EA (Electronic Arts)

[Maximilian]

I hate EA more than any other developer/publisher for wrecking c&c, simcity and a few other of my favourite franchises, not to mention a good chunk of their games are copy/paste garbage from last year.

But recently they seem to have improved, dead space was awesome, a really good game, survival horror done right for 2008. The awesome monsters, good storyline, and all the little things like the blue line telling you where to go, it dosent shorten the game any either its a long game. I cant fault it tbh its excellent, resident evil 5 was trash by comparison. Also the sims 3 is amazing... the sims 1 was amazing too i was really into it but i never liked the sims 2, it ran poorly on my machine, never improved much with an even better machine, i just didnt take to it. The sims 3 though im hooked on it, its really well done and runs great on my lousy 8600mGT at decent settings. I gather that the sims 3 had nothing to do with maxis either so thats pretty amazing. EA made it on their own, just like they made dead space on their own. I would mention mass effect as well but im pretty sure it was mostly completed when EA bought bioware so really EA didnt have enough time to assert themselves and wreck it, mass effect 2 will show how EA is treating bioware.

I still dont like them for ruining my other fav franchises but i cant fault those two games, theyre very good which from EA is turn up for the books. So do you guys think theyre improving?

 

[Beev]

To be honest, as far as I'm concerned they tarnished their reputation with me far too much to ever, ever recover from it. EA is and always will be trash to me, and it's their own fault.

 

[mmnno]

Of course they're getting better, this has been known for a couple years. Spore hurt their comeback, but that was Will Wright's fault not EA's, and at least it was a commercial success.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: mmnno
Of course they're getting better, this has been known for a couple years. Spore hurt their comeback, but that was Will Wright's fault not EA's, and at least it was a commercial success.

It might be a commercial success, but it didn't do as well as expected, and they ended up laying off employees.

 

[videogames101]

Getting better?


lulz.

 

[DaveSimmons]

The Mass Effect port was better than the Bioware console version, I give them credit for that.

 

[Liet]

Huh? Dead Space was a good game, but you had to toggle V-Sync in order for the mouse to move at a speed faster than , and the mouse/kb input was run through analog controller code. That is NOT what I call a good release.

Good game, but a REALLY rough port to PC, and I'm willing to bet that EA is responsible.

 

[Qbah]

Maximilian saying good things about EA? :shocked:

Anyway, never had a problem with them myself. With the amount of games they're pushing out, there are a few gems Dead Space to name one. I liked Crysis a lot too. Not to mention by buying Bioware they've made sure at least some of their upcoming games will be epic The new NFS looks wicked too ! Can't wait.

EDIT: Post number 888 ! Almost evil

 

[coloumb]

Their automated email system wished me a happy birthday along with a 25% discount code of the purchase price of their software - that's better than last year's birthday greeting.

 

[Sylvanas]

Why I hate EA? They destroyed the following: Westwood, Bullfrog, Simcity, Spore, Need for Speed and many more if I thought about it. They produce the following: Shitty sport games that clone the previous year and put 09 infront of the name, Console port garbage that doesn't work properly, 99.9% of EA games are mass produced suck. Why I hate them currently: Buying Bioware (Bioware make the games not EA so don't get it confused- EA still makes crap).

Apart from that it's ok.

 

[jlchoi]

I'm with Sylvanas on this one. They've come to dominate the game industry by buying out the good companies and have them churn out less than worthy games (Command and Conquer, Sims, all their sports franchises).

 

[Phynaz]

Originally posted by: Beev
To be honest, as far as I'm concerned they tarnished their reputation with me far too much to ever, ever recover from it. EA is and always will be trash to me, and it's their own fault.

You will miss some great games then.

 

[destrekor]

I dunno.

I'm just hoping Need for Speed: Shift, isn't an epic train-wreck of a failure.
All this hype of it being a sim at it's core is leaving me with so much expectations, and I know I'm going to be massively let down.

A lot of the interviews and whatnot have hyped it as a sim racer that has arcade appeal, and with driving aids to make it accessible to fans of arcade racers. I think I also read it's absolutely necessary to drive with a wheel if not using any aids. Here's to hoping using no aids results in a simulation experience. It'd be amazing to have the visuals and sense of speed and adrenaline that the presentation delivers, coupled with a hardcore sim experience. All the best sims just don't look that great.

 

[EvilComputer92]

Why I hate EA? They destroyed the following: Westwood, Bullfrog, Simcity, Spore, Need for Speed and many more if I thought about it

I agree with all of those except Westwood. Westwood had already screwed itself over by the time EA bought them. The best games they made were Command and Conquer and Red Alert, which were both masterpieces. Somewhere along the line they got this genius idea that the RA universe is some kind of campy joke, and RA2 was a joke as a result. Tiberian Sun was Ok but nothing like the originals.

Also I like how no one ever mentions Soul Survivor when talking about Westwood because of what a total mess it was. Also Westwood is now Petroglyph, responsible for such totally awful titles like Universe at War. They were on a downhill trend even before EA bought them. At least EA did CNC3 right.

 

[Zenoth]

It's a big company, the biggest right now I think? It's easy to hate the big names, but I as well have a "legitimate" reason to hate them, and that's when they bought/merged Westwood Studios with their Pacific Studios in Los Angeles, which ended up in half (more or less) of its staff resigning and going on with their on wings to try out development under a new name, Petroglyph Games (Empire at War and Universe at War). When that happened I started to perceive EA very differently, since I never had any gripes with them before that move. I still didn't really "hate" them after Westwood pretty much went the way of the Dodo, but I didn't smile about it at all. What hurt me the most after that fiasco was how bad they simply treated their consumers in general, and the amounts of problems I had when I bought Battlefield 2 (during the first week of its release). I installed the game (DVD version), and then it kept on telling me that there was no game disc detected. I contacted SecuROM, they gave me instructions, I followed them, they never worked. I then contacted EA to ask them if they would accept to send me a new copy if I would send them the one I owned in exchange, and they refused. I ended up cracking it and playing off-line for about a month until a mini-image of it was released which I used to finally be able to play on-line since the original executable wasn't cracked anymore and I didn't need a DVD in the drive. We're now here four years later with a 1.5 patch which FINALLY removes the damn disc check.

And... well, there's many other reasons which I myself have experienced first-hand, so I'm not going to fall in the "FUD" of "let's hate a big company", since there ARE real reasons to point at and pinch the guys at EA whenever they do something seemingly stupid for us gamers, there's of course business reasons behind certain decisions which we will never get, as they may think. But sometimes I do wonder if, for instance, Westwood wouldn't have been bought, they would have really made a better continuation of the C&C franchise than EA managed to do? Really? I mean if I look at Red Alert and Red Alert 2, obviously the original is better (I'm speaking for myself here), but I must say that I did enjoyed RA3, it wasn't mind-blowingly better than RA2, but it wasn't really far from that. Also, if I look at Empire at War, a game made by half of the original C&C staff, it's a decent game, I own it, I play it from time to time, but it's much better than Universe at War which feels very cheap, has serious balancing issues, and receives absolutely no more support anymore from them, they (Petroglyph) act pretty much like any big name developers right now, they make a game, make one or two patches (generally speaking) and then they move on to a new project within a period of one or two years and they literally abandon their previous title to the wastes, suck it down.

Then when things like that happen I wonder if Westwood wouldn't just have turned out in just "another EA" had it not been bought/merged, or if it happened exactly due to that and them being so as a direct consequence to what EA has done to the gaming industry in general, as if they (EA) were literally fading themselves on others, like a chain reaction of "let's treat our consumers like the sheep they are". I don't know for sure, it's just my perception on things, but as much as I would want to see EA disappear, I wouldn't want them to stop entirely at making games. To be honest I don't think that the real problem are the developers themselves, I think it's just the industry "model", the way business works, and of course the infamous (or famous, depending on which side of the medal you're on) greed of money and the desire of making front pages and interviews and paying professional reviewers so that they start their review with "this game is the best game I've played since the past decade" and letting them giving perfect scores. And, as a final note, I would like to point out that other companies than EA also destroyed some franchises around, or simply poured bad games on us like a cold shower since it wasn't necessarily predictable. I for one wouldn't have thought that Ubisoft, for instance, would be able to make such a bad game as FarCry 2, but they did. And I wouldn't have thought that a company like Bethesda could decanoize (I just made this one up) the Fallout universe, and I certainly wouldn't have expected a company like Valve to do what they've done with L4D2 and the obvious failure of episodic content... but it all happened, although all of that is still over-shadowed by EA's mishaps for many.

 

[mmntech]

I enjoyed Mirror's Edge and Sim City 4. Both excellent titles.

EA has suffered the same fate that most big companies do. They become bureaucratic. There's no centralized top-management running these companies anymore, just a bunch of robotic middle-managers who couldn't make decisions if their lives depended on it. That's why most of EA's products end up as rubbish. These companies aren't shooting for prestige or progressing the art. They're totally dependent on volume sales for titles that can be churned out quickly. It's why there's a new Madden every year. No risks to take. The games become so watered down in the approval process. I think EA really hurt themselves with Spore though. For years they've gotten away with scapegoating others for their problems. Low sales being the result of piracy & overly harsh reviewers rather than poor quality. That might work fine for niche markets such as us gamers, who put up with the abuse just to sink our teeth into something new. The general public didn't react too kindly though. I'm not sure how the Spore lawsuit is progressing. I haven't heard anything about it since it was announced. The case was pretty strong against EA. They middle-managers insist on doing everything by the book but unfortunately the public doesn't have access to that book.

 

[Dumac]

I don't hate EA. However, I don't buy most of their products.

I did buy Mirror's Edge and Dead Space. I also have my eye are Brutal Legend. These are all majorly console games, however.

I think that the last EA game for PC I bought was Spore, but that was a major disappointment.

As far as companies to hate, I dislike Activision and LucasArts more than EA, really.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I stopped buying after BF2 and how unplayable it was for the longest time.

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
But sometimes I do wonder if, for instance, Westwood wouldn't have been bought, they would have really made a better continuation of the C&C franchise than EA managed to do? Really? I mean if I look at Red Alert and Red Alert 2, obviously the original is better (I'm speaking for myself here), but I must say that I did enjoyed RA3, it wasn't mind-blowingly better than RA2, but it wasn't really far from that.

I think EA's C&C3 was much better than anything Westwood would have made. As EvilComputer said, Westwood's track record became very hit-or-miss after the original Red Alert. RA2 and Firestorm were probably their high points. TS was not a bad game but a disappointment on many levels, as they removed many of the planned features and it had fallen behind other RTSs of the time like TA. The RA expansion packs got mixed reviews too, and then you had total crap like Sole Survivor. Dune 2000 was supposed to be a poor game as well, although I never played that. Petroglyph's games have apparently continued this trend as well.

That being said, EA hasn't had a great record with the series after C&C3. I thought KW and RA3 were fairly disappointing in comparison, and C&C4 seems to be an RTT game with the C&C name added on.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: CP5670

Originally posted by: Zenoth
But sometimes I do wonder if, for instance, Westwood wouldn't have been bought, they would have really made a better continuation of the C&C franchise than EA managed to do? Really? I mean if I look at Red Alert and Red Alert 2, obviously the original is better (I'm speaking for myself here), but I must say that I did enjoyed RA3, it wasn't mind-blowingly better than RA2, but it wasn't really far from that.

I think EA's C&C3 was much better than anything Westwood would have made. As EvilComputer said, Westwood's track record became very hit-or-miss after the original Red Alert. RA2 and Firestorm were probably their high points. TS was not a bad game but a disappointment on many levels, as they removed many of the planned features and it had fallen behind other RTSs of the time like TA. The RA expansion packs got mixed reviews too, and then you had total crap like Sole Survivor. Dune 2000 was supposed to be a poor game as well, although I never played that. Petroglyph's games have apparently continued this trend as well.

That being said, EA hasn't had a great record with the series after C&C3. I thought KW and RA3 were fairly disappointing in comparison, and C&C4 seems to be an RTT game with the C&C name added on.

Not sure here...

Dune 2, C&C and RA1 were the glory days. RA1 expansions were fun, adding some crazy twists to an already great game.

Dune 2000 was poor. Tiberian Sun was good followed by Firestorm which was excellent. RA2 was probably my favourite since Dune 2 and the expansion was cooky but fun.

If my memory serves me well, Renegade was being worked on by Westwood when EA bought them out and despite its average storyline and mediocre reviews, it was a superb multiplayer game and heavily underrated.

I found C&C3, Kanes Wrath and RA3 to be pale imitations of their superior brethren and severely lacking in comparison to more modern day titles (CoH, DoW1/2)

C&C4... well, EA seem to have taken the story from the Red Alert series and spliced it into the Tiberium Wars series. The story was almost a complete joke in C&C3 and from the Directors Cut trailer C&C4 seems to have just ran over it with a coach, steamrollered it and put it through a confetti machine. That being said, I have not skipped a C&C or expansion since I missed C&C: Covert Operations so it will probably get my money when it is bargain basement.

Besides this, EA hasn't done much to hurt me. Bullfrog and a few of the older games developers I knew and loved were swallowed up. I was never there early enough to catch the Need For Speed series... Underground was my first and it has been pretty good from there. U1 and U2 were good fun, Most Wanted was great, Carbon was "ok" and Pro Street terrible, I have not played Undercover but that sounds totally crap too.

EA are pretty much the spawn of the devil... but they do produce some gems for which they do not receive enough praise.

 

[Beev]

Originally posted by: Phynaz

Originally posted by: Beev
To be honest, as far as I'm concerned they tarnished their reputation with me far too much to ever, ever recover from it. EA is and always will be trash to me, and it's their own fault.

You will miss some great games then.

Haven't missed a single one yet. They actually have something good on the horizon? *scoff*

 

[BassBomb]

The games that they don't develop are usually the better ones

like Orange Box, Crysis

 

[Beev]

And those I just buy on Steam, thus giving them no money

 

[Modelworks]

NO

Let me think about it though.

NO

 

[Golgatha]

Sure, their stock price is around $18.50 a share and it used to be around the $50-$60 range. Glad to see them have less influence on the games market, so yes, I would say they are a better company because the current trend is more towards bankruptcy than it has been for quite some time. Glad to see them reaping what they sow.