I haven’t bought an EA title in years. Good luck, you have a few good IPs, but there’s a lot of other competition out there, and even small studios put you to shame these days. Gamers want to be entertained, not roll into a casino.
EA has methodically destroyed pieces of my childhood.
Canadians need to fight for these studios getting the support our oil or car companies get. We punch way above our weight in this industry. After ripping bioware away from ea of course.
What corporate business does best.
I will never buy from EA again. Not that I can remember the last time I did…
It’s almost hilarious to see the steam next gongshow, juxtaposed with all these studio closures.
Someone made a comment recently in another thread about the prevalence of shitty bootleg/noname games all over the place back in the 80s, and how nintendo started putting a gold seal of authenticity on their games as a kind of quality assurance for gamers. That’s what game studios are now, to some extent, for me, with the new flood of AI garbage. Killing off studios known for making quality products is a terrible strategy.
Bioware hasn’t made a quality product since Mass Effect 1 or Dragon Age: Origins - whichever came last.
It’s not about quality, it is about what makes most money. See their sports titles, they suck, but are making lots of money.
Well, sure, it went to shit once they got gobbled by EA – both ME and DAO were released so close to the acquisition by EA, that they were clearly made primarily under the old, more indie, setup. But it’s still a studio that I remember fondly, generally, and would still check their new releases when they came out (even if I didn’t play them).
To me they’re in the same general boat as a studio like Relic. I played the early Dawn of War games quite a bit. After they got gobbled by… Sega? I think? I sorta lost touch with their games in terms of buying them/playing them, because they just didn’t seem to hit the same. I think they got sold off to a venture capital group now, but it’s still a company that I at least look at their games when they announce stuff. I’d put others like ID software, or even some publishers like Paradox, in this group too.
I mean I thought Doom 2016 and Eternal were great, but I can’t disagree with anything else you’ve said.
It sucks to lose all these companies, but it’s kind of been coming for a long time, the whole gaming industry is basically resetting. Going back to millions of small companies instead of thousands or hundreds of big companies. The companies got too big and too slow. Things changed, and they couldn’t keep up. Not to mention so much money wasted, or worse handed directly to CEOs or other upper management.
Despite all the big companies dying, gaming as a whole is still great. Besides having to filter out games that put AI in charge, the rest of the games nowadays are actually doing awesome innovative stuff instead of “game we liked +1”. As much as I like when both exist, it’s predicated on not wasting money, and ideally at least some new ideas in the sequel.
Even the “game we liked +1” stuff is pretty good these days, since there are indie studios making spiritual successors to games with niche appeal that traditional publishers wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.
Stuff like Lunacid, Gloomwood, and the entire boomer shooter genre are basically just “what if X was made without the technology limitations of the time” and it’s great.
It was just “bioware” in name only anyways.
Hehe yeah, Bioware just hits closer to home for me, as I know a few employees, and was very close to being one myself at one point. Some part of me is glad I didn’t ride that rollercoaster. But it still probably would have been overall better than not riding it was.
“Saudis EAt Shit.”
This is the opportunity for 2K to revive their hockey franchise and do something amazing with it. The market (and the ea hate) is ripe for it.
2K isn’t a spectacular company either (hello microtransactions). But I’m just saying this is their opportunity if they were smart enough to take it.
