fooling yourself.
Their customer service is abysmal at best. People can get banned out of games that they PAYED for for something they didn’t really say in the forums without the ability to make an appeal. You can’t claim you haven’t heard that story.
Valve on the other hand is so loved and successful because they have realised that by not screwing people over their customers feel more inclined to give them their money simply because they earned it. That might not sound like a big deal, but I can count the number of publishers that don’t make a habit of screwing their customers to increase their profit with the fingers of one hand (a mutilated hand even).
And myths? Seriously? You call people biased for coloring their opinions based on hard facts of things EA has done? Forget about playing devil’s advocate, I would go as far as to call this article trollbaiting.
It must have worked, you did post in the end.
In all seriousness, I could do a list of facts about the whole EA thing that could be a book to write here, going into their history, how they treated people in the past, and so forth.
But a lot of this was in the past. I guess I am a fool to believe that the whole Mass Effect issue you brought up was not them meddling with BioWare, even though we have it on record by several sources that EA has a laissez-faire policy with BioWare as it is.
Such as this, for example:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-06-07-bioware-we-havent-had-a-breakthrough-success
Or this:
http://www.gamebreaker.tv/uncategorized/no-crazy-success-for-bioware/
I guess they are much more credible sources than Frank Gibeau, who said the same thing two days ago on Kotaku, actually.
http://kotaku.com/5942024/ea-exec-swears-his-company-is-not-evil
Again, this is just one example of what I am talking about. I don’t care if EA made mistakes in the past. It was well documented and we know about it, and people can hold grudges until the cows come home. What I care about is the now, and the point is half of the time they don’t deserve the hate they receive. The multiplayer stuff by Gibeau is just the tip of the iceberg, because the bias towards EA reeks of stupidity on the behalf of a lot of parties involved, especially when companies such as Valve get the pass for saying the same thing. But it was the last piece I read that made me think, “wow, are we really this jaded?”
I guess we are, and it’s a shame too.
So we can accept those articles that are meant for PR and damage control as the truth (because there is no reason for them to present false facts, right? Right?) or we can base our opinions on the numerous colorful incidents of their recent history. Call me biased, but most people would argue that the latter is the objective way.
Here’s a recent example if you want proof:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119212-PopCap-Lays-Off-Plants-vs-Zombies-Creator
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119385-EA-Exec-Explains-PopCap-Layoffs
The first article claims that EA had nothing to do with the layoffs, while in the second an EA executive explains why EA decided to make the layoffs. There is no way both of those statements can be true and which one isn’t is really beside the point. It’s quite clear indication that PR statements like the articles you linked have to be taken with a grain of salt.
People reacted to the fact that FG hasn’t greenlighted a single SP game because it’s quite simply a dreadful tactic. Developing multiplayer consumes resources and development time, so tucked on MP where it doesn’t belong can actually detract from the base experience of the game.
Bottomline is, people don’t base their hatred towards EA on bias, they base it on experience.
PS: I love how they claim that if Hudson has a story to tell in the ME universe they will let him, considering it wasn’t his story to begin with.
@Zevox:
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/02/17/bioware-lead-writer-drew-karpyshyn-leaves-bioware/
“I’m leaving to focus more time and energy on my novels and other non-video game related projects.” and so he left less than 2 months before ME3 was released, even though it was his own story. I guess I should throw away sny ability to read between the lines and accept that PR statement as truth even though it doesn’t make any sense in its context.
“If you think that the ending to ME3 wasn’t because of EA’s executive meddling cutting down the development time of the game you’re probably fooling yourself.”
Considering the variety of claims and rumors about how ME3′s ending wound up the way it did, it seems to me impossible for anyone not directly involved in the matter to claim actual certainty of that cause, and those involved aren’t forthcoming about it for obvious reasons. Which, ironically, makes your claim evidence of the very sort of bias the article points towards.
Anyway, I suppose I should give an opinion on EA myself, but really, I don’t have any. I have minimal reason to care about them one way or the other, as the only thing they publish that I play are Bioware’s games, and the only complaint that I have with any of those that I have any reason to believe may be connected to EA is the rushed release of DA2. Which it appears won’t be replicated with DA3, since more time has already passed between the release of DA2 and today than passed between the release of DA:O and DA2, so my complaint there has little relevance at this point.
A little too tired to adress everything you and Robert said right now, so I’ll just make do with answering the easiest one and leave the rest for tomorrow.
“Considering the variety of claims and rumors about how ME3′s ending wound up the way it did, it seems to me impossible for anyone not directly involved in the matter to claim actual certainty of that cause, and those involved aren’t forthcoming about it for obvious reasons. Which, ironically, makes your claim evidence of the very sort of bias the article points towards.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Karpyshyn
Here’s a little hint if you ever venture into game development and/or publishing. DON’T fire the lead writer or make him quit shortly before the final title of the trilogy is complete. It’s unlikely to end well.
You can speculate how ME3 ended up as it did as much as you like, but it’s pretty clear that what we got wasn’t what the originally intended ending was. Karpyshyn has already given us hints about what that was meant to be (dark energy).
And no, you can’t really entertain the notion that he might have left of his own volition for completely unrelated reasons. Mass Effect was his own baby project for about 5 years and barring outside factors any sane person would see that through to the end.
“And no, you can’t really entertain the notion that he might have left of his own volition for completely unrelated reasons.”
Considering that I have absolutely no information whatsoever on the cause of his leaving, I could do precisely that, just as much as you can do the reverse. Unless there’s some credible information on that matter which you didn’t present – and that wikipedia article has none at all – anything either of us says about the matter is at best speculation based on unverifiable assumptions, and nothing more. Which is entirely useless for a discussion like this.
Obviously you did not see Facebook’s stocks fail to take flight. Social connectivity is NOT the future of gaming IMO.
I do not agree with this article. One thing i especially found odd was the comparison you made between steam and origin, and how you said you couldn’t tell the difference.
I see a lot of differences. Steam is a service that promotes games for every developer, even small indie games gets a shot on Steam. Origin only promotes other EA games. Steam has amazing community features for certain games, like skyrim, DotA 2, TF2 and such. It creates a great community and it is awesome being part of. Origin has no such thing.
The features of Steam really are benefecial to all gamers and gaming companies. And the way I see it, Steam improves PC gaming in general.
Origin is a way for EA to improve their own income by promoting their own products. Nothing else. At least it seems that way to me.
Maybe this is not the way EA wanted it to be interpreted, i dont know, but that’s the way I see it, and how a lot of other people see it (i think). And i dont see EA trying to give me another impression.
But this is just one of many problems i have with EA.
I am comparing the corporate strategies of EA and Valve, not Origin and Steam as services. Origin was used as an example of EA’s shortcomings to reach a long-term goal, and Steam was never mentioned as part of Valve’s strategy to achieve the same goal, even though we are all smart enough to know it is.
The differences between them do not matter in the end, even if they were fully the same. So I don’t understand why you bring it up when that is far from the focus.
What I think is important is why this bias of EA developed in the first place: a history of exploitation. EA is considered evil because they established themselves as the model of the woes of gaming, such as DRM, low quality/high price DLC, yearly releases, F2P, and more. While it might be unfair to single out EA exclusively for these practices, they have, do, and will continue to do such things, the things which traditional gamers loathe. For me at least, if they changed such practices, or at least gave a truthful rationale of the consumer benefits of such practices, I would be inclined to see them for positively. We see them as a ne’r-do-well because they have done such things, and some gamers do not want to tolerate it from them anymore.
I find it odd that you say you really can’t tell the difference between the two despite them having the same general outlook. It might have to be with the execution.
EA has a history of buying up smaller studios and changing their games. Then, if the changed games don’t do so well they shut it down. As a BioWare fan, I have noticed this in the quality of their products since EA has acquired them, and it is the fan bases complaint with their games. They clearly need more time to get these products finished (ME2, DA2, ME3) and they are not given the adequate time, because money. Hell, one of the contributing factors to EA winning the worst company poll was because of that crap ending to ME3.
Then we also have the stories of how shitty EA is to their employees in terms of working long hours and then not getting paid for it. Class action lawsuits up the ass.
What else? Oh yeah, SecuROM, and their shitty advertising for their games. You hear plenty about how bad EA is and their shitty policy with games to warrant the people’s opinion on them.
What are the faults for Valve? … I dunno, they don’t release their Half Life projects in a timely manner.
Well Steam has always online DRM.
That’s great. You can put one more tick on Valve’s part for faults. How is the score looking now?
Uh, no it doesn’t. It’s compatible with other companies always online DRM, but you don’t need to always be online to use Steam.
Wait, I know ME2 was in production when Bioware was bought by EA, but why do you refer to it as one of the products that needed more time? It came out to great reviews and was my favorite game that year. Hell, doesn’t DA1 which seems fairly beloved have the EA logo on it?
Some of that criticism seems unfair, Harsh DRM is obnoxious but its not like they stand alone on this issue. Ubisoft only recently decided to change their minds about it.
EA’s a bastard a good chunk of the time, but they probably don’t deserve the level of hate they get.