Wild Goose Chase on Privateer

No, the rumor wasn't in the game. Like I said, a buddy of mine just told me he found it one day but couldn't remember where, and since his dad worked on the WC games at Origin, and I was like 14, I bought it hook, line and sinker.
 
Chris Reid said:
That's too much of a simplification. There's a wide range of space between platinum sellers and wastes of money. EA (or more specifically, it's pre EA Games subsidiaries to a larger extent) used to play the spectrum quite a bit. If you control costs, make a good game and market it well, it's not going to be a financial mistake. And once in a while you'll have a surprise hit that multiplies your investment to a significant degree. These days it's quite apparent EA is far more interested in the proven blockbusters, sports titles, movie licenses and so on, for a variety of reasons. They could make Privateer 3 right now, make it a decent game and make a decent amount of profit on it. But they don't think it would be a million seller. The last few years for EA have been partly about building a reputation for making platinum selling titles. Their stock price, marketing image and so on reflects this. This provides them leverage in getting the licenses to additional franchises and capital for acquiring other developers. Right now EA is the biggest and best third party game publisher in many ways, but in so doing they no longer make a lot of games that their old subsidiaries would have been happy to produce were they on their own.
Click to expand...

Now THAT was my point. Nowadays EA doesn't even care about selling games for the moeny thay make directly from that, stock markets are a lot more importants... so if the sell a bazillion identical Madden games year after year, they can barely recoup the investment with the sales, because the stocks will raise due to the good numbers and so they'll be richer.

And there were always great developers who did their games because they LIKED them, not because of sheer profitability (which came as an added reward).

I disagree with people that say "EA killed WC" because they funded most of the WC games. BUT it's public domain nowadays how bad the treat their employees, and that they do a lot of stupid stuff with the companies they bought. No more Origin, no more Westwood, no more Maxis...
 
One could argue EA is doing bad business by treating both employers and custumers poorly. Fans of games from Origin, Maxis and Bullfrog are not really happy with EA.

But they are making money. And that's the only feedback required on this business.
 
Unfortunatelly for them, it is pretty common that decisions which are profitable on the short run end up killing the company on the long run.
 
The problem is that when they go down and take things we like with them. Like what happened to Microprose, which became Hasbro which became Infogrames which became Atari and now we have NO support or files for the Microprose games.
 
I think that the dialogue with the Confeds explians partly whey there are no jump lines out of the sector: they say "your profile's cleared to sector's edge." The implication is that your profile is NOT clear outside of the sector. Maybe you need a license to operate in each sector, and the jump lines between sectors are strictly controlled by Confed, unlike the easily-used jump lines within sectors. The freighter that gave you a lift TO the Gemini system had the proper paperwork to operate in Gemini, Shoel, and whatever sectors were between them. You, however, do not, so even though there are jump lines out of Gemini, you can't navigate them yourself 'cuz confed won't let you.

NOTE: this does not imply that I think that EA/Origin thought this was the case. It's just a plausible-sounding bit of BS that could put minds at ease about how you got to Gemini on that freighter if there are no jump lines.
 
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