Vapourware LOL ELECTRONIC ARTS: The EA Thread

[pippin]

Could this be the logic behind DA:I and supposedly ME:A being "open" games?

 

[toro]

Could this be the logic behind DA:I and supposedly ME:A being "open" games?

Yes.

Ubisoft has started to be quite successful with their open-world games and EA wants a slice off the pie.

 

[pippin]

Well they picked the worst possible dev to do the job. If anything, Bioware is mostly good at doing linear and story driven games. There is some degree of freedom, but the usual "open world" shenanigans seem to be the opposite of whay they do.

 

[Immortal]

Bioware is mostly good at doing story driven games.

 

[Jaesun]

New Star Wars game?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Star Wars: Brothel front

 

[pippin]

What's there to like in Bioware games then? The gameplay? The buttsecks?

 

[Caim]

What's there to like in Bioware games then? The gameplay? The buttsecks?

The ability to generate content for the Codex to mock.

 

[Azalin]

Star Wars: Brothel front

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

http://www.destructoid.com/ea-remakes-happen-when-you-re-out-of-ideas--315865.phtml

EA: Remakes happen when you're 'out of ideas'

You run out of ideas when EA happens.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Actually the whole bloody industry ran out of ideas in 1991, but has managed to stay afloat since then by refining the bad ideas and making something good of them.

But yeah, EA spawning a good idea is about as likely as the Second Coming.

 

[Grimlorn]

Funny EA's business model is basically:

Wait for dev company to produce a hit game.
Buy company
Milk the franchise by releasing watered down, shitty sequels
When the franchise is no longer popular anymore close the studio

 

[Excidium II]

Well they picked the worst possible dev to do the job. If anything, Bioware is mostly good at doing linear and story driven games. There is some degree of freedom, but the usual "open world" shenanigans seem to be the opposite of whay they do.

Not necessarily, since the AAA open world game mold is a simple one. The main missions are linear storyline-related stuff, and the open world is just for moving between story points and doing side content/grinding for collectibles spread around the map. Ubisoft p. much perfected this framework.

 

[pippin]

Not necessarily, since the AAA open world game mold is a simple one. The main missions are linear storyline-related stuff, and the open world is just for moving between story points and doing side content/grinding for collectibles spread around the map. Ubisoft p. much perfected this framework.

Yeah. It's just that both open world and cinematic-ridden linearity are the death of game design, but you're right: Bioware just needs to find the perfect balance for their shit in an open world environment and EA might start receiving loadsamoney again.
I wonder if they feel like they should call Curt Schilling again.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://www.gamewatcher.com/news/2015-16-10-ea-data-leak-on-pastebin-exposes-emails-and-passwords

Electronic Arts has suffered a major security breach when someone uploaded a document on Pastebin that contained private personal details including email addresses and passwords.

The document was removed, but it had hundreds of Origin accounts that began with letters A through F, as well as registered Mass Effect and Star Wars Battlefront users.

An ex-Origin employee, Sam Houston, is speculating that the document was the result of a hack into Electronic Arts' databases, stating, "Gamers are often targeted with attacks, and with EA's accounts tied into all of their games and their Origin e-commerce site, a gamer's EA account can be very valuable."

Houston added, "Gaining access to an EA account would enable a hacker to play any of their PC games purchased through Origin, and could potentially be used to play on a gamer's account on a game connected via the EA account system. Those accounts are valuable not only for financial gain, but also for harassing or impersonating users."

EA's senior director John Reseburg doubts this, stating "At this point, we have no indication that this list was obtained through an intrusion of our account databases," and EA has taken action to secure the exposed accounts. "In an abundance of caution, we're taking steps to secure any account that has an EA user ID that matches the usernames on this list."

 

[Bumvelcrow]

http://www.gamewatcher.com/news/2015-16-10-ea-data-leak-on-pastebin-exposes-emails-and-passwords

[INSERT SUPPOSEDLY PROFESSIONAL COMPANY NAME HERE] fucks over customers due to incompetence and complacency. [INSERT CEO OR OTHER RANDOM HIGH UP HERE] apologised profusely and is quoted as saying 'Wut?', before continuing, 'We take the security of our customers details very seriously'.

Seriously, I've always felt slightly dirty about having an Origin account. The only up side is that I never planned to log into it again, and can't remember what my username or password is anyway. Somebody out there knows more about me than I do.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Here's another gold nugget from Peter Moore based on an interview with IGN.

"Remakes, because of who we are, and this broad portfolio of intellectual property...you add all that together, I don't know where we find the time to do remakes, […] We're a company that just likes to push forward.

For a lot of companies, remakes are a way to drive revenue. It's sub-cost, it's an IP that's there, you can remaster, and that's great. We don't do that here. I don't think that's ever been in our culture.

In the old days, backward compatibility was to convince your mom to buy the new console -- not that you were ever going to use it, […] Once you got it? Those things went in the drawer, or on eBay."

You think that's bad? Wait until you read what Garth Franklin of Dark Horizons has to say about it:

Though one of the world's largest video gaming companies, for years EA was one of the least liked - voted the worst company in America several times, it has often been criticised for its lack of innovation, heavy reliance on microtransactions, costly DLC, a focus only on critically underwhelming but wide appealing multiplayer FPS games which have to appeal as wide as possible.

In the past year or so sentiment has begun to turn around with the likes of "Dragon Age: Inquisition" scoring many Game of the Year accolades along with upcoming titles like "Star Wars: Battlefront" getting many excited.

In what dreamworld does he live?!?

 

[Infinitron]

He's not exactly wrong - people have laid off of EA for the past year or two, although that's probably more for "old meme is old" reasons rather than any tangible improvement on their part.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Digitally downloaded games amount to just half the revenues the make with DLC. That's not surprising, given their console centric audience, but still interesting, because digital (2.2B) is already slightly bigger for them than retail (2.1B).

Interestingly, of those 480M, "PC & other" is 137M, Console is 230M and Mobile is 113M.
Which means, that PC gamers spend (relatively) more on DLC (and Subs/Ads/Other) than their console brethren.

Here's the whole presentation:

http://files.shareholder.com/downlo...A-1CEE017AA7BB/Q2_FY16_Slide_Presentation.pdf

 

[Infinitron]

That's not surprising; the same audience that is more used to the idea of paying to download games is also more likely to pay to download other things.

 

[vonAchdorf]

That's not surprising; the same audience that is more used to the idea of paying to download games is also more likely to pay to download other things.

But it of course contradicts the dearly held prejudices against consoletards. I'd wager that the PC audience is also older on average has has more disposable income. Maybe Ubisoft was right with their assumption that there are people who have not enough time, but money and therefore are willing to spend money on booster / time-saver micro-transactions they introduced with Black Flag.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

That graph is kind of misleading as full games for EA are released Q4 or Q3(Ocd-Dec) and after that is DLC/Map packs time.

Also they lost 24mil,if I'm reading it right.

 

[vonAchdorf]

That graph is kind of misleading as full games for EA are released Q4 or Q3(Ocd-Dec) and after that is DLC/Map packs time.

No, most of their biggest (sports) franchises*) release in Q2 (July-Sep) of their FY (April-March).

* FIFA, Madden, NBA, NHL

(which are, with the exception of FIFA, on console only)

in Q3 they'll have Battlefront and in Q4 Unravel and Plants vs. Zombies.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Well only FIFA is big in sales,but them that FIFA packs.

 

[Astral Rag]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-11-17-jade-raymond-building-assassins-creed-style-game-for-ea

A AAA Assassins Creed clone, just what the world needed.