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Worst company in America? Hardly.

EA’S Current Woes (Apathy)

The way I see it, the ire towards EA has really been building in the past 2-3 years, and has come to a head in the past 9 months or so. I’ve broken things down into what I believe to be the focal points for people’s rage, but to be honest with you, I really can’t get so worked up about them. Call it being an adult. Call it understanding that the video game industry is a business that’s fighting to maintain profitability. Whatever you want to label it, I see these things and think “yeah, and?”

BioWare

This is the one that should really get me riled up. BioWare is, after all, one of my favorite developers. The more I look at BioWare games post the EA buyout, the more I see the hand of the new overlords all over them. There is no denying that Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2 are completely different games when compared to their predecessors. They have been focus tested and homogenized to a point that you simply have to pick your flavor of BioWare “RPG”: sci-fi or fantasy.

Can you blame EA, though? Those games did far better at retail than their first iterations, and if you talk to most hardcore Mass Effect fans they’ll tell you that the second game is their favorite. What that tells EA (and the development teams at BioWare) is that the changes made to the game was a positive, and people want less depth to their RPGs. Oh, they may have gone overboard with Dragon Age 2, but I would expect the third game to be much more like Mass Effect 3 (an action game with skill trees) than anything resembling Dragon Age: Origins.

I think the worst thing EA could have done to BioWare was to task them with making an expensive MMORPG (possibly the most expensive to date) in this day and age. Not only was it a money pit, but there’s a very good chance that EA extinguished the flame of passion that the Doctors had. Of course, for all we know their plan was to always leave once their five year contract was up, but it’s a shame that their final year at BioWare was surrounded by so much negativity.

Dead Space Getting the Axe

So, EA decided to put Dead Space on ice after its third mainline game was met with a chilly reception. Now, I’ll totally cop to the fact that EA had higher expectations for this game than any sane person should have, looking at the overall performance of the previous games. But the main reason for Dead Space going bye-bye is largely hinged on the way the game industry is going.

Simply put, it’s becoming more and more difficult to turn a profit on single player, high quality games. Video game development costs are ballooning, and for a variety of reasons, people aren’t buying these games like they used to. The used market has always been around, but in a time where people may buy a game, finish it in a week, and sell it back, it’s becoming a priority for publishers to extend player’s involvement with their games. I don’t think shoehorning multiplayer into single player-focused games is the way to go, but consider that there was probably a good chance that EA would not have gambled on Dead Space 2 or 3 if some sort of multiplayer component was part of the design document from day one.

Dead Space had three main games, a spinoff, and an interactive comic book/arcade game. That’s not bad for a series that was never a huge success. Besides, say that EA announced that Dead Space 4 was coming, and it was a launch game for the next generation of consoles. The same people complaining that EA shut down the series would be bitching that EA was milking the Dead Space series and it’s never been good since the first game and blah, blah, blah. The simple fact of the matter is that it’s impossible to please the vocal minority that is the hardcore gamer, and it was just a good business decision to put Dead Space out to pasture. And no, I’m not happy about it: Dead Space 2 is one of my favorite games of this console cycle.

SimCity and Always Online

SimCity was a debacle. No doubt about it. You know what else was a debacle? The launch of Diablo 3, Battlefield 1943, Guild Wars 2, and almost any MMORPG you can think of. When it comes to games that require an internet connection, the first week or so are going to be awful, and then things naturally stabilize. To be honest, I don’t think that EA “owes” anyone anything when it comes to the fact that the SimCity launch sucked. The fact that Maxis remained silent on the matter for so long was a problem, but shouldn’t you be angry with them instead of EA? Unless EA purposely told people at Maxis to stay quiet, I’d say the onus of the SimCity problems is on the development team.

Now, from what I’ve seen—and to be fair I haven’t played it—SimCity has far more problems with its core design than simply having server problems. After all, the game was perfectly playable after that rocky first week. Maxis claims that SimCity needs to be always connected to work, and that it’s an inherent part of the design. That’s certainly up for debate, and I tend to call bollocks on that. But here’s the thing, folks: always online isn’t going away. I hate it, you hate it. Publishers and developers love it, and this is just going to be the way business is done in the future.

We as gamers have a few decisions to be made. First, you can check and see if a game you’re looking forward to requires an internet connection. If it does, don’t bother buying it on launch day. Buy it a few days later, or a week later. Hell, even a month. If you know the servers are going to be overloaded, what real benefit are you getting from banging your head against an annoying queue at 12:01 on a Tuesday morning? Second, you can choose to not buy that game. If the fact that being always connected to the internet is going to impact your enjoyment of the game so much, why bother? I’m sure you can find an indie game to pass the time for half the price, anyway. And the final choice is to get out of gaming, period. It’s something that I think about with each new generation. As much as I’m generally positive and excited for new games and consoles, I’d be lying if I said I don’t see things that get under my skin, and always online is at the top of the list. So far it hasn’t been a big problem for me, but if I need a good internet connection to play Metal Gear Solid 5 I’m not going to be a happy gamer.

Monetization and the Used Market

Online Passes. Season Passes. Micro Transactions. These are just a few of the shady new realities we’ve seen introduced with this generation of consoles. For the record, I’m not a fan of them, but I also understand why they exist. It goes back to something I talked about with Dead Space: publishers need to find new revenue streams to make these games profitable. While I don’t think that the used market is the blight on the video game industry that most publishers and developers do, it’s obviously a very strong market that probably puts a dent in new game sales. Of course, most people that buy used games likely don’t buy many full retail games to begin with, but we’ll just leave that for another time.

I really can’t get all that upset about these things. I typically buy most of my games new, so online passes always come with my games. At the same time, I rarely play my games online, so that’s not even an issue for me. My online pass for Saints Row: The Third has never been used, for example. Since most DLC revolves around multiplayer I don’t use season passes. Ditto for micro transactions. Now, I’m probably in the vast minority when it comes to this stuff, but other than the online pass (which locks content away that was previously free), the rest of this stuff is a take it or leave it scenario. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. It’s really that simple.

I think that EA has been at the forefront of trying to find new ways to monetize their games, and kudos to them. Someone has to try and fail for someone else to come along and do it right, and it may as well be one of the longest surviving publishers in the industry. I don’t think that these streams of income are viable in the long term, but I won’t fault publishers from employing them to keep the lights on. After all, people are spending money on this stuff, or else it would have gone away a long time ago. And I don’t know about you, but I love playing video games, and with so many studios closing down it’s becoming more and more clear that the industry is in a period of upheaval. So if a few micro transactions means that I’ll be getting more Mass Effect in the future, I’ll gladly accept it (even if I don’t use it myself).