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EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

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Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#111

Post by onli »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #59
AlexandrB wrote: post #11

AAA gaming feels so tired (and tiresome) that this news barely registers for me. The last EA game I played was the excellent C&C remaster - and EA's main contribution was getting out of the way of the project. They still own the rights to a ton of legendary IP - SimCity, Command & Conquer, Battlefield, but I don't have illusions that new iterations of that IP will be any good. I know this is probably part of the Saud…

> AAA gaming feels so tired When first person games became a destination for gaming (and not just another genre that we move on from — like "fighting games") is when I checked out of gaming. I know, I know, there are no doubt plenty of cool indie games out there (and other genres) but I guess in the meantime I found other ways to spend my time and haven't really looked back into games. (I think too "AAA" as a moniker…

A new civilisation game just got released, the most well known mainstream gaming series are either third person (GTA) or sport games (Fifa), there is the witcher - in no way has gaming be reduced to first person games, not even AAA.

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#112

Post by hollerith »

sofixa wrote: post #103
frogperson wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The USA isn't the only country in the "western world", please stop equating the two. Even for Britain, France, Germany, the countries with the biggest far right/reactionary political groups, where there are legitimate chances for them to end up in power, none of them are religious. Or even that socially reactionary for that matter.

Also, even the US is not in danger of becoming a theocracy.

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#115

Post by bunderbunder »

pjmlp wrote: post #86
AlexandrB wrote: post #11

AAA gaming feels so tired (and tiresome) that this news barely registers for me. The last EA game I played was the excellent C&C remaster - and EA's main contribution was getting out of the way of the project. They still own the rights to a ton of legendary IP - SimCity, Command & Conquer, Battlefield, but I don't have illusions that new iterations of that IP will be any good. I know this is probably part of the Saud…

Being a 1970's child that grew up with games alongside the industry, nowadays I mostly play retrogaming, retrogaming inspired, or digital versions of board games. The quest for realism without gameplay of many AAA games, with exorbitant prices, and GB sized textures, is not something I care about. I may spend more time playing something with Atari 2600 graphics, and enticing gameplay than caring about latest COD. I w…

I recently watched a youtube video by a gamer about 20 years younger than me who had discovered older games and was reflecting on how deeply different they feel compared to modern games.

The big difference she observed is that older games don't hold your hand the way modern games do. They expect you to think hard, work hard, use trial and error, and generally, in her words, "use your brain." She spent a while talking about how old games have a manual where new games have a lengthy tutorial, automap, quest log, helpful companion constantly telling you what to do next, etc. etc. etc.

She didn't quite get there herself, but the juxtaposition really brought it home for me: the reason modern AAA games hold your hand is because they have to. Because they're just too big: too many game mechanics, too many locations, too much story, etc. etc. etc. If they tried to just sit back and let the player play the game for themself, nobody would would even scratch the surface of the game before they get bored and leave.

It was a little liberating because I finally realized I really can just stop paying attention to AAA games in general, and I don't have to feel weird about it. I'm not going to say they're bad. Plenty of people enjoy them enough to support a company the size of EA. But I'm now prepared to recognize that the kind of gameplay experience that I grew up on and continue to find most compelling is fundamentally incompatible with a AAA-sized budget.

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#116

Post by triceratops »

sofixa wrote: post #88
beepbopboopp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to start by saying I have no skin in the game here. While not perfect, Saudi has very clearly moved "Westernly" on many ideas, most notably social and economic ones. It can even be argued that their recent moves in that direction have made it near impossible for the other large economy companies to move too far the other way. Th At what point does the narrative about their investments on the larger stage becom…

[flagged]

> It has liberalised, socially

I think that's what they meant by "moved westernly".

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#117

Post by throwup238 »

falcor84 wrote: post #93
Nexxxeh wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Muhammad Bonesaw grew up on Age of Empires, and enjoys(/enjoyed) CoD. They also want to use it to shape global perspective. I think signs are good, or at least less-bad.

Interesting - how do you imagine that he would use the likes of CoD to shape global perspective?

By making sure that Saudi Arabia is portrayed as an ally in the game’s canon rather than generic MENA terrorists.

It sounds silly at first but the US military has been doing something similar for ages with Hollywood, at least since WWII. The difference is the armed forces use access to military equipment for filming as the carrot rather than financing the productions directly.

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#118

Post by burkaman »

beepbopboopp wrote: post #78
fred_is_fred wrote: post #50

[flagged]

I want to start by saying I have no skin in the game here. While not perfect, Saudi has very clearly moved "Westernly" on many ideas, most notably social and economic ones. It can even be argued that their recent moves in that direction have made it near impossible for the other large economy companies to move too far the other way. Th At what point does the narrative about their investments on the larger stage becom…

They literally just killed another journalist after torturing him for seven years https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turki_bin_Abdulaziz_al-Jasse...

Another murder last month, this one they killed for the crimes of attending protests and funerals: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde23/0239/2025/en/

Two years ago they sentenced this man to death because he tweeted something they didn't like to less than ten followers: https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-v...

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#119

Post by zppln »

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #95
bob1029 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree about AAA, but to be fair Battlefield 1 was/is a really good game. You'll never find an experience like that in an indie studio.

I believe that Battlefield 4 was the last good Battlefield game. Biggest asset was fully self-hostable servers that provided progression, community control, and allowed gaming clans/organizations to actually community-build. Nowadays, forced matchmaking and limited party sizes really eliminate the ability to build large communities. The consolidation of publishers/developers in controlling all of the online experienc…

BF4 was broken on launch, with servers crashing from people simply playing the objective. These studios have been serving people garbage for close to two decades by now. They deserve their fate.

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#120

Post by wat10000 »

iaw wrote: post #97
beepbopboopp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to start by saying I have no skin in the game here. While not perfect, Saudi has very clearly moved "Westernly" on many ideas, most notably social and economic ones. It can even be argued that their recent moves in that direction have made it near impossible for the other large economy companies to move too far the other way. Th At what point does the narrative about their investments on the larger stage becom…

They have a well documented and known human slave trade for their laborers in the kingdom. Maybe the narrative changes when their approaches towards human rights does?

"Why does everybody have such a low opinion of this oppressive theocracy?" Gee, it's such a mystery.

Remember when the current leader of Saudi Arabia lured a Washington Post journalist into a Saudi consulate, had him tortured to death, and cut into pieces to dispose of the evidence? What a bunch of merry pranksters. We really should lighten up.

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