I can understand that she's upset, and I am not going to get into how much EQ was to blame but..
"...noting that game manufacturers hire employees with psychology degrees in order to make their games more addictive"
That's such a poor excuse of an argument... Companies hire people with psychology degrees to help with product development / placement all the time... They don't sit in some back room and say "hey how's the best way to get people to play these 24/7 and kill themselves"... in fact these companies don't care how MUCH you play, simply that you pay per month (I've paid for UO for over a year and never played it... yeah thats stupid I know)
I don't see how this is different then a company making a new widget, and talking with psychologists to see which color they should make the widget to increase sales.
It's like the violence in videogames thing... ok you want to ban violence in them? Then lets start burning books, cancelling 80% of TV shows, destroying movies etc that don't involve pretty rainbows and cute rabbits. If hiring psychologists are so evil I want all advertising to be stopped too, as I may become addicted to Pepsi.
First off I love Star Trek (not hard core, but I have enjoyed the series)
But, am I the only one that thinks the best thing for Star Trek would be a break? Paramount/whoever has been milking that franchise heavily for the past several years and perhaps they just need to take an extended break (several years, not months) to rebuild interest with the general public. The break between the original series and Next Gen was huge, so why are we having series after series after series all the time (other then the obvious to squeeze every nickel out of it)?
Yes your right... I guess where I have the problem isn't necessarily in if they buy or sell, but when it affects others gameplay (i.e. monopolizing on a mob and griefing). if WoW or FFXi were to implement a gold / gil buying system that would be fine assuming it had some level of control.
if thats all it was, yes I would agree. But it's not just someone with a map of spawn points campin out for a few hours. It's about people camping these spawns specifically to sell back to make a profit. Which is in violation of the TOS. And not just for a few hours, try 24/7 for weeks on end. I'm sorry but that is not normal play. They have people that take "shifts" on these accounts to ensure they get it.
yes ffxi could be designed better in this respect, but it doesn't give them any right to break the TOS.
it's rather hard to explain to someone that hasn't played an MMO, but the negative ramifications of "gil selling" is pretty big.
Ok so people don't get why this is bad, because in the real world life isn't fair etc.... first off the obvious answer is because this is a GAME, not REAL LIFE. games are supposed to be FUN, that should be the reason people play games, not to make a profit. The way these companies work is not just some joe selling his stuff because he's done, this is highly organized bot farms that causes the majority of players to not have fun. MMORPG's should not perfectly mirror the real world, so the argument "well it's not fair in the real world so get over it" is completely invalid.
Next up... "if I have more money then spare time why should'nt i move ahead and have more fun?" Well ignoring the fact that your "having more fun" means that the vast majority of people can't have fun, using this logic, if I pay the teller at the grocery store an extra $5 to go in front of everyone, that's ok too huh? So what if someone else pays $10 to get in front of that guy? Then someone else pays $20? And the guy that actually was first in line but can't outbid, well, the world isn't fair but that's ok.
Finally, to those that say "who cares it's only a game".... very true... however like anything that you pay a service for, if someone else disrupts it, why should'nt you get upset? And of course, with that argument you can also say "it's only music, who cares what the RIAA does" or "it's only movies, who cares what the MPAA says you can and can't do"
Yeah the MMO's are much better off with IGE all right... now that prices have sky rocketed to 10x what they were, nobody can fight the big monster because it's overcamped with bots...
I think there's always going to be both... i mean me personally I do not like the idea of a pda, cell, and mp3 player hanging off my belt. i have a treo that does all 3 at a level i'm happy with. but for those that want "just a phone" or "just an mp3 player" i think there will always be a market for that too.
Very good points all around... And yes your right, the atmosphere is a lot better in WoW, much less static then XI's.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't saying WoW is a bad game, it's actually pretty damn good. And from a technical standpoint, I'd say quite superior (like the lack of zoning you mentioned, that kicks ass), and I'm quite confident WoW is going to overcome these growing pains like most MMO's before and become one of the top rated MMOs ever.
I just find it too easy for my tastes. Yes I know it goes far beyond 100 for crafitng in WoW, i've actually gone higher, but the fact I get what would equal roughly level 12 in FFXI, in 30 seconds... sorry that's still way WAY too easy, imho. Is FFXI too hard? perhaps a bit... but I still enjoy myself.
I've played both, and although both have their pro's and cons, I play FFXI mostly just because I've invested so much into it, but WoW is a pretty great game too.
Not sure what you mean by lousy atmosphere... yes the game does force you to group (unless your a Beastmaster of course) but on the flip side that means you have to have those darn annoying social skills too.
WoW is good for some people.. I call the game noob friendly just because it's so.. well.. freakin easy. Lets see... level 1-50 in cooking? that took me... oh... 30 seconds? Click a button, wait, presto level 50. Which is pretty sweet... but makes me wonder when everyone has reached "end game" within the first year, what people are going to be doing after that I don't know.
Yes FFXI is instituting a new fishing system... long overdue and I imagine they took a look at WoW and borrowed some ideas... but if you actually rtfa it's not the same system as WoW's... I would dare say it's superior.
now the day I hear "daboo" or whatever the orcs say in all the Warcraft games in FFXI, then I'll buy the FFXI turn into WoW theory:-)
In the end, play whatever game you want, heck play UO or EQ1 if that floats your boat.
I was the same as you... had friends playing WoW too but I found I just could'nt keep both going... and I ended up dropping WoW (shock gasp!) not that it's a bad game, it's a great game, but I had too much invested in FFXI and I still find it a fun game. Lots of anti-ffxi'ers on here, but.../shrug, play whatever whichever one you enjoy more
True... with one itty bitty difference.. mmo's are A GAME... therefore when you have situations where you cannot get the monster that you want / need to continue playing becuase the gold/gil seller's lively hood depends on it... uh thats no longer a game. MMO's are "vritual worlds" in some respects but when you break it down, they exist to make money for the devloper and to provide entertainment for the gamer. Having people make money off of it destroys that.
I'm sorry, but when you talk about how we should'nt just throw around words like torture, and then you have a sig like "YO!, check out my bitches!" which could be considered a higihly derogotory remark where I'm from... kinda weaknes your whole argument.
This reminds me of the argument of stopping using the term slave and master for hard drives.
Hmmm I'd have to disagree... since CoP they've launched additional servers and, being on one of the new servers, the average population I see has risen from 1800-2200 to 2600-3000 on at any time... considering the count of servers I'd find it hard to believe they are actually at 1/4 of what they used to be.
Not actually being able to see the count of users on all servers I suppose it's possible, but I highly doubt it.
Wow, comments like this I wish i had mod points... I could'nt have said it better myself.... sure there's a high likely hood of us "screwing it up" but if man doesn't progress until everything is possibly accounted for and all the i's dotted and t's crossed, we're doomed. If people did'nt take risks in the past we'd probably never have even had fire (imagine the first poor sod that discovered how to make that...), so why is risk suddenly an evil thing now?
Can't wait to see what kind of numbers this produces... I'd like to get a unit for converting some legacy music / movies into a digital format so will be interesting to see how much of this turns out to be hype / fact.
Got a question though. sorry if this is somewhat offtopic... as well I know this is/. so Intel == Bad, but since most of the comments I already read on this post were about the intense heat generated by Intel processors I have a question...
I currently run an intel 3.2 Extreme Edition (no... I did'nt buy it, I won it, I'm not that rich or crazy) that runs on average about 42 Celcius degrees... no the fan isn't stock, it's a $40 fan / heat sink I bought, but it isn't an amazing fan unit or anything like that... the last AMD I had was a 700, so I'm pretty "outa da loop" on AMD's, but it ran around 60 degrees Celcius on average and died in under a year. 42C doesn't seem that bad to me.
Does anyone have some articles showing how cool AMD's run? This isn't a troll or anything I'm seriously curious, as I am thinking of buying a secondary system but don't want to overheat my house.
Yeah I bought a Treo 600 (probably getting the 650 when it is released in Canada) and I find I use it a LOT more then my old Dell Axim. The Treo is small enough to not get in the way carrying it on you and you don't have dozens of device hanging off your belt. But other people I know have zero interest in convergence and just want either a cell or a pda.
at work we completely skipped PDA's, did'nt see a good enough reason to use em.. but now we're rolling out the Black/Crack berry and our managers love em.
I think there will always be a market for a pda, or a cellphone, or a device that does both, so I'd guess eventually the market will level itself out.
You know your famous when people care enough to take the time to analyze random doodles you do... I'd feel pretty wierd if people started analyzing my handwriting and doodles... they'd probably lock me up.
Good thing I'm just a lowly techie in the big scheme of things.
I, like most around here, have probably been fighting with the same thing... right now I have a gentoo server with two 120s, and two 200s, both setup in raid-1 (so 320g total space) I'm not worried so much about performance, as ensuring reliable data.
My two 120s are both identical, but my two 200s are differing brands (yes it works, Software RAID, not hardware) It seems to me that, going with the same brand, while better for performance, means that if there is a manufacturing defect (these are home drives after all, not server SCSIs) that they could potentially blow at the same time. Or am I just a clueless luser for thinking that ? I remember at work when we had WD's in our Client machines, we had 60 go all within a 2 week span, im multiple offices.
Although the QD actually seems like a decent product, it's definitly a case of too little, too late... when I was looking at getting a new phone, I did consider the nGage QD(ended up going Treo 600), but could'nt get over the fact it's an nGage... I mean a lot of ppl I know would think I totally lost my marbles if I bought it. Had the QD been the initial product I think the reaction would have been totally different.
I think a conversation I heard in EB Games (true) sums it up best:
Customer: So, have you actually sold any of these nGages?
Store Clerk: Nope, and honestly I'd feel pretty guilty if I did
Judging by a few of the responses, I'll go out on a limb and say no, _I_ do not want to live forever... It seems to me that there is enough of a population problem already, without people still procreating the old fashion way, plus the fact nobody dieing from old age... I can't see this as being sustainable. As well even if we do manage to solve these problems, who knows what additional, unknown issues will crop up once you hit 200? Or 300 years old?
Agreed... but of the 4 MMO's I've played (UO, FFXI, Galaxies, and WoW), they've all had issues at launch (heard lots of stories out of Japan when FFXI first launched), so all I'm saying is, why are people still suprised that servers arn't stable from the get go? I would actually be SHOCKED to see an MMO, with some 600k subscribers in the first couple of weeks, that worked flawlessly. I'd love to be wrong, but so far I haven't been...
Ahh this brings back memories.... frankly you haven't hit bigtime in the MMO world until you start getting complaints about downtime..
Seems like only yesturday UO opened up public, and it was quite the crappy experience... downtime, bugs, you name it. People claimed the game would be dead in a year, lawsuits were made, Coaster of the year awards given, etc etc... yet, long after the game should be gone imho, it's still kickin.
Not to say that Blizzard should'nt get these problems fixed but, sadly, I consider downtime for the first month or so to be more the norm then anything... I told friends that WoW would have downtime... they're like no, they're Blizzard, they got experience, they'll get it right. And now that I'm proven right, they're pissed at Blizzard.
I still standby the statement that, for the first 6 months to a year of an MMO's life, expect problems. If you don't want problems, wait for the first expansion pack. They'll eventually fix it, and in a year people will forget all about these problems, and complain that the Ultimate World of Everlasting Quests, the latest MMO released, and proclaimed as the second coming, has problems. And they will be suprised.
Yes I know all this... in fact that's what i said (their job is to make money not make games) and therefore they will ensure that an optimum amount of effort is put into a product to ensure the highest ROI possible. In fact what EA is doing may not be wrong at all... to me and other games what they're doing is sacrilegious as they ruin these brands like Ultima and Wing Commander, but, as you pointed out, their client is the shareholder.
All I'm saying is EA has moved from a group that focused on making games as a way to make money, to a group that is interested in making money, and so happens have chosen the gaming industry as their conduit to the stuff. To me a slight wording change, but makes all the difference in the world.
It's late so I'm probably not explaining myself well, but I think we're both on the same page, just saying it differently. I don't think EA is going to change any time soon, if ever...
My point is that people should'nt expect EA to be the "we make games cuz it's fun" type company, they're a corporation with a board of directors and their only goal is making money... I'm not saying this is wrong necessarily, to me this is almost the natural progression of things... it is sad imho in that a lot of gaming companies did'nt start off to make the shareholders richer, which it is now. A Goal of making money isn't bad, but when you only put in the amount of effort that will generate your highest return, you do loose some soul.
Oh don't get me wrong, I know very well why business exist... any business that isn't in it for the money has a strong likely hood of going down... however (again, iana business guru) I see two ways of doing business... you want to make money and look to see how best to get it (in this case, make video games) or you enjoy making a product, and try and come up with a method to make money out of it... two methods, neither necessarily wrong depending on the situation
iana EA Employee, but it seems to me that EA Stopped being about games a long time ago... it's your typical board of directors type shop it seems to me now, who so happen to see videogames as a method of getting rich. I'm sure the people working on "the floor" care very much about their products, but I get the impression that at the top they will dop whatever they can to get the highest Return on Investment, not "make the best game possible"... I don't get the impression that they have any idea how to make the best use of the franchises they have other then sports and Sims, and even that is questionable.
K done ranting, back to work for me
Slashdot Mirror
I can understand that she's upset, and I am not going to get into how much EQ was to blame but..
"...noting that game manufacturers hire employees with psychology degrees in order to make their games more addictive"
That's such a poor excuse of an argument... Companies hire people with psychology degrees to help with product development / placement all the time... They don't sit in some back room and say "hey how's the best way to get people to play these 24/7 and kill themselves"... in fact these companies don't care how MUCH you play, simply that you pay per month (I've paid for UO for over a year and never played it... yeah thats stupid I know)
I don't see how this is different then a company making a new widget, and talking with psychologists to see which color they should make the widget to increase sales.
It's like the violence in videogames thing... ok you want to ban violence in them? Then lets start burning books, cancelling 80% of TV shows, destroying movies etc that don't involve pretty rainbows and cute rabbits. If hiring psychologists are so evil I want all advertising to be stopped too, as I may become addicted to Pepsi.
First off I love Star Trek (not hard core, but I have enjoyed the series)
But, am I the only one that thinks the best thing for Star Trek would be a break? Paramount/whoever has been milking that franchise heavily for the past several years and perhaps they just need to take an extended break (several years, not months) to rebuild interest with the general public. The break between the original series and Next Gen was huge, so why are we having series after series after series all the time (other then the obvious to squeeze every nickel out of it)?
Yes your right... I guess where I have the problem isn't necessarily in if they buy or sell, but when it affects others gameplay (i.e. monopolizing on a mob and griefing). if WoW or FFXi were to implement a gold / gil buying system that would be fine assuming it had some level of control.
if thats all it was, yes I would agree. But it's not just someone with a map of spawn points campin out for a few hours. It's about people camping these spawns specifically to sell back to make a profit. Which is in violation of the TOS. And not just for a few hours, try 24/7 for weeks on end. I'm sorry but that is not normal play. They have people that take "shifts" on these accounts to ensure they get it.
yes ffxi could be designed better in this respect, but it doesn't give them any right to break the TOS.
it's rather hard to explain to someone that hasn't played an MMO, but the negative ramifications of "gil selling" is pretty big.
Ok so people don't get why this is bad, because in the real world life isn't fair etc.... first off the obvious answer is because this is a GAME, not REAL LIFE. games are supposed to be FUN, that should be the reason people play games, not to make a profit. The way these companies work is not just some joe selling his stuff because he's done, this is highly organized bot farms that causes the majority of players to not have fun. MMORPG's should not perfectly mirror the real world, so the argument "well it's not fair in the real world so get over it" is completely invalid.
Next up... "if I have more money then spare time why should'nt i move ahead and have more fun?" Well ignoring the fact that your "having more fun" means that the vast majority of people can't have fun, using this logic, if I pay the teller at the grocery store an extra $5 to go in front of everyone, that's ok too huh? So what if someone else pays $10 to get in front of that guy? Then someone else pays $20? And the guy that actually was first in line but can't outbid, well, the world isn't fair but that's ok.
Finally, to those that say "who cares it's only a game".... very true... however like anything that you pay a service for, if someone else disrupts it, why should'nt you get upset? And of course, with that argument you can also say "it's only music, who cares what the RIAA does" or "it's only movies, who cares what the MPAA says you can and can't do"
Yeah the MMO's are much better off with IGE all right... now that prices have sky rocketed to 10x what they were, nobody can fight the big monster because it's overcamped with bots...
I think there's always going to be both... i mean me personally I do not like the idea of a pda, cell, and mp3 player hanging off my belt. i have a treo that does all 3 at a level i'm happy with. but for those that want "just a phone" or "just an mp3 player" i think there will always be a market for that too.
Very good points all around... And yes your right, the atmosphere is a lot better in WoW, much less static then XI's.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't saying WoW is a bad game, it's actually pretty damn good. And from a technical standpoint, I'd say quite superior (like the lack of zoning you mentioned, that kicks ass), and I'm quite confident WoW is going to overcome these growing pains like most MMO's before and become one of the top rated MMOs ever.
I just find it too easy for my tastes. Yes I know it goes far beyond 100 for crafitng in WoW, i've actually gone higher, but the fact I get what would equal roughly level 12 in FFXI, in 30 seconds... sorry that's still way WAY too easy, imho. Is FFXI too hard? perhaps a bit... but I still enjoy myself.
I've played both, and although both have their pro's and cons, I play FFXI mostly just because I've invested so much into it, but WoW is a pretty great game too.
:-)
Not sure what you mean by lousy atmosphere... yes the game does force you to group (unless your a Beastmaster of course) but on the flip side that means you have to have those darn annoying social skills too.
WoW is good for some people.. I call the game noob friendly just because it's so.. well.. freakin easy. Lets see... level 1-50 in cooking? that took me... oh... 30 seconds? Click a button, wait, presto level 50. Which is pretty sweet... but makes me wonder when everyone has reached "end game" within the first year, what people are going to be doing after that I don't know.
Yes FFXI is instituting a new fishing system... long overdue and I imagine they took a look at WoW and borrowed some ideas... but if you actually rtfa it's not the same system as WoW's... I would dare say it's superior.
now the day I hear "daboo" or whatever the orcs say in all the Warcraft games in FFXI, then I'll buy the FFXI turn into WoW theory
In the end, play whatever game you want, heck play UO or EQ1 if that floats your boat.
I was the same as you... had friends playing WoW too but I found I just could'nt keep both going... and I ended up dropping WoW (shock gasp!) not that it's a bad game, it's a great game, but I had too much invested in FFXI and I still find it a fun game. Lots of anti-ffxi'ers on here, but... /shrug, play whatever whichever one you enjoy more
True... with one itty bitty difference.. mmo's are A GAME... therefore when you have situations where you cannot get the monster that you want / need to continue playing becuase the gold/gil seller's lively hood depends on it... uh thats no longer a game. MMO's are "vritual worlds" in some respects but when you break it down, they exist to make money for the devloper and to provide entertainment for the gamer. Having people make money off of it destroys that.
I'm sorry, but when you talk about how we should'nt just throw around words like torture, and then you have a sig like "YO!, check out my bitches!" which could be considered a higihly derogotory remark where I'm from... kinda weaknes your whole argument.
This reminds me of the argument of stopping using the term slave and master for hard drives.
Hmmm I'd have to disagree... since CoP they've launched additional servers and, being on one of the new servers, the average population I see has risen from 1800-2200 to 2600-3000 on at any time... considering the count of servers I'd find it hard to believe they are actually at 1/4 of what they used to be.
Not actually being able to see the count of users on all servers I suppose it's possible, but I highly doubt it.
Wow, comments like this I wish i had mod points... I could'nt have said it better myself.... sure there's a high likely hood of us "screwing it up" but if man doesn't progress until everything is possibly accounted for and all the i's dotted and t's crossed, we're doomed. If people did'nt take risks in the past we'd probably never have even had fire (imagine the first poor sod that discovered how to make that...), so why is risk suddenly an evil thing now?
Can't wait to see what kind of numbers this produces... I'd like to get a unit for converting some legacy music / movies into a digital format so will be interesting to see how much of this turns out to be hype / fact.
/. so Intel == Bad, but since most of the comments I already read on this post were about the intense heat generated by Intel processors I have a question...
Got a question though. sorry if this is somewhat offtopic... as well I know this is
I currently run an intel 3.2 Extreme Edition (no... I did'nt buy it, I won it, I'm not that rich or crazy) that runs on average about 42 Celcius degrees... no the fan isn't stock, it's a $40 fan / heat sink I bought, but it isn't an amazing fan unit or anything like that... the last AMD I had was a 700, so I'm pretty "outa da loop" on AMD's, but it ran around 60 degrees Celcius on average and died in under a year. 42C doesn't seem that bad to me.
Does anyone have some articles showing how cool AMD's run? This isn't a troll or anything I'm seriously curious, as I am thinking of buying a secondary system but don't want to overheat my house.
Yeah I bought a Treo 600 (probably getting the 650 when it is released in Canada) and I find I use it a LOT more then my old Dell Axim. The Treo is small enough to not get in the way carrying it on you and you don't have dozens of device hanging off your belt. But other people I know have zero interest in convergence and just want either a cell or a pda.
at work we completely skipped PDA's, did'nt see a good enough reason to use em.. but now we're rolling out the Black/Crack berry and our managers love em.
I think there will always be a market for a pda, or a cellphone, or a device that does both, so I'd guess eventually the market will level itself out.
You know your famous when people care enough to take the time to analyze random doodles you do... I'd feel pretty wierd if people started analyzing my handwriting and doodles... they'd probably lock me up.
Good thing I'm just a lowly techie in the big scheme of things.
I, like most around here, have probably been fighting with the same thing... right now I have a gentoo server with two 120s, and two 200s, both setup in raid-1 (so 320g total space) I'm not worried so much about performance, as ensuring reliable data.
My two 120s are both identical, but my two 200s are differing brands (yes it works, Software RAID, not hardware) It seems to me that, going with the same brand, while better for performance, means that if there is a manufacturing defect (these are home drives after all, not server SCSIs) that they could potentially blow at the same time. Or am I just a clueless luser for thinking that ? I remember at work when we had WD's in our Client machines, we had 60 go all within a 2 week span, im multiple offices.
Although the QD actually seems like a decent product, it's definitly a case of too little, too late... when I was looking at getting a new phone, I did consider the nGage QD(ended up going Treo 600), but could'nt get over the fact it's an nGage... I mean a lot of ppl I know would think I totally lost my marbles if I bought it. Had the QD been the initial product I think the reaction would have been totally different.
I think a conversation I heard in EB Games (true) sums it up best:
Customer: So, have you actually sold any of these nGages?
Store Clerk: Nope, and honestly I'd feel pretty guilty if I did
Judging by a few of the responses, I'll go out on a limb and say no, _I_ do not want to live forever... It seems to me that there is enough of a population problem already, without people still procreating the old fashion way, plus the fact nobody dieing from old age... I can't see this as being sustainable. As well even if we do manage to solve these problems, who knows what additional, unknown issues will crop up once you hit 200? Or 300 years old?
Agreed... but of the 4 MMO's I've played (UO, FFXI, Galaxies, and WoW), they've all had issues at launch (heard lots of stories out of Japan when FFXI first launched), so all I'm saying is, why are people still suprised that servers arn't stable from the get go? I would actually be SHOCKED to see an MMO, with some 600k subscribers in the first couple of weeks, that worked flawlessly. I'd love to be wrong, but so far I haven't been...
Ahh this brings back memories.... frankly you haven't hit bigtime in the MMO world until you start getting complaints about downtime..
Seems like only yesturday UO opened up public, and it was quite the crappy experience... downtime, bugs, you name it. People claimed the game would be dead in a year, lawsuits were made, Coaster of the year awards given, etc etc... yet, long after the game should be gone imho, it's still kickin.
Not to say that Blizzard should'nt get these problems fixed but, sadly, I consider downtime for the first month or so to be more the norm then anything... I told friends that WoW would have downtime... they're like no, they're Blizzard, they got experience, they'll get it right. And now that I'm proven right, they're pissed at Blizzard.
I still standby the statement that, for the first 6 months to a year of an MMO's life, expect problems. If you don't want problems, wait for the first expansion pack. They'll eventually fix it, and in a year people will forget all about these problems, and complain that the Ultimate World of Everlasting Quests, the latest MMO released, and proclaimed as the second coming, has problems. And they will be suprised.
Yes I know all this... in fact that's what i said (their job is to make money not make games) and therefore they will ensure that an optimum amount of effort is put into a product to ensure the highest ROI possible. In fact what EA is doing may not be wrong at all... to me and other games what they're doing is sacrilegious as they ruin these brands like Ultima and Wing Commander, but, as you pointed out, their client is the shareholder.
All I'm saying is EA has moved from a group that focused on making games as a way to make money, to a group that is interested in making money, and so happens have chosen the gaming industry as their conduit to the stuff. To me a slight wording change, but makes all the difference in the world.
It's late so I'm probably not explaining myself well, but I think we're both on the same page, just saying it differently. I don't think EA is going to change any time soon, if ever...
My point is that people should'nt expect EA to be the "we make games cuz it's fun" type company, they're a corporation with a board of directors and their only goal is making money... I'm not saying this is wrong necessarily, to me this is almost the natural progression of things... it is sad imho in that a lot of gaming companies did'nt start off to make the shareholders richer, which it is now. A Goal of making money isn't bad, but when you only put in the amount of effort that will generate your highest return, you do loose some soul.
Oh don't get me wrong, I know very well why business exist... any business that isn't in it for the money has a strong likely hood of going down... however (again, iana business guru) I see two ways of doing business... you want to make money and look to see how best to get it (in this case, make video games) or you enjoy making a product, and try and come up with a method to make money out of it... two methods, neither necessarily wrong depending on the situation
iana EA Employee, but it seems to me that EA Stopped being about games a long time ago... it's your typical board of directors type shop it seems to me now, who so happen to see videogames as a method of getting rich. I'm sure the people working on "the floor" care very much about their products, but I get the impression that at the top they will dop whatever they can to get the highest Return on Investment, not "make the best game possible"... I don't get the impression that they have any idea how to make the best use of the franchises they have other then sports and Sims, and even that is questionable. K done ranting, back to work for me