Let's make some more fun of this inveterate blabbermouth while exploding yet another popular fallacy that he's recently committed. The issue in question is the announcement of the two BioWare founders leaving the company to pursue other activities. And of course this is laid on the door of the evil EA corporashun:
http://www.learntocounter.com/forums/in ... 3#msg47813
MichaelJLowell wrote:Normally, I wouldn't post about something like this, because it's one of those moments that would exist for the sole purpose of reminiscing on Westwood, and Origin, and whatever other companies that Electronic Arts has run into the ground. "I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner" is in full play here.
All phrased to create the impression that he's been into games since the days of Westwood and Origin and knows all about them and their cool complex games, all the while he can't even review a bonkers simple "indie" abortion without rewriting the review a dozen times and still failing to produce a decent text.
So understand, you goddamn casual hypocrites, that EA has never "run into the ground" any company at all. If I get bored of running this site tomorrow, and pass it on to the first fuckface who offers me a load of cash, is it the fuckface's fault that Insomnia will be ruined, or the fact that I got tired of it and gave it up? If I hadn't given it up it would still have ended up ruined! Because the very reason I gave it up is because I became tired of it! And a person who is tired of a thing will of course end up fucking it up! Westwood and Origin and all those other companies EA has gobbled up WERE RUINED BY THEIR ORIGINAL OWNERS THE MOMENT THEY LOST INTEREST IN THEM TO THE EXTENT OF MAKING THEM PUBLIC COMPANIES (and thereby relinquishing control) OR OUTRIGHT SELLING THEM OUT. Richard Garriott became bored of games and went to play astronaut, while the Wing Commander dude went into the movies -- and their games had begun to suck EVEN BEFORE THEY LEFT. Ultima began losing the plot at 7, and by the time 9 came out was almost a joke, with the entire thing being capped off by UO, which not only destroyed the franchise but launched the monstrous abomination known as the MMORPG. So gimme a break with the bullshit that EA was somehow responsible for an Origin THAT NO LONGER EVEN EXISTED ONCE ITS MAIN DIRECTORS HAD GROWN TIRED OF GAME DESIGN ANYWAY. Of course the Ghetto moron and all the idiots on the internet from whom he is copying his "opinions" have no notion of any of this, since the only information they have on Origin and all the other old companies comes from Wikipedia, Google search results and IGN Top 100 lists. And now that the BioWare founders WHO HAVEN'T PRODUCED A GENUINELY GREAT GAME SINCE 2000 (2002 if we feel like being kind) finally decided they'd made enough cash and might as well leave to pursue their REAL interests (which they say are social sites and beer drinking), EA somehow becomes responsible for that.
The only puzzling thing about this whole business, which I noted recently in a forum post about Chris Roberts' comeback to videogames after he had finally become bored with making pure cutscenes, is why does EA bother with buying all these companies that are clearly on a downhill slide in the first place. And the only reasonable explanations I can come up with are 1) They simply want the IP and/or whatever talent/know-how exists in the company, not necessarily in order to use it in order to keep that company afloat (WHICH COMPANY NO LONGER EVEN EXISTS AFTER IT HAS BEEN GOBBLED UP AND ITS COMMAND STRUCTURE HAS BEEN COMPLETELY ALTERED), but in order to use it in EA productions in general, and 2) They geniunely believe they can improve the fortunes of these developers which have been essentially abandoned by their founders and chief creative minds.
Reason 1 is perfectly legit, and even a smart move; reason 2 is still legit but dumb, because, as I mentioned, the owners are the heart of the company and without them the only chance to avert disaster is to find an equal or bigger heart, and when we are talking about creators of the stature of Garriott and Roberts this is simply impossible, as it would be for anyone trying to step into my shoes.
So lay off EA and all the other wonderful corporations which have been giving us so many great experiences since the artform's inception, you fucking casual googling hypocrites. Are fucking Crysis, Dead Space and Mirror's Edge, all coming out in the last few years, not enough for you? Oh but I forgot -- you don't really play games, but simply get off on blabbering about them and pretending to be authorities on the internet. The Ghetto moron gave Mirror's Edge two stars lol (-- until of course he reads this and rewrites his review to take into account my comments). And we are talking about a company that's been publishing games since The Bard's Tale in 1985! Which I played at the time and which was wondrous! For fuck's sakes the company's called "Electronic Arts" -- they knew the truth decades before any of you fuckfaces decided to hop onto the bandwagon (and for all the wrong reaons, no less). Has their overall quality level dropped since then? Perhaps, but I'd need statistics backed up by expert reviews of the kind only Insomnia publishes to be well and truly convinced of this fact -- and at any rate, even if their standards have decreased, what publisher's haven't? Have you played any Nintendo games lately? Perhaps all the inane misinformation which the googling generation is flooding the internet with may have something to do with this fact? I don't know, I am just throwing the idea out for your consideration! And at any rate a decline was inevitable with the expansion of the player base, so what's the point in blaming publishers for it? Should EA stop funding trash that makes a lot of bucks, where would the money come from to back something like Mirror's Edge which barely turns a profit? Here's some quotes from a recent email exchange I had with Shepton of Scathing Accuracy, during which I was trying to explain to him that games like Modern Warfare 2 or whatever are perfectly legitimate sequels, and that his business is to review the quality of a game and not its current market price.
Shepton wrote: my point in that instance is more that, from a development perspective, did it genuinely cost the company so much time and money to make the game that's almost exactly like its predecessor down to the vast majority of its source code?
