165 réponses à ce sujet

[Jytra]

The problem that people have with EA boils down to a few things:



1) Many of the studios that gamers grew up with were absorbed by EA and subsequently broken up, their IPs becoming somewhat of a corpse that EA likes to dig up every now and then and exploit (see Westwood and the Command and Conquer franchise). While they don't do it as blatantly now as they did back pre-2005, they still do it.



2) EA still publishes a good number of games that lack substantial polish, in order to meet quarterly timetables. Warhammer Online, and in some cases, Spore, were a good example of this. Substantial hype was built up around these games, and release dates were made to compete directly with rival publishers, but anyone who beta tested Warhammer would have told you that the game still needed more time in development before hitting the open market.



3) Heavy focus on their repeatable franchises, such as the Madden and Sims cash cows, paints the company in a bad image, especially when neither franchise has made a substantial improvement in gameplay, but rather, a slowly increasing focus in microtransactions and DLC, which brings me to the next point...



4) A "newly" renewed focus on DLC. EA made quite a stink when they started charging for DLC that unlocked pre-existing content found in the game, and as of late, this trend is becoming even more apparent. Battlefield Heroes, while an interesting "free" game, has quite a great deal of content that is unlocked on a per-payment basis. Other franchises, such as Need for Speed, Burnout, and Sims, all feature DLC content that includes one or two minor additions, and paid unlocks for things that can be unlocked through regular gameplay.



5) A shifting focus on DRM. I won't go into too many details, as they've already been discussed, but the main point is while the principles of DRM are intended to cut down on piracy, the lengths that EA has gone to ensure the game is no longer pirateable has harmed the legitimate end-user on occasion.





I'm not trying to incite anything, but its these little things that make gamers angry at EA.

[mjboldy]

They aren't as bad as Activision and I admit that EA has gotten better but I still hate game publisher corporations. EA has a history of getting bigger than they can afford and then closing down some of the studios that they bought in order to bring them back down, then the cycle repeats again.

also pretty much everything Jytra said.

Modifié par mjboldy, 14 février 2010 - 12:18 .

[KalReegar]

Looy wrote...

EA aren't so bad any more. They've finally learnt that they can make more money by just letting developers get on with their thing rather than rushing them, forcing ****ty games and destroying the dev studio forever.

Let me give you an example. Bear with me.

Mercenaries 2. Developed by Pandemic, who EA bought out in 2007.

From early footage, Mercenaries 2 was going to be an amazing game. Flammable foliage, usable planes, semi-trailers and a whole slew of awesome vehicles to play with. In fact, EA representatives touted the game as such, hyping it up along the years. So it went until August 31, 2008. Then Mercenaries 2 was released.

It was filled with bugs and glitches, 3/4 of the promised content had been cut, the game was short and failed to live up to its predecessor (which was awesome and is in my Top 10 favorite games). Pandemic then struck the final nail in its coffin by releasing an update which promised new playable characters, bug fixes and other things.

That didn't deliver, and fans were livid. The characters were just skins, no new voices. No bugs were fixed, and new ones sprang up. A glimmer of hope arose when the Blow It Up Again DLC was announced. Fans waited, hoping for the redemption Mercenaries 2 sorely needed.

Blow It Up Again also failed to deliver. Instead of adding content to the game, it added 4 (very poorly done) side missions accessible from a location in the game world.

By this point, Pandemic sealed its fate. And perhaps as a sort of karmic retribution, Pandemic closed its doors little more than a year later.

So, was Mercenaries 2 the fault of EA or Pandemic? No one really knows. EA is at fault for hyping the game up over its actual content, while the failure of the game itself may rest with both EA and Pandemic. Pandemic did have 3 years to develop the game, but for a game such as Mercenaries, it may take more than 3 years. EA didn't realize that, and pressured Pandemic to release the game without testing it properly, hence the sheer amount of bugs that would put an entomologist to shame.

Why the rant? I bought Mercenaries 2, having enjoyed Mercenaries 1 but was sorely disappointed and traded the game in for Resident Evil 5.

Perhaps I don't want to see Bioware go the way of Pandemic.

[stuka1000]

Faust1979 wrote...

without EA we wouldn't have some of the great games that came out in the past and I will lost some here

seven cities of gold
Pinball construction set
Populous awesome game!
racing destruction set awesome game!
maniac mansion

I could list more but they either published or developed some very good games over the years

Seven cities of gold was created by Ozark and only published by EA
Pinball construction set originally created and published by BudgeCo until EA took over
Populous was created by Bullfrog, heard anything of them lately?
racing destruction set was created by EA with a team that once worked for Mattel on Intelivision games
maniac mansion was a LucasArts game.  i could be wrong but I don't think EA had much to do with this game.

So only one of the games you mentioned was in fact created by EA.

[XfStef]

that is their recipy, they buy stuff, and just blow it up, waiting to cash in on the profits



there is NO single creative guy currently beeing employed by EA, they just rely on other people coming up with great idea on which they can rely



they are like a parasite, sucking the living life out of promising games

[Faust1979]

stuka1000 wrote...

Faust1979 wrote...

without EA we wouldn't have some of the great games that came out in the past and I will lost some here

seven cities of gold
Pinball construction set
Populous awesome game!
racing destruction set awesome game!
maniac mansion

I could list more but they either published or developed some very good games over the years

Seven cities of gold was created by Ozark and only published by EA
Pinball construction set originally created and published by BudgeCo until EA took over
Populous was created by Bullfrog, heard anything of them lately?
racing destruction set was created by EA with a team that once worked for Mattel on Intelivision games
maniac mansion was a LucasArts game.  i could be wrong but I don't think EA had much to do with this game.

So only one of the games you mentioned was in fact created by EA.

yeah but the fact is EA helps awesome games get out to the public that is the point I was trying to make. Without EA those games probably wouldn't of been as popular as they were or not come out at all without EA's backing

[Acero Azul]

I don't have a problem with EA, these days EA is making it a possibility for some companies to even still be in business

[Weiser_Cain]

Mass Effect would have been a hit with or without EA, it's just that good, and Bioware has a great reputation.

Compared to the earlier bioware games this seems less friendly with the two serials, one I can't ever use again apparently, and I'm still worried that they're going to spring some crazy drm that breaks my computer or start making us pay for patches.

[stuka1000]

Faust1979 wrote...

stuka1000 wrote...

Faust1979 wrote...

without EA we wouldn't have some of the great games that came out in the past and I will lost some here

seven cities of gold
Pinball construction set
Populous awesome game!
racing destruction set awesome game!
maniac mansion

I could list more but they either published or developed some very good games over the years

Seven cities of gold was created by Ozark and only published by EA
Pinball construction set originally created and published by BudgeCo until EA took over
Populous was created by Bullfrog, heard anything of them lately?
racing destruction set was created by EA with a team that once worked for Mattel on Intelivision games
maniac mansion was a LucasArts game.  i could be wrong but I don't think EA had much to do with this game.

So only one of the games you mentioned was in fact created by EA.

yeah but the fact is EA helps awesome games get out to the public that is the point I was trying to make. Without EA those games probably wouldn't of been as popular as they were or not come out at all without EA's backing

Nobody is doubting that EA pour lots of money into development but that isn't the point.  The point is that we are slowly but surely getting games that the big Gorillas like EA and SoE want us to play and not the games that we want to play like some of those you mentioned.

There is a world of difference between publishing a game and actually developing it.  Take the pinball construction set that you mentioned.  That game broke new ground when it was made; it was new and fresh as the gamers were given the tools to create their own experience although somewhat limited in scope.  Bill Budge created the game and then along with his wife created BudgeCo to publish and distribute it.  The game was out there and on the shelves before EA even had a sniff at it.  Budge however never wanted to be a publisher, he wanted to write games so when EA approached him he happily allowed them to take over that side of things.

Did the game get out to a wider audiance after that? sure it did but Budge I believe still owns the rights to the game, he did afterall create a spin off from it some time later.  He now works for SoE I believe.

To use an analogy look at video cards.  A few years back if you wanted a new card for your PC you had a choice of a few different manufacturers, Nvidia, ATi, Matrox, Diamond, 3Dfx etc.  Now when you go to buy one you pretty much have a choice of two, Nvidia and ATi because the others have either been swallowed whole or moved out of the gaming market because they couldn't compete with the big two.

The same is happening now in the games industry with every even slightly profitable independent studio a target for the likes of EA and SoE.  If the trend continues then in a few years when you want to buy a new game you will have a choice of two maybe three giants which are all producing mainstream crap because inovation will have been left to gather dust.  What's more it wouldn't surprise me at that time if development for the PC stopped entirely in favour of the consoles which are easier and cheaper to develop for.  If this happens then we will get stagnation, not only in the games we play but also in the hardware as the likes of Nvidia, Intel etc. scale back.  Not much need for new technology every couple of months when new consoles only appear every two or three years.

[Faust1979]

In the words of Danny Elfman former lead singer of Oingo Boingo



There's nothing wrong with Capitalism

There's nothing wrong with free enterprise

Don't try to make me feel guilty

I'm so tired of hearing you cry



There's nothing wrong with making some profit

If you ask me I'll say it's just fine

There's nothing wrong with wanting to live nice

I'm so tired of hearing you whine

[KalReegar]

In a decade, it'll be just 4 game companies: Activision, Ubisoft, EA and SoE.



Everything else will either be bought out or shut down.

[XfStef]

blizzard whon't die either... financially at least

[KalReegar]

Blizzard too, but I lumped them in with Activision, since they're one company(?)

[Srau]

Why ?

- Bullfrog (Sindicate Wars, Dungeon Keeper, Powermonger, Populous, etc) R.I.P.
- Westwood Studios (Eye of the Beholder, Dune, Bladerunner, Command and Conquer, Battletechs, etc) R.I.P.
- Origin (Wing Commanders, Ultimas) not R.I.P. but zombified.
- Bioware - status pending - i hope Riccitiello will really change things and not screw up on this one.

Modifié par Srau, 14 février 2010 - 01:12 .

[XfStef]

their policy is to help some small companies publish one title, then ruin the sequel with impossible time and money demands... afterwards they take the most creative people working for those small companies and sack everyone else... it's an economically UBER play



as I have always said, I may ruin my life playing computer games, but atleast I'm not ruining someone else's life by playing with him

[SithLordExarKun]

You guys think EA is bad? Activions douchebaggery is FAR worse. CEO bobby kotic wants to implement a pay to play monthly basis for the next Call of duty game.

[Srau]

Actually Activision did a great thing : during the fusion Vivendi/Activision they dumped the Homeworld licence, then baught by THQ who in turn ordered a new Homeworld to Relic (original creators of the franchise).

[yoomazir]

I predict 2-3 years of Bioware lifespan before merging with other studios! nah, I'm joking,the name is still enough to sell copies of anything.

But you gotta wonder why Bioware did let themselves get bought...my personnal theory is that the founders are in the videogame buisness a long time and since nobody stay young forever they decided to sold their company so they have a little cash under their bed when they take the pension/retreat.
I wouldn't blame them though, nothing's forever.

BTW,EA earned my respect with Mirror's Edge and Dead Space, those are A-MA-ZING games.

(still,disapointed the way ME2 went...)

Modifié par yoomazir, 14 février 2010 - 01:25 .

[icanplaythatrole]

Faust1979 wrote...

In the words of Danny Elfman former lead singer of Oingo Boingo

There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
There's nothing wrong with free enterprise
Don't try to make me feel guilty
I'm so tired of hearing you cry

There's nothing wrong with making some profit
If you ask me I'll say it's just fine
There's nothing wrong with wanting to live nice
I'm so tired of hearing you whine

What we ["we" here means the US] have is corporatism, not capitalism.

That song is whiny, btw.

[Bryy_Miller]

XfStef wrote...

they still su** balls for buying out everything else and turning everything in Madden ! god I hate those kind of games .... YEA !! IT'S FOOTBALL !!! actually it's american rugby you d kheads, football is what you call soccer

Yeah?

And those games make them MONEY.

Please do not bring up the ridiculous argument that video game companies don't do it for the money.

[SithLordExarKun]

Crawling_Chaos wrote...


Kotick is a douchebag that vehemently hates video games and all video gamers, and actively looks for ways to spite us.

Do you remembe the jacked up price for MW2 PC?  I remember kotic saying that if it were up to him he would increase the price for MW2 for pc and 360 even further.

I can't believe some people would whine at EA instead, sure they may be douchebags sometimes but they haven't seen how activision completely dwarfs EA's douchebaggery.