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EA's Conquest of Origin
amitlu writes "Allen Varney wrote about EA's conquest of Origin in the Escapist this week. He covers much of EA's departure from its original values, and even has some quotes from the Garriotts, including, '[CEO] Larry Probst was often not supportive of the things I was doing, but I respect Larry because he was always clear, rational and consistent in his lack of support'"
I do not know (guess why?) what the article says but EA definitely did not work as effectively and as fast as /. did on that website...
Before all the EA bashing starts, this is a good article to read... Several very interesting pieces of information here:
Upon being willfully acquired by EA, Origin was able to expand greatly, but they did so under their own guidance, and did so poorly. They doubled their staff and projects, entirely with inexperienced people. Many of these new projects failed, and this wasted a lot of money. Not a great way to begin a business relationship. That's when EA started to get involved in Origin management... I would too, if I had acquired a company and they started to be abusive and careless with funding and resources.
Origin barely paid enough for people to live on. EA brought their salaries up to competetive levels. The downside, the author puts it, is that this made it less of a 'cultural, hobbyist' thing and more of a business. But is not a business what they were trying to run? Paying your people a pittance - poverty level, as the author claims Origin paid most it's employees (except for it's star employees, who were paid in excess) - is not something to be proud of. I know for a fact that EA today still pays fairly competetive wages. I also know for a fact that the 'sweatshop conditions' no longer exist, at least at the studio I'm familiar with (which was the one being mentioned in the original blog that started the whole scandal). But Origin was doing that, AND paying poorly, years ahead of that.
The author seems bitter that EA insisted that projects actually stay on schedule. Origins habit of letting projects run until they were done, without clear schedules, is probably what led to them running out of money... the fact that they paid their people poorly explains why they lasted so long to start with.
The MMORPG industry was practically spawned by Garriot, who got the approval for seed funding in the budget for Ultima Online straight from the CEO... nobody at the company really had any understanding of what the game was (and rightly so, this was a totally new genre), but when the 50,000 beta testers volunteers signed up, EA threw full muscle behind it.
Sounds like EA saved the company, and tried to turn it from a playground into a business. Yes, there were poor decisions made - on both sides. But Origin would have been dead years earlier. It looks like it was a culture clash... had Origin not screwed things up on their own earlier on and needed hand holding when they expanded faster than they were capable of, maybe they would have maintained more indepedence.
I'm not going to defend every capitalist hog out there, but what else are you supposed to do to support the bandwidth? Almost every cool site out there that wasn't bought by some benevolent billionaire ended up sucking in some small part due to the reality that resources aren't free. I can think of dozens that have small nuisances from ads now as opposed to years ago, but guess what? The Escapists still has good articles. Fuck the ads, economics, or the big companies that charge too much for services (whether you believe that or not). But don't cast stones at the people just trying to make ends meet to provide some good content.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
I think this was a fairly well spoken article.
The problem with EA that this article reveals to me is that EA has mixed goals. EA wants to make the highest quality games and they want to make a substantial profit. So to make the high quality games they hire and purchase the top level talent in the industry. However after they have this talent they don't give them any creative freedom and put them on projects that they have no interest in because it makes business sense. One goal is standing in the way of the other.
This article is a good example of EA making a good business move to pick up a talented company that is about to crumble and them completely messing up on the integration of the company.
The example in the article was sending the people that worked hard on Wing Commander Online to work on UO2. Although technically on paper the wing commander online team should would well on UO2 the feel and inspirations completely change and the team looses all interest in making good games. The previously talented employees start to loose their passion for the industry and start feeling like they are working in a factory rather them an entertainment company. After that the talent is either lost though boredom and stagnation that leads to EA firing them or the talent just quits and moves to another company. Later when the former employees become successful again at a new company EA will look at grabbing their new company and starting the cycle over again.
If you don't know who EA got its image or how EA handle business I would say this entire issue of the extremist is worth reading.
Origin would have been still around if EA didn't buy them, only they wouldn't have had the backing to make UO as soon as they did, if at all. U9 would have been a lot better without people being pulled off of it for UO, and EA rushing it out the door.
This is a huge mistake and one that I have learned many times over. A programmer without sleep gradually looses so much productivity and is far more error prone as he goes longer and longer without sleep that it makes sense to make sure your programmers get their 40 winks.
I have spent three or four sleepless days working on a project, only to go home, get rested, come back, throw out everything I had done and go from scratch to finish within a couple of hours.
Lack of sleep can not only make you much less productive, but you can even become a net negative. Get your rest.
Parent makes a post about the site that's linked by this article. Sounds on-topic to me.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
So I read the article linked above... and then kept on hitting the next page button. I just finished reading the whole magazine issue, and was impressed with ALL of the articles within. It really gives some good insight and commentary on EA and I highly recomment that people should read the other articles as well!
I like the bit about the exorbitant price of floppies nearly killing Origin. I remember blowing my allowance (and later a good chunk of my paycheck) regularly on floppies just to be able to back all those Origin and EA games. Nothing like spending $1.00+/floppy to prevent diskrot from claiming disk 7 (of 8) nine months after spending $50.00+ on the game :(
I can get 2 DVD-Rs or a DVD-RW (with change left over) now for less that a single 720K DSDD floppy back in the good ol' days.
Give a man a beer and he wastes an hour. Teach a man to brew and he wastes a lifetime.
You can just click the "view text" link at the bottom of the page. That way you can avoid ads and background images, as well as re-sizing the text to whatever point you want for easy reading.
Can be found here.
I always wished there was a third, last Crusader. One where that since everything is largely taken care of, the silencer just decides to go completely postal for no good reason whatsoever. I could see the commercials...
"First, there was No Remorse..."
[stuff exploding]
"Then, there was No Regret..."
[guy running around on fire]
"Now... there's just No Reason!"
[silencer shrugs his shoulders, shoots a guy, and frolics off]
Wow, reading that I was thinking back to when I was in high school back in the very early '90's and my friend bought Ultima IV (or V?) for his 286. It was the coolest thing we ever played. Then came Wing Commander and we were blown away by it. Then came the 3D Ultima - Ultima Underground and it was awesome. I even spent a couple hundred bucks to upgrade my PC from 1 to 4MB of RAM just to play it. Yeah, Origin really created worlds. But since Ultima Online (which I never played) I haven't heard much or became excited about any more Origin games.
I wonder how much the rights to all of origin's games are, since EA doesnt seem to be trying to profit off of them - Aside from UO, whose corpse they are using to ride down the mountain with.
I agree.
The only thing that really bothers me is sites that become popular (and hence need lots of ads to support themselves), but don't bother to offer any subscription option so that people who are really interested can pay to get rid of the ads. It's really not all that hard. I imagine it's similar to setting up an ad account (assuming you get someone else to handle the financial aspects).
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Then again, I do get annoyed with all the 'members-only' sections of sites, or enhanced features at a price. When the internet went public, your price for finding something good was having to search for it through all the crap that was out there. Ads didn't seem like anything as long as you found what you were looking for (unless it was 64 scripted pop-ups). Now, the actually useful info is still equally hard to find, and once you get there, it'll cost you $5/month per site to get the good stuff. Or at least that's the impression it leaves with me.
My griping aside, you do prove a good point, and for all we know, maybe they're working on it.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
What bothers me is when sites become popular, require ads to support themselves, offer subscription services that claim you won't see any ads, but when you subscribe you still get ads at every link *cough*IGN*cough*
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
What exactly is the tech support you need from EA? "How do I kill the final boss???"
And...
Do other game companies offer a toll-free support line? I have NEVER seen one. But then again, I never felt the need to call tech support for a game....
No reason to lie.
What ads? I clicked the link for text to be able to print it out and read it at my desk!
That's a good point too. I paid for 3dgamers, but even after signing up there were still ads. I had to go into preferences to disable them. Hello? Web designer? Brain?
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Small addition to the news post, there's a letter from Trip Hawkins in the next issue. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/15/1 It starts on the right column and goes over the next page.