54 réponses à ce sujet

[IllusiveManJr]

Thoughts or feedback?

consumerist.com/2013/04/09/ea-makes-worst-company-in-america-history-wins-title-for-second-year-in-a-row/

[Allan Schumacher]

That statement is worrying, all it says to me is that EA don't know or are just ignoring why people hate them.

Just to be clear, because this comes up a lot: Moore acknowledges we need to do better with our fans.

I can understand challenging the idea of "Always Online isn't DRM" (you can argue it's irrelevant if people are feeling the service isn't providing).

The bullet list that Moore writes up is because those types of movements have apparently popped up, and he's saying if you're voting EA as worst company for those reasons, he's saying that they will be disappointed.

I do agree that EA as a company has stumbled and I hope we can pick things back up. I have no issue with people being frustrated, and while I don't put much stock into this contest if someone feels it's a way they need to express their frustration, then that's their prerogative. I can't speak for all of Moore's bullet list, but I do know there have been pushes from message boards to up our vote for things such as the LGBT perspective, and for things like that I do agree wholeheartedly with Moore that that's not something I'm interesting in reneging on.

And of course that they won this award because all the homophobes voted for them.

He does not say this. And as I warned in another thread, I will not be amused by people perpetuating their dislike for EA through propagating incorrect information (and to me, hurtful. I agree with Moore's stance on the LGBT issue. If it makes you feel better, imagine I said it.).  Lets please not do that.

Moore addressing that point is specifically for those people that used that as their reason (and as stated, there are groups that do so). I'd rather EA spend their time recovering consumer confidence by improving the quality of their games and the service to their customers, than get caught up in LGBT intimidation tactics. I feel this is what Moore says, and I think many people would typically agree. Focus on the games.


As for the vote itself, I don't like it because externally I think it is a net negative for how gaming culture is received.  It's going around a lot on my facebook and through other areas, and it makes me cringe to see people being dismissive towards gamers and gaming culture because of it.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 09 avril 2013 - 08:41 .

[Allan Schumacher]

That may be true, but pounding on your chest that Origin is a success while using this forced sign-up method rings a bit hollow... then again, you were forced to use Steam for Skyrim as well, so I guess that's not only EA doing this kind of thing.

What Origin is doing is exactly what Valve did with Steam to help adoption (things like Counterstrike and Half-Life 2, for example). We are at a point now where many games not even made by Valve require Steam to be installed, which no doubt Valve loves. I support this move because it helps adoption and I think pursuing a digital delivery system is a good thing for the industry going forward.

[Allan Schumacher]

Neofelis Nebulosa wrote...

I will have to respectfully disagree with the central tenet of your comment. I read Moore's PR statement and it doesn't sound like "we acknowledge that we did wrong" at all. It sounds like "we acknowledge people feel like we did wrong". And whilst someone could come and claim I am talking semantics, for me that is a very definite difference, fundamentally so in fact.

And the entire tone of his little speech reads like "u mad bro?" between the lines.

Ask yourself if you would have still felt the same way if the author was "Allan Schumacher" instead of "Peter Moore, COO of Electronic Arts."

EA is vilified by many people, and are immediately going to go into reading any article with a particular slant (I won't claim to be objective in the matter.  I don't think anyone really is in this case).  I will obviously read into it in a particular slant.

I can understand how you could read the blogpost the way you did.  Can you understand how I can read the blogpost  the way I did?

[Allan Schumacher]

bmwcrazy wrote...

Of course. After all you work for the company that you are proud of and they pay your salary.

Sweet, I'm just a shill!

Thanks!

At least EA grants you the place to vent about it (these forums).

But then, we're all about silenting dissent (which is why this thread is still open and whatnot).

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 09 avril 2013 - 10:29 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Volus Warlord wrote...

Standard misdirection. Other people being bad does not automatically make you good. 

A lot of that going around.

But I'm just a shill and I support the opinion because they pay my salary! 

[Allan Schumacher]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
True. If a company that creates products meant to entertain and make people happy needs to even be compared to those that result in injury, harm or even death, then they are doing an incredibly terrible job of managing their brand name and PR.

I find this post is more a reflection on the gaming community and the gaming culture, to be perfectly honest.  (Shill opinion, please feel free to completely disregard at your own convenience to prevent cognitive dissonance)

This gets noteriety the same way a guy filing an FTC complaint for ME3 does (i.e. people laugh at us gamers).  IMO it is a net negative to the perception of the gaming community and industry as a whole.  Though I wouldn't be able to say much.

I agree that Moore shouldn't have bothered responding, since it gives some the idea of legitimacy, something I wouldn't have bothered with.  I don't find the poll particularly meaningful and in fact proclaimed "Defending champs! \\o/" when I saw it.  It's an online poll, and unless I can have any sort of reasoanble assurances that the population voting cannot be influenced by outside biases and ensures a representative sample of the US population, it is not something that will ever mean anything to me.  Of the people NOT mentioned in Moore's bullet list, it's the same people venting frustration on the BSN (which I have no issue with) effectively voting in multiple places.  I suspect that what I would learn from the motivations of these people voting is not any different than I would read here.  Gamers are organized, typically quite technical, and something like this is going to get additional visibility (which I'd say Moore's blogpost helped to do) to this type of audience.

Lets be honest, in this thread (and numerous others) there's no shortage of allegations that we'll just shut people up and silent dissenting opinion.  Yet this thread has gone on for some time, and you're even talking directly with an EA employee (maybe that's what people wanted).  Some posts that nail us to the wall were even edited for clarity by a moderator.

Of course, not forgeting that all the while these people that hate EA so much end up spending so much time on an EA message board.  Always an interesting observation in my opinion.


Regardless, thread is pissing me off now so it's likely best to take my leave of it, lest I start trying to argue simply to win.

[Allan Schumacher]

Anacronian Stryx wrote...

I for one would like to congratulate EA with their overwhelming victory.

I don't know.  We could do better

(And with that I'm out)

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 09 avril 2013 - 11:09 .

[Allan Schumacher]

MegaSovereign wrote...

@Allan

It's true that Peter Moore's response would have gotten heat no matter what he could have said. But his response is filled with fallacies. He effectively handwaved most of the votes as general homophobic reactions. It's silly.

I don't think they do.  Giving it a quick read again:

Are we really the “Worst Company in America?”  I’ll be the first to
admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut
downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new
pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity.  We owe gamers better performance than this.



Some of these complaints are 100 percent legitimate

What he said was, the people that are voting for EA because they make LGBT games (and these people do exist.  I have seen forum posts of people linking to the poll as protest to EA and our gay agenda) are going to be disappointed.  We don't care what those people think.

So unless you were voting for EA because of our LGBT agenda, he is not handwaving your votes (or even "most" of the votes) that were done for a more genuine reason.

You can argue that it's a PR piece (it is; he's proud of the company, and that we're big makes us a target, we still have some very successful products, etc. etc.) and that diminishes the blog's effectiveness (which is fine), but the perspective that he's just handwaving away the criticism to mostly homophobes is not correct.  Something extra has to be read in to conclude that.  Maybe he could have used the term "most" of these complaints, as the word "some" doesn't convey much of a sense of quantity.  Put up next to "most" some (lol no pun intended) people could assign a minimal perspective of it.  This was the motivation for my "I can understand your perspective" comment I made earlier.


The danger being, if you're feeling jaded/cynical, you're going to have a predisposition to make assumptions that fuel that.  And yes, I have my own biases.  Though they aren't through a fear of Moore or for any concern for my job security.  I am openly dismissive of the entire poll having any significant relevancy (I am openly dismissive of pretty much any online poll having any sort of relevancy.  I remember Zynga pushing up the brackets on an Escapist best game company contest).  So my bias is that I'm going to read into Moore's comments from the perspective of not really granting much legitimacy to the entire contest.

Moore still openly stated that the 900,000 SimCity people that claimed their free game on Origin were fully deserving of that, and that EA owed it to them.  This number is easily most of the SimCity owners.


That's the way I read into it though, for all of my biases.  Take that for what it is worth.

[Allan Schumacher]

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I don't know.  "We could do better" I think

EA said "We can do better" in 2008, and for a while they were. But now they're back to their old tricks again. I don't want to see EA go under, even if I don't like the way the company does business. All I want is to be treated fairly and for EA to not take advantage their customers every chance they get. But the problem is I know that's not going to happen. This acknowledgement from Peter Moore is a wasted effort because I know EA is going to continue to treat their customers unfairly and take advantage where they can.

I think you missed the joke.

[Allan Schumacher]

M25105 wrote...

Maverick827 wrote...

Throwing money away must be the definition of an adult in your world.

Both of you can now stop.  Feel free to take it to PMs.

[Allan Schumacher]

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

I think you missed the joke.

I think so.

The other chap congratulated us on crushing the competition.  It was subtle, but I was joking that we could have crushed them more so, and that "we could do better."

Mostly I have been taking this in stride.  On various social media I proudly shared the successful title defense.

[Allan Schumacher]

This isn't the equivalent of someone saying, "You're a bad person!" This is, fairly literally, someone saying, "You're worse than Hitler! Oh, and Stalin. And Marilyn Manson!"

I don't think it's quite that extreme actually.

It's a poll where, in my opinion, gamers are typically well organized and highly likely to see this type of thing, and they use it as a vehicle to register their disdain. The principal reason for this is because of the gaffes EA has had in recent past.

I agree that using the Consumerist poll is probably not superbly productive, it is likely a reasonably higher profile than just complaining here. I'm sure the Consumerist loved it though, as they even felt like going toe to toe with Moore.

[Allan Schumacher]

bmwcrazy wrote...

I love statements like that form you too, EntropicAngel.

Just who excactly is bashing EA and claiming they are trying to silence whomever?

Actually that part of the post was more generally addressed to many of the EA naysayers on the forum in general, not the specifics of your post.  I guess I was misinterpreted.

I suppose I misinterpreted you when you were merely suggesting that my opinion was more a consequence of not wanting to speak out against my boss and remain employed.

Maybe I was reading too much into it.  I suppose I wouldn't be the first person to have done so.

It doesn't seem like EntropicAngel is actually accusing you of it either.  He actually removed the rest of the context from the post to disassociate the part which was in response to your post.  Perhaps he did interpret me correctly in doing so?  I wonder if it's led to you reading too much into the words that were actually used.

Here's the thing, I felt insulted by your post about your implication, and responded with some emotion.  To which you then felt the need to clarify what it was you were implying.  Note what happened... I initially felt insulted... and perhaps read more into it based on my opinion of you at the moment.  I responded with a more emotional response than I probably should have.  Given your post actually made me angry, I started to rant about more general things that I often see on this forum, as a result of my emotional reaction.

Like J. Reezy stated, it was a general comment.  My post wasn't even so much a direct response to you, but rather just a frame of reference for my frustration.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 10 avril 2013 - 01:37 .

[Allan Schumacher]

bmwcrazy wrote...
Right.
I'll be amazed if anyone in this thread has said anything along the lines of EA is trying to silence people. 

Well, far be it for me to not defend myself!

social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/13/index/16499232/3#16500018

Also prepare for this thread to be locked down because BiowarEA wont let
a thread filled with haters, homophobes, and people who attack their
"valid" work stay up

[Allan Schumacher]

TurianRebel212 wrote...

J. Reezy wrote...

TurianRebel212 wrote...

I think winning this award back to back say's it all to EA and their subsidiaries. They have issues. They better hope they get a much, much, much needed boost by BF4, otherwise EA is in trouble. Big time.

Boost of what?

profit. Money. They've been in the red for the last 3 quarters. That's why their CEO resingned. 

Technically JR resigned because performance was at the low end of expectations.  I don't believe Q4's earnings report has been released yet, though I can see some supposition that a loss was posted since it'd be another factor leading to JR leaving.

In terms of GAAP Profit, Q1 was a gain, Q2 was a loss, Q3 was a loss
In terms of Non-GAAP Profit, Q1 was a loss, Q2 was a gain, Q3 was a gain.

[Allan Schumacher]

Brockololly wrote...

GAAP is an acronym for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Basically, when companies report their quarterly earnings they often release GAAP and non GAAP numbers. The GAAP numbers are the "official" numbers while the non GAAP numbers can usually look better due to the company not including certain expenses and so forth.

They more report on different things.  It's entirely possible for GAAP revenues to look better than Non-GAAP revenues.

I'm not an accountant, though one of my best friends is a CMA, but I believe that GAAP follows a set of standards which includes diffusing the total expense of something over the amortization period and things like that (to prevent short term expense stacking I believe) among other things.  So a $5 million purchase that is expected to be in use for 5 years will incur a $1 million expense for each of the next 5 years.

While I VERY LIKELY buggered that up somehow, that is sort of the way I understood it.  I suppose this is why there are expensive accounting courses....

While Non-GAAP has the risk of not being strictly regulated to a set of specific and consistent standards, it may  give investors and analysts a clearer picture as to what the financial situation is looking like in reality.

[Allan Schumacher]

AresKeith wrote...

@Allan is it true that EA once tried to.change Bioware's name?

I have not heard anything like that, though I started in 2009.  I would be surprised, because I think the BIoWare name is a decently recognized brand compared to a lot of others.

There was some concern about the name being overused when BioWare had its brief stint as its own label.  I think that that was more of an initiative by Ray however, and probably had some level of "You can't be a WHOLE label with just Edmonton, Montreal, and Austin!"  But that is speculation on my part.

In any case, that no longer seems to be the case.

[Allan Schumacher]

Cyonan wrote...

On the topic of Moore's blog post about this the sentiment of "We can do better. We will do better" is nice to hear from them, but we do need to see them doing it at this point. It's going to be a very long road to get their reputation back up either way.

There are a few points that I don't think he's really hitting that well though:

> SimCity always online. I get that whoever put that system in place had this vision for an online multiplayer experience(and it could be an interesting idea if executed differently), and I get that DRM is a very bad word among gamers, but regardless of that it is still DRM. Even if that wasn't the first goal of the system, it is DRM, and trying to claim it is not is probably not helping you.

> 45 million registered Origin users. I'm one of them, but only because I had to be if I wanted to play Mass Effect 3. I didn't like it when Valve did it to me on Half-Life 2, and I didn't like it when EA did it for Mass Effect 3. It's not so much that we're proving the nay-sayers wrong as much as we're being forced to use the system if we want to play certain games.

I agree completely on the idea that there is room for Origin as a competitor to Steam however. One company holding that much of the market is never a good thing, even if they are Valve. Competition is a good thing for consumers.

I enjoy quite a few of their games, but ultimately what turns me off of a lot of the ones I'm interested in is the business practices that I'd rather not deal with. That is what happened with SimCity for me(the always on playing a fairly big part in this, as well as lying to us about it requiring the servers).

I just want to call out that I really appreciate a post like this.

I agree that talk only goes so far.  EA (and by extension BioWare, as our last showings weren't as well received as both fans and devs wanted it to be) will need to pony up.  There's a leadership change coming (and I guess an interim one now), and I think that that will have a longer term effect on how things play out.  I'm curious how things play out in the short term.  I know there's been some ripples felt within BioWare (I'd consider them positive ones - take that for what it will), but it's still small scale at this point and there's going to be some transition period which causes issues.


As for the Origin comment, you are right that it doesn't mean everyone is "yay origin."  But I do feel it's a point to be made that it's a non-trivial number, and similar to Steam that install base helps with the exposure and reach of Origin as a sales tool.  I find it interesting that evidently more than 50% of the sales of SimCity were digital and Origin purchasing was prevalent (I believe Amazon was the other).  And it exacerbated the server issues moreso.  Regardless of whether or not EA/Moore wants to feel SimCity's online aspect is a DRM or a service, in the end it's egg on the face and if you're going to do something like that you really need to deliver.  Especially at this current juncture where the idea still faces a lot of resistance.


Anyways, cheers for the post.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 10 avril 2013 - 07:37 .

[Allan Schumacher]

I know he is refering to the other entrants in the poll. But why did he have to chose the worst ones to prove his point?

Eh, it's probably just a case that it makes his point stronger.  Saying "It's not like we're Apple people!" would come across sounding much sillier IMO


It's probably similar to why, whenever a game studio does something bad, there will be inevitable comparisons to EA

[Allan Schumacher]

Kleli wrote...

You are kind of proving my point with your post. EA have to use companies like Exxon to prove their point because obviously most people don't consider Apple (or Google, Microsoft etc.) as bad as EA. Apple have the same opportunity to be considered bad but they have managed to avoid that. EA have not.

Eh, even if people felt generally felt Apple was worse than EA, if I was making the comparison I'd still pick the examples that best exemplified my point.  In other words, if I had a company (AllanCo) and it was generally considered superior to Valve (a highly regarded company by many), and AllanCo, Valve, and Bank of America were all in this competition, I'm not going to say "Well AllanCo is better than Valve."  I'm still going to say "How can AllanCo even compare to Bank of America!?"


I agree that Apple and Google aren't as vilifed as EA (In my world there's no way Google would even get a sniff at a list like this, though I'm no fan of Apple).  It seems like you're just kind of restating what has already been said, however.

I don't find the comparison to be "telling" at all, to be perfectly honest.  It's telling in that he's making comparisons to the other vilified companies that he's going up against.  Is it any more telling than EA winning the whole competition?  I don't think so.  But then, I also don't think that the competition has very much value in general.

[Allan Schumacher]

EntropicAngel wrote...

I didn't know Epler wrote dialog.

I'd actually be curious to know who was writing what dialog. I'd find it interesting.

They do dialogues in that they both do cinematics for the dialogue lines.

[Allan Schumacher]

Ziegrif wrote...

How big is the Legion of Writers at Bioware then? o.O?

There's about 10 or so writers and editors on DA3.  Probably 12 or so Cinematic Designers.

[Allan Schumacher]

Not sure what you mean by not much value. Do you mean that you think the poll is useless as an indicator that there exists a large dissatisfaction with EA from videogame consumers?

More that I find online contests like the Consumerist's serves more of an entertainment purpose than anything else. I already knew that there exists a large dissatisfaction with EA from video game consumers, and in that sense this contest doesn't change my perspective of that. It may work for granting improved visibility, but it also comes at a cost of people laughing at the games industry.

I find myself more wondering "what types of people vote in a poll like the Consumerists" than I do having epiphanies about how EA has been struggling recently.

[Allan Schumacher]

4. This is a controversial issue, with people who are actually in the business, people like Allan (not Allan necessarily, people LIKE Allan) stating quite plainly that Day 1 DLC is stuff that would not be in the base game. If you ever catch them saying otherwise, tell me, because then I'll be happy to blame them for it. But we have no proof.

I understand the cynicism towards this though, especially if consumer trust is shattered. You'll likely not find anyone (anywhere) going "We intentionally ripped this out for the sole purpose of selling it as DLC" even if that were 100% the truth.

The tricky part of DLC is that it's difficult to really prove one way or another. That is, unless you're actually present at the decision making process, it's hard to definitively state "this content would not exist without DLC" or "This content would have existed without DLC, but because DLC is a concept it has been intentionally removed in order to be monetized."

Even if a DLC concept is created during the earliest stages of preproduction for the base game, it still can't really be said if that concept would or would not be in the game if a DLC model didn't exist. Which makes it tricky.

DLC does provide an additional source of revenue, and it does provide a sense justification for allocating resources. If the budget is expected to be entirely used in one aspect, additional funding can be justified to be applied if the expected return lets it be. This expected return can be in additional sales of the base game, or through other revenue streams, for example.

I find it a grey and muddy matter that is very difficult to get an assessment of from the outside. inXile is pretty proud of their "no DLC" type of stance, but at the same time refusing to do any sort of DLC on principle may result in not delivering content that they'd like to deliver, and may result in fans not getting as much content in a game universe that they enjoy that they otherwise would not get.

Now the optics come down to Day One DLC, which is obviously a subset of DLC. This is about examining the line of critical mass for a DLC release schedules, because the inverse correlation of DLC success vs. time since launch is very strong.