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Electronic Arts' Domination Of The Market - Bad?
Will writes "A recent article at Gamemethod makes claims about how big companies can squash the little guy, and good gaming along with it: 'With almost 600 million dollars in sales in 2003(not including December), and 20% of the entire market, Electronic Arts is a developing and publishing powerhouse... Why should you be worried that EA rules the American gaming market and dominates sales? Well, if EA becomes too large of a force in the industry, it has some potentially damaging side effects that will hurt us, the consumers.'" It goes on to specify that "competition breeds creativity", suggesting "there's a problem when EA has enough money to buy out any studios that bring out a hit game", and concluding that "the progress of games as a medium will continue, but at a snail's pace in comparison to the previous years of fierce competition."
The latest sports games from EA stink. They're full of bugs, and are just a roster update.
Back in the SNES/Genesis days, they really came out with some great stuff. NHLPA Hockey, Madden, Bulls vs Blazers...
Now it's just the same thing over, and over again.
Eh, sort of like Microsoft, no?
I remember playing my first EA games back in the 1980's on a C-64.
Games like M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, Pinball Contstruction Set, Mail Order Monsters, etc. These games were fantastic. EA used to play up the fact that the games they published were created by 'artists', not just programmers.
But the table turned long ago. Profit became more important than creativity. EA now is afraid to publish innovative titles because they might negatively impact it's balance sheet.
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20% isn't enough of a market share for EA to truly dominate the videogame industy. Compare this to the 90% share of the OS market that Microsoft has... or the 50+% share of the console market that Sony has. While EA is a 900 pound gorilla, we're nowhere close to them 0wn1n9 us all. As far as I can recall EA has never stifled the creativity of the industry... (and no, I don't work for EA)
More of an issue is that games are so much more expensive now that anyone willing to invest the money at all to cover a development budget is likely to be a lot less willing to take risks. Which usually means churning out clones. I remember watching (and working on) the Ultima series when it went from Richard Garriott churning out an entire game with just hard work (and a little help with the music from his buddy Ken Arnold), to a $50,000 budget for Ultima 5, to a $250,000 budget for Ultima 6, then on up into the millions. Ultima 9 was well into the tens of millions from what I've heard.
The only way a game company is likely to take a risk on a totally new type of gameplay with multi-million dollar budgets is if they have a "name" developer like Sid Meier or Will Wright. A few of the shareware and budgetware and college student developers that aren't busy churning out clones of Tetris, Pacman, and Shanghai will turn out new things from time to time. But of course they'll never have the flashy graphics of the big expensive titles. Want to look for and/or support innovation? Download some of their work. Maybe someday the mainstream game industry will develop something like the Independent Film world, though so far they haven't gotten too far in that direction (just one festival, the IGF). While having a few big publishers rather than a lot of little publishers might lead to less creativity in games...
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It's my favorite series. Hands down (I play it on the PC). You can argue about other racing games, but I love the feel, or at least I did. Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 rocked. Quite impressive. I still play it online. It was the reason I forked out 200 bucks for a Logitech Momo Force. But Need For Speed Underground is VERY disappointing. In drag racing mode, my wheel simply doesn't work. Downloaded all patches for the game. Downloaded the Wingman 4.3 software. Installed any other patches I could find. That and I'm stuck doing "drifting" before I can go any further in the game. Instead of prior titles in the series where you could select from a board of possible paths to take, you have ONE path. And the fact that I think "drifting" is fucking stupid, and I suck at it means I can no longer enjoy this game. They did a great job appealing to the erector set wing, fast and furious wannabe crowd, but the gameplay flat out sucks. They also made "Hard" mode way too easy. Until "drifting", I hadn't lost a single race. Thank God I thought to quickly hit the arrow keys on my keyboard during my first drag race when I noticed my wheel wasn't working anymore. It works with everything else in the game. I'm definitely not impressed.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
At the basic level, I only buy games that I know I like or in a series that are now sentimental favorites of mine. The only EA games I think I have are 2 from the SSX snowboarding series for my PS2. I think if I had to name the publisher for most of my other games I'd score about 60% or so. I would have a better time remembering the developers. Anyway, if they (EA) release a bunch of stale games, people will look elsewhere. In the games market, there will always be an elsewhere.
Before some overzealous moderator pounces. The Need For Speed series are EA GAMES titles. The only ones I play in fact.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
EA buys companies left and right that have made some successful games. They then tinker with the company, forcing them to make less sucessful games. When they make a couple games that aren't blockbusters, the division is gutted and shut down (or just the name is kept).
They have done this with MANY divisions of their company. Most notably Origin a few years back.
EA may have a large chunk, but independent game developers are producing more and more quality games. www.is3025.com for example. they picked up EA's scraps to fill the gap they left. EA's large market share sucks, but it's far from forbodding.
One thing good about EA is that they have good experience in producing games. In the background, they have a lot of experienced people working behind the games, including sound, well-defined project management qualities. Although they would be seen as an assembly line factory (low innovation, repetitive carbon copy products), it means that we will continue to enjoy mediocre games in relatively on-time delivery. After all, EA will not produce something like 'Duke Nukem Forever'. EA is after volume and mass market -- every popular console + PC and they will never be like Blizzard.
... when Bill "Raster Blaster" Budge joined with the initial EA "Artists"? Their first major ad was "Can a computer make you cry?". They had a vision not uncommon for that time, that computers would change society in some very significant ways, and they intended to be part of that, via gaming.
It was a lofty but honorable vision. They succeeded somewhat at first, but as business took its toll, EA became more and more a money farm. I'm sure there are still people at EA who would at least claim to hold to that vision, but for the most part, it's become "just another".
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
"there's a problem when EA has enough money to buy out any studios that bring out a hit game"
How is this a problem? Sounds like a huge incentive for people to start a small company and create a truly innovative game.
I think the trouble is more that there isn't anybody really capable of turning the industry on its head several times over. Game fans really do want more of the same thing over and over, especially the sports fans. Baseball hasn't changed, why should the video game based on it?
If there really were a market or just a desire for out of the mainstream games, and the talent to produce such games, the open source game efforts wouldn't be so pathetic.
But it's much easier to sit back and whine about how big corporations have made you jaded than it is to be creative.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
class Madden2005: public Madden2004 { // Put new roster in here
}
I will just use the following facts to demonstrate why EA's domination is bad based based on certain dates for Battlefield 1942:
Sept 11, 2002 : Battlefield 1942 1.1 pre-release patch is released.
Sept 13, 2002 : Battlefield 1942 is in stores, mMany issues reported making the game anywhere from fully to non-playable depending on your system, even after patching.
November 15, 2002 : EA announces addon for Battlefield 1942, Road to Rome. Still no patch for many reported issues.
November 27, 2002 : Patch 1.2 is released finally, fixes a lot of things, but still some issues.
January 22, 2003 : Road to Rome is gold
February 3, 2003 : Patch 1.3 is released.
Im not even going to talk about secret weapons addon, facts are EA had released an addon for a game before they even had their 2nd post-release patch, and thats damn weak. Any company who announces an addon for a game before that game is reasonably patched is rather poor.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
what about those small gaming companies who are struggling and running out of money? they would be stoked to be bought out by EA. They get cash, finish their game, then leave EA and use their money to form another dev studio.
I'm not saying it's all as easy as that, nor are the contracts likely to allow that in all cases, but that's a small developers dream isn't it?
There must be some good stories in all these buyouts.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
Only $600 Million before December? EA's much bigger than that. Their fiscal year total is projected to be $3 Billion. http://info.ea.com/pr/pr449.pdf
Twenty percent is a dominant market presence? Good grief.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
The developers just signed up with DICE to develope the next version of it for them and have a budge of $500k. I hope they don't charge for it.
What happens if EA starts buying up all the good mods, and then decides to charge for them?
Mods used to be the last bastion of free entertainment for many gamers. You had the original game, but there were all the sweet addons which completely rocked your world, for free. What if that world disappears because EA wants to charge for it and buys the good ones?
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First, I have nothing against monopolies. However, EA is simply not a Monopoly. They do have competition.
Nintendo, Sony, Atari(aka Infogrames), Microsoft, THQ, etc, all put out competing proeducts, many of which perform better then EA's games.
All EA has done is two things. First, they have mastered the art of creating mass market games. Second, they buy up the studios that create the mass market games that they did not create themselves.
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EA in my opinion makes crappy games. I havent bought one in over a decade. If EA spent as much time/money developing new game concepts as i does on "expansion packs" i might buy their stuff. But they stick with the tried and true which to me == old and tired. Sure the sims was cool when it first hit, but not nearly as cool as the original "Sim" games. When Maxis was in control SimCity rocked, now it is lacking a soul. EA has a way of extracting the personality out of a game. I like playing games that you can see the developers passion in. Doom is a perfect example, it was made by people, not a bunch of codemonkeys doing the 9-5. Im sure that EA has plenty of talented people working for them, thats not the problem. The company is too big, to "P.C.", and not willing enough to take risks. It would be nice to see them start a trend for once insted of following them.
I want 2D games back.
From what I recall, Will Wright said that The Sims was developed and brought to the market because EA came in and bought Maxis.
When "independent" the stockholders of Maxis were dragging there feet and di not want to invest in Will's newest dollhouse concept. All that changed when EA bought the company. EA bought Maxis because they viewed Will as the great inventor of SimCity. They gave him free reign on his new project, and probably a ton of cash to work on it with. From that buy out they helped create what I theink is one of the most innovative recent games.
The expacks are probably a light for their heavy cost, but that does not detract at all from the fresh new game type that The Sims brought to the table. It is a highly successful idea spawning multiple games that are trying to emulate it.
If it weren't for EA, I don't think The Sims games would be around today.
If that doesn't convince you of the problem with EA's market dominance, I don't know what will.
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Forget the whales - save the babies.
XBox systems may have better hardware specs than GC and PS2 systesm, but EA titles on the XBox fail to include internet playability through XBox Live. It is interesting to see MS and EA duke it out about XBox Live; the arguements on both sides are interesting and compelling.
Just the same, I don't feel like shelling out my hard earned cash for EA's XBox titles for products that include internet play on the PS2 platform... especially since the XBox title is often similarly priced to the PS2 counterpart. To me, this is less gaming value for the same price.
I hope that MS and EA work out the problem. I also hope XBox Live users spend their gaming dollar wisely.
This can get ugly, but perhaps a little marketing pressure (boycott) could help- it will either drive EA from the XBox platform altogether (bad for both EA, Microsoft, and consumers) or EA and Microsoft will need work out a solution.
Until then, I can't buy into less gaming value for the same price.
I love Prince of Persia but thinking that it was developed with slave labour makes me uneasy.
However, the current crop of stuff from them (e.g. extreme sports games) is quite good too.
Sierra published the excellent Papyrus NASCAR racing simulators for years, their last one in 2003 (2003 Season). In this series, EA until today is way behind (it's not NFS, it's a *simulation*!) in terms of feeling and multiplayer quality, even with their 2004 version (I have both). So what did EA last year? Locked out Sierra through an exclusivity deal ($$$) with the NASCAR brand. IMO, that's the typical wannabe-monopolist behaviour. The market gets streamlined, mass products instead of diversity and quality.