Support NeoGAF

[Rodney McKay]

Neogaf Nerd buttrage at it's finest.

I can't wait to see the seething "fanboy" rage here when Titanfall drops, or better yet... Dragon Age 3

Start putting out good, bug-free, customer-friendly games and maybe EA won't have as much "fanboy buttrage" aimed at it as it has the last year or two. It's really that simple.

Titanfall has already failed at being 100% consumer-friendly due to its needless console exclusivity, and DA3 has pretty strong competition from Witcher 3 in the open-world fantasy genre (at least quality-wise, Dragon Age is probably the stronger brand and admittedly more likely to sell more just from that).

 

[A Serious Man]

I hope they get their shit together. Battlefield and the NHL series consume a large amount of my leisure time.

 

[GECK]

Worst Gaming Company.. Far from the worst company in the world.

Freeeeeeeedom Industries

 

[Yakkity]

I still haven't forgiven them for DPaint V

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

Not sure why people still but EA games. probably the easiest thing to boycott.

A couple of million WiiU owners already have!

 

[paperboywriter]

This is a couple years old at this point http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtHzLt3C_z0

 

[Marvel]

I don't like EA but they have Mass Effect and Dragon Age

 

[Aaron]

That is a great OP.

Considering how they did this year, I'm amazed they are doing as well as they are. I guess you can fuck up a lot of stuff when you have Madden and FIFA to carry you. Battlefield 4 did sell well but had a lot of issues.

Madden was also shit last year, but doesn't matter when you're the only game in town.

 

[IvorB]

Why are people trying to hate on EA for making an exclusive for Xbone (Titanfall)? What is wrong with that?

 

[IvorB]

Besides a general distaste for 3rd party exclusives I think the problem is the way this happened, i.e. that EA made the decision for Respawn, see the tweet in OP. I don't think people take that as a reason to "hate" EA though, but it's a bit unfortunate.

Well they are the publisher are they not? It is their remit to decide on what platforms the game releases.

For all this online hate I would bet my bottom dollar that Battlefield 5 will sell just as normal. I would love to be proven wrong. Online hate is easy; missing out on something you enjoy for your principles is the hard part.

 

[Fuz]

First world gamer problems.

I still can't believe EA won worst company in america what? 2 years running? Shows just how out of touch, disconnected and how little "gamers" care about real life problems. These problems don't even outweigh sweat shops that some american companies use but hey.. Not our problem, right? Fuck those guys, i want to play my video game!

This.

Worst videogame company, maybe.

Besides, nobody forces people to buy their crap. Boycott. Vote with your wallets.

 

[thewhitehawk]

I don't like EA but they have Mass Effect and Dragon Age

To me, at this point in time, those franchises and some others are carcasses of what they used to be. There is still talent and still the shine of promise of what those games used to bring, but the amount of crud that EA puts between that and the user has grown too big and wide for my taste.

I own two copies of Mass Effect 1 and 2 each, one copy of Dragon Age Origins and one copy of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2, and even Star Wars the Old Republic which I made an effort to love, but ultimately wasn't able to beyond the point where the main storyline ended.

EA's focus at providing the best production-value product comes at the cost of intrusive micro-transactions, shoddy business practices, distrust and misdirection of their dedicated, and talented, employees and rushed game releases of broken products which may, or not, end up being fixed depending on how good the product sells at full price, basically an expensive early-access.

They are simply not aligned with my interests as a consumer anymore. They want to turn every special franchise they had into a mass-appeal microtransaction-filled grey sludge that ultimately might look and play a bit differently but in practice serves little more than a mechanism to further exploit consumers. Games are being sold as products, at product prices, but are ultimately being turned into services where you are nickel-and-dimed for every little addition. For the cheats, bonuses and easter-eggs of yesteryears.

I simply can not muster any longer to see this gross mistreatment of consumers and I feel sorry for the talented people that work at EA. But for as so long as they, or other publishers, pursue this direction, I will not purchase their products.

 

[sackferret]

Best EA games I've ever played.

The reason they're so good? A NeoGAF user, Dreamwriter, worked on the games and said why in a RTTP thread:

Me I gotta tell you, we had a LOT of fun making the two GBC games, best time in my career (followed by the worst time in my career with the GBA Azkaban...) The publisher didn't really pay attention to our games, they were only concerned with the console and GBA versions, so we were able to do almost whatever we wanted without interference. Every once in a while we'd show them progress, they'd say "We didn't think the GBC could do this, keep up the good work". Because of that, the GBC games were closer to the books than any of the other ports, where they weren't allowed to put it in if it wasn't in the movies.

The reason The Prisoner of Azkaban was the worst time in his career?

We were micromanaged to death by the publisher on that one. They specifically asked for the GBC Potter team to make that game, and we designed our dream game, taking everything we learned from Chamber of Secrets and amping it way up, taking full advantage of the powerful new hardware. To be honest, we over-designed it, to be sure, but still, without interference we could have made a really kick-ass game. But the publisher didn't trust us to make quality GBA art, seeing as we had come from GBC development. To make a long story short, halfway through production they made us throwaway all the existing background art, replacing it with a new style they came up with, and because the background art changed, we had to change our sprite art to match, and now all the scripting had to be redone, since backgrounds and characters were different sizes/shapes from before. With only half the time to now make a full game, we had to cut many, many features, and to release it as a decent game we had to work crunch mode for the rest of the project, including weekends and holidays, while the publisher had reps in our office micromanaging it all. Not fun.

Fucking EA.

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

People should stop buying their fucking games then, or they won't learn. Their sales continue to grow, don't they? What the hell is going on if that is the case.

I can proudly say that I haven't bought an EA game in the last 10 years iirc.

 

[Neuromancer]

Add this to the list, OP:

Earlier this week it was revealed that EA paid YouTube producers to say good things about Battlefield 4 when it launched, and to hold off any criticism until November 29th — a month after release.

EA paid out $200,000 to these YouTube producers, many of whom have over a million subscribers. While it’s understandable that the YouTube content makers deserve to earn money for their work, they did no disclose that they were paid to say nice things about Battlefield 4.

After the reveal that EA sponsored these videos, the company released a statement where they specifically said that YouTube producers must follow FTC guidelines and disclose that the content is sponsored. But very few, if any of the big-time YouTube producers did that.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=757568&page=1

A very strong showing for EA this year. Congratulations.