Odds are that by now you’ve heard about Electronic Arts’ proposed $2 billion dollar purchase of Take Two Interactive. You may have also heard that Take Two soundly, and promptly rejected EA’s offer, saying EA was simply wanting to capitalize on the impending release of Grand Theft Auto 4. Take Two went on to say that the offer came at “absolutely the wrong timeâ€Â. I assume that they want to wait until after GTA4 makes them (literal) assloads of cash before they consider their options.
This is just the latest attempt by Electronic Arts to buy the industry. It was not too long ago that Electronic Arts purchased both Pandemic Studios and BioWare for somewhere in the range of $620 million. Before that, Electronic Arts tried several times to buy French developer Ubisoft, even going so far as to buy some stock in Ubisoft. This was seen as an attempt by EA at a forceful takeover, which ultimately failed.
In fact, EA has had a long history of buying talent in the form of other developers, rather than work to hire their own qualified, creative, talented developers. Origin Systems (System Shock), Bullfrog Productions (Theme Park/Hospital), Westwood Studios (Command & Conquer) and Maxis (Sim City, The Sims) have all been sucked up by the EA juggernaut in the past, and now both BioWare and Pandemic Studios have been added to this list.
So why do people hold so much hostility towards EA? What could drive people to hate a single corporate entity with the passion that people do with EA? EA is perceived by many as trying to eliminate the competition through the use of money. When 2K Sports, with it’s NFL 2K franchise was threatening to overtake EA’s long-running Madden series as the premiere Football title, EA eliminated this threat not by working at developing a better game, but by throwing money at the NFL to gain exclusive video game rights to both the NFL and NFLPA. 2K retaliated by gaining the exclusive third-party rights to MLB, which was seen as a move that was solely retaliatory towards EA. Regardless, while 2K continues to try and improve on the core gameplay of their MLB 2K franchise, EA has seemed to be content with simply updating the rosters, giving Madden a quick spit shine, and throwing what is essentially the same game on the market year-after-year.
This, I believe, can be accredited to what I call “one roof syndromeâ€Â. Electronic Arts, in being a company that has grown so large that they do not need to worry about other, smaller developers, has allowed themselves to stagnate. They will often times throw a new coat of paint on the same core gameplay and throw it out there for the masses to consume out of necessity. It makes me want to vomit every year when EA boasts about Madden’s incredible sales figures, as though they have beaten some worthy adversary. Most people don’t play Madden because they think Madden is a great gaming experience. They play Madden simply because they have no other choice if they want to play a football game on the Xbox 360 or PS3. Hell, I’ve grown so tired of Madden that at this point I’d take NFL Gameday 98 over Madden NFL 08.
This isn’t to say that Electronic Arts is a terrible publisher as a whole. Series like Burnout, Command & Conquer, and that damnably addictive “Sims†franchise are all incredibly fun to play, and each entry continues to push itself to improve on the previous installment. With that said, almost all of EA’s sports titles have become rehashes of games from five years ago with a few added bells & whistles, the Need for Speed series has hit a brick wall of sorts and outside of the franchises listed above, I’m not entirely sure when the last truly great EA game was released.
This mindset that is most prevalent with EA, and can also been seen at other large publishers, is slowly leading the video game industry into an age where creativity is stifled in order to push another Madden roster update out the door. Will it be the death of the industry as a whole? No. That ridiculous “one console†idea David Jaffe has been pushing will do that. Companies like EA will not destroy the video game industry, however they will make it so that fun, original titles will become fewer and further between.
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You forgot to mention how the Battlefield Series has been abandoned. One of the Greatest FPS Series of all time went from head of the class to the back of the Short Bus. If you ever read the posts on the BF2142 boards you’ll see that most of the fans have jumped ship to COD4. And when legit criticism come out those
posts are locked or deleted. Just pathetic, way to go EA.
A valid point. I was a longtime Battlefield: Vietnam fan, myself. Unfortunately, after Battlefield 2142 came out, EA simply abandoned all support for Vietnam.
From my understanding, though, this isn’t the first time EA has simply stopped supporting one of their older games.
EA like Microsoft needs to cool it. With all these buyouts and payoffs, they are forcing a geek niche culture to corporate mainstream and will collapse the industry in the process. I think MS is behind all of this and will simply buy EA once EA has a monopoly portfollio. What else can be read into it as MS and EA exchange management like they are, well, one company? EA the new MS. Monopolise the industry and produce crap hardware and software for all to enjoy? (meh)
EA is owned by the Illuminati and is trying to monopolize the VG industry. training gamers to be soldiers with all those freaking shooters. i dont buy games from western developers.
One basic PC platform didn’t ruin PC gaming. The now agreed upon one HD format won’t destroy movies, and I have a hard time believing one standard agreed upon console design would destroy the game industry.
The reason why we have as much widespread success across the industry is because the user has a choice. But more importantly than that, the developer has a choice. If you have one console for all video games, not only do you deny choice, but you risk taking away “innovative” console designs such as the Wiimote or, to a far lesser degree, the SIXAXIS.
Over the past thirty years of gaming this so called choice hasn’t produced much in the way of innovation at all. The only powerful example to me is the Wiimote – which happens to be similar in innovation to the eye toy, a product that didn’t require its own console launch. Thirty years and all of our gaming is still essentially a controller and a console.
I’m not claiming I know it’s better, but there are a number of advantages to the idea. Have you ever actually argued against yourself to see if the other side is really as dangerous or weak as you believe? If you try hard enough the results might surprise you.
Eh, I’ve always considered the Wiimote to be little more than a Power Glove trapped inside a bar of soap. But that’s for a different day.
Don’t get me wrong, I see where you’re coming from. But I also see where the downside to a single format for anything, and being a pessimist…
Oh, on a final note — and this goes for all of you — look up by your name. See the (Reply) button? Go on. Give it a click. It allows you to directly continue a line of conversation instead of having to sift through comments. Allison and I went through hell and high water to get this to work, so use it.
Sorry about that. I saw the feature right after I made the reply.
EA stink, pure and simple. What I don’t understand is why don’t people wake up and realise they are being fed tripe over and over again?
When they release the latest version of any of their sports franchises, they laud the new version, and admit the previous version was poor, but hey, did I mention the new version is so much better than last year’s effort?
The EA ethos is style over substance.
I blame all of the mindless folk who continue to buy Madden games every year. They’re the reason why EA has so much “power”. Thanks jocks for furthering ruining the lives of geeks everywhere.
Bingo! Though I have to say — I do love the NCAA Football games. They seem to be the lone exception to the EA Sports rule because they actually DO seem to improve each year.
Creativity is expensive nowadays. As a customer, I know I won’t take a $70 chance on a game if it hasn’t garnered great reviews or I’m not a fan. That’s why I think developers are having to pool a lot of their creativity into marketing, rather than designing. The Wii and DS were designed to avoid falling into this marketing model, and that’s why they’re games are so innovative and their selling well. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are consoles with brute power. They’re like Ferraris. EA wouldn’t trick out a Ferrari. They’d just put some bigger, badder rims on it.