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EA Muscling In On Hollywood?
Thanks to the New York Times/Naples Daily News for their article discussing Electronic Arts' gigantic expansion of its Los Angeles offices, and discussing how they're poaching Hollywood talent to expand the LA division, with 1,000 employees planned there by 2010. The article suggests that "Ninety percent of these [new EA] workers will be creative types who formerly would have worked in television or in the movies - animators, digital artists, writers, directors and set and costume designers", and although it's pointed out that "Electronic Arts is not going whole-hog-Hollywood", at least one analyst suggests that, fearing the competition, "the Hollywood studios, many of whom tried building their own games divisions in the mid-'90s, could decide to start developing games again or could make the rights to movies very expensive."
Now that we have a company that knows how to do games right, will they be able to break the game-movie curse?
> or could make the rights to movies very expensive.
I can't seem to muster any sorrow over that possibility. I've never played a game based on a movie that I've really liked. Let's hear it for fewer cheesy knockoff games..
"the Hollywood studios, many of whom tried building their own games divisions in the mid-'90s, could decide to start developing games again or could make the rights to movies very expensive."
You mean we could end up not getting games like The Matrix ReBugged? We'd lose out on all those licenses for the last twenty years that seem (with the exception of the EA LoTR game and Tron 2.0*) to have universally sucked?
All that could happen if Hollywood thought the gaming industry was setting up in competition?
HEY HOLLYWOOD! WE'RE SETTING UP IN COMPETITION!
*I discounted the cooler StarWars Games as the movie company (LucasFilm) and the publisher (LucasArts) are arguably one in the same.
Though I wish it had been the license of "Bad Taste" instead.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
EA's mass-marketization seems to really be hurting the overall creativity within EA's titles, or should I say derivitals. Suddendly, Need for Speed must be like "Fast and the Furious". The 'wachowski effect' peppers literally every action title they produce, and all thier music is EA TRAX, taken from the suit's top 40 list.
Where's the titile-specific creativity. Each EA franchise used to carry indudual characteristics and dev quirks. In some ways, now it has become all the same.
Kinda like what happened to artists on the radio. Though EA seems like the only company that can actally pull this off, and I doubt it will actually become the prevaililng model in the industry. For now, it's the in thing though.
Many Thanks,
Luke
I'm thinking of brushing up on my own 3D skills and going for a similar job once my current animation gig is over. There's been a serious lull in the non-game animation business for a little over a year now; with layoffs everywhere, and more work going overseas. If EA wants to hire a thousand artists that Hollywood wasn't going to anyway, then that's fantastic :)