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EA and your favorite studio.
Calerxes
Member UncommonPosts: 1,641
Over my time on this board I've seen many posters bemoan the fact that EA has bought out a development studio that made their favorite IP/Game. Many times this is with downright malice and has shocked me with the viscious hate towards EA. Games to me are entertainment and if certain titles disappear thats just the natural way of life and there's always new ones to discover so I'm never that bothered either way. But the question that is rarely ask or answered is that the original owners of these companies must of decided to sell in the first place so why not the emotion directed to them? as EA see worth in a comapany and buy it then they can do what they want with it the original owners get a nice fat paycheck and secure their's and their families future and can then be comforatble in life. If I had worked hard to build a company up over a decade or more and felt that it was time to cash in on the success you are damned sure I'd do it. Sometime I think gamers take gaming way to seriously for their own good as that much stress over their favorite games cannot be good in the long term.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Comments
Name 1 company that was bought by EA that has survived unscathed. Actually, name one outside Bioware that still actually exists on its own.
EA is disliked because it is responsible for butchering games. When companies typically get bought out, its not to rake in the cash, but rather to help boost their funding to produce better games. In many cases, Gamestudios make games for the sake of making a good game, with profit being just the bonus feature. EA on the other hand wants profit and nothing else, and will sacrifice a game's quality to do so. Sure they don't want a massive flop, but they aren't ones to bother spending good money on increasing production length on a game and will often apply pressure for stuff to be done.
EA's bottom line is money, and much like the movie industry, this causes a massive strain on the quality of game that is released. EA is a glutton of a game... sorry... pure profit giant that they lost their way knowing what made games so good. When games become all about profit you have lost your way.
Like I said once and I said many times before, I hope EA (and many other publishers) go out of business. Yes, I know it sucks at first but it leaves room for more independant games to be released. Literally look around at all the indie games coming out and how good they are. If they were supported by EA, many of those would of never came to be. Period. Those that had been would never of been as good as they are now.
You don't give a company that you want to trash $200 million. Or whatever sum it was. People and sites have tossed out everything from 150ish to 500. Fact pretty much is EA wanted Bioware to become their Blizzard. Bioware dropped the ball.
The way Bioware treated their customers during the Mass Effect 3 ending showed that they had completely lost touch with their playerbase. I've probably only ever seen one other instance where any given forum became that active. Three to six pages back there were posts no older than 5 - 10 minutes, depending on what time of day it was. That went on for at least two weeks. I even made comments about it on this site. At a minimum it was three pages every 10 minutes of new threads/ replys. At peaks it was probably much higher than what I stated. Closer to 10 pages every 10 minutes. That was just in the spoilers allowed section of the ME3 boards. All the topics were about the ending!
How did Bioware respond? Entitled brats was the gist of it. It wasn't until much later that they decided to make the extended cut. I wouldn't doubt if EA told them that they had to make it. Casey was of the opinion that "It would blow over." "No problem here!"
Bioware put themselves in this position and it's time for them to pay the piper. EA has bought up studio's just to close them down. However that holds no water with Bioware. They gave Bioware a Blizzard sized budget. Their game has to go F2P to make ends meet only a few months out? Of course EA is going to clean house.
Man.. I sound like a EA fanbot or something and I'm really not. Just silly seeing the mindless rage blaming EA for Biowares screw up.
EA is trash , end of story. I'd write a 500 essay , but it will all come up the same way , so ; TRASH.
They even found a way on fucking up the Heroes of might and magic series , REALLY?!
None of us can have a truely educated opinion.
For instance:
Did the studio in question get lazy / lose care after being purchased?
Did EA purchase said studio and then get involved too much (such as ridiculous deadlines and budget cuts).
One most look at the facts though, EA does not have a good track record at maintaining a franchise. Battlefield = Butchered.
Here Lies Lost Dreams.
Once upon a time....
Battlefield 2 was the best game I've ever played. That came out in 2005.
Since then they have completely destroyed what the Battlefield franchise could have been. They've removed all depth from the gameplay and codified it. I started up BF3 last week to see what it was like, there is a premium mode now, as well as BF4 coming out early next year. If you want to play the beta you have to buy Medal of Honor. It's going to be a yearly formula, release BF4, release next MoH, release BF5, release next MoH and so on and so on. All the games are the same with a slightly different gimmick.
That kind of blatent money grabbing is sickening to me and I know EA is behind it.
At the surface level BioWare certainly brought their ongoing collapse on themselves by making games with one or scores of serious flaws while holding the opinions of their fanbase in contempt.
But it's not difficult to attribute the underlying reasons to EA.
EA is run by businessmen not game developers. They saw the success of FIFA and Madden and have acquired other developers hoping to make their money back by applying their business practices to those developers' franchises.
They aren't the only publisher to do this: the last four Call of Duty games could be numbered CoD 2009, CoD 2010, CoD 2011, and CoD 2012. Or how about Assassins Creed? You have AC 2007, AC 2009, AC 2010, AC 2011, and AC 2012 for the PC and major consoles.
Look familiar? That's exactly what EA's sports series look like. That's what EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc. want to do: put popular franchises in a format that can be repackaged every year. On top of this, once the development infrastructure is in place, it doesn't require high-paid game development experts to maintain the franchise.
EA's expectations force them to dictate creative decisions on developers -- once they've bought you out it is their money after all -- and that makes it impossible for developers to proceed with the vision they might otherwise have had for the game. It also changes the way employees are expected to interact with customers. At one time BioWare developers were active within the communities of the games they made. Many BG2/ToB players have content Dave Gaider made available for FREE, and plenty of features that fans asked for were included in free NWN patches ... content that EA would never allow to be distributed these days as anything but paid DLC. The corporate attitude of _us_ selling to stupid customers who will pay for the same game every year or real money for an ammo clip for their shooter, etc. filters down through the ranks. That is true in any organizational structure.
On top of this, the personnel decisions are ultimately in EA's hands. BioWare people might get to do their own hiring, but anyone who has worked for a corporation like EA can tell you that the word comes down from "on high" that "We'll be instituting a mandatory reduction in payroll by $200,000 annually at the following locations..." It doesn't matter that the manager who actually works with those people on the floor knows that his product will suffer by axing valuable employees. Where BioWare might know that a veteran QA guy is worth every penny of the $50,000 a year he's being paid, EA sees a guy who's being overpaid for a job a college intern will do for free.
All that said, I don't think one should necessarily feel sorry for developers who trade creative direction and business control for a bigger pool of development and advertising capital as well as a big chunk of personal cash. At some point, it's just a logical business decision, but one could certainly argue that developers chronically undervalue long-term creative decision making and personnel management.
This quote is really the point of my thread, it takes two to tango and as we all know EA is in the business of making money and I do not begrudge them that at all. As a company they still make great games, good games and awful games and thats all I care about really I'll play a game if its fun. So I don't really understand the hatred towards EA as these developers decided to get in bed with EA and really if they wanted to keep artistic integrity they wouldn't have done so in the first place. I'm sure with dev's like Dice, Bioware, Westwood, Origin etc.. and the successful game franchises they've created there would be many venture capitalists queing up at the door to give them money, why go to EA, Activision, Ubisoft et al?
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
The problem is if a company is very good at what they do and starts to really compete with EA they will usually make a buyout offer that is hard to refuse. They buy these companies because they are extremely good at some niche that EA either wants a stake in or wants a bigger stake in. Well EA then sends in their own corperate "Leadership" to take control of the company and the first thing they do is EAify the company. They change everything right down to the bathroom policy. This makes it extremely difficult for the company as it was to still function and be extremely good at what they do... You know the reason why EA bought them in the first place? The company then proceeds to fail hard and the morons that run EA stand there and scratch their pointy little noggins and wonder why. They fail to see that it is their insistance in turning the once great company into an EA clone is why they fail.
This isn't just EA or video games either. It happens with a lot of other large companies in the corperate world. It always make me scatch my head and wonder what the hell they are thinking. Company A buys Company B because Company B is better at something than Company A. Company A than proceeds to turn Company B into a clone of Company A. Company B fails because it can no longer function properly as it has been gutted and turned into Company A. Company A than turns around and blames Company B (Which is now a defunct clone of Company A) for the failure. It makes no sense what so ever.
Bren
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Well OP,you basically just told us what EA is allowed to or capable of doing,you didn't really exempt them from fault.
You DO have a player base who are spending money and putting food on the EA execs tables,so you DO have an obligation to them.Simply saying the yown the rights to a game allows them to shut it down it not only a poor argument but it is a wrong one.
We saw how many got angry and felt slighted when SOE changed SWG right under their noses.People invest time into some of these games.they like to feel the ycan login and knwo what to expect.If the game changes dramatically or just disappears,they have the right to be angry.
You really can use an automobile in this analogy.We all expect our car to eventually die,but not in the first year.Imagine now you buy a new car and the manufacturer shuts that line down making parts near impossible to find?You will not be happy nor will you trust that manufacturer ever again.
I was a fan of EA back in the 90's,but at the turn of the century i saw a dramatic change in their games.They still put some qaulity in there and i will not pretend to say their games are complete flops,but they are not a total class act anymore.They were sued by the employees for cheating them out of tons of over time,how can you respect a business who is cheating the people you trust to make a quality game?
EA does have the power and the know how,they are just a very hard developer to like right now,sort of like SOE.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I was a fan of EA as they made some of my favorite C64 and Genesis (sports) games. The problem is that all of the major publishers are the same.
I no longer have a favorite studio and even Valve has degraded.
I don't think EA sets out to crush the companies they acquire. I think its simply a matter that the corporate climate and environment of EA rapidly infects or overwelms the studios they buy out leading to a loss of innovation, of immagination and of success. SWTOR is a great example of bungling up and down the chain. It's obvious much of the development time and effort went into wow'ing those above at corporate, instead of wowing the customers. Yeah EA gambled big and stupidly on Bioware with SWTOR. Bioware while one of the worlds best RPG makers and storytellers had zero experience with persistant online games. They were rank amateurs. And it shows in the game. Now is most of this on Bioware? Yes. But the same exact thing happened over with Mythic and Warhammer. In that case they were one of the most experienced MMO developers, and they still spit out a very similarly bland piece of derivative game that failed in almost the same ways as SWTOR. The development arcs are eerily similar. At some point you start looking for what was held in common in all of these tales of MMO woe. And it all leads back to EA.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
I only have fav games, no fav studio.
I wouldn't care less what studio makes a game. If a game is fun, i will play it. If not, not.
Some studio does make mroe fun (to me) games than others.
I don't disagree with the ME3 ending part, but everything else posted shows what little you know. Publishers don't give money away without strings attached. It always comes with a list of what needs to be included and after their milestone meeting there is another list of what needs to be added and changed.
In a perfect world developers would be given the money to do as they please, and just repay it back. The problem is this isn't a perfect world.
Too Late
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
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Bullfrog
Distinctive Software
Phenomic
Origin
Westwood
Maxis
Bioware
Just some companies that were acquired by EA and went downhill since. Sometimes you can even see it, like with Phenomic. Acquired in 2006, the last good game was in 2006/2007 (Spellforce 2 and addon), after that they developed BattleForge, Lord of Ultima and C&C : Tiberium Alliances (the browser game currently in beta). So with Phenomic doing C&C instead of Spellforce, what is whats left of Westwood (nothing, the last original employee left in 2003) doing? Developing Medal of Honor of course! But wait, what is DICE doing then? They have to pump out a new Battlefield each year - no time for Medal of Honor.
Next Maxis is going to pick up Spellforce, while Mythic will pick up the Sims franchise..or something like that. Well, seeing that Nordic Games released the latest addon (though it was nothing compared to the original games up to the first addon for Spellforce 2), maybe the rights for that franchise are not with EA, so there is still hope.
It is not EAs fault that those developers allowed themselves being bought by EA, but it is EAs fault what happend to them and the franchises since.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
One thing I hate about EA is that they attempt to profit from "brand deception."
They will buy a very reputable and popular brand like Bioware, and then they will proceed to stamp the Bioware label on a bunch of shovelware games to trick people who respect the Bioware game into buying them. If you want proof of this, then just look at:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/12/02/ea-bioware-acquires-klicknation-rebrands-it-bioware-social/
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/12/10/bioware-announces-command-and-conquer-generals-2/
And those are just two examples...I think EA has actually created at least EIGHT "Bioware" studios to profit off of deception.
Honestly, I just think this is terrible. They treat their customers like suckers, doing this really lowers them to nothing more than a very wealthy con-man IMO.
I mean, wouldn't fans of say, the Apple brand, be angry if some other company acquired Apple and then started making the crappiest phones ever and calling them "Apple iPhones?"
Brands gain value by building trust with a consumer. When a branded product is consistently good, consumers learn to trust that brand, and the brand gains value. When you deliberately exploit that trust to make a profit, I think that's despicable.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I agree that no good CEO should want to let his studio be acquired by EA, by judging what became of all their acquisitions.
But the blame has to be put on EA too ... this Bioware insider review clearly states that the acquisition started to drive the company downhill : http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/BioWare-Reviews-E22998.htm
edit : nice insight Creslin
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