I will never buy from EA again. Not that I can remember the last time I did…
EA hasn’t been worth a shit since NHL '95 for Sega Genesis.
I disagree. Under EA’s banner, we got Burnout, Dead Space, Mass Effect, Titanfall, Apex Legends, Star Wars: Fallen Order and even a decent remaster of Command & Conquer series. Also what about Star Wars: Squadrons, a very unlikely game to happen, but here we are. So it’s not like only shit came out of EA. At least for me. Now if you talk about sports games specifically, I can’t talk about that. Never liked EA sports games anyway.
EA has methodically destroyed pieces of my childhood.
What corporate business does best.
This is the best case scenario for corporate businesses, a slow gradual extraction of resources that successfully removes everything of value over a long enough time period not to have overwhelming blowback.
Canadians need to fight for these studios getting the support our oil or car companies get. We punch way above our weight in this industry. After ripping bioware away from ea of course.
BioWare destroyed themselves.
I hate EA as much (or more) as the next guy, but let’s not pretend here: guns and football sell.
EA is not a company of gamers. They’re a company of corpos. They follow the money.
Similar things have been happening in the movie industry. Why is every studio pumping out predictable rehashed trash? Because it sells.
Everyone on this largely esoteric forum is probably already voting with their wallets. We aren’t the ones buying these vaccuous games, but the market is clearly there. It’s much harder to fix that issue.
It’s not just that they sell, it’s that their audiences aren’t as discerning. The guns and football guys will always buy the next guns and football games even if it sucks, even if it’s full of ads, even if it’s made by child slavery. They just want to shovel shit to the shit-eaters and get paid.
It sells because there’s not any other alternatives. If I go to the movies and the only things are available or some shitty rehashes what’s my alternative?
And then they wonder why not as many people are going to see movies.
because there are good original films? horror’s been especially good for it this year, at least in the sense that the original films are making money.
I feel like horror is helped by a large and dedicated fan base that still likes going out to theaters and enjoys original stories. I can’t really say the same about action movie fans.
Movies example was just an analogy.
Guns and football sells, so does Stardew Valley and Euro Truck Simulator 2.
Lots of stuff sells if you don’t undermine and condescend it at every step of the way.
So do lightsabers, Respawn has been kept alive
Mass Effect and DA also sold, until they finished Mass Effect and created a crappy spinoff. Anthem only generated hate for them since they stopped updating it real soon and now have closed the servers altogether. BioWare went from almost a game a year of pure gold to eh maybe you’ll get one every 4-5 and you’ll be lucky if it’s any good.
It sucks to lose all these companies, but it’s kind of been coming for a long time, the whole gaming industry is basically resetting. Going back to millions of small companies instead of thousands or hundreds of big companies. The companies got too big and too slow. Things changed, and they couldn’t keep up. Not to mention so much money wasted, or worse handed directly to CEOs or other upper management.
Despite all the big companies dying, gaming as a whole is still great. Besides having to filter out games that put AI in charge, the rest of the games nowadays are actually doing awesome innovative stuff instead of “game we liked +1”. As much as I like when both exist, it’s predicated on not wasting money, and ideally at least some new ideas in the sequel.
Even the “game we liked +1” stuff is pretty good these days, since there are indie studios making spiritual successors to games with niche appeal that traditional publishers wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.
Stuff like Lunacid, Gloomwood, and the entire boomer shooter genre are basically just “what if X was made without the technology limitations of the time” and it’s great.
Arabia-shmarabia. EA would burn and shit everything around anyway even without SA.
“Saudis EAt Shit.”
It’s almost hilarious to see the steam next gongshow, juxtaposed with all these studio closures.
Someone made a comment recently in another thread about the prevalence of shitty bootleg/noname games all over the place back in the 80s, and how nintendo started putting a gold seal of authenticity on their games as a kind of quality assurance for gamers. That’s what game studios are now, to some extent, for me, with the new flood of AI garbage. Killing off studios known for making quality products is a terrible strategy.
Bioware hasn’t made a quality product since Mass Effect 1 or Dragon Age: Origins - whichever came last.
Well, sure, it went to shit once they got gobbled by EA – both ME and DAO were released so close to the acquisition by EA, that they were clearly made primarily under the old, more indie, setup. But it’s still a studio that I remember fondly, generally, and would still check their new releases when they came out (even if I didn’t play them).
To me they’re in the same general boat as a studio like Relic. I played the early Dawn of War games quite a bit. After they got gobbled by… Sega? I think? I sorta lost touch with their games in terms of buying them/playing them, because they just didn’t seem to hit the same. I think they got sold off to a venture capital group now, but it’s still a company that I at least look at their games when they announce stuff. I’d put others like ID software, or even some publishers like Paradox, in this group too.
I mean I thought Doom 2016 and Eternal were great, but I can’t disagree with anything else you’ve said.
It’s not about quality, it is about what makes most money. See their sports titles, they suck, but are making lots of money.
Here’s hoping Larian steps up again with their next creation.
Did their writing improve with BG3? I played both DOS games and while I really enjoyed the gameplay, the story was just awful.
The writing improved massively.
Guns and football are fine, and everything else is under the microscope
So business as usual?
Well no, they had LGBT characters even in the last Dragon Age I believe. Since being gay is a capital punishment offense, obviously those games can’t be made anymore.
I haven’t bought an EA title in years. Good luck, you have a few good IPs, but there’s a lot of other competition out there, and even small studios put you to shame these days. Gamers want to be entertained, not roll into a casino.
But Mass effect has guns. It was basically a Shooter
“Space guns are unAmarican!”
This is the opportunity for 2K to revive their hockey franchise and do something amazing with it. The market (and the ea hate) is ripe for it.
2K isn’t a spectacular company either (hello microtransactions). But I’m just saying this is their opportunity if they were smart enough to take it.
As a Canadian, I’d love to see that. NHL is basically our Madden or FIFA, and while I don’t even like sports games all that much, I’d like to see some competition in that market.
As long as the most money comes from idiots that buy FIFA every year, and from idiots that buy microtransactions, this is what we will get.
Fuck EA
I don’t really game much anymore bc of life and sadness but I just launched SWKOTOR for the first time since 2012 and forgot it was a BioWare game. Its so good.
