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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."
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 actually that business-centric attitude which has ensured that EA is the only major third party publisher that's still around from the 80s.
Everyone else is on life-support or alive by name only simply for the free marketing and publicity one can milk from 'Midway' or 'Atari'. Not even 'Sierra' was that lucky.
It may seem tragic - but EA is to games what Warner Brothers is to film. Sometimes they get something right - but most of the time they don't. And they're the only ones with the money to put out content on a regular schedule.
That aside, the only way this would be 'Bad(tm)' for gaming in general, would be if EA was leveraging its advantage in an anti-competitive manner. If it was strangling the distribution chain RIAA-style to keep (comparitive) indy titles off BestBuy's shelves, or if it was essentially blackmailing console developers into schemes to dissuade competition.
That hasn't yet happened. Although meatspace distribution has been a hackneyed, independent-unfriendly mess for over a decade - it isn't of EA's making.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
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.
"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.
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.
END COMMUNICATION
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.