Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
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...
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
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.
class Madden2005: public Madden2004 { // Put new roster in here
}
Are you insane? The new Madden has more new features in it than any other Madden in quite some time.
The new playmaker control is awesome. You can change the direction of the run before you even snap the ball now. You can also change the route of the receivers. This is all without having to call a audible and completely change the play/formation. While on defense you can also change the way your defense reacts after the snap of the ball. You can pull every one in to stop a run, or you can pull them back to cover a pass. While running the ball at any time, you can also you it to call for blocks. None of this was possible before, and it is very hard to live without once you get used to it.
They also improved the franchise mode of the game by leaps and bounds. Not only do you just play season after season, now you can do some stuff a owner would do. These are things like set the prices of various stadium prices to improve you bottom line, like parking, concession prices, souvenir prices and ticket prices. Heck, you can even pick up the team and move them to a new city. Once you get to the new city, you can design the stadium and new jerseys.
With all of those new features, it hardly sounds like just a roster update to me.
roche
Bah Humbug!
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.