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I said that the issue with EA isn't that they are out to make money, but rather, that they hurt the market to do it. I went further to pointout that other companies that even have similarly questionable business practices don't hurt their markets in the way that EA does.
A bunch of folks sitting around complaining that EA is evil because they like money is not a good argument against EA. I was clarify that EA is ACTUALLY detrimental to the market and the industry, and that anti-EA sentiment isn't just because we're all a bunch of little anarchist snots who are pissed because mommy won't let us get mohawks.
And before anyone takes offense at that, notice that I said "we" and "us".
Anyway, why would you read my whole post, and then post that you stopped reading it after the first sentance?
Meh, it doesn't matter. I'm overreacting, but it's becase you accused me of wanting to let "shitty companies off the hook". I was explaining, earlier on that same page, how properly to boycott companies like EA, and WHY boycotts are the only effective way of getting EA to realize that there is an issue with their behavior. There ARE checks and balances within Capitalism, but it requires active consumers willing to "vote with their dollars"; people can't justbe passive and buy whatever they are told.
There ARE checks and balances within Capitalism, but it requires active consumers willing to "vote with their dollars"; people can't justbe passive and buy whatever they are told.
This is my biggest concern with what you've been saying: companies like EA and Wal-Mart are so omnipresent that "voting with your dollars" is no longer enough. It doesn't matter whether I shop at the mom-and-pop hardware store; it's still going to go out of business because everyone else will shop at Wal-Mart. If I want the local hardware store to stay in business, I have to join some kind of activist campaign against Wal-Mart's presence/existence.
Same goes for EA. A personal boycott is pointless.
This is kind of turning into a huge derailment of the thread so I won't continue.
I can't find any reason to dislike EA at the moment. They haven't ruined any franchises I've cared about, and in-game advertising is easily ignored. As long as they keep giving me updated Madden rosters/skills and new Tiger Woods games, I don't care if they're making the damn game discs out of dead babies.
I too am of the opinion that there's nothing to dislike about EA, at least nothing that can't be said about any other game development/publishing company.
Shooter Mcgavin on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
I can't find any reason to dislike EA at the moment. They haven't ruined any franchises I've cared about, and in-game advertising is easily ignored. As long as they keep giving me updated Madden rosters/skills and new Tiger Woods games, I don't care if they're making the damn game discs out of dead babies.
In the September issue of PC Gamer, creative director and head of Irrational Games Ken Levine reveals in an interview why his next-gen project is called "BioShock" instead of System Shock 3. He stated that after pitching his idea for the sequel to System Shock 2, "EA just didn't give a sh*t about that game."
Levine also added that the company is much happier in the hands of 2K Games, a publisher who "cares about this game," and "believe in this kind of game." He also said that if EA did agree to do the game, it would have turned out to be "just a regular first-person shooter with a boss monster at the end."
In the September issue of PC Gamer, creative director and head of Irrational Games Ken Levine reveals in an interview why his next-gen project is called "BioShock" instead of System Shock 3. He stated that after pitching his idea for the sequel to System Shock 2, "EA just didn't give a sh*t about that game."
Levine also added that the company is much happier in the hands of 2K Games, a publisher who "cares about this game," and "believe in this kind of game." He also said that if EA did agree to do the game, it would have turned out to be "just a regular first-person shooter with a boss monster at the end."
yes prices go up; it's called inflation, and it happens with orwithout a minimum wage increase. what you need to look at is the disparrity between therate of inflation and the rate at which minimum wage is increased. Sure, raising minimum wage will have some negative side affects, some small bussinesses might even have to shut down, and that is unfortunate, but the benefits outweigh the negatives, though tragic they might be.
...Nobody can live at minimum wage because.
1.Prices are raised, because storeowners are paying more to employees.
2.There are no laws preventing jackass companies like Wal-Mart to fuck with your hours and putting conditions on pay, and if there are such laws, enforcement needs to be stepped up.
And why don't you have control of your bank account? I'm guessing it has to do with your age, which might also account for whyyou think that a minimum wage increase will be done in a matter of three days (completely baseless). Also, when you say youi want to have your money changed into something more tangable, do you mean you want to have it be more liquid, like keeping it in your mattress, or that you are going to invest in something that you think is low risk? I'm just curious.
Trust fund.
Gold, Silver, decent amount of cash, solid resources.
Regardless, the government has no place in doing anything about EA in regards to the market (regarding treatment of workers, that is another story). It is up to market forces (namely, we the consumers) to force EA to change tactics. When you say "man, EA sure are dicks, but I'm gonna go ahead and get that new copy of need for speed anyway" you are sending a message to EA that what they are doing is okay. They don't care what we think of them, after all, they only care whether or not we're willing to give them money. Yes, boycotting EA, or other companies you dislike, might require you to make some small sacrfices, like forgoing the enjoyment fo a game you were looking forward to, but you have to ask yourself whether the enjoyment of thatgame is worth everything else EA does to the market.
1.We know that, the people who don't(or rather do but keep from doing anything) are the people who matter, after all, who the hell is Johnny Impressionable going to trust, some nerd on the intertubes, or BIG GAEMING MAGAZINE IGN/Gamespy/ w/e the hell.
Everything is a toss-up between console people and the big2/2 Vivendi, EA, whatever the hell that marketing firm, the one that serves as advisory for both Vivendi and EA...the name Zenimax came to mind but I think VU bought/owned them from the beginning[/quote]
There ARE checks and balances within Capitalism, but it requires active consumers willing to "vote with their dollars"; people can't justbe passive and buy whatever they are told.
This is my biggest concern with what you've been saying: companies like EA and Wal-Mart are so omnipresent that "voting with your dollars" is no longer enough. It doesn't matter whether I shop at the mom-and-pop hardware store; it's still going to go out of business because everyone else will shop at Wal-Mart. If I want the local hardware store to stay in business, I have to join some kind of activist campaign against Wal-Mart's presence/existence.
Same goes for EA. A personal boycott is pointless.
This is kind of turning into a huge derailment of the thread so I won't continue.
On the Wal*Mart front I agree, but I also suspect illegal behavior behind the scenes there, in which case government intervention would indeed be called for. On thatnote, no more walmart.
As for EA, which is the topic of this thread, no, a personal boycott won't make a difference, but the thing about market forces is that they are made of of lots of seperate individual decisions. if enough people care about what EA is doing, whether they band together, or they stop buying EA products all on their own, EA will feel it. Right now not enoughpeople care that much, although I'm oretty sure I've seen reports of EA sales declining to some small degree, so market forces ARE ineffect, justnot enough to make a difference yet.
Okay, I lied, here comes more Walmart:
The key difference between walmart and EA is that Walmart sells a lot of necessities, such as food and clothes, and so for those with low incomes, they have to shop there in order to make the most of their few dollars. Video games, on the other hand, are the epitome of a luxury good. If I don't buy spore I might be a little miffed that I'm missing out on a fun experience, but my quality of life is COMPLETELY unaffected. Whereas a Walmart boycott could never be effective, because some people need walmart to live, an EA boycott could eventually make a difference. The fact that there are people who disapprove of EA's behavior, but still continue to give them money is baffling to me. Of course, on an objective level, it justmeans that they don't care enough YET.
yes prices go up; it's called inflation, and it happens with orwithout a minimum wage increase. what you need to look at is the disparrity between therate of inflation and the rate at which minimum wage is increased. Sure, raising minimum wage will have some negative side affects, some small bussinesses might even have to shut down, and that is unfortunate, but the benefits outweigh the negatives, though tragic they might be.
...Nobody can live at minimum wage because.
1.Prices are raised, because storeowners are paying more to employees.
2.There are no laws preventing jackass companies like Wal-Mart to fuck with your hours and putting conditions on pay, and if there are such laws, enforcement needs to be stepped up.
you ignore thefactthat some store owners will just take less profit, because the market refuses to pay higher prices, and they need a certain number of employee hours to function.
Prices don't go up that fast. They WILL go up, but as I said, inflation happens with or without a minimum wage increase. That's WHY minimum wage needs to be increased.
Also, instead of cutting hours, stores might opt to cut employees. It is unfortunate for the employees out of work, but those who are still employed are finally making more money.
Corporations aren't out there trying to hurt people, it's just that often they don't care if they DO hurt people. They are negligent, not malicious. For the most part, at least.
The challenge would be getting enough people to care. Caring about the negative effects of EA's business practices requires some base level of knowledge about the video game industry that 90% or more of people who buy video games don't have.
You say it would be harder to get people to stop shopping at Wal-Mart because of the necessities they sell at Wal-Mart. I agree with you there, but it's also true that it's much easier to explain the negative effects of Wal-Mart's business practices to a layperson than it is to explain EA's.
In other words, huge faceless megacorporations have rendered us powerless let's band together and rebel lol.
To all of you EA haters, I just have one question to ask:
Are they really that bad?
C'mon.
If you've ever been a fan of even one franchise that EA has bought and then abandoned, then yeah, pretty much.
You only have the development company that created the franchise to blame. EA didn't just swoop down and say "I'm buying this, here's some money". There were negotiations and contracts that were implemented by both sides. It's your beloved companies that sold you out, not EA. /end rant
You just have to know how to talk to people. You can't be afraid to play into stereotypes, even. Maybe you have to do something you really hate, like market yourself.
You go out there, to your stereotypical casual football fan who buys madden, and you remind him how awesome ESPN 2k5 was, and how Madden 2005 really sucked in comparison. Then you tell him about how EA bought up the NFL rights so that they wouldn't have any competition, instead of making a better game. Explain to him how EA ROBBED HIM of a superior football gaming experience.
I'm not saying this on an individual basis; nobody actually run out in public and do that yourself just because I said so, although if you really want to do it, go ahead. The point is, if we want to stop EA frombehaving the way that they do, and we don't want to wait for it to eventually happen on its own, in five or ten years, then our other option is, as laughable as it seems, to really actually band together, and start an organized boycott.
Hell, the internet makes it easy to do. We get a website somewhere, list up frontthe reasons why we're doing it, encourage everyone not to buy EA products. Maybe we could have a list of alternatives to various popular EA games. Tell people that ifthere is a particular EA title thatthey MUST have, buy it used. All the while we need to make it clear thatwe not a bunch of crazy anti-establishment hippies, at leats not all of us :P. We are a group of gamers concerned about the effects that EA's business practices is having on our hobby.
That's the way to do it. Yeah, it takes work, but holding people accountable usually does. Marketing ourselves right is really the key, though.
To all of you EA haters, I just have one question to ask:
Are they really that bad?
C'mon.
If you've ever been a fan of even one franchise that EA has bought and then abandoned, then yeah, pretty much.
You only have the development company that created the franchise to blame. EA didn't just swoop down and say "I'm buying this, here's some money". There were negotiations and contracts that were implemented by both sides. It's your beloved companies that sold you out, not EA. /end rant
The development companies expected to continue working on those franchises and not get shut down soon after being bought. They also expected their franchises to be advertised.
Couscous on
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The_SpaniardIt's never lupinesIrvine, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
edited January 2007
I'm not kidding, EA employs furries. That should explain things.
You only have the development company that created the franchise to blame. EA didn't just swoop down and say "I'm buying this, here's some money". There were negotiations and contracts that were implemented by both sides. It's your beloved companies that sold you out, not EA. /end rant
A: in many cases the franchises/developers being scooped up by EA were already owned by larger companies, who were the ones dealing with EA
B: I never said I had any "beloved companies", so don't put words in my mouth, if you please. "beloved franchises", fine, I'll cop to that. I'd open a vein for another good Ultima Underworld game, and if EA could manage to produce one, I'd probably buy it.
To all of you EA haters, I just have one question to ask:
Are they really that bad?
C'mon.
If you've ever been a fan of even one franchise that EA has bought and then abandoned, then yeah, pretty much.
You only have the development company that created the franchise to blame. EA didn't just swoop down and say "I'm buying this, here's some money". There were negotiations and contracts that were implemented by both sides. It's your beloved companies that sold you out, not EA. /end rant
And women wouldn't get raped if they stopped dressing provocatively and flirting with strangers.
My only beef with them is their constant hunger for up and coming studios. They have a habit of devouring promising games, EA'ing said games with an infusion of ads/shitty online interfaces/EA trax/and general EA gayness, and then breaking up the studio sometime soon after.
If they want to pump out endless Maddens and shit, then whatever. But, their studio hit list includes companies like Origin (Ultimas), DICE(Battlefields), Westwood(C&C!!), Maxis (Sims), Criterion (Burnout) ...:(.
Ant000 on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
To all of you EA haters, I just have one question to ask:
Are they really that bad?
C'mon.
If you've ever been a fan of even one franchise that EA has bought and then abandoned, then yeah, pretty much.
You only have the development company that created the franchise to blame. EA didn't just swoop down and say "I'm buying this, here's some money". There were negotiations and contracts that were implemented by both sides. It's your beloved companies that sold you out, not EA. /end rant
And women wouldn't get raped if they stopped dressing provocatively and flirting with strangers.
Pfft... rape doesn't hurt.
edit: that's two forum in-jokes in the same thread, I need to stop.
My only beef with them is their constant hunger for up and coming studios. They have a habit of devouring promising games, EA'ing said games with an infusion of ads/shitty online interfaces/EA trax/and general EA gayness, and then breaking up the studio sometime soon after.
If they want to pump out endless Maddens and shit, then whatever. But, their studio hit list includes companies like Origin, DICE, Westwood, Maxis, Criterion (Burnout) ...:(.
I don't think anyone got it worse than DICE did. They finished Battlefield 2 and were all immediately fired. Nobody even got to stick around to support the game after launch.
I too am of the opinion that there's nothing to dislike about EA, at least nothing that can't be said about any other game development/publishing company.
I know exactly what you mean, man. Like, for example, both EA and Nintendo have bought other game development companies. Sure, there were a few slight differences in the way they went about it. For example, Nintendo:
-Bought Rare;
-Continued to let Rare make the games they wanted, occassionally stepping in and making suggestions;
-Sold their controlling stake in Rare when it was no longer profitable to keep them.
EA only does a few things differently:
-Buys company;
-Cancels their projects if their games might directly compete with EA titles;
-Put them to work on finishing up the latest installment of an existing EA franchise (doing them a favor really, they've been so bored at their desks since all their games got canned);
-Fire everyone;
-Sit on their IP and never use it;
-Ever.
I too am of the opinion that there's nothing to dislike about EA, at least nothing that can't be said about any other game development/publishing company.
I know exactly what you mean, man. Like, for example, both EA and Nintendo have bought other game development companies. Sure, there were a few slight differences in the way they went about it. For example, Nintendo:
-Bought Rare;
-Continued to let Rare make the games they wanted, occassionally stepping in and making suggestions;
-Sold their controlling stake in Rare when it was no longer profitable to keep them.
EA only does a few things differently:
-Buys company;
-Cancels their projects if their games might directly compete with EA titles;
-Put them to work on finishing up the latest installment of an existing EA franchise (doing them a favor really, they've been so bored at their desks since all their games got canned);
-Fire everyone;
-Sit on their IP and never use it;
-Ever.
Like I said,... they're exactly the same.
YOU FORGOT THE CLONES...> THE CLONESSSSSSSSsssssss... er The Sims
For the record, that was an intentional exaggeraton.
However, the way in which EA buys upsmall developers, and then cans their franchises actually does have a good analogy with date rape.
But why would EA buy relatively unknown (or heck, even well-known) small development companies and then shut them down? It doesn't make sense, economically. If the companies have such great games that EA fears it will make a dent in their profits, then why not buy them and sell the games themselves? I've never worked for EA so I can't say with absolute certainty, but there has to be a reason, and it can't be because "EA is teh sux and is lame lol". Is it really so hard to think that maybe the small development studios aren't used to working a rigorous schedule, maybe they're not used to taking input from corporate-execs that have no clue about the industry, maybe they're hard to work with and want to keep their vision without EA's intrusion? Is it hard to believe that maybe it's the smaller companies that are at fault here?
I'll sadly admit that I'm not the man for this job, though I'd certainly hop on board if someone else built the wagon.
It's an effort that will take quite a few folks, but I think we could get enough people off of the forums to at least get started. I'll PM you later, and we can discuss the proper way to collect interest in this. (It's a little known fact that while, yes, I DID use the forums to advertise t-shirts that I sold, I made sure to get permission first.) I don't want to over-run this thread with planning, nor do I want to start some kind of political movement on PA's message board without their permission.
But why would EA buy relatively unknown (or heck, even well-known) small development companies and then shut them down? It doesn't make sense, economically. If the companies have such great games that EA fears it will make a dent in their profits, then why not buy them and sell the games themselves? I've never worked for EA so I can't say with absolute certainty, but there has to be a reason, and it can't be because "EA is teh sux and is lame lol". Is it really so hard to think that maybe the small development studios aren't used to working a rigorous schedule, maybe they're not used to taking input from corporate-execs that have no clue about the industry, maybe they're hard to work with and want to keep their vision without EA's intrusion? Is it hard to believe that maybe it's the smaller companies that are at fault here?
I really think you should do a little more background research before you throw out conjecture like this.
For the record, that was an intentional exaggeraton.
However, the way in which EA buys upsmall developers, and then cans their franchises actually does have a good analogy with date rape.
It's like South Parks reasoning of why there never used to be ADD.
"You can either take our deal or we can pop you in the mouth again."
It doesn't make sense, economically.
GameSoft is making a fantasy game in the vein of Lord of the Rings. It will be a well-done RPG in the vein of KoTOR and other such games. It will come out around the time Return of the King comes out, thus feeding off the hype without paying for a license.
EA hears about this. Looks at wallet. Looks at size of GameSoft. They are fairly small.
EA takes a dump of cash onto the current CEO of GameSoft. They're now an EA-owned company.
EA quickly squashes the game they were making so their own licensed game will not sell much better, as there's no reasonable facsimile to get people to support anyone but EA. Then, they force GameSoft to shut their doors.
They've just eliminated competition, as well as giving a bunch of coders very little choice in the way of working for EA. "Work for the big monstrous corporation that raped your job, or go without work and hope BioWare needs coders."
For the record, that was an intentional exaggeraton.
However, the way in which EA buys upsmall developers, and then cans their franchises actually does have a good analogy with date rape.
But why would EA buy relatively unknown (or heck, even well-known) small development companies and then shut them down? It doesn't make sense, economically. If the companies have such great games that EA fears it will make a dent in their profits, then why not buy them and sell the games themselves? I've never worked for EA so I can't say with absolute certainty, but there has to be a reason, and it can't be because "EA is teh sux and is lame lol". Is it really so hard to think that maybe the small development studios aren't used to working a rigorous schedule, maybe they're not used to taking input from corporate-execs that have no clue about the industry, maybe they're hard to work with and want to keep their vision without EA's intrusion? Is it hard to believe that maybe it's the smaller companies that are at fault here?
All of the numbers here are made up, but you get the point.
I make game X and you make Game Y, okay. Both games sell for 50 dollars, and are in direct competition. Game Y, which you make, is by far the better game, because you've put a whole lot of hard work in to it. by the time you are done making it, it'll have cost about 35 dollars per copy to make. meanwhile, game x, which I make, isn't a BAD game, but it's nothing special. it costs meabout 20 dollars a copy to make it, because most of it is based off of last year's code. well, it's about half way into the cycle of making the game, and I realize that if you put out game Y it's going to sell a lot more than my Game X, so Ibuy your company. Atthis point, I can pay to finish up Game Y, but it's cheaper to just finish Game X, and put it out with no compition so that it will sell anyway, even though it's the worse of the two games. This way I make 30 dollars on each copy of Game X (50 - 20) instead of the 15 dollars I'd make on each copy of game Y (50 - 35)
See, making a profit has surprisingly little to do with making good games. Keep in mind that plenty of poo games sell through the roof. EA has taken it to its extreme conclusion by buying out competitors (be they developers or game franchises themselves) and bumping them off in favor of EA's stuff, never mind if the competitor's stuff was better.
But why would EA buy relatively unknown (or heck, even well-known) small development companies and then shut them down? It doesn't make sense, economically. If the companies have such great games that EA fears it will make a dent in their profits, then why not buy them and sell the games themselves? I've never worked for EA so I can't say with absolute certainty, but there has to be a reason, and it can't be because "EA is teh sux and is lame lol". Is it really so hard to think that maybe the small development studios aren't used to working a rigorous schedule, maybe they're not used to taking input from corporate-execs that have no clue about the industry, maybe they're hard to work with and want to keep their vision without EA's intrusion? Is it hard to believe that maybe it's the smaller companies that are at fault here?
I really think you should do a little more background research before you throw out conjecture like this.
That's not really all that relevent to what we're talking about. Origin isn't a company that got "snapped" up by EA then shut down. They lasted a good 12 years. And before they were even shut down, all of the main important members had already left, either to form their own companies or head a new or existing branch of EA games. The nail in the coffin was that Origin spent 4 years and 2 restarts coming up with Ultima IX, and it was a failure. This is completely different than EA snatching up a company and shutting them down.
Posts
A bunch of folks sitting around complaining that EA is evil because they like money is not a good argument against EA. I was clarify that EA is ACTUALLY detrimental to the market and the industry, and that anti-EA sentiment isn't just because we're all a bunch of little anarchist snots who are pissed because mommy won't let us get mohawks.
And before anyone takes offense at that, notice that I said "we" and "us".
Anyway, why would you read my whole post, and then post that you stopped reading it after the first sentance?
Meh, it doesn't matter. I'm overreacting, but it's becase you accused me of wanting to let "shitty companies off the hook". I was explaining, earlier on that same page, how properly to boycott companies like EA, and WHY boycotts are the only effective way of getting EA to realize that there is an issue with their behavior. There ARE checks and balances within Capitalism, but it requires active consumers willing to "vote with their dollars"; people can't justbe passive and buy whatever they are told.
We don't need people to stop buyingthese things completely, just for sales to drop enough that EA will notice.
A hardcore gamer boycott of EA isn't going to put them out of business, but it will get their attention. Then we see what they do from there.
Same goes for EA. A personal boycott is pointless.
This is kind of turning into a huge derailment of the thread so I won't continue.
You keepa saying that word. I dunna think it means what you think it means...
As good as BioShock looks...I-- *sigh* It's just not System Shock.
...Nobody can live at minimum wage because.
1.Prices are raised, because storeowners are paying more to employees.
2.There are no laws preventing jackass companies like Wal-Mart to fuck with your hours and putting conditions on pay, and if there are such laws, enforcement needs to be stepped up.
Trust fund.
Gold, Silver, decent amount of cash, solid resources.
1.We know that, the people who don't(or rather do but keep from doing anything) are the people who matter, after all, who the hell is Johnny Impressionable going to trust, some nerd on the intertubes, or BIG GAEMING MAGAZINE IGN/Gamespy/ w/e the hell.
Everything is a toss-up between console people and the big2/2 Vivendi, EA, whatever the hell that marketing firm, the one that serves as advisory for both Vivendi and EA...the name Zenimax came to mind but I think VU bought/owned them from the beginning[/quote]
On the Wal*Mart front I agree, but I also suspect illegal behavior behind the scenes there, in which case government intervention would indeed be called for. On thatnote, no more walmart.
As for EA, which is the topic of this thread, no, a personal boycott won't make a difference, but the thing about market forces is that they are made of of lots of seperate individual decisions. if enough people care about what EA is doing, whether they band together, or they stop buying EA products all on their own, EA will feel it. Right now not enoughpeople care that much, although I'm oretty sure I've seen reports of EA sales declining to some small degree, so market forces ARE ineffect, justnot enough to make a difference yet.
Okay, I lied, here comes more Walmart:
The key difference between walmart and EA is that Walmart sells a lot of necessities, such as food and clothes, and so for those with low incomes, they have to shop there in order to make the most of their few dollars. Video games, on the other hand, are the epitome of a luxury good. If I don't buy spore I might be a little miffed that I'm missing out on a fun experience, but my quality of life is COMPLETELY unaffected. Whereas a Walmart boycott could never be effective, because some people need walmart to live, an EA boycott could eventually make a difference. The fact that there are people who disapprove of EA's behavior, but still continue to give them money is baffling to me. Of course, on an objective level, it justmeans that they don't care enough YET.
you ignore thefactthat some store owners will just take less profit, because the market refuses to pay higher prices, and they need a certain number of employee hours to function.
Prices don't go up that fast. They WILL go up, but as I said, inflation happens with or without a minimum wage increase. That's WHY minimum wage needs to be increased.
Also, instead of cutting hours, stores might opt to cut employees. It is unfortunate for the employees out of work, but those who are still employed are finally making more money.
Corporations aren't out there trying to hurt people, it's just that often they don't care if they DO hurt people. They are negligent, not malicious. For the most part, at least.
You say it would be harder to get people to stop shopping at Wal-Mart because of the necessities they sell at Wal-Mart. I agree with you there, but it's also true that it's much easier to explain the negative effects of Wal-Mart's business practices to a layperson than it is to explain EA's.
In other words, huge faceless megacorporations have rendered us powerless let's band together and rebel lol.
Are they really that bad?
C'mon.
The Sims...
We ARE the minority... we cannot make a difference.
It's like how HBO has awesome awesome series and then cancels them after a major cliffhanger.
Except worse because EA didn't star the awesome series.
You only have the development company that created the franchise to blame. EA didn't just swoop down and say "I'm buying this, here's some money". There were negotiations and contracts that were implemented by both sides. It's your beloved companies that sold you out, not EA. /end rant
You go out there, to your stereotypical casual football fan who buys madden, and you remind him how awesome ESPN 2k5 was, and how Madden 2005 really sucked in comparison. Then you tell him about how EA bought up the NFL rights so that they wouldn't have any competition, instead of making a better game. Explain to him how EA ROBBED HIM of a superior football gaming experience.
I'm not saying this on an individual basis; nobody actually run out in public and do that yourself just because I said so, although if you really want to do it, go ahead. The point is, if we want to stop EA frombehaving the way that they do, and we don't want to wait for it to eventually happen on its own, in five or ten years, then our other option is, as laughable as it seems, to really actually band together, and start an organized boycott.
Hell, the internet makes it easy to do. We get a website somewhere, list up frontthe reasons why we're doing it, encourage everyone not to buy EA products. Maybe we could have a list of alternatives to various popular EA games. Tell people that ifthere is a particular EA title thatthey MUST have, buy it used. All the while we need to make it clear thatwe not a bunch of crazy anti-establishment hippies, at leats not all of us :P. We are a group of gamers concerned about the effects that EA's business practices is having on our hobby.
That's the way to do it. Yeah, it takes work, but holding people accountable usually does. Marketing ourselves right is really the key, though.
Well I guess he's got a point.
[spoiler:58b2a1999c]Also: Fixed. And this entire post was all in good fun
B: I never said I had any "beloved companies", so don't put words in my mouth, if you please. "beloved franchises", fine, I'll cop to that. I'd open a vein for another good Ultima Underworld game, and if EA could manage to produce one, I'd probably buy it.
EDIT: also, what titmouse said above
And women wouldn't get raped if they stopped dressing provocatively and flirting with strangers.
I'll sadly admit that I'm not the man for this job, though I'd certainly hop on board if someone else built the wagon.
However, the way in which EA buys upsmall developers, and then cans their franchises actually does have a good analogy with date rape.
If they want to pump out endless Maddens and shit, then whatever. But, their studio hit list includes companies like Origin (Ultimas), DICE(Battlefields), Westwood(C&C!!), Maxis (Sims), Criterion (Burnout) ...:(.
edit: that's two forum in-jokes in the same thread, I need to stop.
I know exactly what you mean, man. Like, for example, both EA and Nintendo have bought other game development companies. Sure, there were a few slight differences in the way they went about it. For example, Nintendo:
-Bought Rare;
-Continued to let Rare make the games they wanted, occassionally stepping in and making suggestions;
-Sold their controlling stake in Rare when it was no longer profitable to keep them.
EA only does a few things differently:
-Buys company;
-Cancels their projects if their games might directly compete with EA titles;
-Put them to work on finishing up the latest installment of an existing EA franchise (doing them a favor really, they've been so bored at their desks since all their games got canned);
-Fire everyone;
-Sit on their IP and never use it;
-Ever.
Like I said,... they're exactly the same.
YOU FORGOT THE CLONES...> THE CLONESSSSSSSSsssssss... er The Sims
But why would EA buy relatively unknown (or heck, even well-known) small development companies and then shut them down? It doesn't make sense, economically. If the companies have such great games that EA fears it will make a dent in their profits, then why not buy them and sell the games themselves? I've never worked for EA so I can't say with absolute certainty, but there has to be a reason, and it can't be because "EA is teh sux and is lame lol". Is it really so hard to think that maybe the small development studios aren't used to working a rigorous schedule, maybe they're not used to taking input from corporate-execs that have no clue about the industry, maybe they're hard to work with and want to keep their vision without EA's intrusion? Is it hard to believe that maybe it's the smaller companies that are at fault here?
It's an effort that will take quite a few folks, but I think we could get enough people off of the forums to at least get started. I'll PM you later, and we can discuss the proper way to collect interest in this. (It's a little known fact that while, yes, I DID use the forums to advertise t-shirts that I sold, I made sure to get permission first.) I don't want to over-run this thread with planning, nor do I want to start some kind of political movement on PA's message board without their permission.
Well I'm pretty sure that lots of other companies do this... and it works out.... ie, Nintendo, Microsoft... just to name a couple
Here's a good article from The Escapist about how things went down with Origin after EA acquired them.
It's like South Parks reasoning of why there never used to be ADD.
"You can either take our deal or we can pop you in the mouth again."
GameSoft is making a fantasy game in the vein of Lord of the Rings. It will be a well-done RPG in the vein of KoTOR and other such games. It will come out around the time Return of the King comes out, thus feeding off the hype without paying for a license.
EA hears about this. Looks at wallet. Looks at size of GameSoft. They are fairly small.
EA takes a dump of cash onto the current CEO of GameSoft. They're now an EA-owned company.
EA quickly squashes the game they were making so their own licensed game will not sell much better, as there's no reasonable facsimile to get people to support anyone but EA. Then, they force GameSoft to shut their doors.
They've just eliminated competition, as well as giving a bunch of coders very little choice in the way of working for EA. "Work for the big monstrous corporation that raped your job, or go without work and hope BioWare needs coders."
All of the numbers here are made up, but you get the point.
I make game X and you make Game Y, okay. Both games sell for 50 dollars, and are in direct competition. Game Y, which you make, is by far the better game, because you've put a whole lot of hard work in to it. by the time you are done making it, it'll have cost about 35 dollars per copy to make. meanwhile, game x, which I make, isn't a BAD game, but it's nothing special. it costs meabout 20 dollars a copy to make it, because most of it is based off of last year's code. well, it's about half way into the cycle of making the game, and I realize that if you put out game Y it's going to sell a lot more than my Game X, so Ibuy your company. Atthis point, I can pay to finish up Game Y, but it's cheaper to just finish Game X, and put it out with no compition so that it will sell anyway, even though it's the worse of the two games. This way I make 30 dollars on each copy of Game X (50 - 20) instead of the 15 dollars I'd make on each copy of game Y (50 - 35)
That's not really all that relevent to what we're talking about. Origin isn't a company that got "snapped" up by EA then shut down. They lasted a good 12 years. And before they were even shut down, all of the main important members had already left, either to form their own companies or head a new or existing branch of EA games. The nail in the coffin was that Origin spent 4 years and 2 restarts coming up with Ultima IX, and it was a failure. This is completely different than EA snatching up a company and shutting them down.