EA: "There Can Be Only One"
Posted by Gary Hodges at 3:04 PM Apr 14, 2008
From MCVUK.com:
EA CEO John Riccitiello has said that he wants to ensure his employer is one day recognised as video gaming’s all-time greatest company.
I’m crossing my fingers and hoping he means in terms of sheer mass, or square footage, or their benefits package or something. Because trying to envision a future where the qualitative all-time greatest video game company is EA… well, I’m not sure what that world looks like.
Other than the sky is purple, pigeons shit Turtle Wax, and time-traveling big game hunters prevented Nintendo from ever existing by accidentally stepping on a butterfly while stalking a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The suggestion (and when I say “suggestion”, I mean “drunken boast, surely”) that EA could someday, somehow achieve such a distinction is hard to fathom… at least based on the quarter century it’s logged in so far.
Last time I was at Best Buy I stumbled across EA: Celebrating 25 Years of Interactive Entertainment, and because I’m a masochist I bought it. As a dyed-in-the-wool EA critic, I was delighted to see how unreadable it was; I felt like I was flipping through a hardcover About Our Company brochure written by the PR department and distributed to shareholders.
Also amusing – but not at all unexpected – were all the things the EA book didn’t decide to include as part of their 25 year history, stories I suspect they aren’t tripping over themselves to include in a second edition.
Like the class action lawsuits brought by artists and programmers at EA for outrageous 100-hour work weeks with no overtime, which EA settled to tune of about 30 million dollars.
Or the smothering of any real competition to their yearly sports franchises by locking up exclusive licenses to the NFL (to be fair, an accessory to this crime) and the CLC.
Or the aggressive moves it’s made to buy out competition like Ubisoft (a move Ubi’s CEO described as a “hostile act”) and Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar.
Or the long list of developers it’s snapped up over the years, only to put in a nice aquarium and never feed until they’re found curled up dead one day in a bone-dry water dish – like Bullfrog (Populous) and Origin (the Ultima series) – or individual titles sent to die thanks to zero marketing, like Oddworld Inhabitants’ Stranger’s Wrath (one of the proverbial best games you’ve never played).
Or its sanitizing of the EA Wikipedia entry.
Or even their latest PR fiasco, the announcement that they would sell players additional weapons for the upcoming Battlefield: Bad Company via microtransactions (fleshing out Riccitiello’s "Above all, I'm trying to bring great quality and innovation back . . . I'm also trying to drive us towards a variety of new business models, whether it be subscription or micro-transactions, or advertising-based” remark with a concrete example).
Luckily, gamers and the press flared up over that last stunt, so EA… well, restated their position and tried to make it seem all okay, and the gaming press dutifully dropped it (good job, all you Woodwards and Bernsteins).
It’s ridiculous, and borderline insane. The only world in which EA could be the most successful video game company is one where Wal-Mart could be the most successful discount department store, or McDonald’s could be the most successful fast food restaurant, or Olive Garden was considered real Italian, or…
Oh wait.
Fuck.
Comments
As an engine of capitalism and commerce they are indeed as big a piece of shit as the rest. The thing is, from time to time, they've published some pretty stellar games.
I thought SSX3 was one of the best games to come out for the entire run of the PS2 and I've got about thirty friends who agree. Rockband is their puppy, a game that not only lets people appreciate music they would otherwise never listen to but is also perhaps the best family game ever made. Crysis is pushing the technical boundries of games like no other. They got Battlefield, they got The Sims. More recently they put out Skate and Army of Two, both of which are surprisingly decent games. Dude, they even put out M.U.L.E. How can you not give props to the company that put out M.U.L.E.? Are you dead inside man? Dead like a dead whore who died doing deadly drugs? I didn't think so, you couldn't be.
Maybe it's the way I'm wired, I tend to cut Nazis a bit of slack because - yes while they're terrible, I know - they had these SWEET Hugo Boss designed officer uniforms and the Luger is so fine a handgun it radiates a palpable sense of smug evil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Arty08.jpg
(When the attachments over-shadow the gun itself you are on to something, something deliciously... German!)
So with EA we have to take the good with the bad. You're right, their head office is crammed to the brim with souless assholes, but they helmed some truly great games.
P.S.: I can't wait to get my hands on Spore and neither can you.
Posted 04/15/2008 at 09:09:39 AMIt sucks for the EA employees... but if I'm not getting paid OT for beyond my hired hours... by gum I get a new job.
Posted 04/19/2008 at 12:18:28 AM