Plaintiff wrote...
Right, but multiplayer gaming is already a social experience. When someone says "Social Media", they don't immediatly mean "Facebook".
True, but it depends on the rationale for encouraging / demanding a link to social media.
Historically Bioware has not really introduced much multiplayer gaming into its core titles. This doesn't appear to have stopped them being successful.
True, there have been co-operative features in the much earlier titles, but more recently its been limited to spin-offs courtesy of the shockingly dire EA2D (now retitled as a Bioware company) which brought us Journeys and Legends. ME3's multiplayer was actually rather decent (although tying MP to the SP campaign in any way was definitely not) and the EA Swiss Sarl app was, perhaps predictably, a steaming pile of excrement.
Now, this may not matter. A realist might consider that the idea of a multiplayer element in a primarily SP game is to encourage a tadge more longevity and help construct a community between players. This site actually has that going quite well and its a highly questionable use of resources to build a multiplayer element when your fans are not, at least as far as I've seen, crying out in agony because of the lack of MP.
Alternatively, a realist might take a leaf from Disney's book of "everything sells everything else", and consider that Facebook games like Legends and apps are partly a free-to-play marketing tool (with the obligatory freemium element in case anyone feels like giving EA's most terrible studios some sympathy money) to capture attention for the franchise and help build and sustain hype.
The danger is that EA aren't merely hyping about social media to seem trendy and have actually bought into the bull*cough* surrounding the industry, that there's lots and lots of money to be made from tapping into this vacuous fog where lots of people are gathering to discuss things, and that they must want to discuss games or brands with everyone who can view their Facebook page, Twitter feed, etc. and genuinely get excited when they see Facebook updates that say "Michael has just hatched a pink butterfly in Castle World!", rather than reaching for the spam filter.
Its true that some games work very well by introducing a large, shared, social experience. But lots work well without it, and any glance at the graveyard of MMOs will tell you that a rather large number suffer and die from it. And in my humble opinion, really nailing the social media strategy wouldn't have made one iota of difference.
It would be interesting to know how many of the strategic people on that EA Head Office end of the scale have had jobs at the business end of the industry, particularly game-making or game testing. It would be interesting to know how many games they've played which are structured in the way they seem to be falling in love with. Which game communities have they been a vocal and active contributory part of or, at least, which communities have they looked at and said "This is great - that's exactly how I want things to be". When was the last time they, personally, had a conversation about a brand or a game on social media that was not because they were promoting it or involved in making / distributing it?
It would be truly fascinating to know if they have ever conducted any formal research (preferably without leading questions) into their own fan base to understand whether the players of the key franchises are on board with what is amounting to quite a serious change in direction.
And, perhaps above all else, do they ever actually stop and listen to the inane things that come out of their mouths *before* they get asked to clarify their comments and perform deft u-turns? I'm looking at you, Frank Gibeau...
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