EA's Bad Business

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One of the first steps in understanding the gaming industry is knowing the players. I remember when I first began to recognize certain developers as sure signs of a game's quality, and, in part, it has been through the development of that knowledge that my understanding of the industry has grown.

Electronic Arts is one of the best known and most vilified publishers making games today. Within the gaming industry and the gaming community there is no company which is regarded with greater scorn and outrage. And yet, in spite of being named "Worst Company in America" by The Consumerist in 2012, Electronic Arts has not found itself being pushed out of the market by conscientious consumers. In fact, they have continued to grow into one of the industry's largest publishers.

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I find  myself to be one of those disgruntled by their business practices. Rather than elude to that displeasure with snarky gibes, I will directly rant about some of what I find unappealing.

When I say that customer service is not a focus of the company, I do not mean to point at anecdotal evidence posted anonymously to web forums. What I do mean is that the company is clearly more focused on pleasing their investors than their customers. I am a firm believer in good customer service. It is important that business be conducted between people and that those people feel a personal obligation to be good to one another. The best business decision is often not the best human decision, but gains in social well-being have a better kind of value than simple profit. EA's propensity to think with their wallet has, time and again, raised the ire of the gaming community.

Take their recent release, Titanfall, for example. The game was sold for top dollar and, meanwhile, EA tried to snag $20 dollars more of pure profit by offering a "Digital Deluxe Edition" which included a "Season Pass" to future and, as yet, unannounced downloadable content packages. This meant, essentially, paying EA more money in order to receive absolutely nothing of value in return. Anyone who has stayed awake in a basic accounting class has an understanding of the time-value of money, but let me explain it quickly here. The time-value of money is the basic principle to explain why $20 today is worth more than $20 dollars a year from now. In short, it's better to have money right now than it is to have money at some future time. By selling something they haven't made yet, EA can cash in on quick profits and then squeeze the most value-for-dollar out of the deal while the consumer is left without recourse. To make matters worse, the "digital" part of the "Digital Deluxe Edition" means that there is no physical hardware to produce or ship, they merely lend you the pleasure of downloading the software from their servers at the cost of just fractions of a penny.

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Now, as an investor, if you see a company selling a product for top dollar plus a premium while only spending a few cents to take that product to market, you see a pretty savvy investment. The fact that EA has the wealth to run large-scale advertising campaigns means that, when paired with a great developer, they can bring a pretty good game to massive popularity. And when you've done your research and found out that that company sells millions and millions of copies of its product, well, let's just say you go shopping for a bigger wallet.  As a consumer, on the other hand, you see yourself being treated like a child's piggy bank--heartlessly smashed and taken for every last cent you own.

But EA have found even more devious ways to hide fees and charges in their products. They take parts of the game and hide them behind paywalls and in pre-order exclusives. Look at Star Wars: The Old Republic, if you'd like an example. The myriad ways in which the game is locked down for those "free-to-players" to whom the game is advertised is frankly astonishing. I have found myself disgusted on multiple occasions by the nooks and crannies which the game gouges the player for (or, rather, the payer). On the one hand, if you are a subscriber to SWTOR, the game is brilliant. On the other hand, if you want to try the game before you buy into it, you'll leave with only a taste of what could have been. It has created a lose-lose scenario where there needn't be one; the player loses out on what truly could be an immersive, exciting experience, and the game makers lose out on a possible subscription. And if you're still not convinced, look at Mass Effect 3. An entire character is missing from the game for those not willing to cough up their cash early--and he's one of the most interesting characters you'll encounter across the three titles (currently) in the franchise.

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EA is beholden to their shareholders before their customers. They make decisions on that line even when it means pushing a product into the market before it is ready and in spite of the desires of the artists crafting that product. They take the art away from their artists. They change the development goals to suit their marketing strategies.  EA acquires intellectual property assets and makes drastic changes, betraying the desires of the fans. Regardless, it is these fans to whom the title will be marketed and EA reaps the benefit of their highly desirable word-of-mouth advertising. They restrict digital transactions through their PC game platform, Origin, which has been found to have dubious tracking software that surveys the user's online activity. And one more thing, they don't make single player games anymore--everything is online, everything is multiplayer, and nothing feels connected to the innovation and experimentation that has brought the gaming industry to where it is today.

And yet, in spite of all of this, I do not completely hate the company. In an industry which is growing as fast as the gaming industry has been, and within worlds of "good guys" and "bad guys", there will always be a villain. There will always be something, somewhere, cashing in on the growth for all that it's worth. EA, for all their indecent practices, is a legitimizing force in the gaming industry. Pushing sequel after sequel, unoriginal idea after unoriginal idea, puts games on the same plane as Hollywood movies. It means the market is not starving, is not shrinking, and is impossible to ignore. It puts controllers in the hands of the young and the old alike and, whatever their opinion, it makes them acknowledge the medium--and that means legitimacy, which is something mere dollars cannot buy.

So, the moral of the story is this. Let EA make games for everyone else. Let them sell Mom and Dad on the latest VR system. Let them rot the brains of the young with flashy images. Let them be the villain, and while they are busy raking in their money, keep your eyes open for the heroes. Focus the power of your own entertainment budget on the companies, games, and most of all on the people who deserve it. It isn't easy, finding games worth your time and money, but that's why I make these posts. That's what this blog is here for--to bring you the games you won't find on your own, that you won't see advertised on television or in ads of Facebook. I'm looking for the diamonds in the rough, and if you are, too, then I'm sure we can find something worth putting the power of our dollars behind.

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Titanfall Beta Impressions

I was lucky enough to have the chance to play in Titanfall's multiplayer beta test this past weekend. The game's developers, Respawn Entertainment,are up against high expectations with their first game. The game studio formed in 2010 after Infinity Ward (makers of Call of Duty) fired Jason West and Vince Zampella (one of the Infinity's co-founders) for "breach of contract and insubordination".  Following the age-old playground tradition, Zampella and West started their own game--that's Titanfall, a game with a chip on its shoulder.

If you were doin' the Duty before it was just "cod", you know that the folks at Infinity Ward have had some pretty great ideas over the years. Besides being the "The Spiritual Successor to Call of Duty", Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall is an FPS made of equal parts speed and high-explosive. That's a recipe for disaster if the game isn't balanced, but, from what I've played, Titanfall is expertly balanced.

I had a great time playing the game. Multiplayer was exciting, challenging, and everything else a triple-A FPS title should be.  6v6 matches were just right for the maps and kept spawning players away from danger but never too far from action. AI-controlled "grunts" are absolutely a revelation to a genre which has stagnated as big names like Call of Duty and Battlefield begin to feel like are being manufactured on an assembly line. The constant presence of enemy targets keeps snipers sniping and CQB ninjas checking their corners.Their impact in the game has less to do with points and more to do with the experience of playing the game. Pointjockeys will still be better off hunting Titans than peppering the cannon fodder, but a players won't be able to ignore them, either.

Whether on foot or in a Titan, the matches maintained a sense of pace. Messages popping in from tacticians as well as chatter from the grunts filled the environments with a sense of purpose and kept up the pressure. Beyond filling the maps with action, AI grunts provide a thrilling contrast to real players, who in turn feel more like formidable opponents in a single-player mission. And, overall, the battles can feel like they are  on a large scale like in Battlefield 4 or Planetside 2 but with fewer players and on much smaller maps.

Besides the AI component, Titanfall's matches feel more like real battles because they have an ending. An epilogue sequence after the final points are scored brings closure to each match in addition to providing the opportunity to finish that last kill or rack some extra experience points. The effect that these additions have on making the multiplayer feel more like a narrative is astonishing. Titanfall is the best game I have played at making me feel like both  the single and multiplayer components belong in the story.

But there are still things keeping me from buying this game. For one thing, it's published by EA and will be played (on PC) through Origin. I really do not like the way EA behaves in the gaming industry, so giving them more of my money is something I try to avoid whenever I can. Still, the game looks and feels like a $60 game and I will have a hard time not buying it. 

Personal grudges aside, Titanfall is something of a fusion between Star Wars Battlefront and Call of Duty, but with much more from Call of Duty. Calling in Titans makes you tough and a tough-target for everyone on the battlefield, and I was reminded of spawning as a Jedi in Star Wars Battlefront, but the game looks like Call of Duty in so many ways. The menus, the challenges,  and the loadouts are all distinctly reminiscent of CoD, and I spent a good deal of time with them as there was more than a minute of waiting time between each match. I do feel that having a lengthy break after each match contributed to longer playing sessions, but it also gave me plenty of time to get distracted. 

There are still two things I want to hear about this game before I'm sold on it. One, that the single-player story is significant and worthwhile and, two, that the game has a powerful soundtrack. I realize that soundtracks aren't usually selling points on games in this generation, but, from what I've played so far, I feel it would be an unjustified shame if Titanfall didn't have some incredible music to accompany its stunning visuals--there's just something so evocative about a huge, flaming mech...

Finally, here's a great video from Rev3Games including Adam Sessler, Vince Zampella, and some gameplay video. It gets particularly good around 10 minutes in.