EA Set To Layoff +500 Employees?

Taldren said:
You have a twisted perspective of things.

From the WIKI:
In 1997, they released one of the earliest and most successful graphical MMORPGs, Ultima Online. After this title, Electronic Arts decided that Origin would become an online-only company after the completion of Ultima IX in 1999. However, within a year's time, in part due to Ultima IX's poor reception,[4] EA canceled all of Origin's new development projects, including Ultima Online 2, Privateer Online, and Harry Potter Online.

Due to one poor performer they killed UO2 and my beloved Privateer Online. Yeah, they killed the company.
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Ok so what I am taking from that is this

1992 EA owned the company
Crickets for 5 years, no life ruining there
1997 They made this awesome game called Ultima online!!! Hooray
1999 They made a shit game
EA said fuck you guys

Happens all the time, but then again I never played any games by that company. If you see a lot of those people went on to do great things and some still are producing shitty games. (like this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack)
 
SkribbelKat said:
Have you ever tried using Origin's tech suppoort?

I have for a SIMS 2 expansion that wouldn't work with Double Deluxe. It seemed like EA somehow managed to find every tech support horror story, bleed them all of their worst attributes, distill the goop into a solid form, and then mold it into the basic template for their live chat service. What's worse is that this problem exists across multiple technicians as I found out over the course of several weeks' messing with the expansion that still doesn't work and hasn't been refunded.
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Have you tried Blizzards?

I was on hold with them for 77 minutes. Every time I have tried to call I have been on hold for more than an hour.
 
Hornet said:
IIRC, Gabe Newell for the first to talked about the idea of fans financing the development of video games, and I think many of us including me thought that was a crazy idea back then. But now just look at the success of Kickstarter. Hell I participated in Wasteland 2 myself.
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I participated in the Takedown Kickstarter myself, but frankly it has yet to be seen how worthwhile these ventures are, since so far nothing has actually come of them. It's too early to say whether or not the concept will pay off or not.

I will say, though, that the concept of fan-funded games is exciting to me, and honestly I think so far the point of doing that is to get games made that would not be picked up by mainstream developers in the first place. I don't want to see fan-funded CoD or crap like that, I want to see games that appeal to a higher caliber of PC gamers specifically.
 
MavericK96 said:
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I hadn't seen that ad, thanks Dan. Holy crap, they are spinning that comment to make it sound like the game and the ending is awesome. How much more misleading can you get?
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Please tell me they aren't referring to Metacritic user reviews, or reviews from no-name blog sites.
 
AmberClad said:
Please tell me they aren't referring to Metacritic user reviews, or reviews from no-name blog sites.
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Specifically they quote an article on Entertainment Weekly. Though without any context. That site actually has a few Mass Effect 3 articles. One of which calls those disatisfied with the ending a bunch of entitled whiners who can't appreciate art and have crappy taste.
 
Dan_D said:
Companies don't need EA to make shitty games. But their demands which have been a subject of industry reporting for years incidates that the company places exceedingly high demands and short development cycles on developers. They are almost a game development sweat shop. Speed takes priority over quality. Yeah, a lot of people move on from a company in 10 years, but it's only been 2 years since Mass Effect 2 was released and we've seen a huge drop in quality with regard to some aspects of Mass Effect 3. Dragon Age 2 was almost universally regarded as shit. It just seems odd to me that BioWare has always been regarded as having made almost all excellent games for over a decade and then within a couple years of acquisition by EA, now they are producing shit.
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Part of your argument is subjective. I personally thought Mass Effect 2 wasn't a great game. In fact I enjoyed 3 more even with its complaints. 3 felt like a bigger game and it has an awesome mulitplayer. Even with the missions that feel rehased (insert science base/random NPC you will never meet again) it is a better game in my opinion.

2 while having great characters suffered from the last 2 hours being completely anti climatic.

I think the problem with Bioware is 10 years ago they had better employees. Because of the scale of the games maybe Bioware hired some dipshits. Think about this scenario.

Drew Karphsyn (lead) writes the first game with only like a handful of writers, now the 2nd and 3rd ones are written with a bigger panel. He gets pissed because no one likes his ideas and leaves.

Instead people would like to believe that EA tainted his blood and he was forced to work under 80 hour work weeks which broke down the composition of his body.

Sure EA might be a sweat shop, but what person today isn't working 60 hours or over time just to keep their job. This isn't an EA problem, it is an industry problem. People now are willing to work longer hours for less pay.
 
Dan_D said:
Specifically they quote an article on Entertainment Weekly. Though without any context. That site actually has a few Mass Effect 3 articles. One of which calls those disatisfied with the ending a bunch of entitled whiners who can't appreciate art and have crappy taste.
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I think he was referring to the "75 perfect reviews" thing.
 
MavericK96 said:
I think he was referring to the "75 perfect reviews" thing.
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I know. Who knows where they got all those numbers. Hell IGN down plays just how bad the ending is and gives the game overall high scores. Most game reviews don't even mention the ending other than to say what BioWare and EA says about it being; "polarizing" and other nonsense things.
 
About the "75 perfect reviews" thing:

Based on Metacritic, there may be 75+ "professional" reviews that are perfect listed. That said, that is ONLY if you combine the scores from all platforms, and on Metacritic many of the reviews are listed multiple times from the same site for different consoles. For instance, Game Informer has 100/100 reviews listed under all three major platforms, so my guess is that they are including those as three separate reviews instead of one as it really should be. Grossly disingenuous to say the least.
 
I don't understand this:

People are upset that game review sites are down playing an ending? They arent being objective? Did you guys see Yahtzee's review?

He rips on every game and still downplayed the ending.

We live in an era where user reviews are easy to research on Metacritic/Amazon etc. There you will find a lot of people who give the game a one star.

The game is great even with the shitty ending. Lots of games have shitty endings? Would I sign a ME3 petition for a shitty ending? Sure I would, but I would sign the Syndicate/Deus EX HR one a hell of a lot faster than the ME3 one.
 
roaf85 said:
I don't understand this:

People are upset that game review sites are down playing an ending? They arent being objective? Did you guys see Yahtzee's review?

He rips on every game and still downplayed the ending.

We live in an era where user reviews are easy to research on Metacritic/Amazon etc. There you will find a lot of people who give the game a one star.

The game is great even with the shitty ending. Lots of games have shitty endings? Would I sign a ME3 petition for a shitty ending? Sure I would, but I would sign the Syndicate/Deus EX HR one a hell of a lot faster than the ME3 one.
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I think the main issue with ME3's ending being shitty was that a lot of people who were really into the series played through two other games to finally reach the conclusion that should have been epically crafted in ME3. It's like playing 100+ hours of games only to wind up with a meaningless and in many cases absurd conclusion. It's not so much of a big deal when a stand-alone title has a shitty ending, but when it's part of an ongoing, cumulative effort over three titles, it has a lot more impact. Plus, just the fact that the overall quality of the other two games and like 95% of ME3 was so much better than the crap ending everyone got is part of what made it confusing and infuriating.
 
MavericK96 said:
I think the main issue with ME3's ending being shitty was that a lot of people who were really into the series played through two other games to finally reach the conclusion that should have been epically crafted in ME3. It's like playing 100+ hours of games only to wind up with a meaningless and in many cases absurd conclusion. It's not so much of a big deal when a stand-alone title has a shitty ending, but when it's part of an ongoing, cumulative effort over three titles, it has a lot more impact. Plus, just the fact that the overall quality of the other two games and like 95% of ME3 was so much better than the crap ending everyone got is part of what made it confusing and infuriating.
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Yea I get that. I understand that and really I can understand if someone doesn't agree with my logic because I think about a lot of what you said even when typing my response.

I guess I thought in terms of ending yea it was shitty the way that they tied things up and it not being different in nature. I think a lot of the issue was here you have a series that can be played maybe 3 or 4 different ways, but to have a different ending for each path could it have been done?

Yea I mean it was done in Deus Ex, but how good was it? So you get the copy cat endings and there is a shit storm.

I get that, but I guess I was satisfied with certain parts of the ending, they felt epic to me etc. Basically everything up to the part people were pissed with, but even if the game ended right there and it went to a black screen I would have been more satisfied with it than anything I played in the last few years.

Maybe I have been playing shitty games, but the endings to things like Syndicate/Deus Ex/Mass Effect 2/ have pretty much been subpar in my book.
 
roaf85 said:
I guess I thought in terms of ending yea it was shitty the way that they tied things up and it not being different in nature. I think a lot of the issue was here you have a series that can be played maybe 3 or 4 different ways, but to have a different ending for each path could it have been done?
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Honestly, I think it would be awesome if they made a game where halfway or so through the game your path branches out into 3-4 different directions and the game is completely different depending on which you choose. I really think that would provide much better replay value than these current games where 99% of the game is the exact same regardless and then at the end you hit one of three or four switches/buttons/choices/whatever.

Just like the BBB claim about ME3's marketing, it's incredibly misleading to make claims like "your decisions completely change the game" when in reality it has almost nothing to do with gameplay and everything to do with which 2 minute cutscene you see at the end.
 
And I agree with you that the Deus Ex: HR ending was pretty mediocre. However, the game itself was excellent and there is replay value in that you can play the game completely stealth or completely assault or any way in-between, which does change a lot of how you approach different missions, and could even bring you to locations you didn't see the first time around.
 
This is off topic and I know I dont want to appear stupid, but did the edit button go away? All I see now is the multi quote.
 
MavericK96 said:
And I agree with you that the Deus Ex: HR ending was pretty mediocre. However, the game itself was excellent and there is replay value in that you can play the game completely stealth or completely assault or any way in-between, which does change a lot of how you approach different missions, and could even bring you to locations you didn't see the first time around.
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You could replace the Deus Ex: HR thing with ME3 and get the same results. For example when I had a conversation the other day with coworkers I found out that practically everything about their play through of ME3 was different than mine.
 
MavericK96 said:
Honestly, I think it would be awesome if they made a game where halfway or so through the game your path branches out into 3-4 different directions and the game is completely different depending on which you choose. I really think that would provide much better replay value than these current games where 99% of the game is the exact same regardless and then at the end you hit one of three or four switches/buttons/choices/whatever.

Just like the BBB claim about ME3's marketing, it's incredibly misleading to make claims like "your decisions completely change the game" when in reality it has almost nothing to do with gameplay and everything to do with which 2 minute cutscene you see at the end.
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Like House of the Dead :)
 
roaf85 said:
You could replace the Deus Ex: HR thing with ME3 and get the same results. For example when I had a conversation the other day with coworkers I found out that practically everything about their play through of ME3 was different than mine.
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Again, though, DX;HR was not the end result of a three-game expanse of gameplay.
 
roaf85 said:
Why are you guys all pissed at Origin? If EA put shit on Steam, Steam would probably want 7 percent. EA publishes a lot of games so it makes sense in a free market for them to say:

"ok fuck this we will pay the upfront cost, but we are putting games out there on a download service made by us to not have to pay someone else 7 percent per download"

It makes perfect sense to me.
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I have no problem with them wanting to make money. Lets be fair put it on Steam and Origin and have the Steam price be 107% of the Origin price. I would pay that extra 7% to have it on Steam. But they won't do that.
 
JayteeBates said:
I have no problem with them wanting to make money. Lets be fair put it on Steam and Origin and have the Steam price be 107% of the Origin price. I would pay that extra 7% to have it on Steam. But they won't do that.
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That won't happen. As much as you want to buy it for 107 percent of the cost no one would want to do that.

You would have games ring in at like 63.99 on steam and Amazon and all other retailers selling you a key to activate against origin for 59.99 would have to explain why there is 2 places for their digital downloads and how they have different price points.
 
They're also screwing up their on-line games. There's a ton of people on pogo.com that are pissed they're messing up the games - where you can't get them to load. There's also issues with billing, and non-existent customer service.

My wife and daughters are cancelling. At $40 subscriptions, plus extras, I'm sure this isn't helping EA's bottom line either.
 
MavericK96 said:
Again, though, DX;HR was not the end result of a three-game expanse of gameplay.
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I mean just the ME3 game itself. Or you could say ME2 as well. My point is the same with ME2 or ME3 people have vastly different play throughs even just the games by themselves.
 
Monkey34 said:
They're also screwing up their on-line games. There's a ton of people on pogo.com that are pissed they're messing up the games - where you can't get them to load. There's also issues with billing, and non-existent customer service.

My wife and daughters are cancelling. At $40 subscriptions, plus extras, I'm sure this isn't helping EA's bottom line either.
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Same issues with all the people through out the years who said they were quitting WoW. The issue with TOR is that it sucks.
 
roaf85 said:
I mean just the ME3 game itself. Or you could say ME2 as well. My point is the same with ME2 or ME3 people have vastly different play throughs even just the games by themselves.
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I suppose, although it seems to me that regardless of how you play Mass Effect, the missions are all pretty linear and, although you can choose if you want to go full assault or tech or whatever, the missions all just consist of moving from one room to another very linearly while killing enemies along the way. In DX:HR you don't even have to kill any enemies at all, and there are a ton of hidden areas that you may never even see on the first playthrough. With Mass Effect I've never really felt that's the case. Mass Effect's differences in playthrough tend to be in the dialogue choices you make more than anything.
 
roaf85 said:
That won't happen. As much as you want to buy it for 107 percent of the cost no one would want to do that.

You would have games ring in at like 63.99 on steam and Amazon and all other retailers selling you a key to activate against origin for 59.99 would have to explain why there is 2 places for their digital downloads and how they have different price points.
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And why is that a problem? Its digital distribution, the capital expense for filling a distribution channel with 2 different versions is negligible.. barring some kind of terms from Steam. We probably can't know the nature of those terms without some kind of contract breach on somebody's end, but lets just assume there aren't. Is managing 2 or 4 (maybe if you count collector's edition) SKU's on 2 different digital download services all that difficult? Of course not. No, this isn't about shit being "confusing" because there would be multiple prices, I think putting "steam edition" and charging $5 more for it is pretty damn straightforward. this is about arrogant companies like EA thinking their shit doesn't stink and shoving it down the throats of consumers.
 
EA getting smaller... I am happy as can be. hurry up and die this time

i dont like people losing their jobs because execs mad them do crappy games, but i also simply hate EA more for lowering the bar for game studios and consumers.
 
beowulf7 said:
It looks like EA is taking action for winning the "Worst Company of 2012" award by consumerist.com. :D
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i like how EA said they would just keep making award winning games after winning the golden turd award from the consumerist...

to EA: you mean those rewards you get from gaming magazines before the game even exists. Those rewards you get based only off concept art and how much EA has bribed you in some way... THOSE REWARDS?
 
EDIT: Game of the year awards for games that come out 2 years after the fact ...

THOSE LAUGHABLE rewards.......... sigh
 
I didn't have a problem with Origin or EA until they released BF3. So looked forward to playing a killer game that it still is really. EA just totally ignored hacking and cheats in game but burdened us with Origin to make sure we didn't cheat them!
 
Maybe people are losing interest in games that are intentionally incomplete, and being charged for the content, seems to be the model EA have been using since 2009.
 
EA Stinks they make a lot of their best games origin exclusive rather than allowing steam a larger and more popular platform to make money too. They are anti-competitive and treat their workers like crap. They release games before they are done and they need over half a dozen patches.

Why do you think that EA is one of the most hated companies out there?:eek:
 
I bought the BF3 Limited edition DVD disc and it installs with origin, So either way you lose. but the limited edition costs the same and if you cna find it . then you don;t have to shell out another $15 for DLC. Which is BS.
 
thekipper said:
Please, please free up the NFL and NCAA licenses.....
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x2, they did the same thing with the Porsche license with The Run and now that the game bombed, they freed it up, but it's gonna cost us $15 to add the porsche DLC to Forza 4, bastards!!!
 
(what happened to the edit button?)
....I already paid for the season pass, so screw Porsche and EA needs to fire their executives and marketing department, not the grunt employees, another douchbag move IMO
 
MavericK96 said:
I participated in the Takedown Kickstarter myself, but frankly it has yet to be seen how worthwhile these ventures are, since so far nothing has actually come of them. It's too early to say whether or not the concept will pay off or not.
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The Wasteland 2 goal achieved party was streamed tonight on Twitch TV, I'm happy for them, but I'm really hoping they don't disappoint. Money has the power to corrupt and close to 3 million dollars can make even the best intentions turn sour. Maybe thats just the skeptic in me, but I still donated $20, so only time will tell.
 
I'm hoping this means that they won't have enough money to pay the NFL/NCAA for exclusivity.
 
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