How many other people were never hired by EA, but resigned from EA?
(That is, you were hired by a company that EA bought, then you resigned from EA later. Getting fired counts too! ;)
How EA Lost Its Soul
31–40 of 57 posts
Re: How EA Lost Its Soul
#32Why does no one just put all the words in a row like a book or a newspaper or something anymore? Does anyone actually enjoy this "experience" where you have to wade through a maze of obnoxious pictures and logic puzzles and shit? Is the general assumption that, now that we've made it to the internet we can forget our big boy book-reading skills and go back to pop-up picture books? Why is there all this ADHD frame-shi…
> Does anyone actually enjoy this "experience" where you have to wade through a maze of obnoxious pictures and logic puzzles and shit?
Yes. I thought it was beautifully presented and nicely paced, and well worth my time.
Also: a single "Continue" button at the bottom of each page is "logic puzzles and shit"? Three tiny logos hidden in the title bar are "social media faggotry"? Seriously?
Re: How EA Lost Its Soul
#33Why does no one just put all the words in a row like a book or a newspaper or something anymore? Does anyone actually enjoy this "experience" where you have to wade through a maze of obnoxious pictures and logic puzzles and shit? Is the general assumption that, now that we've made it to the internet we can forget our big boy book-reading skills and go back to pop-up picture books? Why is there all this ADHD frame-shi…
Because they're trying to put them in a niftily-illustrated package like a magazine instead.
Now that we've made it to the Internet, even the lowest of budgets can have full color illustrations if it's willing to pay for the artist's time. No worries about minimum print runs before it's affordable.
I mean, oh no, you had to snap out of your click-trance for five seconds to find a button to stop reading?
(I may be biased, I'm an artist who very occasionally takes illustration gigs from online publications.)
Re: How EA Lost Its Soul
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know they incorporated under a different name (Amazin' Software), but they changed it in 1983 -- only a year later. I'm not sure they ever released anything before the name change. They came out of the gate in 1983 with Archon, M.U.L.E., Pinball Construction Set and One on One, all of which were not only games but arguably historically significant. I agree that Hawkins wasn't a great businessman, but I think you're…
Those were published (not written in house) and not even exclusively published -- often USA only. EA shifted its razor focus to games much later, in the process alienating many of their core engineers who were all about the "making tools for Electronic Artists" mission. Pretending this was some grande vision from day one misses the most interesting part of the story, and arguably the exact moment EA "lost their soul.…
In the 8-bit days, EA was all about the games. It wasn't until the arrival of the Amiga and DPaint that they started selling tools. And the internal vision of their toolbuilders didn't match what they were selling to the end users, IMHO. I had more than a few EA c64/Amiga games, and some of their Amiga creative apps. Nobody I knew who was serious about music used DMusic, DVideo was an awkward attempt at solving a problem that the hardware didn't have anywhere near enough oomph to really nail, I can't even remember what the other Deluxe Tools were. But DPaint... DPaint was the king.
As a teenager with a c64, the EA brand meant "really interesting games that were worth buying for, which was good because their copy protection was really tough". And reading the album-styled packages with their moody photographs of game devs trying to look like rockstars along with the vision statement ads about how Games Are Art, and Game-Makers Are Artists? Hell, whether or not Games Are Art is argument still being had today.
Re: How EA Lost Its Soul
#35Why does no one just put all the words in a row like a book or a newspaper or something anymore? Does anyone actually enjoy this "experience" where you have to wade through a maze of obnoxious pictures and logic puzzles and shit? Is the general assumption that, now that we've made it to the internet we can forget our big boy book-reading skills and go back to pop-up picture books? Why is there all this ADHD frame-shi…
There are a lot of broken articles in the universe, but is this one of them? This article seems to just have chapter separation and a cover image on each chapter, as well as some video inserts. Apart from the video, this is pretty much exactly how it would be formatted in a magazine. Do you think magazines are for chumps too, because they use too many pictures?
I think a magazine that intentionally spurns it's own inherent benefits in favor of pretending to be something else, like a movie or a symphony, would be for chumps, yes.
Websites offer infinite scroll, that's their medium, pretending to be a magazine is ridiculous and frustrating.
Re: How EA Lost Its Soul
#36Why does no one just put all the words in a row like a book or a newspaper or something anymore? Does anyone actually enjoy this "experience" where you have to wade through a maze of obnoxious pictures and logic puzzles and shit? Is the general assumption that, now that we've made it to the internet we can forget our big boy book-reading skills and go back to pop-up picture books? Why is there all this ADHD frame-shi…
"Faggotry"? Really?
Re: How EA Lost Its Soul
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those were published (not written in house) and not even exclusively published -- often USA only. EA shifted its razor focus to games much later, in the process alienating many of their core engineers who were all about the "making tools for Electronic Artists" mission. Pretending this was some grande vision from day one misses the most interesting part of the story, and arguably the exact moment EA "lost their soul.…
In the 8-bit days, EA was all about the games. It wasn't until the arrival of the Amiga and DPaint that they started selling tools. And the internal vision of their toolbuilders didn't match what they were selling to the end users, IMHO. I had more than a few EA c64/Amiga games, and some of their Amiga creative apps. Nobody I knew who was serious about music used DMusic, DVideo was an awkward attempt at solving a pro…
They were not a huge company and they had a full on "Creativity" group. Deluxe Paint, Deluxe Music, Deluxe Animation, Deluxe Video, Studio/8 and Studio/32 for Mac...
It wasn't until Sega Genesis that they went whole-hog on games. And even then they were distracted by edutainment software and other stuff.
I agree with what you're saying however I am pointing out that the core premise of the article ('Trip was all about games, he birthed a Game Company') is a little false. Trip was all over the map. For proof of this I typed in their official corporate charter above, as published in 1987. It does not contain the word "game."
Re: How EA Lost Its Soul
#38Why does no one just put all the words in a row like a book or a newspaper or something anymore? Does anyone actually enjoy this "experience" where you have to wade through a maze of obnoxious pictures and logic puzzles and shit? Is the general assumption that, now that we've made it to the internet we can forget our big boy book-reading skills and go back to pop-up picture books? Why is there all this ADHD frame-shi…
> Does anyone actually enjoy this "experience" where you have to wade through a maze of obnoxious pictures and logic puzzles and shit? Yes. I thought it was beautifully presented and nicely paced, and well worth my time. Also: a single "Continue" button at the bottom of each page is "logic puzzles and shit"? Three tiny logos hidden in the title bar are "social media faggotry"? Seriously?
The opening page was my main frustration.
According to my internet experience: 1) scroll down - failure, maybe my scroll isn't strong enough to get past some weird header frame thing 2) space bar - failure, maybe it's a side to side thing 3) scroll right - failure 4) scroll left - go back a page, reload 5) look at bottom of page for navigation down - failure, only outside links 6) look to right - failure, no generic slideshow next button 7) scan top of page - immediately censor out what I assume is the menagerie of facespace, tweeter, clinked-in, youporn share links
The initial "READ ARTICLE" button is a tiny link, next to links you generally assume to be worthless, in the wrong part of the page. Yeah, I consider that a logic puzzle, not daunting, but yes.
And yes, any link to "please share me on the facespace and validate me with some twits" comes off as obnoxious begging.
Re: How EA Lost Its Soul
#39Why does no one just put all the words in a row like a book or a newspaper or something anymore? Does anyone actually enjoy this "experience" where you have to wade through a maze of obnoxious pictures and logic puzzles and shit? Is the general assumption that, now that we've made it to the internet we can forget our big boy book-reading skills and go back to pop-up picture books? Why is there all this ADHD frame-shi…
Because they're trying to put them in a niftily-illustrated package like a magazine instead. Now that we've made it to the Internet, even the lowest of budgets can have full color illustrations if it's willing to pay for the artist's time. No worries about minimum print runs before it's affordable. I mean, oh no, you had to snap out of your click-trance for five seconds to find a button to stop reading? (I may be bia…
I'm fine with the illustrations, the layout is just annoying and counterintuitive. Why would you not just have a long-ass column with some images in it like basically every other article? That's what's awesome about webpages, infinite scroll, maybe some hyperlinked table of contents in a frame to the left, you know 1990s HTML stuff.
Re: How EA Lost Its Soul
#40Why does no one just put all the words in a row like a book or a newspaper or something anymore? Does anyone actually enjoy this "experience" where you have to wade through a maze of obnoxious pictures and logic puzzles and shit? Is the general assumption that, now that we've made it to the internet we can forget our big boy book-reading skills and go back to pop-up picture books? Why is there all this ADHD frame-shi…
"Faggotry"? Really?
Is this about the vocabulary or the concept?
Yes, I despise when someone begs me to force their work into my friends faces. If I like it enough I am perfectly capable of copy-pasting the link myself.