ALL YOU GAMES ARE BELONG TO US

ALL YOU GAMES ARE BELONG TO US

 

When I first started gaming (lets just when the N64 was released), I liked EA. What wasn’t to like? They ushered in a new digital era for football, which tended to be a strong selling point for most consoles. And at the time I was just basically into sports games. Football, baseball, and even soccer were among my favorites to play. Like any young person, I continued to buy their games. And why wouldn’t I? 989 sports couldn’t do any better, which made EA the cream of the crop! All was good……

 

When I first bought my first copy of Madden on the PS2, I was excited. Next Gen graphics plus one of my favorite sports! Oh Boy! I was also excited the next year…and the next…… wait a minute. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that Madden was more like an extremely retarded version of Everquest. Instead of a monthly fee, Madden made you pay a yearly $50 dollar fee, in which the game was slightly “updated”, but the rosters had changed! And maybe some new uniforms or stadiums! Soon I began to wonder if there was life outside of Madden. Then it happened.

 

I had always heard rumors of this “2K” sports franchise, and that they had made a few football games. Pfft, what were they thinking? EA’s Madden was far superior…right? That’s when NFL 2K5 came out. I was tired of paying Madden’s yearly fees. I was bored with the same interface and physics year after year. Those reason, coupled with NFL 2K5’s $20 price tag, made me jump ship. I bought the game, put in the disk, and began playing. And lo’, did I play. Hours upon hours! New interface, different physics, using the analog stick to call hot routes for your receivers, John Madden not blaring football cliché’s through my speakers. I was having FUN playing a football game again. Not to say that their wasn’t room for improvement, but surely this would be a solid platform to launch years of great football games that rivaled Madden. And just when I was hopeful…Darkness came…

 

EA made a multiyear deal with the NFL….the specifics didn’t matter….only EA…could make football….no more 2K series….BLACKNESS

 

Well, it wasn’t all bad. I had since broadened my horizons to things like RPGs and FPS and the like. Surely, my life would be free of EA tyranny from now on.

 

Thursday October 11, 2007. Headlines read: EA Buys Bioware, Pandemic. Mass Effect…Mercenaries 2…when does it END!

So, now we know EA’s model for business. We can’t create franchises that are worth a damn anymore, so we need to buy them. Buy everyone. You know, I didn’t know George Steinbrenner owned the New York Yankees AND Electronic Arts. When does this all stop? Instead of taking a short cut to being # 1 again, why don’t you do it the way you should? You’ve already bought up enough developers to be churning out hits every other month. Yet you don’t. Why is that? Because you squeeze every drop of originality out of development teams by putting them on tiresome work schedules. You hit them with deadlines that are impossible to make. You take out all the creativity and add something quite your own, which is usually to make the most appealing games and game franchises stale. So, what happens now? Does Bioware get the chance to refine the next RPG they make? Or will you tarnish another company’s legacy just to maintain your own? Have you already cracked your whips to make sure that Mercenaries 3 will be hot on the heals of Mercenaries 2? Sooner or later gamers will figure you out. Not just the hardcore gamers, but the “everyday gamer”. Someday your Madden Tournaments will loose their luster, because everyone loves using that one play where a receiver streaks down the middle of the field, and the safety blows his coverage EVERY TIME. Someday, your broke ass model of business will bring you exactly what you want: You’ll be the only company that makes games on any and all systems available. Maybe then you’ll realize that the only thing you really need to make great games is the one thing that you’ve been trying to destroy this whole time….

Competition

As if to prove my point