[MP-Ryan]

There's also the matter that many good studios have been gobbled up by EA, but continue to be generally good studios.  BioWare (Edmonton, at least) continues to make generally if not exceptionally good games, and I'm not about to punish local employees who turn out products I've enjoyed playing - despite some flaws - because their studio happened to get swallowed by a douchebag publisher.

And for that matter, despite all the hate it got, I've arguably spent more time in MEA's coop than ME3's.  Both have flaws, but the fact that I kept playing them means they were generally fun, which is why I generally buy games in the first place.

[Turambar]

I got the impression that Bioware was already declining by ME2, with the important writing talent having left.

Also, I don't understand how you can place the blame on Maxis for the end of Sim City.  If EA wasnt their overlord, they never would have gone for the misguided idea of an 'online' sim city, which is what forced the tiny map sizes and oversimplified gameplay.  This was back when EA was putting multiplayer on EVERYTHING even if it had no business having multiplayer.

[0rph3u5]

Anyone else think this discussion would be improved by a little Cliché Phrases Bingo, or is it just me?

[SamVision]

Whoa why did you make this a thread? I was drunk and just blurted out my feelings. I still don't plan to support Anthem, but to each their own.

[General Battuta]

I got the impression that Bioware was already declining by ME2, with the important writing talent having left.

Patrick Weekes is still at Bioware. Karpyshyn was always bad, and I'm guessing you don't know who Chris L'etoile is or what he did.

I doubt EA did SimCity Last any favors, but the Glassbox engine was 100% Maxis' idea, which forced the tiny map sizes and oversimplified gameplay.

It's so easy to point to bad things EA has done I don't know why you need to make up new ones.

[Rogue Assassin04]

Well... EA destroyed Criterion Games (Which made NFS HP2010, NFS MW2012, Burnout, Black) which used the efficient Chameleon Engine, which was way better than the FrostBite 4 (the standard engine of theirs for *all* the games, originally derived from Battlefield series)

The Chameleon Engine had so much potential for NFS series, while it took Black Box studios a lot of time to make the Tank Handling code to a Car Handling code. This caused a lot of time to develop NFS The Run (2011) which marked the end of Black Box Studios.

The NFS MW2012 actually had a story mode and cutscenes where the old characters would re-emerge and make big impact in the story, but then EA didnt give them the full time, and they launched a Multiplayer only NFS MW2012.

The Link:
http://needforspeedtheories.boards.net/thread/1485/mw2012-thread

[Phantom Hoover]

"This game would be full of fantastic content if the greedy publishers hadn't made them push it out early" is a take you should always be sceptical of after Star Citizen.

[MP-Ryan]

Whoa why did you make this a thread? I was drunk and just blurted out my feelings. I still don't plan to support Anthem, but to each their own.

Because your comment spawned a bunch of others, so it got split.

[Rhymes]

What I don't get is why EA is so fixed on Frostbite being the engine for everything going forward--it's an engine for big badass Battlefield games, not for RPGs or whatever else EA wants to make today.

[General Battuta]

What I don't get is why EA is so fixed on Frostbite being the engine for everything going forward--it's an engine for big badass Battlefield games, not for RPGs or whatever else EA wants to make today.

AFAICT it's entirely because they own it.

[Buckshee Rounds]

"This game would be full of fantastic content if the greedy publishers hadn't made them push it out early" is a take you should always be sceptical of after Star Citizen.

I got Wing Commander 3 for free on Origin and I can't remember why. Still to play it. They also gave away free games to anyone that preordered Sim City, which I wasted by picking Dead Space 3, but which was at least a AAA game.

Anecdotal I know, but it's certainly an example of decidedly non-evil behaviour. I get that they're relentlessly monetising their games and setting some bad precedents for the industry, but it seems like they're a symptom of a wider problem.

If anything the mobile games industry is way way ****tier.

[Phantom Hoover]

Well they gave you free games because they needed to undercut Steam to get a toehold in the games market, and free is a very competitive price point. Here are the respects in which both sides in this thread are right:

— EA is a horrible company that has **** up a lot of good franchises and studios by pushing them into a hyper-aggressive, big-budget big-monetisation business model. (They also treat their workers much, much worse than the consumers but this is standard across the entire industry.)

— Refusing to buy EA games, even good ones, on that basis is pointless, will effect no change and is basically just internet posturing. Telling other people to do the same is very obnoxious.

[deathspeed]

I had no idea Titanfall 2 had dropped so much.  Yes, I gave EA my money, probably for the first time since BF3.  I no longer pre-order games or pay more than $20.

And yes, EA is evil from a consumer standpoint.  So is Activision, who was my favorite publisher of Atari 2600 games.  So is almost any other company answering to shareholders.  These companies are not friends of their customers.

I forgot where I was going with this.  But i have a new game to play in a few hours when the download completes!

[General Battuta]

The consumer outrage against Battlefront 2 did seem to make a difference, and one the whole industry noticed. That’s good.

At the same time EA also published Titanfall 2 which had incredibly unobtrusive MTX and tons of free content. So it’s not purely publisher determined.

My biggest grudge against EA is for killing Dead Space.

[starbug]

Whats EA done now? I know they have been recently cancelling games left, right and center that are still in development. Can't remember the last EA game i got, think it was ME Andromeda. Which wasn't a bad game, just not a Mass Effect game. My biggest grudge is for killing the Dead Space series, changing it into an action co-op game for the 3rd one ruined it. Its meant to be horror not action. Also the mishandling of the Command and Conquer series.

Also for canceling KotOR 3. I have just actually watched a vid on BIOWARE and EA, regarding SW. It turns out that Bioware have tried a couple of times to do KoTOR 3 and each time EA has refused.

[Aesaar]

The outrage at hearing a game got cancelled always amuses me.  As if there's no possible way a cancelled game could be cancelled because it wasn't going to be good.  No, no, games are only ever cancelled because publishers hate good games.

[Grizzly]

Materialistically speaking: all EA is doing by cancelling games is declining themselves a chance to get your money.

Also materialistically speaking: Freespace 2 was a mistake. It absolutely failed in what it was created to do, which is make money for Interplay. Yet here we are.

[Det. Bullock]

The outrage at hearing a game got cancelled always amuses me.  As if there's no possible way a cancelled game could be cancelled because it wasn't going to be good.  No, no, games are only ever cancelled because publishers hate good games.

Sometimes, but Bioware has been a tried and true developer of single player narrative games for a while, it's kind of difficult to think a new KOTOR made by them would be bad so there must be some other reasoning behind EA's refusal and given that they seem to focus on games with a multiplayer component it's perfectly possible they fell into trends, first multiplayer as something that's needed to sell the game to everyone and later as an excuse to cram in microtransactions and later on lootboxes.
Of course it could also be that the Old Republic period came under veto from Lucasfilm because they want to make movies or cartoons set there sooner or later, who the hell knows.

[Turambar]

'Bioware' not being able to make KOTOR despite wanting to make KOTOR is among the many signs that make me think that Bioware doesn't exist anymore, and is just another part of the tumor on gaming that is EA.

[jr2]

Materialistically speaking: all EA is doing by cancelling games is declining themselves a chance to get your money.

Also materialistically speaking: Freespace 2 was a mistake. It absolutely failed in what it was created to do, which is make money for Interplay. Yet here we are.

I mean, putting aside the fact that they borrowed AMD's marketing department for FreeSpace 2...