71–80 of 121 posts
I was excited by the prospect of seeing a new CEO come in and possibly change the culture of EA, but after reading this piece I'm thinking that idea was probably naive. This lack of user empathy seems pretty pervasive.
Peter Moore isn't the new CEO, he's been COO for a couple of years, and usually comes across as pretty straight-talking.
More than anything, I'm confused as to just who his intended audience is, here. Certainly none of the gamers who have had long-standing issues with EA for years would find this "mea culpa" convincing. The only people I can imagine would be convinced or swayed by this would be EA employees and management. Is it part of some internal political battle being played out in public?
Either we're not the intended audience for this message, or the C-levels at EA really are so delusional and detached from their customers that they think they can rub a little PR pixie dust on their reputation and make it all better.
I don't think EA deserves to be voted the worst company in America by a long shot. But I do think they need to be publicly shamed to the point that they actually listen to why people don't like them (I don't know if public shaming helps people realize things, I'm not a parent, but it seems like a good idea). Their otherwise interesting products are made far less compelling in order to satisfy business requirements. It's just dumb business. Meet your business objectives in smarter ways while creating smarter products and people will like you more.
In the field of entertainment software, the user experience is paramount. There's also something to be said for letting customers feel like they "own" their games rather than simply leasing them until you close your servers. If you take this away, you'd damn well better provide some fantastic value in its place. To think that people resent you purely because of your choice of cover atheletes, micro-transactions or support of LGBT rights, polarizing as these can be, is evidence of the same sort of thinking which pervades your product development.
They could've "done better" by actually saying what they will do to improve things. This was an absolutely atrocious PR piece. It didn't address any of the issues people were having. "45 million registered users are proving them wrong." Such a goofy and useless statistic. When you require registration for your products, that doesn't mean people are satisfied users of your service, it means you got a lot of people to…
"45 million registered users can't be wrong" when you're misquoting people to make your point, maybe something is wrong with your argument. BTW I have no connection to EA and don't think I own any EA games.
Also, if you are uncertain of who publishes the games you own, you can't outright deny connection with a publisher.
They could've "done better" by actually saying what they will do to improve things. This was an absolutely atrocious PR piece. It didn't address any of the issues people were having. "45 million registered users are proving them wrong." Such a goofy and useless statistic. When you require registration for your products, that doesn't mean people are satisfied users of your service, it means you got a lot of people to…
"45 million registered users can't be wrong" when you're misquoting people to make your point, maybe something is wrong with your argument. BTW I have no connection to EA and don't think I own any EA games.
Sure it's not 100% word-for-word, but the sentiment is spot-on. What's your problem with his quotation?
They could've "done better" by actually saying what they will do to improve things. This was an absolutely atrocious PR piece. It didn't address any of the issues people were having. "45 million registered users are proving them wrong." Such a goofy and useless statistic. When you require registration for your products, that doesn't mean people are satisfied users of your service, it means you got a lot of people to…
"45 million registered users can't be wrong" when you're misquoting people to make your point, maybe something is wrong with your argument. BTW I have no connection to EA and don't think I own any EA games.
They could've "done better" by actually saying what they will do to improve things. This was an absolutely atrocious PR piece. It didn't address any of the issues people were having. "45 million registered users are proving them wrong." Such a goofy and useless statistic. When you require registration for your products, that doesn't mean people are satisfied users of your service, it means you got a lot of people to…
"45 million registered users can't be wrong" when you're misquoting people to make your point, maybe something is wrong with your argument. BTW I have no connection to EA and don't think I own any EA games.
There is no parallel universe in which EA is worse than half these companies. The result we have now brings discredit to the whole enterprise of worst-company contests.
If EA's COO had a soul, he'd write a long-form blog post about how bad United Airlines, Ticketmaster, Equifax and BofA are.
Today on HN I see a link to a Gamasutra article where industry people are talking about just how incredible some of the LucasArts games were (20 years ago!) and another link where one of the heads of EA is making excuses for why people hate his company. Some of his points are valid, and people can be immature and ridiculous in their reasoning (or downright horrid). But he overlooks some of the valid complaints that people have with EA. And they are valid. He's throwing out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.
"The customer base as a whole is annoyed because you release buggy unfinished games with horrible DRM. Not because of your LGBT policy.
Your post doesn't sound sincere to me. It doesn't even sound apologetic. It sounds arrogant and like you're saying we shouldn't be complaining instead of admitting your mistakes. You don't address people's real complaints.
I want my wasted money back; not a free game. I don't want to have to use Origin. I want actual customer support and a longer character lim-"