I hate to bash EA Games ,but this article is saying, if I'm not reading this wrong that the CEO of EA is planning a "fundamental shift" in how it makes games basically
"is to ensure its games are functional and fun at a much earlier stage in the process than it has in the past, to be more rigorous about ensuring quality control through the process and to be willing to delay a game's launch when it's necessary." And "We always believed you need a playable build. We've been building games a long time," he said. "But in the heat of battle you kind of do what you can. We have now said there is no alternative. If the build is not playable, you have to push the schedule until it's playable again."

Does any one think this is BS or is EA changing for the good?

I'll believe it when I see it. First step would be to drop that bullshit Origin requirement and make their newer games optionally available on Steam again, without any extra strings attached. Quality aside, this is actually the main reason why I haven't bought a single EA game since Crysis 2: Don't push your nosy new distribution software on us as a requirement if we already have one that is perfectly functional and widely accepted. Valve beat you to it when they forced it down our throats with HL2 back in 2004. You don't get to do the same just because you want your own.

The last time that EA earned my respect was in 2010, when RA3 was released.

EA has a lot to do to get that respect back.

The best way to make fun games would be to let the Developers do their thing, and not force them to follow some companay-wide-quality-standard-probably-bullshit-guidelines.

1. Hire developers you have trust in.
2. give them a set budget
3. release the game when it is ready

Here's your "fundamental shift"

I like EA games and EA live chat support has never failed me. (Except once yesterday where the support guy didn't talk, but that's not EA's fault). I use Steam but I think Origin (and UPlay) are good to prevent Steam's monopoly. I don't like this Valve worshipping just because they were first to make a distribution platform. Origin brings me my games, that's all I need.

I hope this reflects to the C&C franchise and give us new, improved, but true to the originals, games.

@Knossos

RA3 was released in 2008, 2010 was the year of C&C 4

@MARS

Some steam games (like AC3) redirect the user to UPlay, Origin can still cooperate on that front if they want.

Well then, but I got my copy of RA3 in 2010. EDIT: It was very new back then, I didn't know it was released far earlier.

If EA stops milking the cash cow and let the people who knows how to make good games do their trade, EA would've their fundamental shift already. I remember Sony being lenient with ThatGameCompany when they went overboard with their budget, and what do we get? A very good, well-made, and finely-crafted piece of diamond game called Journey.

1- Release 100% complete games that doesn't require 50 more DLC to be complete.

2- Listen to people.

I call this bs.

They have denied the fanbase's supportive ideas many times and never fully finished what they promised from the start.

This, is nothing but useless sweet talking. I won't trust it until I've seen it, which I believe is unlikely to happen.

The "fundamental shift" for EA will be in my opinion, developing and creating new interesting IP's (Intellectual Property). They are a master of expending it like Battlefield, Simcity, The sims, Red Alert, C&C etc... I don't know why the change explained in the development pipeline is a fundamental shift. Maybe it is. I hope that they use it to rappitly prototype new IP's with it.

Holy crap! Another admin? I thought only Hunter was the admin?

Anyway, if EA actually allowed their developers to finish the games before they release them I would be so happy. And not ruin beloved franchises as well.

I don't believe it. EA is talking bullshit, as usual. They lost our respect a LOOOONG time ago when they swallowed Westwood and spit out its remains.

Westwood died and every C&C game except 4 has been better since. The first non-Westwood one is still the best.

C&C 1 was awesome, Tib Sun was also great, Tiberium Wars was okay.
Red Alert 1 was also very awesome, Red Alert 2 was awesome, Red Alert 3 was not great.
Zero Hour was pretty decent (aside from all the scrapped stuff), but the main reason I play it is for mods.

I have different opinions than you.

I call BS, simply because as one of the current big players, they are INCAPABLE* of making any meaningful changes.



------

*Not because they are stupid/evil or anything, just that they are also chained by various factors that we don't notice at first. Cracked. com did a pretty good article about this kind of stuff: http://www.cracked.com/article_20727_5-rea...t-to-crash.html

More reasons why I like to bet on indie game companies, since they are mostly outside of the established system...

Most of the listed weren't even theirs to begin with. Sim*s are all Maxis (bought by EA in '97) and C&C is Westwood (bought by EA in '98). Mostly EA guys popped up, bought the franchise in a bargain price, then started to sit on it - and in the last 8-10 years, they even suck at managing them. Look at Dungeon Keeper, the first series killed off.

The fundamental shift I think that they finally will announce their bankruptcy.

Why does EA likes to buy everything? where the hell do they get all the money?

Sport licenses bring a lot of money.

Each year, they release Madden and all that crap and rake in the money.

It's a new game with a slight difference!

Cos believe it or not, the average consumer of the likes of Madden or FIFA is probably even more meatheaded and ignorant to the shrewd business mechanisms within this industry than a typical CoD player
Sure there's often plenty of overlap between the two, but it does take a very special kind of stupid to pay full-price for a glorified roster update every single year, whereas CoD games are at least distinct from each other.

They say EA challenges everything but whatever they challenge can't fight back.

You can change parts and revise designs all the time but if the machine's output is still the same, it wouldn't matter. (Yeah I agree with the other sentiments)

Wait, CoD changes over time?

So it isn't just "Pick a new OP gun, run around noscoping shit while screaming profanities through a mic" in some games?

Now this is a pretty poor comment, coming from a moderator.

CoD at least has a new title, new story, and completely new models. The sports series have a polygon update, number addition, and roster change.




They did not even develop Madden at first. They stole the source code from Bethesda and just added graphics (Hey, sound familiar?):
http://kotaku.com/5816920/before-elder-scr...-created-madden

Yes, they just took the physics engine. But that is still quite a steal, considering it was groundbreaking, and EA most likely acquired it by lying to Bethesda.


Actually, I have seen the people MARS is talking about up-close. His comment is actually very nice compared to what they actually are.

This is sooo true, i saw these people a lot. the rooster update can be done manually or just from the internet.

What are they? Maybe regular sports fans? Who buy that one game a year because they enjoy it, and know it will entertain them for a year.

Most of the regular sports fans I see buy the game, enjoy it for 5 years, or do not buy it at all.

These kind of people think that buying a game will "prove their masculinity" or something like that. If you do not buy the latest merchandise, including Madden, you are not a human.

This. I wasn't talking about ordinary sports fans. I was talking about shallow, meatheaded fratboy jock types who constantly have to remind themselves of their manliness by doing all sorts of cliche manly things like bragging about their masculine physique in a totally not latently homoerotic way, engaging in stereotypical male displays of consumerist materialism, casually flaunting douchey attitudes of sexism and racism, objectifying women, etc. These are the kind of people that buy every year's copy-paste sports title not because they actually enjoy those games, but because they feel compelled to simply own the latest one as a means of conspicuous consumption even though any gamer with half a brain would know that a frickin' roster update is something that should be implemented as exactly that; an update, DLC or whatever to a previously released game instead of a full-price, standalone game of its own if the tech behind it isn't actually making any major advances from one year to the next. It's a blatantly manipulative business scheme and I don't harp on that particular kind of player for liking sports; I harp on them because they fall for the scheme and thus help enable a bloated merchandising and marketing system that has turned something as innocent, communal and proletarian as football or pretty much any other type of popular team sport into a cynical corporate monstrosity that feeds corrupt officials and overglorified players. The fact that EA gets away with these yearly rehashes while making millions off of them is simply a sad testament of consumer ethics and the kind of player I described contributes a large part to that problem through their ignorance.

Also, moderator or not, I am entitled to my own opinion. I suppose I could have been a bit more clear in my characterisation of that player type (I'll be forgiven for not having done that when I made that reply 20 minutes after I'd gotten up in the morning) but I stand by my point. It's easy to blame big name publishers for all the problems and idiocies of this industry but the sad truth is that they wouldn't be getting away with half of these things that annoy us on a regular basis if it wasn't for certain parts of the target audience who let them get away with it.

This is still riddicolous. Am I supposed to apologize for buying a video game and ruining the economy?

Sure having a content update as dlc instead of a full game would be better, but guess what, it's not gonna happen anyway. It hasn't happened since 1995.

Of course the people you described are jerks, but I'm also kinda sick of self-rightous ignorant people who want to force their preferences onto others and are calling people dumb sheeps for buying a product they enjoy.

And I'm also aware that this applies to tons of other stuff, and I'm most likely guilty of such statements as well. These sort of posts are still not needed though.

Origin's redundant for the most part. I'm not saying Origin itself is pure shit but it's always the notion that we already have Steam and we don't need more DRMs to deal with (same could be said about Uplay)

Stalker, I'm not blaming you for buying/playing games you genuinely enjoy, because you're in no way coming across as the 'dudebro jock' player archetype I described. I don't hate people who honestly enjoy sports games or even the sports games themselves, but having seen this particular market from the inside myself for a fair while in the past, I can attest that consumer apathy and ignorance do make a lot of the bad business practices of the publishers possible in the first place and the annual rehash of the likes of Madden and FIFA is a strong example of that, but then again, so are Battlefield and Call of Duty, albeit to a lesser extent.

Yeah, it's ok. It was more or less just about that one 'special kind of stupid' sentence, which was kinda unfair imho.

Annual releases are indeed a problem, because apparently it gives the devs/publishers the power to release whatever crap they want. Annual releases (especially in sports games) exist for almost 20 years now, but they have gotten worse in one way: DLC. In one forum of one of those annual games it was basically this:
In 2012: "Why are they putting stuff in DLC that should be in the game from the start? This is bullshit!", etc.
In 2014: "The game isn't even released, but I can't wait for the next DLC!"

Also for everyone who says 'listening to the people' is a good thing for a developer to do: Do you know what the average customer looks like? I don't want to say they are stupid or not important, but the average gamer these days is a 13 year old console gamer, who likes to spend money for shiny stuff. And ofc. you can't blame the devs to make games for the majority of players though.

So I can totally understand the 'hate' for CoD or annual sports game players.

Tis actually a very good point. Sure, 'listening to the people' sounds like a good idea, like publishers and devs would get in contact with their community and take into account the wishes and ideas of the loyal fans who are truly emotionally invested in a franchise, consult or even higher modders to work on the sequel or reboot of a beloved old game that they've kept alive for years and all that. Problem is, that's not what they mean. What they mean when they announce that they will 'listen to the people' is more of that group marketing analysis bullshit where a game is designed to appeal to the widest possible audience in order to deliver a 'meh' to 'okay' experience for as many people as possible instead of a truly great, memorable and innovative game that appeals to a smaller group by virtue of having real character and 'edges' to it. That way, you can pump out a new game every year, because most people won't grow to attached to the previous one and move right on to the next full-price sequel. From a pure business perspective, this is of course entirely reasonable, but it's the same paint-by-numbers manufacturing approach that also made most of pop music and Hollywood movies so forgettable these days. Hell, I've actually found myself looking into and buying plenty of indie games on Steam recently, simply because they're different and in some ways more interesting than generic modern military shooter #3275698 and I'd actually make the argument that RTS games are well on their way to becoming a 'niche' genre as well in the future that big publishers and devs won't even touch anymore aside from two or three franchises tops.

Amen to that the only thing i find worthy to invest to these days are either indie games or classics from a different time and era where the mind set of both developers and publishers worked slightlhy different.


The games i had the most fun with the past 5 years were all indie games from small developers since they tend to have alot more inovation and creativity in them.

It's a double edged sword. No matter what people a developer listens to there will always be some people left out.

A few examples of games I played recently:

Call of Duty:Ghosts vs. Counter Strike:GO

CoD Ghosts was a next gen launch title and focused mainly on their console player base (which IS significantly larger than their PC players), and left out basically any PC specific features/support as well as any competitive modes from the last CoD (Black Ops 2). It might be a good game for a casual console gamer, but it's pretty crappy for someone who wants skill-oriented, balanced gameplay in a competitive environment.

CS:GO had competitive ranking system from the start and included lots of e-sports features (including proper anti-cheat) and therefore greatly supported competitive gameing. The gameplay however is almost the exact same as it was 15 years ago, and a lot of it feels outdated as well as not very beginner-friendly.

Two similar games focusing on entirely different customer groups. This sounds great on paper, but I kinda dislike both games and would have prefered something in between. A similar comparison would be Diablo 3 vs. Path of Exile.

Now what's the point of all this? The gameing community has such widely spread preferences and taste, that it's very hard to find a game these days that fits into your scheme of a 'perfect game'. And for a developer it's hard to please a wide number of customers withour delivering some generic garbage.

Well for me that perfect game is Garry's Mod
But everything you said up there is true, there are people (and trust me, I know) that are like "yo I played black ops 2 today and pwned some n00bs, I'm gonna get ghosts cuz I'm really excited omg" and they are usually jock-like. You say you don't have it, they're like "hey man you really need to get it it's über fun lol". They usually associate with other jocks who play the same games.

I'm a dudebrojock and my feerings are hurt. I demand a year's supply of butthurt cream from the SWR team.

Well, Stalker dude, I wouldn't say you need to apologize, but if you contribute to this practice then you are definitely to blame.
Definitely to blame in the same way that people who pre-order "unfinished games" [and other devious strategies] and support publishers to continue with their atrocious acts are. If you are part of a community that is helping the game industry to clash by sheer stupidity, then of course you are to blame.

You don't need to feel bad for it. But you should.

Now, I don't mean you must stop doing it or anything. If you want to throw the: "I don't care, deal with it. I like it." it's fine, but don't ask to not be blamed or be surprised when you are called the attention that it is an idiotic practice, because you are at fault.
Note that I'm not actually putting in cause what you support, buy or don't buy, what you like or not, I'm rather just letting clear how this works.

I am aware that buying such games is probably harmful to the gameing industry, but I believe it is at a point where I won't see any change in my lifetime and I prefer to spend my free time playing games. Other than that this is heavily based on opinions, especially when calling something an idiotic practise. What games have you bought in the recent years? Are you sure you haven't supported any evil developers or pre-ordered any game?

I've bought exactly ONE game in the last two years and that was Hanako Games' "Long live the Queen" because I refuse to support EA and consorts with their business practices of emptying my pockets and giving me stale beer and hard cookies in return.

Besides Kerbal Space Program, the last game(s) I have bought for the past 3 years was EA's C&C Ultimate Collection (at the time, we* also brought some cupcakes with Hello Kitty rings on them so you can guess what state of mind we were in...). I'm too cheap to buy games on a regular basis.

*there were 3 of us at the time, it was a Walmart run...

So yes, you may just more easily admit that you don't care about the harm you do because it won't [personally] affect you much. That's what I was saying. You could save some words and just say "I don't care. Deal with it!"
And no, calling this an idiotic practice* is not an opinion, it's a fact. It's a fact that it is shown and proven that it continues to feed the industry to drive in that way, otherwise it'd have been stopped by now. Say, just because you like to be lied/cheated at, and don't see it as such doesn't mean that you can have an opinion as that not being a lie to you, it is still a lie/cheat, only that you like being lied and cheated at. That is no matter of opinion. It is idiotic! Whether you like it or not, that is another issue. And there yes you can throw your matter of "opinion".

I can't tell you for certain that in the recent years I haven't bought bad games, or games from companies that try to pull these devious strategies. But I sure as hell can assure you that I've stopped pre-ordering games for good since I saw what that was driving companies to do. And I do try to be sure not to fall into clumsy attempts of devs/publishers that try to throw tricky acts on the industry [P2W craps and stupidly released DLC's, etc].

However, I wish you to understand that I was not speaking as of you personally. So there is little matter in what games I or you buy, or what do you or I support. You need only to know yourself that if you're part of the people that help this crash, then you are to blame. I need not your justifications for it. For there can be none. Just be aware of what you're doing. If you care: "good!" and if you don't: "oh well, we can't have everything, can we ?"
Again, you don't need to feel bad for being blamed and part of the problem, but you most certainly should. It's not like I'm against you or anything.

I know I started this ,but I need your opinions of this ,
Does this sound familiar to anyone (Hint Command And Conquer Free To Play, anyone?)

So is this 'New Shift a Way to cover EA's butt, or what's left of it, from the problems Battlefield 4 had?
Your Thoughts People?

EA Admitting its mistakes!!!! I must be dreaming.

Everyone has to dreaming ,if that was to happen. Or the planet turn upside down while we weren't looking.

Until EA display an actual significant showing of "fundamental shift" then everything they spew out is simply empty PR talk. There was an old article somewhere where they spun a similar lie but I can't find it.

Well, yes it most likely is an idiotic practise. Of course shoving money down greedy publisher's throats isn't exactly the best way to cause any change. But my main problem with this logic is that it has no end. I don't want to derail this even more, but idiotic practises like that are everywhere and unavoidable. It's idiotic to buy an I-phone, it's idiotic to buy branded clothes, it's idiotic to drive a car, it's idiotic to upgrade your PC, it's idiotic to watch a movie, it's idiotic to buy music. Basically everything that's overpriced, because it further damages the economy.
You could also say it's idiotic not to stand up right now and do something to change the world.
Of course you can try to avoid most of those practices, but probably everyone will be at a point where you just say 'fuck it, I'll just buy this, because I want it.'

On topic:
While I was never a huge fan of EA I don't think they diserve all the hate. Sadly that's not because they have changed, but because most of the other publishers have lost my respect as well.

Err, since when upgrading PC or driving a car or other things in that list was idiotic? There is no point in buying an equivalent of Nvidia Titan every year, but buying one, because you want or need a 3 monitor set-up and need that super-beefy GPU is kinda logical.

Just make decisions based on reasonable choices/offers, not overhyped consumerism.

^ This.

But anyway, Stalker, you may be right about there having many other idiotic practices [there are!]. Heck, let's pretend you may even be right about everything you said. Now, are you at fault, or what, if you're still doing it, anyway?
Hint: Yes. Yes, you are.
Point proven. That's all I wanted to say.

I could go down the speech of: "Someone has to start working to make a stop on this, even if others do not." and all that thing and expand through there. In a way, I can defend that ideology. For going the route of: "If you can't beat them, join them!" makes you no less guilty than the next idiot who can't even see what it is doing to the industry.


Now on the second topic:

Not much to offer. It is EA, after all. So I follow the herd on this one when they say only after actually seeing any change, I will start to believe they can get better.

Go away Stalker. EA deserves the hate. It's much well known that EA was always about that: if you didn't worked upon sports games, Sims or CoD you should work 24/7, overworking without payment and your work won't even be cared. Not to mention the amount of franchises they simply sacrificed into cash.

I am pretty much on Hunter's side: I haven't bought a game since C&C The First Decade came out, and I bought my copy exactly on March 3rd 2006 (birthday present and I still have the bill in the box). And I am blaming EA for turning the other companies into these simple cashing guys as well, tho Namco-Bandai will probably take over the crown soon (Crapcom is retarded but I can't really care about how they fuxed up Megaman) with all they did with the Soul and the Tekken series.

All I'm actually really interested and awaiting the release of is Age of Decadence, an indie RPG because the demo already gave me back the pen-and-paper feel I always expected from the genre - which I could never get from a game before and never could been satisfied at all.

What's your problem? Did you even read my post? I just said that other publishers are doing the same. Which of course doesn't make EA any better, but it's still unfair to only bash EA. (Also CoD isn't from EA, but you probably meant Battlefield).
Although your exaggerating quite a bit, EA has indeed ruined quite a lot of games/franchises and mistreated developers. But sadly (which is of course no excuse for EA) Activision, Ubisoft, etc. aren't really doing much better. I wouldn't exactly say it's EA's fault alone for the current state of the game industry though, which isn't actually much different to how things were done in the past.

@HoneyBee:
That's true. My point was that it's unfair and hypocritial to condemn one group of idiots in a whole society of idiots.