161–170 of 204 posts
Just going to leave this here. Better than SimCity by miles. http://store.steampowered.com/app/255710/
As an adult, I consider myself to be very strategic and analytical. I believe I can attribute some of my refinement in this sense to games like SimCity and Civilization. It's sad to see such a storied label gutted.
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The way I figure it, when value is being knowingly and unnecessarily destroyed, someone somewhere in the chain is being irrational. Given that EA is a public company, the obvious candidate for that somewhere is Wall Street. Your analysis seems to confirm that. But the stock market is supposed to be hyper efficient nowadays such that it's practically impossible to outperform it even for the experts, let alone for rand…
I know that Wall Street is the boogey man for the HN crowd but how in the world can Wall Street be the villain in this story? The Sims was only completed because EA was able to prop up the studio while it was underdevelopment. They were able to do that because A) they are good at selling software and B) they were a large public company. Since then the studio has had a couple of huge flops (Spore and SimCity online) a…
Two replies up, you'll find your answer there, as you probably jumped over it.
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As a strategy, it's better than being profitable: it's predictable. The forecasts for the upcoming financial quarters are much more likely to be accurate when you only work with known IP. The CEO is more beholden to analysts and stockholders than to customers. He has more to lose by failing expectations than he has to gain by exceeding expectations. Therefore, EA adopts a strategy that minimizes variance rather than…
The way I figure it, when value is being knowingly and unnecessarily destroyed, someone somewhere in the chain is being irrational. Given that EA is a public company, the obvious candidate for that somewhere is Wall Street. Your analysis seems to confirm that. But the stock market is supposed to be hyper efficient nowadays such that it's practically impossible to outperform it even for the experts, let alone for rand…
Well, the model I see people using to describe EA basically amounts to buying studios with good long-term revenue prospects (known brands that, if consistently executed at a slightly below-average level, should maintain decent sales because the fans know what they're getting every time), and deciding to extract all of that future revenue all at once, by hyping up the latest incarnation of the series to extreme degrees while not bothering to execute at all. More sales now, less work now, no sales later.
If you want to stand by describing this as irrational, I wouldn't say the obvious candidate is EA shareholders. I'd say the obvious candidate is the studios who can't manage their brand well enough that it's worth more than the EA strip-mining approach. If you think that the long-term revenue stream has more "inherent worth", the studios are the ones squandering it.
(postscript -- I'm pretty sure I accidentally downvoted you when selecting a quote from your comment. I wish I could undo that.)
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No. It's one of the core beliefs of Behavioral Science
Sales, Marketing and Accounting departments are filled with people whose only job is to think how to make more money for the company. Is that covered in the core beliefs of Behavioral Science?
Assuming they even do that. Their daily thoughts are more likely to be : How can I make sure my superiors notice I perform my role. How can I make sure I don't fuck this up. What do I need to do to get a promotion. I don't feel fulfilled, I think I'll go find a job elsewhere, I wonder where I should start looking. etc. etc.
When you posted these comments were you thinking : how does posting on HN maximise my profit ?
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EA has at least one other strategy, with EA Sports: every year they come out with a new and improved Football, Basketball, Hockey, Golf, etc. and people get it. Madden NFL has been going since 1988. To be fair, EA Sports did discontinue some of their less popular games, such as Rugby and Cricket.
And despite all of their shiny improvements, Madden 2005 and 2008 are considered the best from a gameplay and mechanics standpoint.
Also, they have FIFA Ultimate Team which has a whole meta game of players and cards (which i love).
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I know that Wall Street is the boogey man for the HN crowd but how in the world can Wall Street be the villain in this story? The Sims was only completed because EA was able to prop up the studio while it was underdevelopment. They were able to do that because A) they are good at selling software and B) they were a large public company. Since then the studio has had a couple of huge flops (Spore and SimCity online) a…
> how in the world can Wall Street be the villain in this story? Two replies up, you'll find your answer there, as you probably jumped over it.
Wall Street, even as the completely generalized abstraction, doesn't have anything to do with this, other than a big video game publisher used some money generated there, to back a studio that has been unsuccessful at their job. If it had been a US governmental bailout or kickstarter that the financing came from, would not have changed that.
As far as I'm concerned, the time to mourn is upon the acquisition by EA. On that day, the studio is already dead to me. By the inevitable day the name has finally had all "value" squeezed out of it by the corporate behemoth that is now EA, I have long since done my mourning. signed still bitter about Ultima 8 & 9
Guys, EA is plenty easy to hate, and if you want to hate them, more power to you, but the idea that they snatched up maxis, killed it, and looted its corpse is just not compatible with the timeline.
Will Wright got rich and bored and left. The fundamental landscape of computer games changed. The staff turned over in huge quantity, obviously, because 18 years. And the big new idea for the studio was interesting technology that never quite gelled as a game.
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Sales, Marketing and Accounting departments are filled with people whose only job is to think how to make more money for the company. Is that covered in the core beliefs of Behavioral Science?
You're missing the point. They don't think about how to maximise profit. They think about how to hit their sales target, how to run successful marketing and how to perform their accounting function. Assuming they even do that. Their daily thoughts are more likely to be : How can I make sure my superiors notice I perform my role. How can I make sure I don't fuck this up. What do I need to do to get a promotion. I don'…
I'm paraphrasing heavily, not to hurt your feelings. Less voodoo science, more thinking.
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No. It's one of the core beliefs of Behavioral Science
Sales, Marketing and Accounting departments are filled with people whose only job is to think how to make more money for the company. Is that covered in the core beliefs of Behavioral Science?