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How EA Lost Its Soul

polygon.com

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Re: How EA Lost Its Soul

#51

Post by fenomas »

tvawnz wrote: post #38
fenomas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

So in short, you didn't see the main article link, and that made you think they might be doing lots of wacky scrolling/sideways/etc. stuff, none of which they actually did?

Seems like a hell of a lot of bile to balance on top of "I didn't like the styling of a button".

Re: How EA Lost Its Soul

#52

Post by fenomas »

rtpg wrote: post #28
tvawnz wrote: post #15

Why 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?

Aside: it's hugely ironic how frequently commenters on HN, of all places, berate sites for being hard to read on mobile.

Re: How EA Lost Its Soul

#53

Post by zantana »

egypturnash wrote: post #34
tacos wrote: post #25

Earlier 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…

Actually this article inspired me to look for some of the old packages on ebay, which actually are a little pricey.

Electronic Arts in their early years really inspired a vision of computers taking creative endeavors to a whole new level. Even their early ads in the computer magazines still give me goosebumps.

Re: How EA Lost Its Soul

#54

Post by smeyer »

angersock wrote: post #43
smeyer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is this about the vocabulary or the concept? It's almost certainly a complaint about the use of a slur, not about the underlying complaint about the buttons.

Slurs are generally less effective once they've become mainstream. Go spend some time on 4chan, and this will become clear--'-fag' is used as a suffix/term-of-art, and basically doesn't even register on the radar anymore as being said with any seriousness. "Goddamn" and "Christ" were once quite serious business as well.

Of course they're less effective once they've become mainstream. As you mentioned, many slurs gradually lose any hateful meaning, and I'm sure the term "faggotry" might be becoming a bit less offensive over time, but seeing as how it's still used by many people in a hurtful way, it's not unreasonable to expect some people to be upset in situations where it's less clear. If someone disliked a comment using the term on 4chan, I wouldn't assume they disliked it for the term, but this isn't 4chan.

Re: How EA Lost Its Soul

#55

Post by angersock »

smeyer wrote: post #54
angersock wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slurs are generally less effective once they've become mainstream. Go spend some time on 4chan, and this will become clear--'-fag' is used as a suffix/term-of-art, and basically doesn't even register on the radar anymore as being said with any seriousness. "Goddamn" and "Christ" were once quite serious business as well.

Of course they're less effective once they've become mainstream. As you mentioned, many slurs gradually lose any hateful meaning, and I'm sure the term "faggotry" might be becoming a bit less offensive over time, but seeing as how it's still used by many people in a hurtful way, it's not unreasonable to expect some people to be upset in situations where it's less clear. If someone disliked a comment using the term on…

this isn't 4chan.

Quite right--4chan has a better sense of humor than HN, more original content, and is much more abrasive. :)

Re: How EA Lost Its Soul

#56

Post by egypturnash »

tacos wrote: post #37
egypturnash wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abou…

EA began in 1982, not 1987. If I google 'c64 electronic arts', the entire first page of results is about games. Same with 'atari 800 electronic arts'; 'apple ii electronic arts' brings up mention of a few of their various 'something construction kit' titles, about half of which were really just games with level editors.

From the wikipedia page on DPaint: DPaint began as an in-house art development tool called Prism. As author Dan Silva added features to Prism, it was developed as a showcase product to coincide with the Amiga's debut in 1985. [...] Deluxe Paint was first in a series of products from the Electronic Arts Tools group, which included such Amiga programs as Deluxe Music, Deluxe Video, and the Studio series of paint programs for the Macintosh.

Re: How EA Lost Its Soul

#57

Post by tacos »

egypturnash wrote: post #56
tacos wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abou…

EA began in 1982, not 1987. If I google 'c64 electronic arts', the entire first page of results is about games. Same with 'atari 800 electronic arts'; 'apple ii electronic arts' brings up mention of a few of their various 'something construction kit' titles, about half of which were really just games with level editors. From the wikipedia page on DPaint: DPaint began as an in-house art development tool called Prism.…

I was there. EA optioned one of my games in 1989. Even the Wiki article gets it right: "In the late 1980s, the company began developing games in-house and supported consoles by the early 1990s."

They were a publisher and sort of a crappy one. And the reason EA exists today is because the tools/creativity group helped it weather the wacky games market.

The retro movement largely ignores all the amazing apps that were made back then. Old games are fun to play. Old apps? Not so much. Though you kids should. Now get off my lawn.

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