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We Can Do Better

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Re: We Can Do Better

#91

Post by jpxxx »

unoti wrote: post #86
jpxxx wrote: post #82

Christ, what an asshole. "An annual web poll shows that once again, Electronic Arts will be named the "Worst Company in America". We at EA understand that we provide a lightning rod for many in an industry that has undergone massive change and experienced a great deal of consolidation. We've acquired beloved game developers, we've put storied franchises to rest, and we've sheparded evolutions in gameplay and game des…

Seriously, good job. Why is it so hard to be honest with customers once a company grows past a certain point? Does the money corrupt, or am I naive, or both?

I dunno. Maybe ten years around Steve Ballmer terminally fucked him up.

The fundamental problem is that his post was targeted at the 10,000 industry and customer elite, none of whom feel like giving the Titan much respect because nobody fundamentally likes the #1 guy.

Who he should have been writing to were the 350M people he claims to support. When you're selling sweet-smelling electronic vapor, you use sweet-smelling words to gently remind people that comparing a videogame developer to ACTUAL HITLER is insane and insulting. That a substantial portion of the market is composed of profound assholes is beyond the point.

You don't play at their level, you don't speak at their level, and you don't engage in CEO Ego-battle 3000X. It's just fucking videogames.

Their true customer is a 15 year old girl playing Simpsons on her Samsung. He should be writing to her.

Re: We Can Do Better

#92

Post by matthewn »

At the risk of sounding like a grouchy old fart: I still mourn the loss of the old Electronic Arts -- the company that Trip Hawkins founded in order to let the imagination of artists run wild through the nascent world of personal computing. I grew up immersed in EA classics like Skyfox and Archon and Adventure Construction Set and [pause to genuflect] M.U.L.E. The brilliant men and women who crafted these games were actually celebrated in the packaging. You got the sense that the game you bought was truly a creative labor of love. At the time, EA's slogan was "We see farther." Today's EA is by comparison unrecognizable, a giant that has grown too big to care about anything that the original EA cared about, a company whose slogan might as well be "We see the bottom line."

Re: We Can Do Better

#93

Post by jiggy2011 »

tptacek wrote: post #78

Jiminy Christmas. Can you get a better illustration of the seething entitlement of gamers than EA being a finalist in a worst-companies bracket that included ABInBev, both AT&T and Verizon, Ticketmaster, credit-reporting agency Equifax, United Airlines, Carnival Fecal Coliform Cruises, Comcast, yes, really, Comcast, Walmart, and Bank of America? There is no parallel universe in which EA is worse than half these compa…

I think it was "most hated" rather than "worse", you're right there are lots of companies much worse than EA.

OTOH I think that people feel that video games should be a source of joy and pleasure so feel especially betrayed when a game company turns around and sprays them with this sort of corporate BS.

It's like if my bank sends me a letter charging me for not having enough money + another charge for sending me the letter I just expect that because they are a bank, I just accept them as a necessary evil. They don't exist to make me feel good.

OTOH a video game company's raison d'être is to make people feel good so if they are attracting hate then they're really fucked something up.

Re: We Can Do Better

#94

Post by djKianoosh »

weixiyen wrote: post #42

I cannot forgive EA for the NFL Licensing deal that ended NFL 2K. You shut down better games to push inferior products. I believe gaming would be in a much better place overall if EA did not exist, despite many early hit titles. The overall effect on gaming as a whole has been negative.

specifically in this case with Madden and NFL2K you are absolutely right. It's not even that nfl2k was any good or not. It's just that the loss of competition gave the various madden dev teams over the years ZERO motivation to do what the hardcore madden gamers wanted them to do to improve the game. yes they (we) are a minority and they want to sell as many copies as possible, but seriously, even in their own house Madden is subpar compared to FIFA. FIFA had online multiplayer a good 3 years before Madden. It took Madden about 7 years into "Next Gen" consoles (PS3/x360) to revamp online franchise even though they actually promised it every year. instead they focus on "Presentation" like hand warmers. please. And they justify their decisions by "Telemetry" aka usage stats, but those are extremely misleading. A couple years ago they put out a half-baked online franchise with horrible bugs. Their "telemetry" told them very few gamers used that game mode, so they decided to scratch it and try to completely redesign online franchise from scratch, again. Well of course nobody used that game mode! It was broken!... ay ay ay, dont get me started...

Re: We Can Do Better

#95

Post by tptacek »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #93
tptacek wrote: post #78

Jiminy Christmas. Can you get a better illustration of the seething entitlement of gamers than EA being a finalist in a worst-companies bracket that included ABInBev, both AT&T and Verizon, Ticketmaster, credit-reporting agency Equifax, United Airlines, Carnival Fecal Coliform Cruises, Comcast, yes, really, Comcast, Walmart, and Bank of America? There is no parallel universe in which EA is worse than half these compa…

I think it was "most hated" rather than "worse", you're right there are lots of companies much worse than EA. OTOH I think that people feel that video games should be a source of joy and pleasure so feel especially betrayed when a game company turns around and sprays them with this sort of corporate BS. It's like if my bank sends me a letter charging me for not having enough money + another charge for sending me the…

Who hates a video game company more than a credit agency, or the cable company that packet shapes and MITMs your Internet connection? Just don't play the game, and you never have to think about them. You can't say that about Equifax.

Re: We Can Do Better

#96

Post by indyK1ng »

kayoone wrote: post #37
tiredofcareer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the disconnect there is that Half Life 2 was a superb achievement in gaming, and worth the investment of dealing with Steam (arguably, Counter-Strike 1.6 started the Steam train, though, and Team Fortress 2 keeps it chugging). If EA gave us a Half Life 2 of its own that required Origin, they might pull it off. I can't think of one, which is telling. SimCity had the potential to be and, well, wasn't.

The title that required me to install Origin first was Battlefield 3 and thats a pretty awesome game by every measure, if you are into these kind of big budget military shooters that is.

I wouldn't have cared about Origin if it wasn't for a few provisions in their licensing agreement that made me very nervous. In particular the bits about letting them scan your whole hard drive (Steam's only lets them scan the folders it writes to) and the provision they added about "You can't sue us, but we can sue you." While other services have the latter one, having it in conjunction with the former really gave me a huge big brother vibe. I wouldn't have used it with the first one anyway as that's intrusive enough, but the second just made it worse.

Source:

For the claim about Origin's license letting it scan your whole hard drive: http://www.nerdbuster.com/2011/09/eas-origin-wants-to-scan-y... http://www.gamespot.com/news/ea-origin-eula-sparks-privacy-c...

For the second claim about the one way copyright lawsuit provision: Chapter 17, section A can be found here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&...

In it, they specifically say that the exemptions from this non-lawsuit clause are related to copyright (big claims) and small claims court. Since most users aren't likely to own copyright or patents, I call that stacking the deck of available actions.

Re: We Can Do Better

#97

Post by jiggy2011 »

tptacek wrote: post #95
jiggy2011 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was "most hated" rather than "worse", you're right there are lots of companies much worse than EA. OTOH I think that people feel that video games should be a source of joy and pleasure so feel especially betrayed when a game company turns around and sprays them with this sort of corporate BS. It's like if my bank sends me a letter charging me for not having enough money + another charge for sending me the…

Who hates a video game company more than a credit agency, or the cable company that packet shapes and MITMs your Internet connection? Just don't play the game, and you never have to think about them. You can't say that about Equifax.

When people wait X years for a game they really want to play and they find it has all of these problem then they will feel let down. Especially when they have competitors who are known for giving much better service.

If you have a shitty ISP who MITMs your connections then either you have the choice of moving elsewhere or if you can't it's because all their competitors are just as shitty.

You can't just go and get Sim City 4 from another company.

Re: We Can Do Better

#99

Post by just2n »

> Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.

And you lost me. Zero credibility.

Re: We Can Do Better

#100

Post by icebraining »

tptacek wrote: post #78

Jiminy Christmas. Can you get a better illustration of the seething entitlement of gamers than EA being a finalist in a worst-companies bracket that included ABInBev, both AT&T and Verizon, Ticketmaster, credit-reporting agency Equifax, United Airlines, Carnival Fecal Coliform Cruises, Comcast, yes, really, Comcast, Walmart, and Bank of America? There is no parallel universe in which EA is worse than half these compa…

You're confusing "gamers" with "people who voted for the poll". Only a small minority of the former are part of the latter group.
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