Why game makers like EA are nowadays evil?

[Knee Deep In The Fan]

4 minutes ago, Jerry.C said:

 

That reminds me of Microsoft and their failure in mobile. They thought they were too big to fail, and many analysts thought the same, declaring Windows Phone the victor by default before launch. And look how that ended up. In the process they irreparably harmed their main product and the only thing that saved their ass is that the Linux camp is still not capable of providing a desktop experience that is good enough for the common public and Apple doesn't want to compete.

 

Or of Nokia as a smartphone maker. They also considered themselves invincible and totally missed the touchscreen revolution. When they were finally able to react it was too late, they rushed into a bad deal with Microsoft that made things even worse, and ultimately they ended up being sold to Microsoft (who in turn made even more losses out of the mess they got.)

 

Bottom line: There's no such thing as "too big to fail."

 

 

 

Oh I agree, and iirc, EA got a lot of shit from their shareholders/investors due to the backlash and diminishing returns that Battlefront II got after the BS micro-transactions and other things they did before and during the games launch.

[Starkiller]

Game companies are evil because all they care about is profit. Because of this, there is no soul in a game, only a pastiche of greed and an aura of generic mechanics. Electronic Arts, Konami, Activision, Ubisoft, Bethesda, these are the scum of the gaming industry. They assimilated small game companies and ruin their actually good series of games, like Westwood Studios & their Command & Conquer series being turned into sludge, Pandemic Studios & their Star Wars Battlefront series, as well as Destroy All Humans, Origin Studios and the Ultima series. Even good companies like Valve have turned to shit, ignoring the franchise that started their prominence and jumping on the online fantasy card game bandwagon, announcing a card game that destroyed their reputation and allowing shovelware like the god-awful Hunt Down The Freeman  on the Steam platform. 

 

Hell, not even smaller companies are immune to this. Atari of today doesn't give a shit about releasing the Blood source code and IP and wanted a ridiculous amount of money if a better, more honest company wanted it. I want a Blood 3 damnit! Free Caleb out of eternity! 

 

I can only dream at this point. 

[Mr. Freeze]

If game companies are evil, why do you care about smaller game companies being assimilated? Aren't they evil too?

 

And ffs, entertainment companies being "evil" is the height of overreaction. I don't like EA either but the circlejerk would have you believe they hold gamers at gunpoint and force them to buy lootboxes. 

[Chezza]

All that needed to be said is said. Shareholders and the need to increase their money consistently requires non stop growth. As for Private companies, they need all their games to be successful consistently since they usually have less funding.

 

Steam is not great but their platform is a gold mine. All passive features they barely need to manage which adds value to their games without actually providing anything.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Chezza

[Starkiller]

7 minutes ago, Mr. Freeze said:

If game companies are evil, why do you care about smaller game companies being assimilated? Aren't they evil too?

 

And ffs, entertainment companies being "evil" is the height of overreaction. I don't like EA either but the circlejerk would have you believe they hold gamers at gunpoint and force them to buy lootboxes. 

At least smaller game companies actually gave a damn about their fanbases and put a lot of effort into making a game play well, even taking the time of innovating or bringing new elements to the table. 

 

Maybe the game companies being "evil" is an overreaction, but it is still despicable about how they would show off something cool and exciting, and when you play it, it is just a rehash of the same stuff but with a new gimmick and a paintjob. Look at the Call of Duty series of games. Decent WWII shooters, then Modern Warfare, and then going downward with lessened quality after each game, eventually to the point where the fan base agreed Call of Duty was nothing but stale junk. 

[fraggle]

6 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

And why most of the software companies and game makers from the 90s went from good to bad?

Because creating games has become a lot more effort than it used to be.

 

Back in the '90s Doom was created by a team of fewer than 10 people in less than a year. But the amount of work required to make a comparable game nowadays has increased by orders of magnitude. A level for Doom (1993) takes O(hours) to make. For a Quake-era game it's maybe O(days). For Doom 3-era it's maybe O(weeks). For a modern game like Doom (2016) it's probably months. The same is true for things like artwork, 3D modelling, and programming.

 

So for a typical modern AAA game you're talking a potentially huge team with dozens of people working on all different areas of the game, and of course now they need management. The majority of these are talented, creative people who need to be paid decent salaries. All of this adds up to a significant investment of O($millions) per year so to break even you need to make sure enough people buy the game - better hire a good marketing department too.

 

When the stakes are high people don't like to take so many risks. Why do something experimental or unusual if millions of dollars hang in the balance? Just make another boring military FPS because they're known to be popular and a safe bet. We see the same effect now across most forms of entertainment - from video games to films to TV series. People like superhero movies so just keep making hundreds of them. Things become safer bets if they have a familiar brand to back them, which is why we see reboots across every form of media.

 

That's why I don't really pay any attention to what's happening in AAA games any more. It's rare that there's anything truly original or interesting coming out - the indie game scene is far more interesting.

[Knee Deep In The Fan]

39 minutes ago, fraggle said:

That's why I don't really pay any attention to what's happening in AAA games any more. It's rare that there's anything truly original or interesting coming out - the indie game scene is far more interesting.

Yes but the indie scene is just as guilty of this as well. "Oh look another 4-way player death match title like Duck Game, how original."

[june gloom]

12 hours ago, Jerry.C said:

 

That reminds me of Microsoft and their failure in mobile. They thought they were too big to fail, and many analysts thought the same, declaring Windows Phone the victor by default before launch. And look how that ended up. In the process they irreparably harmed their main product and the only thing that saved their ass is that the Linux camp is still not capable of providing a desktop experience that is good enough for the common public and Apple doesn't want to compete.

 

Or of Nokia as a smartphone maker. They also considered themselves invincible and totally missed the touchscreen revolution. When they were finally able to react it was too late, they rushed into a bad deal with Microsoft that made things even worse, and ultimately they ended up being sold to Microsoft (who in turn made even more losses out of the mess they got.)

 

Bottom line: There's no such thing as "too big to fail."

 

 

 

It's a shame because I really liked Windows Phone as an OS. My first smartphone ever was a WP and I'll always have a bit of nostalgia for the thing despite the fact that it was so underpowered barely anything worked but at least the battery lasted 3 days.

 

But the complete lack of support for WP by app makers and even major companies was incredibly frustrating. The Facebook app was infuriatingly out of date; there was no Steam app. Other seemingly important apps were non-existent. It was maddening.

[Jerry.C]

5 hours ago, arobase said:

It's a shame because I really liked Windows Phone as an OS

Wait - what? There's really people out there who liked it? I once had to use a WP device as a temporary replacement and I hated every minute of the stupid user interface.

 

 

5 hours ago, arobase said:

. My first smartphone ever was a WP and I'll always have a bit of nostalgia for the thing despite the fact that it was so underpowered barely anything worked but at least the battery lasted 3 days.

 

The battery of my 8 year old HTC Desire lasts for 5-6 days without recharging. There's no chance I replace that phone unless it truly breaks.

 

 

5 hours ago, arobase said:

 

But the complete lack of support for WP by app makers and even major companies was incredibly frustrating. The Facebook app was infuriatingly out of date; there was no Steam app. Other seemingly important apps were non-existent. It was maddening.

 

Are you surprised? It's bad enough that every software has to be written twice for two totally incompatible platforms, add a third one into the mix that also needs everything rewritten again and the financial resources will inevitably dry up.

 

[Cacodemon345]

Windows Phone is shit for it's lack of apps. It's UI is shit.

 

As for about the "too big to fail" thing, that's horribly wrong. That's the reason for the downfall of some of the companies.

[HavoX]

18 hours ago, Starkiller said:

Konami

This company is the worst of the worse. Even worse than Comcast. Whatever happened to the happy days? :(

[june gloom]

4 hours ago, Jerry.C said:

Wait - what? There's really people out there who liked it? I once had to use a WP device as a temporary replacement and I hated every minute of the stupid user interface.

 

Yes? I liked it. it was clean and simple and looked nice.

 

4 hours ago, Jerry.C said:

 

Are you surprised? It's bad enough that every software has to be written twice for two totally incompatible platforms, add a third one into the mix that also needs everything rewritten again and the financial resources will inevitably dry up.

 

All that is completely true. And it was frustrating. But I still liked my phone and I wish WP had been supported more. Alas, it wasn't to be.

[CARRiON]

21 hours ago, Mr. Freeze said:

And ffs, entertainment companies being "evil" is the height of overreaction. I don't like EA either but the circlejerk would have you believe they hold gamers at gunpoint and force them to buy lootboxes. 

 

I'd say a company ^(EA) stealing technology ^{(football game engine iirc)} from another company ^(Bethesda) and using said technology to profit greatly ^(Madden) is pretty evil, and that's just scratching the surface. Or how about the EA Spouse incident? Where EA forced unpaid insane overtimes on its employees to the point family barely ever saw them? The main plaintiff of that resulting lawsuit got $14.9 million for unpaid overtime.

 

I'd also say intentionally mismanaging companies and involving dev companies in lawsuits just to bankrupt them is pretty scummy. Some might say a bit evil even. And now you have all this lootbox nonsense, with EA being one of the biggest offenders of being absolute financial predators.

 

Also didn't EA host some contest a few years back that allowed people to submit indie games or something and in the contract it basically said anything you submit would be owned by EA? And when they got caught they basically reworded it to say basically the same thing but nicer? (My memory is iffy on this one)

 

Regardless, yeah fuck EA.

 

EDIT: And how can I forget, EA is one of the biggest offenders of releasing games dependent on a server then completely shutting them off only a few years later. What a trash company.

[Starkiller]

26 minutes ago, CARRiON said:

 

I'd say a company ^(EA) stealing technology ^{(football game engine iirc)} from another company ^(Bethesda) and using said technology to profit greatly ^(Madden) is pretty evil, and that's just scratching the surface. Or how about the EA Spouse incident? Where EA forced unpaid insane overtimes on its employees to the point family barely ever saw them? The main plaintiff of that resulting lawsuit got $14.9 million for unpaid overtime.

 

I'd also say intentionally mismanaging companies and involving dev companies in lawsuits just to bankrupt them is pretty scummy. Some might say a bit evil even. And now you have all this lootbox nonsense, with EA being one of the biggest offenders of being absolute financial predators.

 

Also didn't EA host some contest a few years back that allowed people to submit indie games or something and in the contract it basically said anything you submit would be owned by EA? And when they got caught they basically reworded it to say basically the same thing but nicer? (My memory is iffy on this one)

 

Regardless, yeah fuck EA.

 

EDIT: And how can I forget, EA is one of the biggest offenders of releasing games dependent on a server then completely shutting them off only a few years later. What a trash company.

Pretty much this. Bunch of greedy cunts. 

Corporations are some of the most evil entities to ever exist. I hope I don't fall into the same path. 

[CARRiON]

I will say I think most of the time people do overreact, but in the case of EA they've displayed a complete lack of morals on multiple occasions. There is a clear line between being dicks and being "evil" in my mind. I feel like EA in particular has crossed that line more than a few times.

[Starkiller]

I think I was overreacting earlier about game companies being evil, but I agree that EA definitely have shown the lack of morals and principles. Hell, Konami has already followed that route. Pissed in the faces of the fans by canceling Silent Hills, firing and refusing to mention Kojima, Metal Gear Survive, and Pachinko games. 

 

Pachinko games? How low can you seriously get? 

[june gloom]

While I do question the wisdom of getting EA named "worst company ever" by Consumerist two years in a row (how about, oh I don't know, Haliburton, or Verizon, or one of these other companies that actually affect way more people?) there's really no question that they are absolutely amoral. They're the embodiment of late-stage capitalism. While other companies -- even Ubisoft -- are seemingly occasionally aware that they have a responsibility to their customer base, EA just doesn't seem to care.

 

@Starkiller re: Pachinko games, you forget that Konami, like lots of game companies, have diversified holdings in various entertainment sectors, such as Pachinko. Don't forget that Konami also makes Yu Gi Oh. So, no, they haven't "sunk low" just for making Pachinko games that they were already making. Where the frustration sets in is using their big franchises that they've otherwise effectively abandoned on Pachinko games nobody outside Japan will play.

 

Also Silent Hills getting cancelled was a good thing. That series really should've been taken out back years ago.

Edited May 15, 2018 by arobase

[Equinox24]

EA is a greedy company, All they care about is money. They think they are too big to fail, and more money would make them the #1 gaming company in the world.

[Knee Deep In The Fan]

1 hour ago, arobase said:

 

@Starkiller re: Pachinko games, you forget that Konami, like lots of game companies, have diversified holdings in various entertainment sectors, such as Pachinko. Don't forget that Konami also makes Yu Gi Oh. So, no, they haven't "sunk low" just for making Pachinko games that they were already making. Where the frustration sets in is using their big franchises that they've otherwise effectively abandoned on Pachinko games nobody outside Japan will play.

That is true. I work in a casino and here we have Konami slot machines like Shinobi and Pac-Man machines from Namco.

[Avoozl]

Well I am not happy with Bethesda these days, they don't always fix every bug and rely on the mod communities to do that, not to mention how they are fool proofing and stripping features from their main IP's TES and FO per every release, but now they are charging for mods a second time which has crossed the line for me, the first time they did it it received a lot of backlash. I think charging for user mods is the worst thing any company has done so far. I really think they should let Obsidian work on their future FO and TES games.

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

24 minutes ago, Avoozl said:

I really think they should let Obsidian work on their future FO and TES games.

They won't though, because they know Obsidian's games will be massive successes like New Vegas was and everyone will remember Obsidian and not Bethesda and realize Obsidian is awesome and Bethesda isn't. Anymore. Morrowind is still awesome.

Worst part of it all: NV was a massive success despite being an incomplete bug-riddled mess. It was just that good.

[Cacodemon345]

I will agree on the fact that companies occasionally care for customers. But only just. At least Nintendo shines in this area.

[The Unclassy German]

i think game companies in general are just losing the "pizazz" they used to have...probably because there has been so many games that have been made over the past 3 decades that people are starting to lose ideas

[Doomkid]

On 5/15/2018 at 4:35 AM, Cacodemon345 said:

Nintendo would be the closest thing to making always Quality and Fun games.

 

Despite being a lover of classic Nintendo, I have to disagree. Even back in the 80's and 90's, games that are pure, irredeemable trash such as Back to the Future, Terminator, Ghost Busters and so forth were licensed and sold by Nintendo with a price tag equal to that of good games like Super Mario 3 and Zelda and such. Absolute garbage peddled to easily-duped kids and their easily-duped parents before the days of readily accessible game reviews and whatnot.

 

The difference is not in the way these companies operate, that's always remained somewhat consistent (for better or for worse) - What's different now is that everyone is on the internet and anyone can uncover godawful practices and expose them to the world. It's not that they've gotten worse, it's just the we're actually aware of all the dirt now.

 

EDIT

Quote

[...] the amount of work required to make a comparable game nowadays has increased by orders of magnitude. A level for Doom (1993) takes O(hours) to make. For a Quake-era game it's maybe O(days). For Doom 3-era it's maybe O(weeks). For a modern game like Doom (2016) it's probably months.

 

This is one of the things that kinda saddens me about progress when it comes to art that hinges on technology. The expectations have been raised to such an unattainable standard for anyone that doesn't have millions of dollars at their disposal. A campaign that takes 3 hours to play used to take, oh say, 300 hours of collective manpower to actually create. Now it takes more like 300,000 collective hours of manpower, but beyond greatly enhanced visuals, there's isn't actually all that much to show for it - The consumer still gets roughly the same amount of fun out of the product for roughly the same amount of time spent with it.

 

Of course I'm talking about AAA development, but I just kinda miss when the line between that and indie development was a lot more blurred than it is now. In the old days a lot of 'soon to be mainstream' devs started out as what we'd now call 'indie', that was just the industry standard at the time. Now, to be clear, I'm not advocating for stagnation, but it's a shame in some sense how things have played out. There's a lot less love to go around nowadays for the average little development team.

 

We even see this in our little community. The bar has been raised so high for the average Doom map/mod that something roughly on par with vanilla Doom in terms of visuals and gameplay bores the typical casual Doomer, the ones who play Doom wads sometimes but aren't so far into it that they feel compelled to make an account here or on other Doom sites. It has to have so much more complexity to it now (on the development side) to garner a decent number of players/fans beyond just the tiny circle of us who still enjoy "old Doom". Again, not advocating for stagnation, just pointing out the.. Uh.. Price of progress, or, uh.. Something.

Edited May 16, 2018 by Doomkid

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Again, not advocating for stagnation, just pointing out the.. Uh.. Price of progress, or, uh.. Something.

The result of technological development resulting in the raising of the basic "quality" bar. If that helps.

[ScreechingBoner]

10 hours ago, The Unclassy German said:

i think game companies in general are just losing the "pizazz" they used to have...probably because there has been so many games that have been made over the past 3 decades that people are starting to lose ideas

That, and the fact that making games is more accessible nowadays than it used to be in the industry's earlier years. Now you have cleaner languages like Java, C++, C#, Python et al, with all the bells and whistles and nice looking IDEs. It's no longer a mystery only accessible to that kid's uncle who works at Nintendo.

[Cacodemon345]

My take would be that the companies are starting to lose ideas. Even through companies like Bethesda occasionally care, it's not like they always care, as compared to Nintendo, which actually cares what their consumers want as always.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

The customer has no idea what the hell he\she wants though.

[[McD] James]

44 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

My take would be that the companies are starting to lose ideas. Even through companies like Bethesda occasionally care, it's not like they always care, as compared to Nintendo, which actually cares what their consumers want as always.

 

And yet they still haven't localised Mother 3. 

[Jerry.C]

1 hour ago, Cacodemon345 said:

My take would be that the companies are starting to lose ideas. Even through companies like Bethesda occasionally care, it's not like they always care, as compared to Nintendo, which actually cares what their consumers want as always.

 

It's not that they are out of ideas. What's really going on is that far too many people only want more of the same, the less variation, the better.

This is why everywhere where large amounts of money are at stake, they play it safe and release what's guaranteed to make money. If they take risks with new ideas they also risk to lose money, and that's a big no-no in big business.