Pick Your Upgrade Path (October 29, 2005)
- Thread starter ChrisReid
- Start date
Edfilho
Cry some more!
Mace said:
Well, I don't know if most home pcs are that "good". There are lots of junk pcs around. Especially around here. But people are stupid. the refuse to buy a DVD-ROM drive for less than what game costs. And publishers insist on making games on CD-ROM, even though it increases their manufaturing costs a lot. Heck, they really pushed for the CD-ROM standard back then, why not do it now?
BTW, EA was good for WC in the 90's. Even though most of the WC universe was published thanks to them (and their huge budgets), that doesn't mean we must love them forever. After they got the UO fever and started cancelling WC games, things were not pretty at all for Wc fans.We simply cannot sing praises to the current EA.
The EA we know today is not such a great company. Their currrent ethos, ethics and practices are really bad news. I really hope that the "alternative" american football games do well at the counter.
I also hope EA fail at taking Ubi over. even tohugh ubi can also milk a franchise, they publish some very good games.
Maj.Striker
Swabbie
Banned
Hmm, I don't know. I don't dislike EA's 800 lb gorilla mentality in the game market because that's natural for them to want to be in control, and I am appreciative of what they've done for Wing commander in the past and, if they ever were to focus on it again, I would probably have no complaints against EA today. 
As it is, my major gripe against them would be that they've allowed a perfectly good franchise such as WC go to waste. Now, I understand that the market for space sims collapsed back around Freespace 2 but there are plenty of other avenues open for EA to make use of the WC license. As much as FPS can be a bore, a WC marine story could potentially be a great new way to take the franchise. But I digress...
Mr. Unregistered claims to know EA employees...he hasn't named one. I'll name one that I know, Carter Edgerton. Director of Creative Content for Electronic Arts. I've had a couple of conversations with him on the availability and potential uses of the Wing Commander franchise in a couple of different business ventures. Through our conferences I've learned that EA isn't opposed to revisiting the WC franchise in any variety of channels but so far their focus for the immediate future is on the xbox 360/PS3 and establishing the current franchises that they've already invested heavily in. If there were an independent game studio willing to develop a WC game, pay an upfront license fee as well as a percentage of the games profits then I think I could swing a deal provided we could put together a decent cost analysis. Now, I know, I may not be a handsome 27 year old with two master's degrees but I have done some high level negotiation with some of the higher powers of EA...none of them gave me the impression that they'd like to take over the world. Althought they certainly would like to beef up to maybe a 900 lb gorilla status. Top that, Unregistered.
As it is, my major gripe against them would be that they've allowed a perfectly good franchise such as WC go to waste. Now, I understand that the market for space sims collapsed back around Freespace 2 but there are plenty of other avenues open for EA to make use of the WC license. As much as FPS can be a bore, a WC marine story could potentially be a great new way to take the franchise. But I digress...Mr. Unregistered claims to know EA employees...he hasn't named one. I'll name one that I know, Carter Edgerton. Director of Creative Content for Electronic Arts. I've had a couple of conversations with him on the availability and potential uses of the Wing Commander franchise in a couple of different business ventures. Through our conferences I've learned that EA isn't opposed to revisiting the WC franchise in any variety of channels but so far their focus for the immediate future is on the xbox 360/PS3 and establishing the current franchises that they've already invested heavily in. If there were an independent game studio willing to develop a WC game, pay an upfront license fee as well as a percentage of the games profits then I think I could swing a deal provided we could put together a decent cost analysis. Now, I know, I may not be a handsome 27 year old with two master's degrees but I have done some high level negotiation with some of the higher powers of EA...none of them gave me the impression that they'd like to take over the world. Althought they certainly would like to beef up to maybe a 900 lb gorilla status. Top that, Unregistered.
ChrisReid
Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Edfilho said:
Well, EA is as different today in 2005 compared to 2000 as it was in 2000 compared to 1995. They made a lot of decisions over a couple year span that ended up costing a lot of money, getting nowhere and setting back multiple franchises. It's only been in the last year or two that they've really started to recognize why some things were big successes in the nineties. Focusing on their one successful mmo, Ultima, and reinvesting in series like Command & Conquer are good moves.
Edfilho said:
Madden 2006 is the best selling game of 2005 to date.
Mace
Vice Admiral
well, wing commander would not need a sequel but a full remake to make it's way back as a game. wing commander stands for space combat, and thus a marine-based 3d-shooter, to me, would seem out of place... and it has been too long to continue the original series WC(1990), WC2(1992), WC3(1994), WC4 (1996), and prophecy(1998), EA's target audience was still in dipers when WC1 was made, no matter how great the game, or it's universe is, it is too way-back for mainstream gamers....
AD
Finder of things, Doer of stuff
Mace said:
I don't think so. The game makers simply need to make sure they dont assume everyone is 100% familiar with the franchise. In fact, I think having the sense that all the characters that you are playing have a huge backstory that you could explore only opens up the franchise to new fans wanting to know more. You need to ease new players in by making them feel comfortable with what they know yet also include many "rewards" for those familiar with the series. I really can't see what would be gained by going back to square one with Blair and the WC1 plot.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
My complaint isn't so much that people hate EA in spite of what it's done for Wing Commander, it's that they hate EA because whatever their equivalent of Slashdot is told them to. There's too many exceptionally stupid people on the internet who are happy to repeat whatever they've heard is popular without thinking.
Heck, look at your own post.
UO didn't kill Wing Commander -- heck, UO kept Origin alive for years... and if any single product came close to having EA develop another Wing Commander, it was the success of Ultima Online (which spurred five bazillion attempts at Wing/Privateer Online).
And 'ethos'? Come off it -- EA is a company, its fundamental value is making money... just like every single other game developed in the universe. EA just happens to be very, very good at what it does... I'm not sure why success means you're evil or bad in 2005.
And how many 15 year olds love to play the new star wars games, years after the first in the series was publishes and decades after the first movie was made.
Two words: Michael. Moore. (and people like him)
Altough I've made my opinion of EA clear in some other threads 'round these parts, my real beef is with the current board of directors and CEO who don't have the backbone to try something new on a decent scale.
Edfilho
Cry some more!
ChrisReid said:
I agree that returning to C&C is good, but I don't know about UO. Ultima Odissey looked like a really good thing(c) but they kept UO on a rebreather machine for too long. Even Sony made EQ2. They should make a sequel or something.
Well, that really doesn't prove anything. I've seen several excellent games selling poorly - the latest example being the thorougly outstanding Psychonauts - while far inferior games sold very well - Madden games will sell very well no matter what is inside the box. I've seen some comparative reviews of Madden2k6 and NFL2k5, and the latter is REALLY better. But it sold less.ChrisReid said:
Bandit LOAF said:
And my complaint is that people will act like EA is perfect and benevolent, and thar it is a sin to complain about them. I do not base my dislike of EA's latest decisions on Slashdot or any other web site. Your generalization is not a good point to counter my argument. It may be true about many people, but hey, there are sony, intel and MS fanboys in the world, anything is possible.
Every single psot SO WC project was cancelled with the "we are diverting the resources to UO instead". After UO took off and WCSO was completed, EA got complacent and even coward (in relation to OSI's IP) and stopped investing on the other projects...Bandit LOAF said:
Bandit LOAF said:
Oh, so as long as you're in it for the money you are free of any constraints? Anything goes? Nothing is wrong or forbidden anymore?
Come on, everyone is interested on making profit, that doesn't mean you can act like a fucking Soprano without any reprieve. There are many ways of making money without buying and closing all competition. Monopolies are bad to us, remember?
Of course I know that success isn't bad, I'm not a fucking retard. But success is no redemption either. It doesn't mean ANYTHING in itself.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it? EA set out twice to make a UO sequel. In both cases, half-way through the project they suddenly realised that it may not be a good idea to make a game that directly competes with their most successful online game. I mean, I don't know if making a UO sequel is really a bad idea or not - I'm sure there's plenty of arguments for both sides. But I do find it damned hilarious that EA tried to make a UO sequel twice, and both times got second thoughts after pouring millions into the production, for the exact same reasons. You'd have thought once was enough....Edfilho said:
You're getting a bit self-righteous, don't you think? It's not like EA forces five-year old kids in Afghanistan to make its games, or sends squads of AK-47-carrying thugs to destroy its competition. You can complain about EA's practices, but you should be specific. This "EA is evil" and "monopolies are bad to us*" crap just doesn't cut it - you don't win an argument by being as vague and hyperbolic as possible, you win it by providing specific evidence, by presenting a concrete line of reasoning. You haven't done that.
The closest you've come to presenting any evidence of EA's horrible monopolistic practices is how it handled OSI in the late 1990s. There is, however, one extremely huge problem with this - this was an internal EA matter. This was an EA studio they crippled and ran into the ground. This certainly wasn't a case of an evil EA buying off a competitor and shutting them down - as an EA studio, Origin in the mid-1990s was given probably more money than any other EA studio. So, what does EA's handling of Origin post-UO tell us? It certainly doesn't tell us anything about EA's supposed monopolistic practices - if anything, it merely tells us that EA has made a shitload of mistakes. And while that's a reason to criticise them (and laugh at them!), it's certainly no reason to spew this hyperbole about EA acting "like a fucking Soprano without any reprieve".
* I'm not questioning the well-proven idea that monopolies are bad for the consumer. But I certainly am questioning the idea that EA is a monopoly merely because a few thousand people on the internet declared it so.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
You don't really know what you're talking about, though. They tried to develop "UO2" several times -- and each time market research showed that the only people they'd be competing with would be themselves. EA very correctly determined that there's a set user base for MMPRPGs, not an unlimited source of players -- this is something they *failed* to do with regards to Full Motion Video in games, and then crushed the market forever with Wing Commander IV. It's a very intelligent choice on their part. (Sony has discovered exactly this problem as it tried to expand its MMP base -- there are only so many people who'll play these games, and it's hard to justify multiple ten million dollar development runs for a user base you already have.)
As for 'replacing' UO, they tried - Origin developed an entirely new 3D client for Ultima Online. What was the result? People preferred - and still prefer! - the original 2D client. UO is on "life support" in that it's still profitable so they still release expansions for it - they're certainly not propping the game up beyond its means. (In fact, just believing that they would would seem to counter your own argument -- a company doesn't keep a game on 'life support' when it's making a profit.)
Actually, it proves exactly what you just demanded of it -- that the better game sell more copies. That was *your* requirement, not Chris'. If you think that the fact that a more expensive game that has been out for less time doesn't have *anything* to do with its quality, you're crazy.
The whole EA sports issue is such a non-argument -- in that the people who actually play these games don't complain about them. Slashdotians like to take the fact that EA releases a new football game each football season and complain about... well, horribly mindless crap... but the people who are buying a new football game each football season happily choose the EA brand.
A sin? If I were writing the internet bible, having generic populist opinions just for the same of having people to agree with you would certainly be on one of those stone tablets, yes.
First of all, no, it wasn't. There was no such announcement because no Wing Commander project after Secret Ops was ever announced. Second, you must know that even if a PR person said this (which they didn't), that it was a complete lie -- those "resources" were fired and sent to go work at Sony.
Third, you're misrepresenting the timeline -- UO took off well before Prophecy and Secret Ops came out. If anything, UO's grand success meant EA kept funding Origin through the development of these other games which the company *didn't* believe in - SO in particular, which was fashioned very much to find a new 'followup' to UO's incredible success (which, incidentally, was a brilliant risk on EA's part that unfortunately for us and them didn't take off).
You could have fooled me -- because here's that generic internet rant about monopolies. Well, here's a cold, hard truth: Electronic Arts isn't a monopoly. Electronic Arts will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be a monopoly, no matter how many times the kids on the cool part of the internet say so.
It will be competing with giant companies like Nintendo and Sony and Paramount and FOX and Microsoft until the end of time. And yes, it will buy small development houses. That's how, as this thread started, Wing Commander came to be what it is today. But you know what? If EA doesn't buy TinyCompanyCo, Nintendo, Sony, Paramount, FOX or Microsoft *will*. In all likelyhood, that's why the people who run TinyCompanyCo started the business in the first place -- to make money from such a sale. There's no loser there - everyone is doing exactly what they set out to do. Picking on EA - for personal reasons - when it's part of a giant system of similar companies upon which the entire industry is based is a poor, poor argument.
Edfilho
Cry some more!
Bandit LOAF said:
I know about the aborted UO2's. But the thing with market research is knowing which question to make. WoW has reached huge numbers of players, and a lot of those people probably didn't play MMORPGs before. MArketing management is in fact Demand management. You could just try to find some unknown demand and supply it, but nowadays the tendency is CREATING the damned demand. Sony actually managed to consolidate their user base with the Station Pass, but that probably cuts the profit a bit.
Anyway, if Blizzard bought these market researches that EA used, they wouldn't publish WoW. And there it is, a big success. These "oh, we already have all MMORPG players in our game, there isn't anyone else left" arguments are BULLSHIT in the present time. WOW, GW, CoH and to a certain extent FFXI proves them wrong. Mind you, these games all lack several features present in UO. a new and improved UO2, true to the original AND offering the new features presented in the newer contenders could be a success.
UO is in the "cash cow" stage of a product's life cycle, but it could go back to the "golden boy" stage. It has a bit of market share, but little to no growth potential. A new UO could enhance this.
Sincere question: How many people are still activelly playing UO? I'm really asking it, i wanna know.BANDIT Loaf said:
Anyway, IIRC the so called 3D client was REALLY bad. But that's not the point. If Origin didn't make Ultima 5 and 6, people would still be playing RPGs with stick figures and black backgrounds. They would tell you that stick figures and black backgrounds are great. There is no need to "upgrade". But BANG, OSI did it, people gnashed teeth, they complained and cried, and everybody loved u6 and u7.
Bandit LOAF said:
Eh? what? didn't get it. I was lamenting how inferior games sell very well while better games languish, while wishing that the opposite was true. I pointed that unfortunatelly the number of sold units is not a measure of quality. What is wrong with that?
Bandit LOAF said:
I disagree, I have seen several sports games fans complaining about EA. And again, I never read Slashdot at all. Care to provide some evidence that the only guys and gals who complain about Madden are EA haters?
The fact that MAdden is so established as THE american football game among the more casual sports-gaming onyl crowd is the reason why they didn't make a new engine since 2001. the game looks worse than the other competitors, and also plays worse. If EA had to work harder to make those people buy Madden, they wouldn't rest on their laurels so bad.
BTW, AFAIK, the situation is better in other sports genres. Fifa really has to impress people, given that Winning Eleven is so popular...
Bandit LOAF said:
Well, i seem to recall that kind of information, but as I possess no way of proving them, I won't press the point. Anyway, I was refering to resources in general (time, cash, people), not just personell.
Bandit LOAF said:
Even then, LOAF, overhead on UO's operation did continue to grow after the early success. And what did EA do with the people and money invested in WCOnline and Priv3 and etc after cancelling them? What other game did OSI have?
Well, I really question some of EA's decisions at the time. They could have been a bit bolder and supported some of these titles. Didn't they perform market research BEFORE commiting them into development? Was it really so necessary to cut the losses and write that investment off?
Bandit LOAF said:
EA is already the monopoly in NFL branded games... I wasn't refering to them as the Big Brother of ALL THE GAMING INDUSTRY. But they're getting closer to being the Microsoft of PC gaming. Their stake in Ubisoft is one of the evidence. Most of the other competitors are focusing on console gaming. And you have to understand that there are several different markets in gaming. Dance Dance Mario is not fighting with Shadow of the Colossus for the marketshare, and neither of the two are really competing with Battlefield2 for the PC.
And I don't know about the tinycompany example. It is one thing to be bought by 1990's EA and another to be bought by them now. Sure, all biggies buy the small ones. But EA is really the more aggressive predator here. For instance, MS seems to have settled down a bit. The only other company that seems comparable to EA today is Squareenix in Japan. And already they seem to be losing focus in their games and gameplay.
I'm no pink commie, loaf, I do think that free enterprise and profiting and all that is ok. I'm no idiotic angsty teenager ranting on the itahweb about how all corps are evil. But there is a reason why something like the SEC exist, and why stuff like the MS monopoly law suits happened. Sometimes some of those corps become... a little too greedy for their own good. No, actually it is too greedy to OUR own good. Corps aren't EVIL, but they sure as hell aren't NICE either.
I like to have option. I like the fact that I can pick between City of Heroes and WoW, or Splinter Cell and MGS, or maybe even play all of those. But if Ubi goes down or Sony fully consolidates the console (pardon the involuntary pun) market, some of these choices will disappear.
Maj.Striker
Swabbie
Banned
Eh...never have liked Madden. I preferred NFL Fever and NFL Blitz.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
The "station pass" is a specific reaction to the fact that no one was willing to subscribe to EverQuest, EverQuest 2 *and* Star Wars Galaxies (and whatever tripe they pick up from third parties going out of business -- Matrix Online, I think).
Worlds of Warcraft hasn't created a new user base, it's taken existing users (from Everquest in particular) -- it also had a launch in places that UO doesn't sell (Korea, particularly) that upped its user base.
... or kill the previous UO. And the people with business degrees who spend millions studying such things say that the latter is more likely. I'm not able to argue with them.
It's something like 250,000 people.
The 3D client isn't bad - it had the problem that all great Origin games had... the 'state of the art' computers when it came out weren't enough to play it properly. Modern users have a hard time accepting that, and it's a shame -- but it's great that EA still developed it that way.
It's great for game development, too -- adding little 3D objects is so much easier than rendering out thousands of bitmaps.
The problem is that it's the opposite of what you originally claimed, and it's demonstratively not an automatic fact that good games sell poorly and poor games sell well.
I don't know if you need a new football engine -- my understanding is that the only reason you release a new football game each year is because there's a new batch of players.
We certainly didn't need a new flight engine every year -- the original engine worked fine for five games, realspace worked great for another six... if EA had done 'WC6' in something other than Vision, we'd have made fun of them for it.
I would imagine, speaking only as someone who occasionally talks to people who play sports games, that you only need to develop a "new engine" when there's a new generation of consoles to port to. I'd expect a "new" Madden engine within the next year or so, for the Y-Box/GameSphere/PSXXX).
(And seriously, "since 2001"? That's such faulty logic, since the series has been around for... what, twenty plus years? They haven't made a new engine since... the last time they made a new engine! Shocking, Ed, just shocking.)
They used their time machine to re-collect the time used developing the cancelled products and then they planted six new money trees to make back the money they'd already spent.
Less stupid question next time, please.
They fired the people involved in Wing Commander Online and wrote off the money as a necessary loss to avoid competing with their own Earth and Beyond.
The fabled 'other game' developed by Origin was Harry Potter Online, but it didn't reuse any of the teams.
Market research means watching a million MMP games flounder in the early 00s -- which is exactly what happened. People released game after game after game after game *because* of UO that ended up failing horribly.
Purchasing a brand name doesn't make them a monopoly.
If you actually cared about that you'd have been bitching about how they had the "monopoly on Jane's brand games" for several years. Oooh, and hey, get this -- LucasArts has the *monopoly* on Star Wars games!
EA bought the NFL license... from the NFL. You, too, can buy a license from a corporation -- what corporations generally don't do is give their license to everyone for free. It's not some kind of amazing trick that EA has finally pulled.
The reason people start tiny gaming companies today is to make money selling to larger ones. Look at our gaming heroes -- both of them sold their companies out to larger ones before they'd even gone public that they had companies (Chris Roberts and Digital Anvil to AMD and Microsoft, Richard Garriott and Destination Games to NCSoft.)
EA isn't a 'predator' - it's not forcing companies to be sold to it... they're being created specifically because their owners would love to get rich by having them bought by an Electronic Arts or a Microsoft or an NCSoft. Heck, even Ubisoft can only be bought by EA (or anyone else) because they put themselves on the market to get money from stocks in the first place -- and it's a stupid example because, surprise surprise, it never actually happened.
You're applying broad American political philosophy to something very stupid and insignificant, though. The SEC doesn't exist to make sure you get the best value for your football dollar -- if the SEC were ever going to look into video games at all (and it won't) it would be because some kind of company had complete control over the entire industry... not control over a particular brand of a particular type of a particular genre of game.
So, EA is evil because the sky could fall tomorrow.
ChrisReid
Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Edfilho said:
It's actually pretty interesting how in the last year or two companies have started to create competing brands within their own libraries. Capcom's about to launch the Dead Rising zombie-franchise.. which will be completely unrelated to its successful Resident Evil franchise. Ubisoft has its Clancy games that cover the spectrum of military FPSes (Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell), and yet they're publishing the America's Army and Brothers in Arms series too. EA isn't grouping its Battlefields and Medals of Honor, nor their Burnouts and Need for Speeds. The market is big enough now that if EA had two competing space sims in production in 2006, it might just decide to go and release both of them.
t.c.cgi
Vice Admiral
Bandit LOAF said:
Well, I do know a lot of people who are playing WoW that have never even tried MMOs before. It has the advantage of having the name and theme of a popular non-MMO franchise, and likewise Blizzard's general following. I agree that the MMO market is relatively stagnant, but some have managed to pull in new blood.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Yes, but Blizzard pulled in new blood from its own blood bank - those people playing WoW that never played an MMO before are all Warcraft fans. Obviously, this works perfectly for Blizzard's Warcraft franchise... and just as obviously, it doesn't work for a franchise like Ultima, which doesn't put out any new products capable of attracting millions of new customers the way Warcraft games do.t.c.cgi said:
B
Bog
Guest
you guys are great fans i have been a fan of wing commander since wing commander 3 first came out i miss that franchise some much, but it's good to see fellow fans have not let the wing commander flame burn out, say when is origin/ E.A. going to make another game or they can sell the rights to me ~~~.