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Interview With Bing Gordon (EA)
djedery writes "I interviewed Bing Gordon (Chief Creative Officer of EA) via email. We discussed game design in academia, outsourcing, game scheduling / budgeting, games for India / China, getting along with marketing, and risks." Decent interview; could be longer but the line about reverse engineering the Genesis is an interesting one, especially considering that some of the current legislative attempts would make that illegal.
Games, as they are now, are generally horrible. It's a lot like Hollywood nowadays, not just because of movie frenchise games, but also because it costs millions of dollars to just make a game, and then nobody wants to take their chances on a game that is less likely to sell (i.e. isn't really mainstream) so they release pretty much ONLY first person shooters.
yawn@games & lol@interweb
o hai
He invented the machine that goes "BING!", right?
10,000? So one link on
Overall a great interview. I like where it talks about the need for business acumen in software development. It seems that there are certainly developers who are missing this.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
I remember talking with other EA people at the Redwood Shores building and laughing at just how hardcore EA execs when it came to putting console makers in their place.
EA letting Sega know their console was a rotting corpse with the Dreamcast.
EA making Microsoft beg like a pathetic little bitch for online support for the Xbox.
EA and the 360 is the best one yet, just wait and see...
If the DMCA had been arround in the early 1980's...would IBM still hold a monopoly on the PC BIOS? Think of all we would have missed out on. Apple probably would have folded up for lack of users if the Mac clones industry didn't happen...although they'd like you to forget that
Blar.
Chief Creative Officer, huh? I guess my question is exactly how much "creativity" is involved with incrementing a number with each new game release?
This guy's the limit!
What are your thoughts on the MMOG market? Do you agree with Brian Farrell's recent assertion that there's only room for one big MMOG at any given time? (I.e. World of Warcraft as of now.) **Note to reader: interview took place prior to the announcement of the Mythic acquisition. Nope. I think that "virtual worlding" will soon be a rite of passage for all teenagers with access to the internet. Does this mean that Warhammer Online will not be canceled?
The guy sez:
"At EA, an MBA is very useful for people working in finance and business development. We must have 2-3 entry-level job openings per year for MBA-type skills in these areas. But there are many more openings per year for MBA's who also can lead product development teams through sound business judgment, organizational development and leadership skills, and game-making creativity. We have 200-400 entry-level job openings per year for people like this. In other words, MBA's who want to be in the game business should try to be Producers, not business specialists."
I can see 2-3 entry-level MBA's a year, but 200-400 for those looking to lead project teams? Is there some kind of horrible disease in EA's HQ that kills yet isn't known publicly? I can't imaging that many positions for all skill sets, let alone MBA + ??...
The trick to finishing any creative project on schedule is to ship whatever is done by a given date. This is what advertising agencies usually do with the commercials they create. Of course, no one remembers that it was on time after it fails miserably.
And ofcourse all your customers are happy with half completed games.
We reverse-engineered the electronics in a "clean room" environment, because Sega wouldn't give us licensee terms that we could live with.
And yet they set up terms others can't live with. Haven't they learned anything?!.
I think our industry's greatest challenge is to transition from technology-based to creativity-based experiences. In other words, we should all become like Miyamoto! Easier said than done.
Uhm.. EA doesn't really have a track record for both technology-based or creativity-based experiences. I think they'll have a long road ahead of them.
Oh and ofcourse publishers should grant the creators of creativity-based experiences some slack, otherwise it won't work ofcourse. how does this go along with "it compiles, ship it" mentality from the first citation?
The more rabid supporters of the DMCA are the primary reason why the more moderate supporters of "liberal, but strong" IP laws (more law enforcement, less preemptive legislation) get drowned out. When they get called out on issues like the BIOS, they almost never respond. "La dee fucking da" and all that jazz. IP law sometimes doesn't work. Sometimes the market is actually expanded by the rabid competition that weak IP law can create. Necessity is the mother of all invention and there is actually a point where letting people live off their research and development becomes parasitic.
It's not a divide between socialism on the one side and hyper-protective policies on the other. There is plenty of room for common law to work its magic to create a nuanced and flexible system.
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EA's biggest risk was preparing to launch a lineup of games for the Sega Genesis without a license. We reverse-engineered the electronics in a "clean room" environment, because Sega wouldn't give us licensee terms that we could live with. If this had not worked, and the games hadn't sold, (Sega agreed to license terms the evening before our public introduction of games), EA would probably have gone the way of early computer game leaders like Broderbund and Sierra. It was truly a "bet the company" decision.
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Codemasters (UK based company) did that too. Sega/Nintendo settled out of court, and the "secret" deal was to pretend they'd paid or something, otherwise the people who actually did pay would get pissed.
I read Interview with Bing! 2006 and Interview with Bing! 2007 seems to be just a rehashing of the same ideas as the prior just with updated information. Ever since EA has gotten exclusivity to the Interview with Bing! license the whole series has gone down hill.
Our industry's biggest business challenge is to figure out how to convince consumers to pay "fair value" for the increased quality we are delivering. We need to monetize our "excess hours" of satisfied play. Our best games are unbelievably cheap on a per hour basis, compared to, say $1.00 per hour for paperback books, and $5-10 an hour for movies and DVD's.
Translating: Our industry's biggest business challenge is to figure out how to rise our prices, so getting exclusive use of trademarks like NBA, FIFA, NFL, NHL makes us the only one, and we can put the price we want. We will buy more and more small and good game studios to! Well, if you want a game, you will need to buy from us, this is our industry's biggest business challenge.
Our industry's biggest business challenge is to figure out how to convince consumers to pay "fair value" for the increased quality we are delivering. We need to monetize our "excess hours" of satisfied play. Our best games are unbelievably cheap on a per hour basis, compared to, say $1.00 per hour for paperback books, and $5-10 an hour for movies and DVD's.
Die in a fire you ass! Fine, as soon as gaming PCs/consoles are as cheap as the equipment needed to read a book you use that as a valid comparison. And as far as "excess hours", cut-n-paste level grinding and mindless drudgery does NOT count per-hour the same as watching a movie. Fucktard. I think we found one of the reasons EA sucks so hard.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
The creativity stems from figuring out which game developer they feel like purchasing, bleeding dry then discarding next like the financial vampires they are.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
...its not a name its a sound effect!
SURELY NOT!!!!!
was it just me that read that as bling gordon? like flash gordon only with 50% more whores
Another proof that a single well picked buzzword like "cross-functional" can win you the game any time. I must have lost contact with mainstream or this one just is picking up steam, though.
There is something deeply suspect about a company that has movers and shakers named "Bing" and "Trip."
Mudge
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they're not.
Thus providing a boatload of overpriced, hype marketed, half-done crap to your consumers, forcing large patch downloads, huge amounts of frustration and company image degradation. This really lets customers know how much you value them.
It is because of numbskull thinking such as this that I admire Blizzard above all other game developers. Their philosophy: "We'll ship it when it's done."
Damn straight.
This guy is just another reason to hate EA.
I heard this guy speak at a conference. I was amazingly underwhelmed. He visibly seemed to have no interest in being there, and did not prepare. It was like having a discussion with a troubled teenager about the importance of compound interest and dividends for their 401k.
I felt he was a total jackass, and I know several people who work (worked) for EA (go EA Tiburon) and there's a lot of bad things to say about EA. This guy's demeanor and appearance backed it up. He somewhat reminded me of the stereotype of fraternity members (one former programmer compared EA to a giant frat house, so this resemblance may be more than just passing). During the presentation, he constantly would state what sounded like a fact, and then immediately mumbled "or whatever". I know a thing or two about public speaking, and I'm certian his actions weren't the result of being nervous.
He may be a good business person, but in my opinion, you'd have to be supremely intelligent (which he did not demonstrate during his talk) to outshine his jackass attitude.
Notice how the interviewer name dropped stanford, but Bing didn't take the bait.
Instead, Bing dissed stanford's undergraduate programs by name dropping Carnegie-Mellon and the University of Southern California as the must-have courses. Bing wasn't exactly a cheerleader for the stanford MBA curriculum either.
Guess what was said here is true http://www.epinions.com/content_73675148932.
"The trick to finishing any creative project on schedule is to ship whatever is done by a given date."
Anyone remember falling from 3 feet and dying in 1942? Unclimbable "slippery" hills? Horrible stuttering?
How about the M60 kit in BF Vietnam? Talk about completely unbalanced? Do they have QA at EA?
What about crashing after every round in BF2? Servers crashing whenever someone fired a missile from a HUMV?
Not even 1/10th the problems... and just generally, patches that break more things than they fix?
I think the article should be more about why the "Chief Creative Officer" should keep his job... I won't spend another dime on EA products.
Funny how he forgot to mention exploitation of labor as one of their "tricks." Not too terribly long ago, you could almost compare them to any sweatshop in China and find parallels. How'd that class-action a couple years back work out for ya, EA?
I admit, I don't know if the situation's improved for EA programmers since the lawsuit was settled. This is pure speculation on my part, but given their corporate culture, I don't doubt they're still working under "constant crunch" conditions. Any manager worth a damn can see this is counter-productive in terms of quality and turnover rates, but hey, make 'em code until they collapse anyway!
Our best games are unbelievably cheap on a per hour basis, compared to, say $1.00 per hour for paperback books, and $5-10 an hour for movies and DVD's. ...Because they pad their games with mind numbing chores. Half life episode 1 has a $5.00/1hour ratio. That's on par with a Movie. I would much rather play less of a better game than visa versa; it's a waste of time otherwise.