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The 'EA Image' Tarnished
Gamespot reports that Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson has gone on record saying that EA is wrecking its good name, with questionable business decisions and dropping game quality. From the article: "'Reviews of all of EA's annualized titles, its primary source of profit, have declined over the past two years,' Wilson noted. 'Although market share has not declined dramatically to date, in years such as 2007, which promises to have tremendous competition, it seems likely if quality does not improve. EA's aggregate review has also declined significantly in the past two years.'" 1up has the word that, in support of this, EA is still very proud of their 'paying for cheat codes' policy with Need for Speed.
The parent post has a minor error. Let me see if I can fix it.
EA is wrecking its "good name"
Much better.
Sure but, cmon, how much better can Madden really get without smell-o-vision? Seriously, I like the EA games, and have noticed less improvement over the years, but all in all, they're still great games that are fun to play. I even like their stupid "Big" games and wish they'd release them on PC.
You'll have that sometimes...
So...the huge employee-driven lawsuit against EA for its draconian work environment, unpaid overtime, etc. didn't tarnish their image?
Lackluster re-releases of (American) football games after EA secured exclusive right to all things "NFL" didn't tarnish their image?
'nuff said.
But because such a short post won't explain to the uninformed: The debacle that was C&C Generals should tell you just how bad EA's influence is on a proven game series. After all the great work that Westwood did defining the C&C series, EA released C&C Generals as a wannabe StarCraft with horrible netcode and next to no support.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I think almost a decade has passed since EA actually had a good name.
The one they had back in the days of Archon, Pinball Construction Set, Seven Cities of Gold, and M.U.L.E.
'course, that was a long time ago...
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
What other shocking truths will these crazy journalists uncover next! I hear they're working on a piece regarding new evidence that water is apparently wet. Mind-blowing!
I weep for the early to mid 80's, where *EVERY* single title coming out of Electronic Arts was pure gold. M.U.L.E., Mail Order Monsters, Dr J vs Larry Bird, Racing Destruction Set, The Seven Cities of Gold, Archon - the list of quality, addictive games coming from them kept me and my Commie 64 busy for ages and ages.
Good idea: Offer players new and exciting content to download through online services, allowing your video games to generate extra revenue without having to develop an entirely new game that will vanish off the $60 shelves and into the $30 bargains in three weeks.
Bad idea: Gut half of your $60 game and redistribute it claiming that your customers will want to pay extra for what they originally got for free.
When I interact with a company I want to feel as though we are mutually benefitting each other. I give them my hard earned money, and they give me a product born of their own sweat and toil. I don't want to feel like I'm some resource they're trying to find new and more fiendish ways to exploit.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
I hate to be a dink (well, honestly I don't hate it) but when someone says that EA doesn't have a good name they're essentially sitting in their ivory tower of video-game elitism like food critics before them. EA is the Large Chain restaurant of the videogame industry and doesn't get the respect they deserve. Sticking with the food analogy, EA produces a meal that looks good, tastes good, has good portions, had good service, and you don't get the shits after eating it; it may not be the best meal in the world, and you may not want to eat it all the time, but they still have a good reputation.
'Although market share has not declined dramatically to date, in years such as 2007, which promises to have tremendous competition, it seems likely if quality does not improve...
What competition? I thought they'd finished buying and gutting every company that had a semi successful title in the last 5 years. And when they couldn't buy them, they obtained exclusive franchise licensing so they could torpedo their ships before they even left port.
I have no idea what the future holds for EA. But I wouldn't be so sure that they won't continue to get away with releasing half finished products, humping and dumping young developers and double charging their customers. It seems like plenty of people have continued to buy their products.
I'm just bitter they swallowed some of my favorite little development houses in the late 90s.
I take it you haven't played BattleField 2. It might taste good at first, but later that night when your ass is exploding you'll wish you'd stayed home for dinner.
Watching EA run my favorite franchise into the ground was all the evidence I needed. It took EA about 9 months to come out with a patch for C&C Generals which could have been done with about 15 lines of code involving unit changes. I always hoped for more games like Red Alert.
If I dine at a fine restaurant I expect fine food. If I go to McDonald's I expect a Big Mac. I consider this OK. You know why? McDonald's is cheaper than the $50 a plate restaurant. EA's mediocre games are still $50, now even $60. EA's games(and, to be fair, games in general) are deteriorating in quality while increasing in price. This is bad.
EA traditionally hasn't gained hate because of their game quality. A lot of people already hate EA, in the necessary evil sense, because of the absolutely putrid way they have been treating their employees over the past few years. The suffering quality of their games very probably has to do with that very fact.
EA has turned out some of the greater games that we've all been playing over the past few years, but part of me feels guilty doing so, knowing the ways they've treated their employees to get that job done.
EA lost their direction a long time ago. I used to play Ultima Online until EA bought it out. EA realized that getting two new customers was more profitable than keeping one veteran customer. That's true in the short run at least, which seems to be all they are thinking about.
They seem to adopt this policy to non-subscription based games, although it is slightly modified: selling two almost completely similar (or two shitty) games is better than selling one original (or quality) game. The 2007 annual sports game lineup that EA released were barely an upgrade from 2006 (and 2006 wasn't that much better than 2005, but I'll give it credit for being relatively significant). They should have just put it off until they worked out their issues with the next-gen consoles, or pulled their heads out of their asses. If they started thinking more about what the customers want instead of maximizing profit in the short run, they might do a lot better. I know a lot of people are going to get into the "companies only care about money" rant, but a lot of the time, caring about your customers will lead to more money.
If you look elsewhere, you will find that Valve is doing the Good Idea (except for the have-to-hope-Steam-won't-shut-down factor, which I still dislike). So it can be done. If EA is too stupid, tough luck ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
The article says that reviews for EA games have been getting worse since two years ago. That's about when EA started signing exclusive licensing agreements with professional sports. Without an NFL 2K7, why does Madden 07 have to be any better? If you want to play as your favorite NFL team, you have to go wtih Madden.
The article also cites alot of movie and comic book license games as proof of declining quality. But again, EA has the inside track on a lot of that IP. They are one of the few companies big enough to lock up the pricey licenses. There is a reason that Rare never made another James Bond game after their biggest hit, GoldenEye. EA is a giant, multi-platform developer who could pay Universal Studios a lot of money for exclusive rights to James Bond.
And when a kid goes to the store, he doesn't say "That game is an EA game, so it must suck," he says, "That is a Superman game, so it must suck." EA's reputation doesn't get tarnished when Superman Returns sucks. What gets tarnished is the reputation of Superman games (already pretty bad).
Right now, EA has the money and clout to get a lot of exclusive licenses. They can sell a lot of mediocre games with a great license, especially if they are the only ones in town with a game of your favorite series.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
My friend is a big Superman fan and pre-ordered "Superman Returns" the video game direct from the EA store. This was in April, the game then got pushed back to a November release date. In the meantime he had already been charged for the game. The game was supposed to be released on November 20th. As of November 24th my friend still did not recieve his game.
The only way to contact someone at the EA store if their is a problem is by logging in and sending a support e-mail which they say someone will get back to you in 24 hours. Three days later my friend still heard nothing after sending a support email and asked if I could help him somehow. I tried to find a phone number for the EA store - no luck, checked their main website etc... still no numbers got the address for EA games and googled it which gave me the corporate HQ number and location in the U.S. Called long distance to California to try to get it sorted out and the secretary instantly put my friend into an automated computer response system that did not have any options for the problem he was experiencing it then took a survey from him and hung up on him.
We called back a second time and got the same secretary again who transferred us to some guy that just went by the name of "Mike" he would not give his ufll name badge number nothing... I asekd him how my buddy could just get a refund since he went out and bought the game at the store since no one had gotten back to him. The guy said "Their is no one you can contact at the EA store the only way to contact someone is through their webmail form" I asked for a supervisor he said "I don't have the name of one to give you" I asked well who do I contact if this is not resolved ? He had no answer. I asked for his information in case this wasn't taken care of he just gave me his first name and refused to give me any other information and just kept saying it will be corrected I have let a supervisor know.
The morale of this story I would NEVER BUY ANYTHING DIRECT FROM EA EVER.
- He paid ahead of time
- They have no customer service except for email
- They have a don't call us or contact us if you have a problem policy
- They have a VERY SHADY way of doing business with customers.
- You can't talk to anyone live if you have a problem. Unless you call corporate HQ in which case you might get a Janitor for all anyone knows named "MIKE".
Now that a business analyst looks at it, we see evidence that EA is rotten to the core, not just bruised on the surface. They're apparently doing everything wrong, game-wise, development-wise and business-wise. The only thing they seem to do correctly is take over, assimilate and ruin a game studio in just such a manner as to manipulate the market share and keep their piece of pie the same size.
I'll never forgive EA for how it has ruined numerous studios (Origin was my favorite), several (former) employees' lives and the games that we loved to play.
Something familiar about those words....Oh, yeah. That has been Blizzard's policy for a decade now. "It's done when it's done." Go figure that it only took EA 10 years to adopt the one practice they should have been doing from the beginning.
Too little, too late. I feel extremely sorry for all of the lives it would affect, but I seriously hope EA bites the big one, goes down the toilet and either gets bought by a REAL game company or is taken apart and sold for scrap.
There is one reason why I have not yet dumped my EA stock: Spore. I'm not expecting it to save the company or anything, but I feel like I'd be a fool to sell before it's released.
Actually, the only reason I even bought EA shares several years ago was because I was a Will Wright fan.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Art can not and must not be produced on an assembly line. EA's biggest fault is their attempting constantly to do this.
I'm a former EA developer myself, and I poured a lot of my own blood, sweat, and tears into titles that I never had much faith in to begin with -- but that is the nature of being a small cog in a very large machine. The bolded point up here is very valid, though. By tying so much of EA's commercial viability into pre-existing IP like movies and real-world sports, EA saves tons on the R&D costs on the actual creation of new concepts and ideas. However, they've also built themselves into a box where almost every title they release has a built-in "expiration date", which both increases the pressure on the developers themselves, and shortens the time available to develop a quality product.
I personally have always found this to be a counter-productive and short-sighted way to do business. The best-selling titles in gaming history were not slapped together in deference to a deadline instead of a standard of quality, and the assembly-line nature of developing iterative titles that must be released on a consistent yearly schedule does nothing to encourage innovation. Regardless of the effects, EA has made this their business model by choosing to base games on items that coincide with 'real world' events (the start of the NFL season, a movie release) and that will be continue to be the lynchpin of how they do business until the moment where they're confronted with a very real financial reason not to do so, which will require a far more significant backlash than rhetoric from hardcore gamers -- like a tangible decline in perception from the MAINSTREAM consumer.
That being said, though, I think the attempts to categorize EA as an 'evil empire' are missing the boat. EA is a corporation, like any other, and as such, its business is moving units. While smaller companies obviously are able to personify the individualistic ideals viewed as more honorable and dignified in a free market, EA's massive corporate structure has relegated it to ultimately being a "bottom line" company as opposed to the type of entity that can engage in 'prestige' work. This is a huge corporate monolith, there's no doubt about that, but to think that the company is operating from an "us against them" perspective is fairly inaccurate. Regardless of what the general consensus may be, the people making games at EA do care about creating a quality product, it's ultimately the business issues and the inflexible nature of such a gargantuan company that creates disasters -- not any ill-will towards consumers or the industry in general.
It's also become fashionable for gamers to rationalize their dislike of EA's products and stature by falling back on the "EA Spouse" claims and returning to beat the war drums that EA treats their employees inhumanly. This, I think, is at its heart a flawed argument which draws more from conjecture than reality. I left EA because I wanted to work at a smaller company and feel better about the quality products I was involved in, sure, but at no point during my tenure there did I feel exploited or taken advantage of in any way. The hours were long at times, sure, but I've worked in the industry prior to that and continue to do so today and I see little to no difference in the time commitment expected from me in those situations as I did when I was still employed with Electronic Arts. I know that the vast majority of my fellow employees felt the same way. It seems to me that the argument that EA is worthy of scorn because of how they treat employees is a conclusion being drawn far more from conjecture than any real-world experience. The argument that their employee treatment is somehow the motivating factor behind an overwhelming negative perception of the company seems to be a convenient way to mask the true cause of this sentiment, which falls somewhere a few inches to the right of the revolutio