Electronic Arts vs. Creativity: At the end of the day, everyone is screwed up

Electronic Arts vs. Creativity

I could get a lot of applause here from some quarters if I stood here and wrote "Electronic Arts is the worst company that has ever existed and every manager there should be tarred and feathered out of town!".

Yes, hating Electronic Arts has been in vogue in recent years - actually for a long time - including multiple awards as the worst company in the USA as part of the annual ridicule prize.

Table of contents

1 Good will as a means to an end 2 Studio corpses pave your way 3 How to make yourself a villain 4 Happy developers are good developers? Nobody could know! 5 Learning from the mistakes of others, I don't want to go that far. EA, the worst company ever? That is massively too exaggerated, and you don't even have to use weapons manufacturers or medication lobbyists for comparison. Despite all the criticism, EA has also done a lot of things right, published good games, helped indie teams gain attention they would otherwise never have received and apparently treated them very decently.

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Good will as a means to an end

That much is clear: Electronic Arts is not your friend, like every company you want to earn money - only for this reason seemingly selfless decisions are made. A good reputation brings good money, and popular figures such as Nintendo or (until recently) CD Projekt Red act no differently.

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Electronic Arts vs. Creativity: In the end, everyone is screwed up (5) Source: PC Games Electronic Arts has taken this path for a long time not disputed. Sure, players were spoiled with goodies and games that were interesting for them. Quite early on, however, they made a reputation for themselves as "the publisher who closes studios", often those who had developed popular series and had only recently been bought up by EA.

Westwood Studios, the makers of Command & Conquer? Bought in 1998, the lights went out in 2002. Maxis, the ladies and gentlemen behind SimCity? The curtain fell in 2015. Pandemic, the team behind the first Star Wars battlefront titles? 2009 was over, it was nice with you. And of course Visceral Games, who made a name for themselves with Dead Space and then worked on a Star Wars action adventure until they stopped doing that in 2017.

Studio corpses pave his way

Electronic Arts vs. Creativity: At the end of the day, everyone is spoiled. (2) Source: EA And that was just a selection, you and me also remember Bullfrog Productions, Black Box Games, Dreamworks Interactive or Mythic Entertainment - rests in peace.

I am sure that in many cases the closings were inevitable or at least justified, but often enough pure calculation with a view to short-term profit. At the latest Visceral Games then caused absolute incomprehension among players. Just ditching the teams of beloved games like that is not only a pretty lousy move for waiting fans, but also, and above all, for the employees.

And what else? EA announced games to be canceled soon afterwards, managed to release only a handful of Star Wars games in eight years of exclusive rights, not all of them great, sidelined promising titles from other manufacturers such as Star Wars 1313, messed up the beloved series like Dungeon Keeper and Command & Conquer into unnecessary cashgrab mobile games, turned out to be one of the biggest culprits when it comes to real money content in full price games and other microtransactions and, and, and.

So yes: You have already worked hard on your bad reputation.

How to make yourself a villain

This strategy, which is designed to maximize profits quickly, cannot last long, because ultimately the most important capital is paying, satisfied Player, and that a title like Star Wars Battlefront 2 was a financial disappointment when it was released by expectations speaks volumes.

Well, hunger Even then, EA would not have had to gnaw if this strategy had simply been continued, FIFA and Co. would have taken care of that, and - again with a view to FIFA and its aggressive paid content - the company is still no model boy. But yes, a change is noticeable.

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Electronic Arts finally wants its studios to decide on their own!

Publisher EA would like to give its internal studios even more freedom when it comes to brainstorming and developing new games. var lstExcludedArticleTicker = '1367729,1368113,1367849,1367600'; Electronic Arts vs. Creativity: At the end of the day, everyone is spoiled not wanting something like that ". And all that without any microtransactions! The same thing with Star Wars: Squadrons, and big is now mentioned for every title if it doesn't try to riot the players. This is a transparent strategy that should show "we're the good guys now!", But I'm still happy when something changes for the better.

Happy developers are good developers? Nobody could know!

Electronic Arts vs. Creativity: At the end of the day, everyone is screwed up (3) Source: PC Games Hardware And now the big insight and the reason why I wrote this column: All of a sudden EA realizes that it's not good To urge studios to develop developments that are not suited to them and to squeeze in hated game elements for the devil.

Who could have guessed that?

Dragon Age 4 is now allowed to do without multiplayer and live Service elements are created, all internal teams are given more decision-making power in their projects: Now studios are free to decide what they want to work on. Not directly said, but I hope it implies: Some studios that are extremely traditional in some cases will no longer be closed if a few billion euros in savings have to be made at the end of the financial year.

Whether all of this will be enough to It remains to be seen whether this large-scale change in behavior will eventually bring milking cows like FIFA on board and free them from their customer-unfriendly design.

Recommended editorial content On this one You can find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration. The realization that creativity and quality cannot flourish when absolutely every aspect of development is regulated to death is a valuable one. Likewise, and this is my hope, goes hand in hand with showing greater consideration for the welfare of the employees. The fact that at Bioware employees were sometimes tortured to the limit of their nervous resilience, that crunch was standard and that apparent efficiency was paramount, must no longer be accepted.

Learning from the mistakes of others

Electronic Arts vs. Creativity: In the end, everyone is screwed up (4) Source: Bioware Now the time has come, I say the sentence with which I will finally get the verbal headbutt from many readers: I hope that many other manufacturers and Studios at Electronic Arts take an example, so this new behavior has substance and is not just a nice memory in three months. The Activisions and Blizzards, Ubisofts and how they are not all called in this world would do well to think further than until the next investor meeting. Then you can build something that will endure and at the same time refrain from being seen as the devil who has descended on earth - is not the worst either.

Ultimately, destructive financial thinking simply destroys everything - the The joy of the players, the quality of life of the developers, the success and reputation of the manufacturers. And if all of this can be avoided by simply acting morally and humanely, there is no excuse to behave differently.

Am I naive with my point of view? Maybe - but sometimes it's just really good to believe that something can get better.

How do you see that? Do you share my point of view? Tell me in the comments!