54 réponses à ce sujet

[Allan Schumacher]

lol metacritic, I prefer to look at how many units of product companies ship and it is no secret that EA is in decline.

Using this metric, ME3 is the best game in the franchise. It may not paint an entire picture either.

[Allan Schumacher]

Gameplay wise it kinda is the best in the trilogy. But I'd say the vast majority of those sales for ME3 was earned by ME1 and ME2 not ME3.

I think that that is a fair thing to look at. As such, it reinforces my point that simply looking at units shipped may not paint a clear picture.

[Allan Schumacher]

Maverick827 wrote...

Also, this article gives some more insight on day-one DLC:

http://www.gamespot....dition=desktop' class='bbc_url' title='Lien externe' rel='nofollow external'> http://www.gamespot.com/news/bethesda-defends-day-one-dlc-6406719/

"A new challenger has arrived"

I look forward to meeting them in the finals next year!

[Allan Schumacher]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Knowing how many units sold for a single game is hard. I'd have no idea how you'd measure it for a publisher's entire line.

If you want to talk about EA's financial health though, they're a publicly traded company. There's probably information on their annual revenue out there somewhere.

Edit: I think I've found it.

2008: 3.67B
2009: 4.21B
2010: 3.65B
2011: 3.59B
2012: 4.14B

EA does not appear to be in decline.

The Net Income (Loss) according to that is as follows:

2008: (454M)
2009: (1.09B)
2010: (677M)
2011: (276M)
2012: 76M

According to that (I don't know if it's GAAP or non-GAAP or whatever, the last 4 years has been a positive trend for EA, with 2012 being the first year that a profit was made.  It's possible 2013 (FY 2013 just ended) is a shift downwards, however.

[Allan Schumacher]

I don't think it does, the whole pretense for "Day one DLC wasn't cut content" relies on the validation cycle of the platform owners. Without that delay, with a release structure such as that for the PC, this becomes a much more clear picture. Day 1 DLC would still be present, because it's a revenue initiative to stealth the price of the game up another $10, but it would lack the excuse of "These people would be idle for 3 months", and so be very obvious what the intent is.

For people who are aware of how the Industry has operated over the years, it's obvious that's what is happening even with the excuse. The old way of creating games was that pre-production would start on the next title ~6-9 months prior to release, and when the team was winding down, those people would be moved over to ramp up production on the next title. We can see this outlined in the Torment Kickstarter where Fargo talks at length about how they could do two at once.

DLC in general is a form of risk mitigation in leveraging an existing title for additional revenues with lesser overall costs compared to a full game. We could transition our teams over onto a new project, but that comes at the opportunity cost of providing content for the current game through post release content for it. I don't think it comes at a huge surprise, but DLC is created in large part to help make money.

What Fargo did with his team was take his current staffers, and rather than get funding to work on DLC, he got funding to work on a different game. Both solutions are viable, and both are done to ensure staff isn't sitting idle.

As for the "cut content" perspective, doing what you suggest would simply mean that instead of From Ashes existing and being released at Day One, some other project would have been worked on instead. If DLC (as in the incremental updates) didn't exist at all, post release content would either need to be packaged as an expansion pack.


I think a better example would probably be Tales of the Sword Coast for Baldur's Gate. Instead of sitting idle, they started their work on Tales of the Sword Coast expansion. In it, they were able to bring back in a lot of cut content since those ideas were already in place, and they were delivered as an expansion pack. Alternatively, had a DLC model existed back then, it may have been possible to split the Tales of Sword Coast expansion pack into smaller deliverables, which would have meant that some of the content would have been delivered sooner (perhaps even day one, perhaps not).

[Allan Schumacher]

Sorry, I was refering to the letter here: http://www.dorkly.co...pany-in-america

I just read this after reading Stan's post. I am pretty sure that this is fake as well. Dorkly watermarked the image, and my assumption is that it's Dorkly that made it.

[Allan Schumacher]

Degs29 wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...
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.

That's exactly the problem with the DLC model:  it makes it incredibly easy for developers to exploit their customers.  Not that that's what's happening now,  but the mechanism is now in place and it's difficult (if not impossible) from our side of things to know whether it's occurring or not.  That leads to an unhealthy amount of suspicion.

I agree that this is a huge potential risk.  THere's certainly an optics issue, and it could very well be that, even if you can make a DLC to go with release, it may need to be structured differently (maybe more like DAO), or simply just released a short time after release.

If we start running into really extreme cases where entire games are effectively unplayable without DLCs and the like, then DLC bridges will get burned and it'll become something more like Kickstarter, in that you're going to need some level of reputation in order to successfully apply DLC to your game.

[Allan Schumacher]

Celcore wrote...

See I think you're already at the point, Look at my comment above. Clearly the multiplayer in ME3 was just designed to be a money making engine.

I think that this perspective is overly dismissive towards people that enjoy the multiplayer.  You talk about psychological feedback loops as if they were only considered during the design of the multiplayer, and not the rest of the game.  This isn't true.

If you want to be ultracynical, the whole game was designed to be a money making engine.

[Allan Schumacher]

It certainly was designed to generate money. It certainly helps mitigate risks. And yes, the Multiplayer DLC can be free because of it (otherwise we would not be allowed to release it for free on the consoles).

I wonder if, given your deduction, people might actually recognize that the idea that multiplayer may have been created not necessarily at the expense of single player, since it provides a more consistent source of revenue and as such, can better justify financing.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 11 avril 2013 - 02:36 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Celcore wrote...

Thats quite the slippery slope though, the next step is to integrate these dice rolls in to the single player game and throttle the leveling and item games to a point where you're grinding for hours to get to the next stage of the game or pay 5 dollars now for X experience and random weapon to progress.. I honestly don't see a company like EA beyond that tactic its only a slight side step from what they are doing with multiplayer.

I think your assertion is a slippery slope, and not as sound of an analogy as you think it is.


First off, unless you think that the consumable items merit a significant reward, there is an end to ME3's Multiplayer, unlike a slot machine.  Furthermore, people define their metrics for when they win, in that not everyone is going to want a particular (and certainly not every) piece of equipment.  That said, because people are able to define what they want from the reward mechanic, it also means that reception of a reward that is not what one wants serves as a penalty.  It can frustrate the user (which has been a frequent complaint).  This would be akin to the slot machine occasionally award money that is actually useless.  Slot machines also have the benefit that the reward given directly feeds into the payment mechanism.  ME3's MTX rewards are not the type that allow you to directly repurchase the card packs.  Unfortunately, the psychological gambling loop is interrupted by that whole "play some multiplayer, or take a break and spend some more money directly" which interferes with the slot machine analogy.  Slot machines keep the player playing, because by providing some level of reward, they can keep the player playing until the reality of the odds comes to fruition, where the more games that are played, the greater the chance the player ends up losing. 

Although you seem to have shifted your argument away from the slot machine in this post, and are acknowledging something more accurate, which is that the MTX system is more about trading time for money.


As for the slippery slope, if we start critiquing the various methods to keep people interested in playing a game as being unethical, you can start to draw conclusions that the entire way BioWare makes their games.  By providing interesting rewards (i.e. fun game experiences), we allow people to form a degree of attachment and desire to return to the state of pleasure that they received while playing our games.  You could even argue that we did this with Mass Effect, and that part of the reason why 3's ending was poorly received was because people held too strong of an attachment to the setting and characters (there were literally posts where people described symptoms of depression).

Suddenly, because we've made our games in a way that people just can't wait to play the next one, they are displaying a form of addiction because even though they consciously dislike EA and protest our decisions, they still feel they must pick up the next BioWare game and therefore feel compelled to support practices that they do not actually support.  People accused us of manipulating their emotions because someone like Javik was the DLC, and not a less interesting character like James Vega.


On a final note, regarding the situation you describe, you're right that that is a potential risk.  I think that if a game came down to what you describe, it probably wouldn't do very well unless it was maybe a free to play game.  Regardless, it's a situation I likely wouldn't enjoy if that's what all games came do be.  I very rarely buy MTX, and the ones that I have were only in F2P games I enjoyed where I drew a line of "This game is worth $X, so I will contribute $X" to it, and receive benefits for supporting the company.

[Allan Schumacher]

I believe there are MP card packs for forming the various "Ultimate" teams in recent sports games (2K Sports does it as well). Earn some points and get some player cards, and when you get the player you can put them on your team.

I don't know how many players there are in total, and I don't know if you can receive duplicate cards either.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm fine with Steam but Origin charges me sales tax whenever I try to buy something.

That's why I have only bought like four or five games from Origin and 280 something games from Steam.

Yeah, that is annoying.

Whether or not Origin or Steam charges sales tax depends on where the customer lives. Washington residents have to pay sales tax for Steam purchases, for instance, and I believe if EA has offices in a state then sales tax needs to be charged there. Canada is a bit more fuzzy. There's an idea that in Canada with the way the HST works, because EA Canada is in Burnaby, BC, every province that is a part of the HST system is charged sales tax. I personally think that there might be additional issues simply because of the GST in Canada, because when my dad had his own business and started doing online retailing, he was legally required to charge GST/PST/HST based on the home address of the purchaser. In that sense, it could be a Canadian business thing

Since I live in Alberta, which has an EA office, it's not something I can validate unfortunately.

Whether or not states will continue to not tax online purchases (and whatever legal issues they may have for or against doing that) is certainly not something I can predict.


I'm sure if EA could choose to not charge it, they happily would, since they don't receive any benefit from charging a sales tax.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 11 avril 2013 - 05:27 .

[Allan Schumacher]

That Reddit discussion is silly.

Yes, you can argue that making $76 million for a year isn't super much, but it's a lot better than losing $200 million from the year before.

He's trivializing the shift, as EA was definitely a company that was slammed hard with the economic downturn.

The Reddit discussion also undermines your assertion that things are downhill. As evidenced in the Operating Income mentioned in that Reddit discussion, things are going much more uphill year on year compared to the last several years.

It shows that things are improving year on year.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 11 avril 2013 - 06:29 .

[Allan Schumacher]

I have two Steam accounts given the issues I ran into with Half-Life 2's authentication.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm sure that the 45 million that Moore used is to illustrate the level of market penetration and it is indeed going to be an idealized one.

The important thing with something like this is that it's a vehicle for product delivery. I first started to use Steam because I needed to for Counterstrike. My current account was created when Half-Life 2 came out, in 2004.

Looking through my email history, my first game I purchased through Steam was Orange Box, 3 years later. I received gifted copies of UT2k4 and Left 4 Dead in late 2008. Then I bought Fallout 3 in early 2009, Empire Total War, COD 4, Borderlands, THQ Complete, and Civ 4 throughout 2009.

Then in 2010 it's dozens of purchases as I basically realized "I actually prefer this service" and now it's my primary way of acquiring games.

I think the gift aspect really helped with some level of exposure, and it also seemed to help out two friends (one I gifted KOTOR to, and the other I gifted Mirror's Edge to). Both became fairly prolific Steam purchasers.


So yeah, not every person that has to install it will necessarily use it as a store front, but some will. By the sounds of it for SimCity, there was a lot of digital purchases (more than 50%) of the game in the first 1.1 million copies sold. A good chunk (most?) would have gone through Origin.

[Allan Schumacher]

Layoffs at EA Montreal are not relevant to a discussion over a Consumerist contest regarding customer satisfaction (as the defenders of this contest are quick to remind critics).

If I see other posts of this nature bans will be issued as I'm not interested in dealing with passive aggressive snark towards EA in what has otherwise been a fairly well reasoned thread.

[Allan Schumacher]

Steam is still my preferred platform as well, in large part because it's where most of my games are as well.

[Allan Schumacher]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

I'd just put forth KOTOR 2 as a counterexample to Gatt9's accusations. There was a huge amount of unfinished content left on the disc, and it never saw the light of day because there was no green light for an expansion pack or DLC. If Obsidian had actually completed that additional content and released it as DLC, fans like Gatt9 would have accused them of cutting that content on purpose to sell as DLC later. As the case was, nobody ever saw the content in a finished, professional quality state, and it was only up to the player community to cobble it together in a somewhat workable form on their own.

As I'm currently playing through this (with the mod, which I have not played before), it is something I thought up as well.

Mostly, in my limited experience, unless we're pressed up against disc space restrictions, it's just not worth the effort to bother actively removing the content.

[Allan Schumacher]

Maverick827 wrote...

Megaton_Hope wrote...

Th'other thing is, all else being equal, Origin is Steam with less functionality, a smaller selection of games, a clunkier interface, and greater difficulty in proposing new sales to me without getting in the way of starting a game.

How is Origin's interface clunkier?  I've found the exact opposite to be true.

Different people will find different things appealing or not.  I'm sure his reasons are fine for him, even if you find the opposite to be the case.  I find both the interfaces to be mostly similar.  The only thing I had to do really was change the overlay key combo in Origin.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm not required to use the online services for these products. I'm becoming required to for the games. And that's the problem: required. That's the absolute worst way to implement new technology--or anything, really. Don't force people against their will.

Depends. Eventually you reach critical mass, and people that wish to stay with legacy equipment have to deal with it.

This is not exclusive to video games either. I have seen places that no longer take cash as payment, and some even to the extent that they only take credit cards (both retail and online sellers), for a variety of reasons. If it gets to a point where supporting a legacy way of doing things is not worth the time/money to do, it gets to a point where a company is willing to accept it may lose some customers with a decision.

I fully expect gaming to be all digital at some point in the future. It will get to a point where brick and mortar retail would still result in some sales, but the simplicity of not having to deal with that manufacturing process, the price guaranteeing, securing shelf space, and so forth will eventually result in better financial performance.

It makes no sense to bother making games for the Super Nintendo, the economies of scale no longer exist and you're not likely to make much money by doing so (you're more likely to lose money!).  We won't make software for Windows 95 or DOS anymore, even though I suppose we technically could.

I may be wrong, but it's just the way I see the industry going. Eventually boxed copies will go away, and yes some will be left out cold, but others will decide to make the change. As long as enough people make the transition, it's still a good decision to do so.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 12 avril 2013 - 10:59 .

[Allan Schumacher]

My point is that if a business feels it's preferably to not take cash (for whatever reasons), then to do business there you accept that, or you take your business elsewhere.

As for only taking credit at a brick and mortar establishment, you'll still find plenty of non-luxury establishments that place restrictions on cash (no bills over $20 and the like).  Other restrictions will be exact change and whatnot.

These types of places do exist: http://bucks.blogs.n...no-cash-please/. My Dad was a former business owner (small computer store) and once upon a time offered a discount for cash purposes (since it was cheaper for him to deal with cash) until cash eventually became more inconvenient for him to deal with. Though he adopted a change in his policy more because payments in cash were so infrequent, that taking the time to deal with cash deposits and whatnot with the bank was less and less worth the trouble.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 13 avril 2013 - 12:23 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Sure, but that's not relevant to the current course that the discussion is on (being forced to purchase software digitally)

[Allan Schumacher]

Ravensword wrote...

There are some businesses that only deal w/ cash and refuse to accept credit/debit and checks.

There certainly are.  The reason why I use the example of the opposite scenario because it indicates a shift from what I would consider "traditional" (i.e. cash was used before plastic cards).

Holding a grudge for the sake of argument.

Hoorayforicecream would hardly be the only person that discusses this topic that would be holding a grudge for the sake of argument.

Though the Horse Armor example does illustrate that, in many ways, DLC as post release content is still going through various levels of experimentation.  I think it's safe to conclude that the reaction (and presumed lack of success) for something like Horse Armor has helped motivate Bethesda to not do something like that again.

[Allan Schumacher]

Brockololly wrote...

Its funny. Bethesda and the Horse Armor was in many ways ahead of its time since that was basically one of the first instances of a relatively cheap microtransaction. And now we have a lot of games (I'm thinking BioWare specifically) that do those microtransaction type DLC armor or weapon packs.

And yet you look at Bethesda's DLC offerings and from Oblivion to now with Skyrim, they're primarily offering much more substantial expansion pack type DLC that comes out well after Day 1.

I don't disagree.  In some ways Bethesda helped spearhead it.  I always see DLC such as that as purely cosmetic and wholly uninteresting, but I know that those types of things are pretty easy to create, so the investment in creating them is a fraction of what the larger, content expansions tend to be.  Though they are also typically cheaper, so it's mostly just a different type.  I assume that since they keep getting made, on some level they are sufficiently profitable.

Although I think you can also look at the Premium Modules of NWN as another thing that is rather "ahead of its time."  I don't know what reception really was (I had long since moved on), but I'll bet the idea struck up some discussions.


Going back to Bethesda, however, their DLC model at the moment has been mostly just a digital distribution of the older style expansion packs.  I'm curious if that changes going forward, with their statement of supporting Day One DLC, or if it was more just a message of solidarity between other game studios.

Personally, those types of expansion pack level DLC content are what I'd prefer from DLC.

Agreed 1000x over.  Although having said that I still haven't bought many DLC in my life.

I picked up ME3s after hearing about the Citadel buzz
Picked up Fallout New Vegas' as I heard good things (and felt the itch to play it again)
Picked up Shogun 2's (although Fall of the Samurai was more standalone IIRC)

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 13 avril 2013 - 05:47 .

[Allan Schumacher]

I disagree. I mean no offense to Bathesda, but their games, and thus their DLC, are very plug and play. Every mission uses essentially the same mechanics. There are quest triggers, quest objectives, and that's about it. Go to [Location], [Kill/Loot] an [Enemy/Item], and then return to the quest giver. They have a small handful of voice actors and it doesn't sound like they have them do many takes.

BioWare, by comparison, creates involved scenes and elaborate set pieces. The Shadow Broker's ship and underwater in Leviathan are very different than anything in the main game. Bathesda DLC, on the other hand, are mostly comprised of re-skins and some minor new models. The level of voice acting between the two isn't even comparable. Bathesda makes a lot of generic things, BioWare makes a few focused things.

Shadow Broker is probably our best one (which is funny as I haven't played it >.>).


I think a large part of whether or not one would like Bethesda's DLC is in large part motivated by what you hope to get out of Skyrim. If you love the exploration aspects of it, plopping down a new area "plug and play" style is probably still going to feel pretty awesome.

For myself, their DLC is pretty inconsequential because I don't actually own Skyrim! Haha. Still waiting for it to come down in price a sufficient amount. (it's on my Steam wishlist)