EA is a corporation out to suck the cash out of everything and everyone.
No.
EA is a corporation.
Yes EA has tendencies to produce crap (a-la Pogo, most else) and great successes (The Sims, Spore, Battlefield). What EA does, that most people don’t realize, is that it gives the resources to studios to produce HUGE titles.
Spore is a prime example. Maxis can focus on creating a quality product (Spore) and they have carte blanch to do whatever they want. They’ve spent, literally, billions of dollars on this title. This is something they would have never been able to do as an independent studio. Bioware will be another example of this. Bioware will not be changed, so they’ll now have the financial backing of EA to produce their next epic RPG (Mass Effect 2, I’m sure) with less of a financial stress.
This is, believe it or not, something the industry needs: quality products. Give the dev teams ample time and money to produce in depth, immersive, quality experiences, and you’ll get a better return.
Thats not to say EA is a shining example of all that is good. Go look at some other titles they’ve produced (any movie spin-off, ect) and you can see the worse the industry has to offer. Especially when it comes to treatment of developers: terrible deadlines (4 months, some times from start to finish) and short budget.
EA is also known for milking its franchises (Madden). I do not include The Sims in this category, why? because we actually get quality expansion packs out of the deal..
I’m quite happy with the expansion pack system.
Expansion packs, not just a corporate strategy to suck the life out of your wallets.. or your parent’s wallets.
Think about it, if they left games to include EVERYTHING that expansion packs add.. That’d put development time in DECADES, not years. Look at The Sims (2) franchise, this is an excellent example of Expansion packs done right.
Base game, without expansions, was great.. until we got expansions, and then it became increasingly better because the expansions actually added something tangible and in a magnitude great enough to justify the purchase.
Expansion packs also quickly come down in price, originally selling for 40, they can be down to 15 by the time the next one comes out.
Yeah, they add money to the corporation or studio.. But where does that go? Into producing more games, you enjoy. If it went straight to the CEO’s pocket, then where are the games coming from?
In the end, yeah EA is big and ungainly at times.. but it also has some great redeeming qualities. Gamers need to open their eyes and realize that not everything is a big huggy buggy love fest. This is a business, just as harsh as the film industry, and we need to cooperate with and support our companies if we want decent games.
Support your favorite franchises, support quality, support depth, ignore the crap, and we’ll all be happier in the long run. Oh.. and stop complaining, seriously.. We’ve all heard it and its going nowhere.
*goes brain dead*
Very true and its good to someone else talking sense, but that doesn’t stop us from wishing things were different.