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[PA Comic] Friday, May 17, 2013 - Increasingly Damn Late
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
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Also, I kinda like Macklemore. Those dudes were on The Colbert Report a few weeks ago, kinda dug em.
This is still my favorite:
So the Leno impersonation is complete, then.
Aren't all those studios that you just listed owned by EA?
Yes, but his point is that it's misleading to talk about "EA" making games like EA is a centralized monolithic entity that produces everything themselves. The quality of future Star Wars games is going to be more dependent on the particular studio that does them.
EA can of course influence the quality of the finished product (assigning games to good studios or bad ones, whether they meddle in the process "Rush the game out to make a holiday release" KotR2-style, etc). But saying "EA makes Star Wars games now" is like saying "EA makes Need for Speed and Mass Effect" - that is, technically true in a very general and imprecise sense but not informative. Mass Effect is made by BioWare; Need for Speed is made by several different studios depending on the particular title and quality varies accordingly; and so on.
EA can certainly be blamed for things like Dragon Age 2, where the team was incredibly rushed to get something out the door, so they massively reused assets to the point where the game only has like 3 caves and 4 city maps. That is entirely EA's fault for putting such a strict deadline on a sequel to a game that took something like 6 years to develop.
EA can be blamed for sequel saturation on the Need For Speed series. They can be blamed for forcing Criterion to make NFS games instead of Burnout games. They can be blamed for rushing SWTOR out before it was ready. They can be blamed for forcing the DRM debacle on Maxis and Sim City 5. They can be blamed for driving Wil Wright away from the company he founded by putting a gag on his creativity and forcing him to churn out mindless Sims sequels and expansions.
No, they don't code the games. But their hand is in the pot and they are actively involved in every step of the process.
For better or for worse, they give each studio enough rope to hang themselves with. While it's fashionable and no doubt easier to blame stuff like that on the evil corporate suits, I know that, in at least two of those cases, those decisions were made at a much lower level than the faceless suits everyone likes to scapegoat.
Like it or not, sometimes, people who make things you like make decisions you won't agree with. My source is actually having worked on two of the games you listed.
The macklemore joke just killed me right there when I read it.
Also, love the "Electronic Arts has dicussed the wealf they’d stacked as a result of Online Passes", go Typos go!
Horrible bosses to in fact have an effect on quality.
"Wealf" is intentional.