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Marek

Electronic Arts: the positive thread

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Yeah so EA, hated by everyone. They destroyed some perfectly fine developers in the 90ies and they're notorious for releasing incrementally updated sports games every year.

BUT ... I think EA is actually doing not so bad right now. I believe they've realized they need to be better in a lot of areas to become as succesful this generation. (The PS2 has always been EA's magic money tree, but those days will be over soon.)

Have you seen NBA Street Homecourt? I am buying that game. I don't usually care about sports games, but that's one sexy game. I love the art direction and the animation (watch some videos of it to see what I mean), and from what I hear the gameplay is great too. Plus it seems it manages to be "street" in a genuinely cool way, without being extremely retarded.

I'm looking forward to SSX Blur for the Wii, also on the EA Sports BIG label (Chris had a good preview of it at Shack a while back). Also wouldn't mind playing some Tiger Woods for the Wii if it's implemented well.

Fight Night Round 3 was kind of cool.

Then there's Army of Two from EA Montreal, a game focused entirely on co-op. Might be great, who knows.

Also Spore.

Also Sims Wii (led by Robin Hunicke), Simcity DS, Theme Park DS, various unannounced new IPs at EA LA (led by Randy Smith, Doug Church), etc.

I think EA right now is kind of like Microsoft after they'd released the first Xbox. They deserve a chance to be possibly loved again, if they play their cards right.

WHO'S WITH ME????

:getmecoat

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Acch, bashing EA lost its luster anyway, now that Sony took its place. And Def Jam seems cool too.

So yeah, I'm with you.

If you're reading this, EA: yeah. We're that fickle.

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I wish EA all the best with their new direction. I agree that they are making some moves in some more interesting directions. However I'm not sure that they can do it. I think they've grown to a size where they are going to really struggle to change a lot of things, without a bunch of pain in between the good-ish place they are now, and the good-ish place they might get to. And where there's pain, there's shareholder pressure and where there's shareholder pressure, there's uncertainty, doubt and eventually a fall back into old ways.

I don't think the hate is going to go away. The hate is because they made hardcore gamers irrelevant, in terms of needing their support in order to sell a lot of games. I think in that respect, it's largely undeserved hate too. The only grudge I bear is how many great franchises they have that they won't do anything with.

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EA has always had some great devs amongst those it has assimilated (who found resistance futile). The question is always how long they can keep producing good games from within the belly of beast before being fully digested.

ahghgh metaphor overload! abort abort

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I must say, I like the look of SimCity DS and Sims Wii. If only because you get to dress up as a chef with one of those chef hats in the Sims.

Also, apparently you have to carve out your own furniture and house material when you're building your house. I wonder if this means that no two houses will be exactly alike?

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There are no ideas in EA games. Playing them is like participating in weird fiscal calculus, where every investment and asset has been hedged totally.

They serve their audience well enough I suppose, and the recent $30 million+ payout on class action lawsuits to their victimized workers hopefully put some fear into the boardroom...I'm not sure though. None of their upcoming games interest me. It would take a lot just to get me to buy an EA game, so loving them is unlikely.

I like Microsoft a whole lot more.

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Well, I think FIFA is shaping up pretty well, although I feel they fecked up the Xbox 360 version of FIFA 07, when the current gen and PC version was so good. They finally got it at least half-right and they had to mess with the formula and release a mediocre X360 version.

Burnout is losing its appeal. Once it was a difficult and very intense hardcore racing game, but now it's a soulless, overthetop and simple racing game with absolutely no intensity - just chaos. And who needs turning anyway? Just bounce off the fence!

I want a new Rumble Racing game from them, it was one of my favourite PS2 games. A forgotten gem, undeservedly underrated.

All in all, they have some good games every now and then, but their good game/bad game ratio reflects the market - which isn't a good thing.

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That's fucking horrible.

"It is not about making money, it is about making a difference."

EA might be slightly doing better again, creativity-wise, but such lack of critical analysis in that article, blecch. Propaganda! EA did much to diminish the creativity of a lot of studios in the 90s up until now, and their endless, yearly rereleasing of franchises is the very testament of their policy of squeezing dull-witted consumers dry. You may be eligible for absolution, EA, but don't deny the fucked up things you did in the past.

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I've recently been kind of getting into American Football (I'm English so it's not the easiest thing in the world with people immediately going "Oh, it's just a dumb version of Rugby. Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!) so I'm kind of interested in getting Madden for the Wii when I eventually get one, especially since I've never played one before so I can overlook the glaring similarities to previous versions. It seems to have got pretty good reviews too...

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Bah, until EA makes a CFL game, they can't be considered truly hardcore in the sports market. Canadian Football kicks American Football's ass.

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Deluxe Paint!! Guybrush Threepwood!!

who knows what protagonist name they'd have ended up with if it weren't for EA

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Canadian Football kicks American Football's ass.

Anything kicks American Football's ass.

But then again, I'm an American who thinks curling is awesome, so I may be of questionable sanity.

Edit:: Also, while I am slightly more optimistic and filled with less hate towards EA, I'm not going to be singing praises just yet.

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Hey, curling is awesome too. Was watching the Tournament of Hearts just yesterday.

I don't think anyone is outright singing the praises of EA just yet, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of optimism with regard to them. They were decent once, they may yet rise above their recent rut.

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See, I read that article and one of things that really bothered me was how proud every person was of screwing other companies over for EA.

From the begnning when they cut how much of a percentage the distributors were entitled to, to threatening SEGA and getting a better deal than they would have with Nintendo. Only to dump them when SEGA came up with their own sports range (something not mentioned in the article). To releasing the same game on multiple platforms, and at the same time admitting that they liked it that way because then a hardware manufacturer can't have it their own way.

I thought Stranger's Wrath was a great game, and I hope that every now and then EA 'help' release something like that again.

To boot, EA are generally lazy (I know this from first hand experience), if it is too awkward for them they just go 'Fuck it, we're EA, we'll go somewhere else'.

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