Former Exec Says Electronic Arts "Is In the Wrong Business"

Mitch Lasky was the executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts until leaving the publisher to work at an investment firm. He now has some harsh things to say about how EA has been run over the past several years, in particular criticizing the decisions of CEO John Riccitiello. Quoting: "EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again. ... by far the greatest failure of Riccitiello's strategy has been the EA Games division. JR bet his tenure on EA's ability to 'grow their way through the transition' to digital/online with hit packaged goods titles. They honestly believed that they had a decade to make this transition (I think it's more like 2-3 years). Since the recurring-revenue sports titles were already 'booked' (i.e., fully accounted for in the Wall Street estimates) it fell to EA Games to make hits that could move the needle. It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another. Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's $850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy."

Comments

Times have changed

[sopssa]

This is a business person commenting harshly mostly about how EA is financially ran, and that they haven't been able to grow as fast as Activision Blizzard (which was a one giant merker - like Microsoft and Google getting together). His bashing about the games isn't about gameplay, their originality, or how fun they are for players - it's just seems to be about business. "Hit" would be a game that makes lots of money, not how good it is.

I actually like the way EA has been taking. They're doing a lot more original, new IP and games than some years ago - last year notably Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Dragon Age Origins.

The thing is that Activision Blizzard has grown in to a huge competitor with their World of Warcraft franchise, Modern Warfare 2, and Guitar Hero series. All of them, btw, series that have 6+ released games. Every year a new one. And the cash cow that World of Warcraft is.

It seems he was more happy when EA was the company that didn't create much of new IP or games, but just milked the old ones every year with new versions. Now EA has changed it's route a bit and releasing such new kind of games than Mirror's Edge, and such legends than Bioware's roleplaying games. They don't probably hold such a mass appeal, but they're great games and something new.

So is Activision Blizzard now the ones that are mostly after money, and EA trying to do something new?

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Activision just said they crossed $1,000,000,000 (over one billion) in MW2 revenues. Just saying..

Re:Times have changed

[A beautiful mind]

Mass Effect um, probably holds mass appeal. With the masses. It's going to be massive! And the sex scenes, oh my, some nerds are going to go to mas...

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually close to the problem EA currently has, when people like him were in control of it all they did was dish out the same game every year with name changes on the models and perhaps a new colour scheme. This was a great way to keep a steady income but has 0 room to expand and increase profits and a good chance of starting to lose them as you get outbid for the contracts by upstart companies that can take risks.

Now the new team have spotted this and have started to branch out but its having to fight the old EA to get it done the games he mentions as disasters really weren't, and pandemic was never really a reason to buy pandemic-bioware seriously it was maybe 200mill of that price which they recouped almost instantly.

The Old Republic (note the lack of the word KNIGHTS) already has enough interest to be classed as a major hit for EA seriously its a SW MMO aslong as they avoid the problems people had with galaxies its gonna be a cash cow with extra cash on the side!

Activision-Blizzard has a problem lack of new properties and Blizzards own self confesed inability to come up with new game ideas and universes (seriously they became famous for games that were quick renames of Games Workshop games with game play ideas stolen from dune 2!)

If players ever start to leave WoW for other games in increasing numbers i can see their income dropping like a rock

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention there's no new "Knights of the old Republic" in the works. It's called Star Wars: The Old Republic. I'm not convinced by the predictions of some guy who can't even get the names right.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course he's talking about business! It's no use churning out original titles which cost 10s of millions to make and don't recoup their costs. You don't get more "art" in the market, in the long run, because the company making it will go bust.

There is no dichotomy of companies which are trying to make money vs companies which are trying to do something new. All the games companies are trying to make money. The rest is just PR & marketing.

Re:Times have changed

[NickFortune]

This is a business person commenting harshly mostly about how EA is financially ran, and that they haven't been able to grow as fast as Activision Blizzard (which was a one giant merker - like Microsoft and Google getting together). His bashing about the games isn't about gameplay, their originality, or how fun they are for players - it's just seems to be about business

You say that like it's a bad thing. His point is that EA's business strategy is unsustainable, and I think he's got a point.

I actually like the way EA has been taking. They're doing a lot more original, new IP and games than some years ago - last year notably Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Dragon Age Origins.

When you say "way they've been taking", I assume you mean that in the sense of "direction they've chose to head in". As opposed to the way they've been taking money. Personally, I'm not entirely convinced. DA: Origins could have used another six months playtesting on the AI IMHO, and Dead Space sucked like a black hole. Spore was fun however, and I'll concede that I'm not generally representative of the larger gaming community.

The point is, as you rightly point out, he's not criticising the games - he's criticising the business strategy behind them. If Spore, Mirror's Edge, Dead Space and Need for Speed: Undercover were indeed loss makers for EA, then it doesn't matter how good the games were. If they can't make them turn a profit, they soon won't be making any more.

It seems he was more happy when EA was the company that didn't create much of new IP or games, but just milked the old ones every year with new versions

I didn't get that, at all. As I read it, he just thinks the revenue from their established franchises isn't going to be enough to tide them through the changeover to digital distribution. And he thinks that EA are throwing too much money at trying to manufacture blockbusters, and I think he's probably right.

The trouble is that for quite a while now, the big games companies have been throwing money at games trying to raise the barrier to entry. They want to be like Hollywood studios where you have a big investment for big returns. So we things like big name voice actors throughout. Or fully orchestral scores for a game. Hollywood gets away with this by sinking a lot of cash into publicity so they can "buy the gross" - cover the bulk of production costs in the first week. That doesn't appear to be working for EA, assuming bizpunk is right about those games being expensive loss makers.

He's not making any judgements about the games themselves, except that they don't seem to be making enough money to recoup their development costs. Which, if true, would be a problem regardless of the game content.

Re:Times have changed

[dltaylor]

If you're in business to make money, open a brokerage, casino, or bank.

Otherwise, while you would like to make enough profit to keep the doors open, you're in the business of producing a product. Make a good (-enough) one keep satisfy the customers and get some repeat business.

In case no one's figured it out by now, Wall Street doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground about the latter, and will happily destroy the entire US economy (except them, of course) to do the former.

Re:Times have changed

[L4t3r4lu5]

... ter social interactions by utilising in game script choices, with the outcome predicted to be a reduction in mas...

Re:Times have changed

[Alarash]

I'm completely with you. Unfortunately video games are not about fun and, well, video games any more. They are about making money, and most of the time that means low innovation/risk taking. Which is sad, because video games should not be about pleasing shareholders, but pleasing gamers. If you please the gamers, you will mechanically make money. But probably not in the 5 to 15% year-to-year growth that investors are asking in our capitalist world.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

New doesn't mean good. I don't care if the game is the 10th in a series if it's a great game.

Re:Times have changed

[vivian]

...sive waist sizes usually associated with them, as gamers will start actually getting out there and experiencing the joys of the real world.
Of course there will always be a need for mas...

Re:Times have changed

[Denihil]

terbatation. After all, gamers gotta get off, and someones gotta do it. Definitely not my mas...

Re:Times have changed

[Zironic]

It's not like they need new game ideas or universes as long as they can provide high quality entertainment.

Re:Times have changed

[pmfa]

It seems he was more happy when EA was the company that didn't create much of new IP or games, but just milked the old ones every year with new versions.

You completely missed the point of the article. Maybe you're a fan of some of the games and you feel that the guy is attacking those, but he doesn't have a word to say about game quality. His main concern is EA's failure to adapt to digital distribution, and the reshaping of a game as we imagine it. In fact a lot a people are failing to see the point, that's the reason there is a follow up post named Packaged Goods to explain game unbundling. It's all about choice. Nowadays instead of spending 60$ on a box and get 40 hours of gameplay, we the gamers, want to select our experience. If I only play on my iPhone during my daily commute I can spend a buck once in a while and I'm happy. The freaks that spend their every waking hour in some corner of a virtual world can pay a monthly subscription and be happy.

Re:Times have changed

[LKM]

He's not making any judgements about the games themselves, except that they don't seem to be making enough money to recoup their development costs. Which, if true, would be a problem regardless of the game content.

Without taking a risk on new franchises, you won't have established franchises you can milk in the future. Which is exactly how EA got into its current hole. They're doing the right thing now, even if it's not producing immediate profits for them.

Re:Times have changed

[yakumo.unr]

Cash cow really just doesn't seem quite a big enough term any more for a project of such an insane monetary pull

Cash whale?

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you say you liek the way EA is going. I will say they have great games. I am so tired with havign to contact them after buying a game because of their DRM, that I no longer will buy any ES product. With Spore, I got home on a Sunday and hated to wait until Monday to play the game. I then needed to spend nearly one hour on the phone to have them reset something on their end.

Unlike most 11 year olds. I have maybe 6 hours a month to play a game. I do not want to spend that time on a call to the help desk.

Re:Times have changed

[bobdotorg]

...ters thesis topic. That has to do with the sexual habits of mas...

Re:Times have changed

[Professor_UNIX]

What is it with World of Warcraft anyway? Am I the only person in the world left who hasn't played that game? It looked like some cheap Ultima Online or Everquest clone.

Re:Times have changed

[ZarathustraDK]

terbatation. After all, gamers gotta get off, and someones gotta do it. Definitely not my mas...

C-C-C-C-Combo-breaker!

Re:Times have changed

[Jellybob]

terdons, which actually have a long, and exciting courtship ritual, involving lots of mas...

Re:Times have changed

[sopssa]

Nowadays instead of spending 60$ on a box and get 40 hours of gameplay, we the gamers, want to select our experience. If I only play on my iPhone during my daily commute I can spend a buck once in a while and I'm happy. The freaks that spend their every waking hour in some corner of a virtual world can pay a monthly subscription and be happy.

Well in that case he should probably say that to every publisher on the planet, as everyone does this. In fact, Blizzard charges you for the base game, 2 expansion sets, and a monthly fee. Sure you can buy the earlier ones for $19 now, but that still more than an usual game and with a monthly fee. And lots of people have paid the full prices for those games, because they purchased them on launch.

His main concern is EA's failure to adapt to digital distribution

I think EA has been quite good with this. They sell games on Steam, Direct2Drive and their own direct-download store.

But as he noted in the new post, his blog usually gets 50 visitors who knows him and his background, and in that way directing it at EA isn't so surprising. But now slashdot and other sites picked it up as a rant towards EA, while in fact its more general comment towards whole business.

Re:Times have changed

[PizzaAnalogyGuy]

..terpiece pizzas, because even if these gamers get more social, not all of their old habits are going to disappear. They will still need their crusty big pizzas with pepperoni, italian sausage, green peppers, red onions and mushroom toppings taken down with a big glass of coca-cola while raiding in WoW. Only that way they can ever find mas...

Re:Times have changed

[plover]

because video games should not be about pleasing shareholders, but pleasing gamers. If you please the gamers, you will mechanically make money.

That's not necessarily true at all. It's way more complicated than that. A complex game with all the development, artwork, mechanics, music, actors, promotion and packaging can easily cost over $50,000,000 to produce. At those costs you have to please a million gamers before you make your first dime.

That's a huge risk. You don't know it in advance, and there are no guarantees. When some guy comes in and says "I've got this great idea for a game. We'll have these soldiers who ..." you have no way of knowing if he's pitching the next WoW or the next Daikatana until you build it.

It's risk all along. Anything can kill the game's appeal. Unrealistic mechanics, incomprehensible controls, too easy, too hard, ugly scenery, short levels, long levels, inappropriate music, bugs, etc. The whole time you're pumping tons of money into production, hoping that when it comes out the other side that you can sell at least a million copies to cover expenses. And for every problem you encounter in its production, you have to decide "do I trash it or fix it?" Smart companies have learned to do the smallest investments up front, saving the big costs of things like artwork for the very end. That way if they kill it they've wasted less money.

Once it leaves the factory, it's in the hands of some barely rational people who are not in your employ. Games sell based on their reviews -- nobody will buy a one star game. A bad review by a well respected reviewer can wreck your $50,000,000 investment with the click of a mouse.

Even assuming Wall Street was behaving rationally and not just playing some derivatives market, your company takes a hell of a risk every time they do anything, or nothing. It's impossible to say that games based on "fun" are simply automatic money makers.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

... turbation, amidoinitrite?

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

...tication which is necessary for proper digestion of their food and better overcoming the diabetes from those years of sitting on their posteriors. But that does not really answer the questions about their mas...

Re:Times have changed

[Alarash]

Your argument doesn't fit in the scope of what you quoted. I explicitly said "please the gamers, and you will make money." Then you go about explaining ten different ways a game can fail. Pleasing the gamers means producing good games, avoiding exactly what you described in the process.

Re:Times have changed

[mike2R]

...sively distended stomachs; pizza alone cannot account for that, it must be due to mas...

Re:Times have changed

[Darth Sdlavrot]

When film and movie historians review and categorize films and movies they will discover a lengthy period of rehashed plots and themes beginning in the 1980s. Given the choice I watch old movies, often in black-and-white, instead of the garbage on the "Big Screen."

Star Wars (IV: A New Hope) predates your 80s threshold, but it too was just a rehash of old B&W serials from the 30s, right down to the opening crawl. I've tried watching some of those serials -- they're so bad, so corny, they're almost unwatchable.

Kind of like Episodes 1-3.

Re:Times have changed

[CrackedButter]

you mean with new game ideas?

Re:Times have changed

[cgenman]

Also, once you've milked a single franchise for too long, you can no longer get guaranteed profits from it. Player interest starts to die out, and you start getting smaller and smaller returns from each iteration.

EA's current administration recognized that problem. NFS's underperformance isn't a reflection of a failure of planning, but rather that the series has been milked to death for far too long. The sales curve for NFS had plummeted already, and was arguably long past the possibility of a yearly iteration remaining relevant or salable at previous levels. in 2006, they had pushed so few new IP's that when Medal of Honor started to fade they really had little to bring up in its place.

Of course, with any new series or universe in the gaming world generally speaking the second iteration sells better than the first. You really do build up a lot of awareness and interest on the first go. Mass Effect 2 (one of the new post 2006 worlds they specifically created) looks posed to be one of next year's biggest games. Army of Two 2 is looking to make up ground. Skate has basically stolen "Best Skater Game" from the now officially flopped over Tony Hawk. Even Dante's Inferno has a surprising amount of player awareness at this point. That's a lot of profit potential that they wouldn't have just grinding out Need for Speed sequels twice a year.

Re:Times have changed

[CrackedButter]

I haven't played it either don't worry.

Re:Times have changed

[LordVader717]

Believe it or not, there are companies who try to keep a culture of innovation and earn reputation even if it does mean being less profitable. A company with diverse expertise and talented developers is going to have the power to influence trends and create new markets.
I find it extremely questionable how so many people have this fundamentalist belief that companies should devote everything chasing numbers on paper, which are extremely artificial and arbitrary BTW (notice how this guy laments about them "destroying" 11 billion in stock value), instead of encouraging people to be creative and simply make great products.

Maintaining talent and independence also ensures that the company is more robust to trends and can expand new markets.
Nintendo was the dominant games company before the Playstation, but lost out in the following decade. Instead of doing what would arguably have been a sound choice of becoming a profitable software developer on other platforms, they made sure they kept doing their own thing and invested in making hardware. It payed off when they came out with the Wii which has since become the dominant platform.

Re:Times have changed

[rcastro0]

...sage to the trunks: long vigorous, strokes, growing up in a crescendo. Golly! It was as enjoyable to them as mas...

Re:Times have changed

[NickFortune]

Without taking a risk on new franchises, you won't have established franchises you can milk in the future. Which is exactly how EA got into its current hole. They're doing the right thing now, even if it's not producing immediate profits for them.

Sure, in a stable market. And to be fair, I didn't read TFA as saying "EA should not be taking a risk on new franchises". He's just raising concerns about the budget size vs. the payoff.

I think you have to remember that his comments are all made in the context of a move to digital distribution, which he feels is going to happen a lot faster than EA are allowing for. Reading between the lines a little, I think he'd like to see more, lower budget games aimed at a cheaper price point. That doesn't make sense if your retail is through shops because shelf space is expensive, and with a limited number of titles that you can offer, you need to spend money trying to force a blockbuster. But for digital distribution, you can spread your risk a bit more, develop a range of titles and see what catches the public imagination.

Re:Times have changed

[Tolkien]

Wall Street would happily destroy the entire US economy to do their own ass?

Re:Times have changed

[selven]

...ks.

On a completely unrelated note, Natalie Portman is mas...

Re:Times have changed

[rwv]

Activision Blizzard now the ones that are mostly after money

Activision has always been about money. One thing that's surprised me is that they bought the Guitar Hero franchise IP (from Red Octane, or something) and then let Harmonix get right back in the saddle to produce a (in my opinion) technically superior franchise called Rock Band. But Guitar Hero makes more money because it's got better marketing and not as good support for DLC.

Blizzard has always been about quality games. I'd be very surprised if Activision will try to mess up the money-making machine that turns up hits like Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft. That was definitely a great acquisition.

Re:Times have changed

[cheesybagel]

Well, Blizzard made also made The Lost Vikings. I thought that was pretty good.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I would.

Re:Times have changed

[rwv]

I find it extremely questionable how so many people have this fundamentalist belief that companies should devote everything chasing numbers on paper, which are extremely artificial and arbitrary BTW (notice how this guy laments about them "destroying" 11 billion in stock value), instead of encouraging people to be creative and simply make great products.

I'm going to take issue with the claim that businesses should "be creative and make great products".

In my view, globalization has pushed the manufacturing industry away from "great products" and into the realm of "good enough for a couple years" products. Cars aren't what they used to be. Most furniture these days is made from plastic mixtures and particle board. Food is genetically mutated. Even books are being served up as disposable digital bits instead of printed pages.

All these changes comes in the name of being able to provide a broader spectrum of the population with goods and services that they haven't traditionally been able to enjoy, and it can be attributed to lowering quality to cut costs (i.e. by using cheaper (more abundantly available) materials).

The business upside to the decrease in quality, of course, is increased market share because a greater percent of people can afford these products.

To return to the point... businesses don't exist to make "great products". They exist to make "products people want to buy". Since we're such a materialistic society, we want *everything* and that means we're forced to sacrifice quality because the average Joe simply can't afford both expensive furniture and an expensive entertainment system. The compromise is that Joe Sixpack buys relatively cheap versions of the products he wants that fit within his budget. In the process, cost cutting manufacturers are put on a pedestal. Ergo, the rise of Ikea, Walmart, Target, Kia, and Hyundai.

Re:Times have changed

[Brownstar]

EA realized this and as of June of 2009, all new games will not have software DRM and replaced it with a cd key check.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/06/eas-new-motto-please-pirate-our-games-er-storefronts.ars

Re:Times have changed

[cgenman]

I'm completely with you. Unfortunately video games are not about fun and, well, video games any more. They are about making money, and most of the time that means low innovation/risk taking.

In the early 80's it was about copying everything Atari did. In the late 80's everyone was making a sidescrolling platform. Cue the 90's, where suddenly mascot sidescrollers and fighting titles were all important.

Personally, I think the early 00's \ PS2 era were the most innovative in gaming in quite some time. But either way, games have always been sold out to business. This is sadly not a new development.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Is whale milk any good?

Re:Times have changed

[10Neon]

A common error: the acquisition was the other way around- Activision was bought by the company that already owned Blizzard.

Re:Times have changed

[domatic]

That sort of rehashing has been going on since we first started telling stories. The number of premises, themes, and plot lines isn't all that large and would fit in a slim volume. Happily the number of ways those can be combined, sequenced, characterized, and emphasized is pretty much infinite. The OP was complaining of something else. A very limited number of fictional universes and franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars is being rehashed over and over. And when they aren't doing that it is either a "remake" or a "reboot" of something else everyone knows about like SpiderMan. And this happens because the MBAs in charge of the studios want some sort of "guaranteed return".

I don't know if Avatar will turn out to be my cup of tea or not but at least it appears to be an attempt to create a new franchise rather than a respin of an existing one. Though even if I do like it, I'm sure I'll be heartily sick of "Avatar: The New Beginning" 20 years from now.

Re:Times have changed

[FreonTrip]

...sive disappointment with the world as it is. Rather than work to fix issues with personal appearance and the world at large, a lifetime of video games and distraction - particularly in the world's richest country, where the entertainment industry represents 4% of GDP - have encouraged them to avoid that which makes them uncomfortable, or to gloss over it before heading back to endless diversion.

Sorry, guys, they can't all be funny.

Re:Times have changed

[TheThiefMaster]

Clever.

No-one's posted that before.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not make games using the model that keeps Hollywood pumping out movies? A bunch of producers get together with directors and various other crew and search for good scripts, then make a blockbuster and everyone is happy. If the game sucks, no problem it's not a "EA" or "Massive/Blizzard" blunder, it's just this particular game sucked. Better luck next time...

The crappy ones could be easily skipped if the reviews are bad at the "screenings"

Re:Times have changed

[Lunix Nutcase]

Food is genetically mutated.

Food has been genetically mutated since humans began farming. Or did you somehow think that previous generations of humans turned those wild plants into the common food plants we know today through magic?

Re:Times have changed

[Skal Tura]

Actually NFS is dying because the newest games SUCK. first Underground is still the best ever NFS game, underground 2 not so good, and the newer ones were complete failures.

Latest NFS isn't so fun, albeit i admire the attempt on realism, and had very much fun initially playing it, it had very annoying limitations (1 car of the same model only!), and for tuning you had to always stop the game, and ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY the bugs!

Worst ones:
A) keyboard doesn't work AT ALL without massive battling
B) Crashes
C) Sometimes it seems after restarting the race you are suddenly in a different car
D) Tuning quite often not working (no change in behaviour of the car)
E) Occasional disappearance of final gear in the car
F) Not that realistic at all, an AE86 were partially very realistic (i could compare it to my car), but things like drive ratios were way off, acceleration was off on higher tuned (a stock AE86 goes 8.9, a very mildly tuned goes under 8s, heavily tuned should reach low 6s) and the characteristics of the engine behaviour (one of the things which makes this car one of the most legendary cars ever built)

and many other problems.
If it didn't have the bugs, even with being not-so-realistic i would probably played A LOT... I've worn out even logitech Momo by playing LFS

Re:Times have changed

[thomst]

..king tape and popsicle sticks. As any giant sloth can attest, they're mas...

Re:Times have changed

[Ltap]

Actually, it would be an interesting project to graph sales and ratings for long-running, many-installment franchises (*looks at sports/racing games*) to see how things have fluctuated - some of them are old enough to have gone through multiple generations of gamers. It's an old wrestling strategy that you can redo a gimmick after 7 years, because the people who were around then won't be around now, and the ones that are around now won't remember anyway.

For instance, the first Call of Duty and Call of Duty 5: World at War. WaW has some references and nods (it also rips off Modern Warfare's narrative structure, but that's beside the point), but this was fine until the final scene: Russian soldiers in Berlin capturing the Reichstag and ending the bulk of the war. This scene was copied almost directly from CoD1. So even in narrative-based FPSs, you're starting to see repetition within a franchise after a few years. I think you'll find that the majority of people who have played CoD5 have never played the original Call of Duty and wouldn't know about this.

This is also one of Disney's strategies - they re-release their "classics" just short of every decade, which is enough to account for a new generation of children and the format changes that would require re-buying.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't miss much on Spore. It was basically 4 bare-bones RTSs, and a simple space RTS, badly cobbled together to try to make some continuity. The hyped up creature design turned out to be mostly meaningless, and by the last two games you can't even see your creatures anyway, so who cares what they look like.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

...king all the evidences, and luminol is a bitch.

Re:Times have changed

[tepples]

What are "new game ideas"? I haven't seen a new genre-creating game since Parappa the Rapper. Even Katamari (distributed by EA in Europe) is just Williams' Bubbles in a bigger world, and Spore (published by EA) is a bundle of retreads of existing sim/civ games.

Re:Times have changed

[Gilmoure]

I don't know if you grew up with cars from the 60's and 70's but things have changed for the better. Back then, even Datsuns, Hondas and Toyotas, needed a lot more maintenance and more frequent maintenance than modern cars and they also didn't last as long. To get 100,000 miles out of an engine without a ring or valve job (actually taking engine apart and partially rebuilding it) was almost unheard of. Same thing with transmissions; seems you were always getting bands adjusted and such.

Now days, my '96 Jeep Grand Cherokee is about to pass 330,000 miles, only having oil/fluids changed and belts and spark plugs. My '02 Tracker has just passed 125,000 miles, again with just fluid and plug changes. And both of these machines are required to pass emissions checks, which my older cars ('72 Honda and '70 Impala) don't. And with the older cars, there's still timing and carb adjustments that have to be made about every other month or so.

The other cool thing about modern cars; they've all been hot rodded. My '07 Chevy Trailblazer, just a basic truck with basemodel engine, has a 250 cubic inch straight 6 engine, the same size engine as my '68 Nova had. Only this engine is now aluminum block, fuel injected, has headers and free flowing exhaust, dual cam and puts out almost 100 HP more than my old straight 6. And gets better gas milage and pollutes less. And this is all standard now. Cool!

So yeah, modern cars are definitely lasting longer and are built better.

Re:Times have changed

[Jellybob]

You sir, have won the thread.

Re:Times have changed

[plover]

What I said is that there is huge risk. You can make a great game that pleases a million gamers and still fail miserably.

And for every game you sell, you might have started on 10 or even 100 that you axed early in the process.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

You like the path EA has taken when the only titles they've developed are sports titles (Madden etc) while the titles you like (D:AO) were developed by companies they swallowed up while the games were still in development.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Annnnnnnd I'm spent. Bravo. BRAVO slashdot.

Re:Times have changed

[LatencyKills]

I'll second this. EA to me was almost a joke in terms of developed IP. Oh, wow, here's another version of Madden, now with Fred Taylor stats after the knee surgery! And yet another C&C/Red Alert? That has hit written all over it! I had written EA off as dead until Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, and Dragon Age, which were probably the first games had purchased from EA in over 5 years.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

If players ever start to leave WoW for other games in increasing numbers i can see their income dropping like a rock

There's a little thing called Starcraft 2 on the horizon. And just after that... Diablo 3. Not to mention the enigma that is their "new MMO" which most of the original WoW team already migrated over to.

I don't think Blizzard is going to have any problems turning a profit for years to come.

And that's assuming that the new WoW Expansion that is coming out in less than a year will flop (which it isn't looking like it will).

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

EA has possibly become a cash cow too big to feed itself. They've put out several innovative IP's recently but they're built on the success and size of dependable money suckers like Madden and NFS. They're a business-oriented company that has bought up studios to help churn out the first creative games they've had in years. They're doing some great things that smaller companies would be surviving off happily but they expect the next WoW with every new IP so that they can get to where they used to be.

Re:Times have changed

[interkin3tic]

terdons, which actually have a long, and exciting courtship ritual, involving lots of mas...

s effect playing, which ultimately was more interesting than actually mating, and that is why they went extinct. Another factor contributing to their extinction was mas...

Re:Times have changed

[Simetrical]

Activision just said they crossed $1,000,000,000 (over one billion) in MW2 revenues. Just saying..

WoW has got to make more than that per year. 12 million subscribers × $13 per subscriber per month × 12 months per year = $1,872,000,000 gross per year, to a first approximation.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

sively popular in said nerd world, where many mas...

Re:Times have changed

[TheRaven64]

I don't know what kind of crap you eat but I, for one, only eat unmutated protozoa.

Re:Times have changed

[rpillala]

If you haven't already, you ought to read The Buyout of America by Josh Kosman. And then add Private Equity firm to your list. At least your list includes honest businesses. That is, they make no claims contrary to their true intention of only making money.

Private equity firms buy companies by giving them tax incentives for financing their own buyout. The company being bought puts up most of the money that is used to buy them. The PE company then takes a company that may have been about its products and reduces staff, R&D, and raises prices when they can, so that the loan can be paid off more quickly. It's this transition and the fiduciary responsibility to shareholders that has turned so many once-decent companies into hollow shells that can't deliver on the promise of their name. One great example is Kinko's. There are others. Like hospitals. People are willing to put up with a lot before they'll change doctors or hospitals.

Re:Times have changed

[CrackedButter]

That was kinda my point.

Re:Times have changed

[iamhassi]

"WoW has got to make more than that per year. 12 million subscribers × $13 per subscriber per month × 12 months per year = $1,872,000,000 gross per year, to a first approximation."

You're dead on: in 2007 they were making 1.1 billion a year. Two years later I have no doubt it's approaching 2 billion.

Re:Times have changed

[nacturation]

...ter debaters, whose eloquent speeches argue that the eating habits of teenagers have been on a steady decline for decades, and in order to burn more calories teenagers must engage in more mas...

Re:Times have changed

[LordVader717]

Cars aren't what they used to be. Most furniture these days is made from plastic mixtures and particle board.

Because it's cheaper, environmentally friendlier, fulfills the same function, and often results in higher quality products or even increased functionality.
Rich people still buy expensive furniture, and poor people have always bought cheaper, shoddier stuff and resorted to DIY.

Even books are being served up as disposable digital bits instead of printed pages.

Last I checked most people buy still only buy printed books.
People buy ebooks to read on an ebook reader, not because they're cheaper.

All these changes comes in the name of being able to provide a broader spectrum of the population with goods and services that they haven't traditionally been able to enjoy, and it can be attributed to lowering quality to cut costs (i.e. by using cheaper (more abundantly available) materials).

People can still buy "high-quality" products

To return to the point... businesses don't exist to make "great products". They exist to make "products people want to buy".

No, not every business. But many entrepreneurs engineers and designers do want to make good products people enjoy. And this also includes making products more affordable. The two goals aren't incompatible.

If there are businesses who can find their niche just making the same things then that seems fine. But people claiming it's somehow wrong to seek other things than bare-profit and stock price are missing the point of running a business.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

If players ever start to leave WoW for other games in increasing numbers i can see their income dropping like a rock

It's not going to last forever, and I hear about new players complaining that the old timers harass them and accuse them of being mule alts and gold farmers and things like that, which will tend to reduce new signups.

Re:Times have changed

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Except that it costs them 40-50% of that revenue to run their operation, so they really only profit $500m. Not that that's chump change, but it's a far cry from $1billion

Re:Times have changed

[Cecil]

merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made.

seriously, blizzard sells a ton of add-on shit to World of Warcraft that I'm sure significantly pads those numbers. race changes, name changes, faction changes, server changes, appearance changes, the card game, ingame vanity pets, authenticators, and that's just the stuff that I know for a fact many people actually buy on a regular basis.

Re:Times have changed

[ZachPruckowski]

Don't forget that like half of those 12 million players are in China, where the pay structure is different - they pay by the hour, and it's handled by a licensee, not directly by Blizzard. They probably only have 5-6 million on the $12-$15 monthly plans.

And don't forget that WoW China has been offline a bit recently due to government issues.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

But can we really assume a spherical whale?

Re:Times have changed

[Latinhypercube]

Agreed Mirrors Edge and Dead Space were very awesome games... more please !

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

sively covered in hot grits, which will no doubt result in mas...

Re:Times have changed

[mypalmike]

Agreed. When I worked at EA in 04-05, there was zero interest among management in developing original IP. The Redwood Shores studio was shedding itself of anything that wasn't 3rd person action licensed content.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, am I on Reddit?

Re:Times have changed

[Ginger Unicorn]

and rock n roll racing! Jake lights him up!

Re:Times have changed

[sourcerror]

Pleasing the gamers means producing good games, avoiding exactly what you described in the process.

Captain Obvious is obvious.

Re:Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Pleasing the gamers means producing good games, avoiding exactly what you described in the process.

Captain Obvious is obvious.

Thank you Major Redundancy! Where would we be without you?

EA doing something bad????

[Dexter Herbivore]

Never! I could never even possibly concieve of EA ever doing anything wrong in their quest to make money by milking IP to death. /end sarcasm

Re:EA doing something bad????

[someone1234]

You say this because EA released lots of CRPG's in the last decade?
While I didn't consider DAO a big 'hit', it was definitely innovative from EA's point of view.

They said DA:O would be the new BG

[Anonymous Coward]

"Spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate" my ass. That quote was thrown around so much it lost all meaning. You can't replace Minsc and Boo.

Re:They said DA:O would be the new BG

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god it isn't. DA:O beats the pants off the Baldur's Gateses. More fun to play *and* a more engaging story with real characters. Fuck BG and its dull, plodding D&D trappings.

Re:They said DA:O would be the new BG

[Grimbleton]

You shut your lying whore mouth.

Re:They said DA:O would be the new BG

[CrackedButter]

I thought NWN was the spiritual successor? That franchise needs another game, i loved them all.

Re:They said DA:O would be the new BG

[Anonymous Coward]

NO U!

Exec spewing again thats all

[Anonymous Coward]

You can say anything you like but you should be able to back up your allegations with some kind of fact or you risk sounding a lot like a 12 year old who did not get what they want. The real reporter here would be forced to ask the "EA Executive" what exactly should EA be in the business of then? The problem with the statement above is that as Sopssa pointed out, "It seems he was more happy when EA was the company that didn't create much of new IP or games, but just milked the old ones every year with new versions." Gamers get bored... Gamers are getting tired of since you know... it has been around for nearly 20 years now for example. Sports games are always going to make some money because people love being able to play their favorite teams and whip the hell outa their least favorite teams.

MMO's are going to be hard to break into because Blizzard took an award winning and fun game (Warcraft) and turned it into an online experience with WoW. SWG at one time was the leading MMO out there until Smedley took over the creative side and tried to make it a financial thing instead of an innovative and fun game by copying the best of every MMO he could find. However The Old Republic will do well in the market for multiple reasons such as Bioware's known ability to write extremely good plots in their games added to an already good name in the Old Republic series of games (KOTOR is still on the best sellers list ten years after its release).

Whom ever this EA Exec is needs to look at something along the lines of... uhm... Quake is a good one. It was by far the number one FPS game for a long time. And after Quake III its kind of died out because people are bored with it. ID still does well for themselves doing other great games dont get me wrong, but they are not the power house of FPS's that they used to be. Repackaging the same old game with updated graphics and new maps is what will get you a status quo. EA is trying to come up with something new. Its better than some other gaming companies out there.

Off subject (kind of), Dragon Age sold a ton more than expected, has released three Downloadable Content items for minimal cost (around $5 each), is working on the fourth DLC (should be out sometime in the next week or so) and has announced an Expansion. Not bad for a game thats less than 6 months old. Great job Bioware/EA. And the game rawks.

Re:Exec spewing again thats all

[cheesybagel]

Actually Smedley's problem was that he thought buying movie licenses was going to be their big ticket into awesome profits. Game be damned. So they bought Star Wars licenses, Matrix licenses. If you read the history of game publishing, corporations doing movie licensed games more often than not produce absolute piles of steaming shit of games, and go belly up after a certain time. I mean, one of these games (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) even caused the videogame crash of 1983. The minute I heard SOE was going to do movie license games, I thought they were finished. There are reasons why this often happens. The money you need to shell out for licensing is money you do not have to spend on game development.

They should have just improved their existing Everquest franchise, instead of letting it die of software bitrot. They only bothered launching Everquest II around the time WoW was launched, and the machine requirements to play the game were so demanding, I wonder how they ever thought they were going to sell a lot of copies. So they only managed to sustain their existing player base instead of enlarging it. IMO they should have also done an RPG using the same engine in a different, PvP, fantasy setting of their own. Blizzard has always been pretty sensitive about this issue and they usually make games which have non-demanding machine requirements.

I did not have a lot of hope for Bioware after all the employees they lost (KotOR II was done by Obsidian) but Mass Effect seems to have turned out well. They should have just made an MMO out of the Mass Effect world instead of shelling out for a Star Wars license.

Re:Exec spewing again thats all

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I believe the intention at the time that the initial press release that Bioware was doing an MMO was to base it off of something similiar to either NWN, BG or the Jade Empire games. However it coincided with the release and subsequent unhappiness that Lucas Arts felt for what Sony did with the NGE (which was not officially authorized by Lucas as it did not follow Star Wars cannon at all, something Lucas is known for being anal about). Now since Sony had a license and a contract, Lucas could not break contract with Sony so they have forced Sony since to keep the game running even though it is obviously deader than a door-nail (what 8,000 players actually pay for Galaxies now). However the "Star Wars" brand name has a HUGE cash potential (just like Star Trek has) and with the success of the original KotOR by Bioware, they were a logical choice for a new Star Wars based MMO.

Rather or not that is what really happened will probably never be known. But think of the loss of revenue that Lucas has had from a game that should have been not only one of the top selling MMO's but by licensing to Sony who at the time was much bigger than Blizzard was. Why would they consider a contract with a smaller company (Bioware) when the bigger company who has experience with MMO's (Sony) already has a license that they have already spent millions in legal fees ironing out?

I have not played Mass Effect unfortunately so I cant comment. However I would say that making an NWN game would cause problems since NWN is based on AD&D 4th edition and is also licensed through Wizards of the Sword coast who currently have DnD Online that tanked... BG same thing only edition 3... Jade Empire maybe. So watch Dragon Age since its all new, based on the creative ideas of Bioware, and EA, has public tools available to edit new expansions by the players that actually work, and are electronically distributing nearly everything for the game. Without that pesky Wizards of the Sword Coast licensing stuff and a brand name of their own, making a Dragon Age based MMO is not only possible but IMHO likely. BTW, they released the pen and paper version of Dragon Age if youre really into it.

Re:Exec spewing again thats all

[Belial6]

E.T. didn't have any effect on the mythical video game crash. There was no crash. Video games were doing just fine. The so called crash was because there was a platform shift. The 2600 had run it's course, and some big name companies didn't realize it. People were just shifting their game playing to the C-64, Apple, and other 'home computers'. Did too many E.T. games get produced? Sure. Were they produced for a platform that could only be described as 'last generation' at the time they were produced? Yep. Was it any worse that other 2600 titles that did just fine a few years earlier? No. It was a perfectly fine game that would have done just fine if the 2600 wasn't already a full generation behind it's competitors, and they didn't produce as many cartridges.

1983 was a big year for video games. How could you expect people to get excited about 2600 games when you had games like Ultima III being produced for the 64? Even people that didn't want to play RPGs could see that the 2600 was massively dated. I still remember having Moon Patrol for both the 2600 and the C64. The difference was enormous.

EA is a battery hen publisher

[distantbody]

the developers are the hens and the eggs are the games

Take Dragon Age: the hen had potential but the farmer didn't give it enough free range and the egg came out bland and clichéd. I won't bother fitting the NPC-ads in to the analogy (is there a mod to get rid of them?)

Re:EA is a battery hen publisher

[Bieeanda]

Every last Bioware RPG has played straight to cliches. EA may be a bastard to work with (and they certainly are), but put the blame for paint-by-numbers plot writing where it belongs.

Re:EA is a battery hen publisher

[ErikZ]

Really? I enjoyed Mass Effect quite a bit. I've just pre-ordered Mass Effect II

MOD PARENT UP

[aussersterne]

One particularly unhelpful wrinkle of the U.S. version of capitalism + culture has been investors' singular motivation to hit it big and rake in the bucks and a general social unwillingness (management, the population, investors, regulators) to believe there is any social good in any business that does not generate massive returns and growth on a quarter after quarter basis.

There are simply many things that we need the economy to do that are not going to generate double-digit returns and result in world domination by a single sexy corporation. Plumbing, for example. Or reference publishing. Or wood milling. Instead of taking sustaining business + paying employees or small but steady growth as good enough within the context of also employing people and providing a necessary social good, we're happy to say "This hospital isn't giving us 20% year-over-year; it's only giving me 1%! I can get that from a damned CD! Fuhggedaboudid." And nobody bats an eyelid, everyone takes for granted that a hospital is only valuable if it's nice and profitable, otherwise it "couldn't compete" and "should" close in a free market economy.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[YourExperiment]

One particularly unhelpful wrinkle of the U.S. version of capitalism + culture has been investors' singular motivation to hit it big and rake in the bucks and a general social unwillingness (management, the population, investors, regulators) to believe there is any social good in any business that does not generate massive returns and growth on a quarter after quarter basis.

Whilst I totally agree with you on principle, I would take issue with one point. It's not that no-one believes there is any social good in these businesses, it's that no-one cares.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to skyrocketing inflation, no one has the option to invest in 1% growth stocks.
If you do inflation kills your nest egg incredibly quickly.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[locallyunscene]

Or the press.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[megamerican]

"This hospital isn't giving us 20% year-over-year; it's only giving me 1%! I can get that from a damned CD! Fuhggedaboudid." And nobody bats an eyelid, everyone takes for granted that a hospital is only valuable if it's nice and profitable, otherwise it "couldn't compete" and "should" close in a free market economy.

You forget the small fact that the medical industry ceased to be a free marked in the U.S. in the late 1960's.

There is a thing called a Certificate Of Need (CON), which are aptly named. Essentially you need a CON from a person like Illinois Governor Blagojevich in order to open a hospital, increase the amount of beds, add a new wing, add any large equipment, etc.

So if you didn't grease the right people new hospitals don't get built. Demand goes up while supply doesn't and costs skyrocket. The medical industry long relied on charities like the Shriners and many others to keep hospitals running. The costs have gotten so high that all but a few charities can actually fund a hospital.

I think you've been watching too many Hospital dramas where things are run like a business, when in reality its all politics and government intervention that has screwed the healthcare industry.

It has nothing to do with the free market.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Kjella]

Hospitals have both a humanitarian value and for the most part the patient is required to have that specific hospital, but for most products that's just not a big deal. Imagine if the big three were allowed to fail, do you think we'd be without cars? Hell no, all the Japanese and Korean and Chinese car stocks would skyrocket because they'd be rid of their hardest competitiors.

I do admit that there's one thing if it's just wages. But there's also many, many other factors like the customer appeal, choice of design, efficiency of production process, delivery process, product quality and so on that means propping up products that barely break even might save some jobs locally but holds the world back.

Look at it the other way, what would happen if hospitals were run very inefficiently? Someone would buy up hospital stock, make them efficient and make a killing. In perfect competition there's hardly no profit, investors want as imperfect conditions as possible - in favor of those they invest in, of course. The question is if you should go beyond that and treat people who can't pay, but it should be fairly obvious you are talking about subsidization or charity here. I suppose not getting a return on your investment could be considered charity, but it's a very fuzzy donation.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[NeutronCowboy]

One particularly unhelpful wrinkle of the U.S. version of capitalism + culture has been investors' singular motivation to hit it big and rake in the bucks and a general social unwillingness (management, the population, investors, regulators) to believe there is any social good in any business that does not generate massive returns and growth on a quarter after quarter basis.

This really hits the nail on the head. I visited my sister in Germany recently. She lives in an apartment that is owned by a guy who runs a custom boot shop. Complete with wooden boots for fitting, etc. So far, not that interesting. Until you realize that that shop has been a family business for over 400 years. It has been in existence longer than the entire US. It still is a single shop. And probably will be until someone decides not to do it anymore. Compare that with the US, where a decision would have been made to franchise the business, get investors on board, and then sell it for a couple of millions before it gets run into the ground by people with unrealistic quarterly expectations.

There's something to be said to be happy with 0% growth.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[nomadic]

So if you didn't grease the right people new hospitals don't get built. Demand goes up while supply doesn't and costs skyrocket. The medical industry long relied on charities like the Shriners and many others to keep hospitals running. The costs have gotten so high that all but a few charities can actually fund a hospital.

Not necessarily.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[TheLink]

I guess there's a subtle difference between earning a living and making a killing :).

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing Americans are not good at is perspective. The idea of a shop lasting for 400 years would flabbergast many Americans. But then try telling them about cities that have been around for millenia and their heads would explode.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Kral_Blbec]

Thats BS. There are plenty of people who work in such "unprofitable" markets. Plumbing, which you reference, can be very profitable. I happen to know someone who owns a family plumbing business, they do quite well. I see plumbing trucks driving around all the time. Seems someone is doing it and making money, which blows your massive over-generalization out of the water. Hospitals are mostly public non-profit institutions where nobody cares about the profit. Anything left over is just reinvested into new equipment and nobody gets big bonuses anyway. There are private hospitals, but those are mostly research oriented. You seem to be mostly talking out of your butt out of your dislike of America. You have no idea what it is really like.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Kral_Blbec]

Does he make his income from owning an apartment building or selling wooden shoes? Sounds to me like he keeps it open more out of family obligation than as a money maker.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Deosyne]

I'm sure that there are plenty of US businesses that operate in the same fashion. They just aren't publicly owned corporations. Once a company goes public, its financial viability immediately becomes beholden to the shareholders. If they aren't happy then your stock price plummets and another company buys you out, sets your employees to pasture, and uses your logo for their own products.

That said, private companies that are not contractually obligated to venture capital agreements or other external restrictions, and those who invest in these private companies, are perfectly capable of basing their decisions on any sort of financial, moral, or social standards that they like, as long as the lease gets paid.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at it the other way, what would happen if hospitals were run very inefficiently? Someone would buy up hospital stock, make them efficient and make a killing.

Perhaps a poor choice of words?

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[yuhong]

Yea, the problems of shareholder value and agency theory, another mess altogether. I even had a slashdot submission on this.

How you grow a business

[Stan Vassilev]

It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another.

Most startups fail, but this doesn't mean we don't need startups.

An advice I read somewhere said to treat every project in your company like a mini-startup. Of course, many of those projects won't become an instant cash-cow. the secret is in being flexible, quickly recognizing failure, minimizing damage and adapting.

But if the company stops trying to innovate and create fresh products, then all you're left with slow death by milking the existing franchises. And of course, man of the best franchises started small as yet-another-risky-project for the company.

Re:How you grow a business

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with EA is the sheer size of the organisation. I mean as the company gets bigger, it gets harder to be adaptive. It seems they got a rep a while back for spinning more sequels to games (not bothering to innovate).

But they seem to have listened to the critisism and started to create better, more origonal games. I thought Crisis was ace when it came out and can't say that people don't like the Call of Duty series - even though they are very short for the money.

There should be a rating for Value for money based on relative costs, Enjoyment factor and average time for completion.

We could then work out some values and actually see that developers are giving us either a great game or good value for money (longer games).

Re:How you grow a business

[Loomismeister]

Interestingly, 3 out of those 4 games were incredibly fun and a great buy/rent in my opinion.

It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[GuyFawkes]

The only thing that I can remember about EA games is the logo and the girl whispering "EA Games", I can't remember what games had that "loading screen", actually the other thing I can remember about EA Games is most gamers seem to hate them.

While the marketing / advertising / PR types will probably point at my memory of the corporate logo and say "See, branding works!" the fact is that it doesn't, because the memory that I have is not a positive one.

I remember 3dRealms for Duke, I remember Raven for SoF, I remember Cavedog for TA, and those are all positive memories associated with good games.

I can't think of a single game that EA released, I can probably sit here and recite 50+ game titles, many of which may have been released by EA, but that's not the point.

Frankly the ex-exec is as out of touch as the CEO, if you are going to measure anything by my experience, but of course they don't do that do they, they measure stuff by the closed feedback loops of market researchers, also employed by EA, drinking their own kool aid.

The problem with EA is that unlike 3dRealms, Raven, Cavedog et al, they tried to make the "house" bigger than the "game", and I suspect that if you dig down to the level of the actual game workers, you will find that same corporate branding ethos at work, sure, you're all working on "Aliens vs Mario 7", but you're all working for EA first and foremost, you're all able to be switched around within EA, to "Mario vs Jar Jar Binks 3" at the whim of a manager.

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[sopssa]

I remember 3dRealms for Duke, I remember Raven for SoF, I remember Cavedog for TA, and those are all positive memories associated with good games.

I can't think of a single game that EA released, I can probably sit here and recite 50+ game titles, many of which may have been released by EA, but that's not the point.

What you listed were developers of the games, not publishers. It's a lot easier to remember a good developer, because they generally release one game between every 2-3 years and if you like it a lot, you're gonna remember the name. Just the same way as you probably remember what bands or artists you like, but don't remember who is their record label.

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[f0rk]

The problem with EA (for the studios) is that EA screams louder.

What is the first thing you see in a EA game ? That damn EA logo, then for a slip second, you see some random no name company (the studio).

The game publishing industry is trying to mimic the movie publishing industry by doing the classic " presents... a movie"-introduction.

By sad part is. The avarage gamer is a lot less intrested in who made the game, then the avarage movie enthusiast. So they only notice the EA logo and get reminded to turn off all brain activity for 5sec because, well, every one hates waiting for the game to start.

The movie industry can do this because its more or less part of the build up, and for the enthusiast, its just another reminder that this movie is made by the awesome studio, .

Back in the old days. A game would open with the studio logo, and if the publisher is lucky enought, they get there very own screen to present there name, else they would just have to do with a "published by" in the end credits.

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[sopssa]

I agree on that somewhat, but Ubisoft is even worse than EA. Ubisoft always puts their always-the-same intro and you cant even skip that. EA usually customizes their intro to fit the game scheme so it's not that boring and you can skip it. Activision one is probably the best, short maybe 1 sec blip and you can skip it too.

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[YouDoNotWantToKnow]

I remember Raven for ruining Quake 4 and it is not a positive memory at all.

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[jaraxle]

Much like you, I remember the developers of games as well.

I remember Origin Systems, Westwood Studios, and Mythic Entertainment (granted, still around but "rebranded" to EAMythic). I also remember the publisher that effectively destroyed them and the works that they created; Electronic fucking Arts. Granted, Mythic is not yet destroyed but their latest flagship product, Warhammer Online, didn't truly start sinking until the merger with EA. Take into account the gutting of the studio with last years Q4 layoffs and it's doubtful WAR will recover without some serious TLC.

Let's see how EA handles Bioware now that they've been assimilated. Time will tell of EA forces them to push Old Republic out the door too fast without it being finished thereby guaranteeing MMO failure, or if they actually learned from the mistakes they heaped upon WAR and let Bioware just do their job.

~jaraxle

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[GuyFawkes]

I hear you re developers vs publishers.

But....

The fact stands, the BRANDS that I remember are 3dRealms, Raven, Cavedog, mmm, positive feelings, positive associations...

EA... ummm, errrr, dunno, sucks tho.

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[BenevolentP]

Uhm, really? "New Ubisoft game" is, even for the average gamer, as informative as "New Warner Movie", meaning not at all.

"New bioware game" or "new id game" on the other hand... (though id is both developer and publisher i think)

I'd even say that studios are even less interesting to the average movie viewer, since marketing and interest is mostly centered on the director and actors (trying to come up with an example, i just had to look up that Spielbergs studio is Dreamworks actually)

I really don't understand how you come to your conclusion.

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[f0rk]

I think sopssa (the first guy who replied to me) actually had a good point.

Its a bit depending on what publisher it is, some of them do the best of it and actually integrates the games style into the presentation.

This is almost the always case with movies (shown at the cinema). You rarely see "game-style" introduction to a movie. It's most of the time part of the ACTUAL movie, and the majority of the time elegantly presented, and part of the build up.

(i am aware that there is alot of movies that has both the "game-style" presentation and the more cinematic way)

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[Mr. DOS]

It doesn't help that the EA logo is never skippable, but the studio logo almost always is...

      --- Mr. DOS

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[revlayle]

GO back even further when EA used to take chances on innovative games in the early to mid-80s

Ozark Softscape: MULE and 7 cities of Gold
Freefall associates: Archon series and Murder on the Zinderneuf
Bill Budge: Pinball construction set
Interplay: All the early Interplay Titles (primarily Bard's Tale and Wasteland - that being said, BT games are much like the old Wizardry title, no necessarily innovative, but was a hit)
Binary Systems: Starflight games

EA started out in like 82 or 83 and didn't make their own games until 87 - and it was the very late 80s and early 90s when crap really started flowing out of the company

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nowadays it seems starting a game gets you a sequence for 4 or 5 different entities, apparently all related to the game somehow. I don't know what each one does, and I don't care. I just want to skip all of those and get to the game, and I don't look at any of those when picking which games to buy.

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[Reapman]

A great example of that I think is when I fired up Red Alert 3 for the first time..seeing the intro bit and reading "EA Studios West (or whatever it was) presents.." Felt a slight bit of sadness. It should have said Westwood there.

I think a lot of the problems some of us old timers have with EA is the death sentence they gave to a lot of good studios of old like Westwood, Maxis or Origin. I agree that I remember a time when EA wasn't top dog, but I also can't remember anything I liked out of them.. must have been something. I'm waiting for EA to create a "new" studio called Westwood to win some of us over.. but it won't be the same.

Funny, I remember Activision back in the Mechwarrior days and some other stuff they did. Now they're just another EA.

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't think of a single game that EA released, I can probably sit here and recite 50+ game titles, many of which may have been released by EA, but that's not the point.

That's not hard at all:

Madden 1988-2010
NBA 1995-2010
NHL 1991-2010
FIFA 1993-2010

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

[Whorhay]

One EA game of series that I remember that I really liked is the original Bard's Tale games. In fact that's probably the first EA game that I ever played. And I remmeber it was an EA game because there was an unremarkable house that if you entered would show a Logo for them and play the credits for the game.

transparent strategy

[dickbot]

- work for EA for a while, at least until I can find a real job : CHECK

- leave the company with a nice bundle of cash and the appearance of now having insider knowledge : CHECK

- take various SHORT positions on EA stocks with the leverage of my new firm : CHECK

- write a nasty paper about how bad EA is ran, and have it published on /. : CHECK

- take even SHORTER positions on EA stock : CHECK

- wait for stocks to drop, take LONG positions and retire to the caiman islands.

Re:transparent strategy

[SenseiLeNoir]

You were modded funny, Sir, but if i had mod points, I would mod you as possibly insightful!

Recommended businesses for EA:

[Hurricane78]

Things that, from what I know about the typical EA manager character, should fit them:
- Weapon dealer / Warlord: Fueling wars by selling weapons to both sides, just to make money.
- Pharma industry: Getting school children on hard drugs sold as medicine, just to make money.
- Competition for Monsanto: genetically engineer slowly killing plants and make the whole world plant and eat them, just to make money.
- Music industry: Artist extortion and media reproduction, just to make money... ...Oh, wait!

I agree, Lasky is the cause of EA's current issues

[LKM]

I actually like the way EA has been taking. They're doing a lot more original, new IP and games than some years ago - last year notably Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Dragon Age Origins.

This is correct. What Mitch Lasky does not seem to understand is that these new IPs don't have to be immediate monetary successes. They are investments in the future. To understand how that works, one only needs to look at EAs past. They got into the current situation by not starting enough new franchises. Eventually, yearly updates to established franchises were not enough for EA to sustain their business. Hence, EA is failing because they did not invest in new IPs in the past, not because they invest in them now.

Activision is now going down that same path. They made a ton of money with risky, interesting new IPs such as Tony Hawk's and Guitar Hero. Now that they are on top, they're milking these franchises for all they're worth, but not investing in new, interesting franchises they can milk in the future - they're doing exactly what EA has been doing five years ago, and they will end up in the position EA is right now.

People like Mitch Lasky got EA into the position they're now. These people are the cause of EA's problem, not its solution. They need to shut their pie holes.

Times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

The game industry is no different than the movie industry. Both prefer releasing sequels to proven cash cows rather than originality. When film and movie historians review and categorize films and movies they will discover a lengthy period of rehashed plots and themes beginning in the 1980s. Given the choice I watch old movies, often in black-and-white, instead of the garbage on the "Big Screen."

Missed his point

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we've missed his point. EA continues to make very expensive "disc based" titles when things are going to "download only", thus cheaper (take a look at iPhone 1.99 games... Good luck selling a $9.99 app). The article said that EA thinks they have 10 years he thinks 2-3 years. Whether he's right or not, who knows. If he is correct then EA can't keep spending $50mil per title. People pay $60 per game because they can trade them in for $40. What happens when "download only" does not allow tradeins? The price of games will need to drop. (eg. Music Cds used to cost $20 now I find most for $10.). All $ Canadian.

Re:Missed his point

[hedwards]

I've never understood the allure of download only, it does work, but really only for companies like gog that allow you to redownload the games when you want and free them of DRM crap. If I can't do that, then I'm definitely not buying. Which is a shame because several of the games listed in the summary are ones that I would be buying if not for the oppressive DRM scheme.

Re:Missed his point

[Anonymous Coward]

EA commands a significant portion of the iPhone game market (in terms of sales numbers), and has been making XBLA/PSN (downloadable) titles like Battlefield 1943, which was massively successful for what they put into it.

Re:Missed his point

[aj50]

Even when we go to download only games there will still be a market for big budget titles. No amount of $1.99 iPhone games can, for me, challenge the fun of playing Call of Duty online. You can argue that downloaded games will be cheaper and the price of games will fall but the fact remains that this year's best selling game was also one if its most expensive.

As a counterpoint to the rest of your post, may I point out that in the most recent iPhone games chart the top selling game costs $9.99 and five out of the top ten games were published by EA (none of which cost more than $6.99).

As my friends used to say about Battlefield 2....

[Bicx]

EA: Patch Everything


Why get it right the first time when you can release a dozen 500MB patches?

I have to agree

[eugene2k]

EA really is in the wrong business. With their skills they can make more money in racketeering.

Re:As my friends used to say about Battlefield 2..

[f0rk]

But now your putting a bit to much blame on EA. DICE is the studio that made it. Even though EA is renowned for putting shit loads of pressure on there studios, DICE are still the once that made an extremely buggy game.
Specially when DICE is the LEAST affected of all EA studios. Fuck DICE is even listed as its own "country" on jobs.ea.com, because of there freedom to move and produce.

Really?

[CountBrass]

So according to the parent we're on the 6th iteration of World of Warcraft? Even if you count the pre-decessor Warcraft RTS games then WoW is only number 4. If you take Diablo, WoW is really WoD, then we're only on the 3rd iteration. But then the parent also ignored Diablo, Warcraft and even Starcraft so we probably shouldn't take him too seriously.

Re:As my friends used to say about Battlefield 2..

[Jaqenn]

Just so we're on the same page here, would you agree or disagree that Battlefield 2 was astoundingly good when it wasn't crashing?

EA, god forbid, should you do anything to bioware

[unity100]

we, the gamer community will make sure that noone buys your games. hear and heed.

Re:As my friends used to say about Battlefield 2..

[Bicx]

It was a great game that included more aspects (guns, ground vehicles, helicopters, aircraft) than just about any other multiplayer game. The quality of the software and service tried my patience though.

No, you are BLATANTLY wrong.

[unity100]

behold mount and blade, one of the last year's stars http://www.taleworlds.com/

the creators are a husband and wife from turkey, who left their daytime job some years ago to chase this dream. they didnt have any capital, they didnt have any investors. instead, they made their prototype, gave it as shareware, and asked people to support/contribute. a few years later, you have the game. at no point any investment got involved, and they only sit down with a publisher (paradox) after the game was complete.

the game much less rivals pirates in the hybrid/open ended scope, but passes in a medieval feudal world, with unprecedented (common consensus of all gamers and critics) mounted combat. turns out they also have been able to incorporate strategic, roleplay, and rts elements too.

they got high reviews last year in all prominent online gaming magazines.

this alone proves fun, vision beats the hell out of investment and the 50 million dollar budgets you are talking about there.

gaming died when wall street entered into it. it will reincarnate when enough number of players realize gamers and wall street dont mix well together.

Re:No, you are BLATANTLY wrong.

[Vohar]

I've watched friends play Mount and Blade, and it looks like a fun little game. It got high reviews though based on the fact that it was done by two people. Taking that into account it's pretty impressive, but it doesn't have any of the polish you'd expect from more commercial games. If the same game had gone to reviewers with an EA tag, reviews would have been far less favorable. Phrases like "decade-old graphics" and "choppy hit detection" would have been used.

It's just a different set of standards for major and indie developers. Finding an indie that "made it" doesn't really prove much.

Re:No, you are BLATANTLY wrong.

[TheRaven64]

It's rather the point though. Small games have a much lower break-even point. If you make a small game in a couple of weeks and a thousand people buy it for $5, you're doing okay. If ten thousand people buy it, you're doing really well. The game cost around $5k to make, including online distribution costs. Now scale that up to a game that costs $50m to make and you've got to sell a million copies at $5 to break even. Or a hundred thousand copies at $50, but both are pretty hard. Now look at the small game again, and imagine it selling for 50. Now it's in the impulse by category; it costs about as much as a pack of crisps. Now you need ten thousand people to buy it, but you can do that pretty easily.

Blockbuster games, like blockbuster movies, have a huge investment cost. If you've got $50m in capital to invest, then it makes a lot more sense to finance a load of smaller games than a single big game. The single big game may flop and you lose everything. The smaller games are all likely to break even, because they have to please a lot fewer people to do so, and a few of them may end up doing spectacularly well.

PopCap is doing incredibly well by realising this.

Re:As my friends used to say about Battlefield 2..

[L4t3r4lu5]

E... A... SPORTS! PC's are lame.

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re:As my friends used to say about Battlefield 2..

[L4t3r4lu5]

Fuck, I meant to say "Ports."

HARDFAIL.

EA terribad? I can't believe it!

[castironpigeon]

So after churning out a decade's worth of craptastic software somebody more or less important finally caught on to their scam? This only a few short years after the general public caught onto their scam, causing a drop in sales and consequently bringing on cries of, "Oh noes! PC gaming is coming to an end!" and, invariably, "OMG PIRATES!" I'm guessing we'll see a few more years of EA squandering its IPs, putting out bug-ridden, graphically intense, empty gaming rehashes of previously successful games before all of its investors and high level crooks move on to start the cycle over again somewhere else.

Re:As my friends used to say about Battlefield 2..

[Bicx]

Although not entirely responsible, EA should be prepared to take the blame when they slap their unskippable "EA: Challenge Everything" logo screen at the beginning of a game. DICE may just have written the code, but EA is the common denominator for games that tend to suck on a technical level, so people will almost always blame EA.

You got the power to back that up?

[JSBiff]

Wow. Someone on slashdot.org makes a threat to EA. I'm sure they're reading it. And that they're terrified. I mean, I'm sure that if they screw up Bioware, MILLIONS of sports gamers who don't give two pennies about the types of games Bioware makes (mostly RPGs), will stop buying their sports games. Fans of The Sims, everywhere, will stop buying any Sims games. Nobody will buy any EA games at all because they screwed up Bioware. All because you prophesied it on slashdot.

Don't get me wrong, I have liked several of Bioware's games in the past, and it seems like EA is already starting to screw them up, and I'm not too happy about it, but seriously, neither you nor I have the power to make sure that no one buys EA games.

Public vs. Private Companies

[geoffrobinson]

Shareholders would like a return on their investment. That is completely understandable.

The problem comes in when a company is in a mature state (Microsoft comes to mind) and they are a publicly traded company. You have to raise profits.

If a company was privately held, they, if they wish, is to be content with steady profits. Maybe more companies should go private.

I mentioned on another post that Microsoft has waisted billions trying to get into new markets when they would have been better off just giving the money to their stockholders.

*sigh*

[Quiet_Desperation]

Remember Archon, M.U.L.E and Pinball Construction Set?

Re:*sigh*

[An ominous Cow art]

Remember Archon, M.U.L.E and Pinball Construction Set?

I have the opening music from Archon stuck in my head right now. How I loved that game...

It's not just the marketing model

[the_Bionic_lemming]

EA games DRM denied access to a game I purchased on my machine because I had Alcohol 120% installed, In deciding on that invasive course of action to protect their software, they lost me as a customer.

If I buy the disc, and the disc is in the drive, don't lock me out of a game over your sense of ethics. Refund my money, and take the product back instead.

You've never heard of Ultima?

[Anonymous Coward]

BF1942, Command & Conquer, Ultima
DICE, Westwood Studios, Origin/Richard Gariott (Let's be honest)

EA Games destroyed all these franchises and reduced what were great games into the crap we have now. That is why there is such dislike and hatred geared towards EA games from longtime gamers. They take successful games, remove the core developers that made them great in the first place, then run the series into the ground, squeezing out as much revenue as possible.

Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

MW2 is a pretty good game they deserve it. Just saying..

Re: Mirror's Edge

[Anonymous Coward]

Loved this game. Thought it was genius. The gruesome death scenes were down-right though-provoking. Eeeesh.

Did anybody else form the opinion that "Mirror's Edge" refers to powder substances which might accumulate around the edge of the mirror? I noticed in the first scene, after meeting up with your sister and then running -- that Faith runs through a room filled with crystal artwork. ;)

Mirror's Edge deserved to succeed

[TwineLogic]

Loved this game. Thought it was genius. The gruesome death scenes were down-right though-provoking. Eeeesh.

Did anybody else form the opinion that "Mirror's Edge" refers to powder substances which might accumulate around the edge of the mirror? I noticed in the first scene, after meeting up with your sister and then running -- that Faith runs through a room filled with crystal artwork. ;)

Re:Mirror's Edge deserved to succeed

[orlanz]

I thought Mirror's Edge SUCKED. The concept was new (over say Prince of Persia) only in the fluidity it provided, but that was it. That game should have been 3 times longer, almost no load screens, and actually have some of the moves presented in the load screens. I basically felt like a mouse in a maze designed for 2 yr olds. Not to mention that game seemed entirely unfinished. A college friend of mine basically designed something similar using the unreal engine on a 3d map of downtown Atlanta. It took _him_ 6 months.

Dragon Age: Origins sucks too. Its a poorly thought out game in terms of player interaction and field layout (I don't like having entrances 1/2 mile away from a village that I just world mapped to). It was also _pointlessly_ complicated to remove value from the actual game play. I don't want to play D&D with 10 times more crap. Lets not even start on the "Just wait here while I go <Download New Content>." That's just a few, there are tons of crap in most EA games.

Here is what's common among EA games: Art, Marketing, DLC, Prices, and Bugs. EA games belong in a Museum of Art, cause that is what they are... NOT games. EA Marketing is the perfect case study for any marketing class in the world. EA has made DLC mean secondary charges to your CC and the equivalent of SP1 & SP2 for Windows. Prices & Bugs.... nuff said.

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

That's too bad, because I really like the games EA have been making lately. Dead Space and Mirror's Edge are great, and Dante's Inferno is not bad either, from the demo. Mirror's Edge especially was my favorite game of 2008.

Comparing optional Apples to DGA-mandated Apples

[Anonymous Coward]

"The movie industry can do this because its more or less part of the build up, and for the enthusiast, its just another reminder that this movie is made by the awesome studio, ."

The movie industry is required by the Directors Guild of America to have the opening credits displayed in a certain order. The gaming industry has no such requirement.

As an aside, I don't think the name of the companies that worked on the movie are of any interest to the average moviegoer, and therefore usually detract from the pre-movie "build up" rather than add to it.

Please don't call it "Electronic Arts".

[Ant P.]

Electronic Arts actually made good, original, fun games and didn't shovel out shit year after year. This "EA Games" is the polar opposite.

Yellow Tab Genesis Cartridges

[McDozer]

I remember when I was growing up if you found a Sega Game with a Yellow Tab on the side (indicating it was an EA Game), you could almsot bet it was going to be a badass game. I guess some of you never experienced the glories of the yellow tab Genesis games. I've had several friends agree with me. Although recently EA just seems to buy up companies and bastardize the games. I'll never forgive them for what they did to Origins with Ultima Online. After EA bought Origins the game went to complete shite.

They need some fresh thinking

[SendBot]

T&A just don't move games like they used to. They need to offer gamers something they just can't get easily online:

http://www.duelinganalogs.com/comic/2009/12/29/family-matters/

Sorry if someone else posted this already. I didn't see it.

BF3

[Anonymous Coward]

I will gladly pay for DVDs or Download for battlefield 3 for PC.

Just make it already.

best NFS ever

[heson]

You are wrong. Underground was not worth the time it took to install.
a) Imagine driving a real car with keyboard.
b) very few after the patch
c) never happened to me
d) never happened to me
e) never happened to me
f) Instead of fudging up the car to get the stats right, they focused on getting cars that handles like cars (instead of bobsleighs)
Can't say its the best game in the genre but at least its a good heir to Sports Car GT (its even the same game engine even if a later generation) and surely by far the best NFS title ever.
It is also the best attempt so far to give arcade and realistic handling in the same game. Even on easy the car feels like a car.

EA had it coming

[JustNiz]

I'm glad that EA are finally feeling the pain for repeatedly screwing their own customers. I bet that EA management are still blaming the economy or something else rather than having to face the blatantly obvious fact that its their own fault for putting massively restrictive DRM on all their products, and assuming we the consumers are stupid enough to let them get away with silently installing rootkits on our PCs.

Taking over your whole PC and also limiting the number of times we can ever install the product we paid for is a massive abuse of our rights and just downright bloody insulting. The worst thing is that even after the lawsuits against EA and enormous backlash on most gaming forums about Spore DRM, I believe EA are rubbing our noses in it by continuing to use almost as bad DRM on all their new games.

I'm sure EA management will incorrectly conclude that declining sales of EA PC games show PC gaming in general is dead, rather than having to face that they made their own products suck.
 

Re:I agree, Lasky is the cause of EA's current iss

[Whorhay]

Five years??? EA has been in the business of producing the same product with new names and faces for at least ten years now, if not longer. How long have their various NBA/NFL games been selling a new version every year?

It is the stupid acquisitions...

[Anonymous Coward]

including one that allowed this guy to branch off into investment business. 400 million for ringtone business? cretins

These acquisitions of late were only bringing new slates of arrogant self-promoters, shitting on existing infrastructure.

The problems with EA and the industry in general

[jonwil]

1.A corporate world and big shareholders who only care about the next set of numbers are and refuse to accept that short term flat or negative growth that leads to long term profit can be an acceptable way to do business.
2.The lack of a "middle ground" in games. In the movie industry you have blockbusters that make the big bucks (and cost the big bucks) and then you have lower budget films that dont necessarily need to make big bucks to recover their investment plus you have small niche films made on the cheap outside of the mainstream

In the games industry you have the small casual games (things like PopCap games, some Wii titles, various DS titles, iPhone games etc) and the big expensive "every model has to have more graphical detail than anything the other guy has" blockbuster type games. There are no middle-of-the-road games that are bigger and more engaging than the casual games but not as horrendously expensive as the blockbusters. There are plenty of mods out there for various titles that show the kind of games that can be made if the industry was willing (the kind that dont need thousands of man-hours worth of content)

3.An unwillingness to experiment. In the movie industry you have a lot of films that were green-lit even though they were different from what came before because the industry was willing to take a chance. The games industry doesn't want to experiment anymore in the way pioneers like Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, John Carmack, Will Wright, Peter Molyneux, Richard Garriott and others did.

The industry needs to start making games that dont cost huge sums of money to make, dont require thousands of dollars of computer gear to run with all the options set to "max" and dont require an always-on internet connection just to play the single player. I am sure many people would play such games if the gameplay was good enough (I would)

Dead space wasnt bad.

[Scarumanga]

I'm not sure why the mention dead space as bad, as i recall it being somewhat of a success, it had scores right around 7.6-8.0/10 so that's a critical success IMO. If i where EA i would sit down the dev team and have a nice discussion over fixing the flaws the game did have and not removing the good stuff it already does have and going from there. If EA would just put a little more heart into it, they could have blockbuster titles like Fallout and Half-Life 2 (we know why those games are good, and that's because Valve and Bethesda actually give a damn about releasing a great game). Crytek should go back to Ubisoft i think, EA doesn't deserve a hit title like Crysis 2.