"Press Reset" by Jason Schreier is a great look at the human side of the industry in general. The crunch, layoff, move to a new studio, repeat is all too common. EA was on a whole other level, though.
EA: The Human Story (2004)
21–30 of 156 posts
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#22EA perpetuates practices that hurt customers, too. I used to unapologetically pirate video games and only within the past two years have I finally come full circle and begun purchasing games, both new titles and older ones I had played in the past but never paid for until now. Steam has been the tool of choice for this reconciliation process. As a result, some of the hardships that paying customers encounter have bec…
This is just a side effect of hypercapitalism at play. Aspects of capitalism aren't bad, but when capitalism is the single biggest driving force of your society , things like this are bound to happen, because the endgame that gets rammed down everyone's throat is "making money is your life's purpose". These types of things have happened across how many industries at this point, historically? Practically all of them.
What's the alternative to capitalism, PBS but for video games?
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#23EA perpetuates practices that hurt customers, too. I used to unapologetically pirate video games and only within the past two years have I finally come full circle and begun purchasing games, both new titles and older ones I had played in the past but never paid for until now. Steam has been the tool of choice for this reconciliation process. As a result, some of the hardships that paying customers encounter have bec…
> I must admit I do not understand the industry, but I don't see why competent studios like Blizzard/BioWare/Id could not simply self-publish their games. What exactly does EA add to the equation? Seems like it would not be a particularly monumental task to cut them out.
Indeed you don't understand it because BioWare etc ... are just studio name it's all EA right. People at Bioware are EA employees they're not Bioware employees. btw EA purchased BW before ME2 even released so it has been 15years+.
As for the rest EA is one of the best place to work for in the video game industry, they're pretty good with their employees ( working hour, perks etc ... ).
Regarding the legendary edition it's playable offline so I not sure what you're talking about.
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#24EA perpetuates practices that hurt customers, too. I used to unapologetically pirate video games and only within the past two years have I finally come full circle and begun purchasing games, both new titles and older ones I had played in the past but never paid for until now. Steam has been the tool of choice for this reconciliation process. As a result, some of the hardships that paying customers encounter have bec…
>I used to unapologetically pirate video games and only within the past two years have I finally come full circle and begun purchasing games, both new titles and older ones I had played in the past but never paid for until now. If you are buying games/software as used, do the original creators see a dime of that purchase or is it just as if you never did pay for it?
They didn't say used.
Also that is such reductive argument. When I sell my furniture to someone else am I supposed to pity the carpenters and whatnot?
How about when I sell my house, should the developers who built it get a cut?
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#25EA perpetuates practices that hurt customers, too. I used to unapologetically pirate video games and only within the past two years have I finally come full circle and begun purchasing games, both new titles and older ones I had played in the past but never paid for until now. Steam has been the tool of choice for this reconciliation process. As a result, some of the hardships that paying customers encounter have bec…
>I don't see why competent studios like Blizzard/BioWare/Id could not simply self-publish their games
related to this is how the games are managed once installed as well. Each studio is moving towards each having their own "Hub" for their games. Usually it is referred to as a "Launcher", but I dont think it is going to end there.
For example, Blizzard has "Battle.net". You open battlenet, log in to battle net, and then select a game to play from your battlenet library.
Games I used to be able to just launch from Steam, now open up a separate UI where I have to login and launch the game from there (Larion Studios).
I imagine a future where I come home from work, login to my housing account, login to my computer, login to the 1 of 5+ games marketplaces to access my purchased library, select the game i want to play, login to the publishers account, login to my game studio account, login to my game-specific user account, login to the 3rd party server running the game instance backend for my session, then download a 32gb update and not be able to play until tomorrow
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is just a side effect of hypercapitalism at play. Aspects of capitalism aren't bad, but when capitalism is the single biggest driving force of your society , things like this are bound to happen, because the endgame that gets rammed down everyone's throat is "making money is your life's purpose". These types of things have happened across how many industries at this point, historically? Practically all of them.
What's the alternative to capitalism, PBS but for video games?
would gamepass be the closest to that? The other alternative would be games being small indie projects or huge community things. The mods people release for free are sometimes pretty insane in scope, even if Noone ever paid for a game again we'd still get some decent games at least
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#27EA perpetuates practices that hurt customers, too. I used to unapologetically pirate video games and only within the past two years have I finally come full circle and begun purchasing games, both new titles and older ones I had played in the past but never paid for until now. Steam has been the tool of choice for this reconciliation process. As a result, some of the hardships that paying customers encounter have bec…
This reminds me of something Gabe Newell famously said about Steam.
> "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
I'd almost never pirate a game that was available on Steam. There are games I want to play that I don't see myself playing (unless I can be bothered to pirate), just because they're on some ugly, useless, slow, cumbersome and frankly worse-than-literally-nothing "launcher". I'd rather play a game through Steam than just through an executable, but I can't say the same for literally any other launcher/game service.
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#28at this point it feels like its immoral to not pirate AAA games. its kinda like buying products that contain palm oil. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil#Social_and_environmen...
you can rip my cetyl alcohol based cleanser products from my cold dead hands..
i am definitely a bit of a hypocrite here- in most of my hair products there are ingredients that use palm oil as feedstock. I just try to avoid it in food products.
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the alternative to capitalism, PBS but for video games?
would gamepass be the closest to that? The other alternative would be games being small indie projects or huge community things. The mods people release for free are sometimes pretty insane in scope, even if Noone ever paid for a game again we'd still get some decent games at least
Gamepass would be cable for videogames, PBS for videogames would be a government agency that made them.
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#30at this point it feels like its immoral to not pirate AAA games. its kinda like buying products that contain palm oil. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil#Social_and_environmen...
I know that this wasn't the main point of your post, but palm oil production has actually become substantially more defensible in the past decade (i.e. deforestation and worker exploitation are by far the exception instead of the rule).
All that to say that the moral thing to do might change with time.