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The Almighty Buck Entertainment Games

Electronic Arts' Domination Of The Market - Bad? 83

Posted by simoniker from the if-i-ruled-the-world dept.
Will writes "A recent article at Gamemethod makes claims about how big companies can squash the little guy, and good gaming along with it: 'With almost 600 million dollars in sales in 2003(not including December), and 20% of the entire market, Electronic Arts is a developing and publishing powerhouse... Why should you be worried that EA rules the American gaming market and dominates sales? Well, if EA becomes too large of a force in the industry, it has some potentially damaging side effects that will hurt us, the consumers.'" It goes on to specify that "competition breeds creativity", suggesting "there's a problem when EA has enough money to buy out any studios that bring out a hit game", and concluding that "the progress of games as a medium will continue, but at a snail's pace in comparison to the previous years of fierce competition."
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Electronic Arts' Domination Of The Market - Bad? More

Electronic Arts' Domination Of The Market - Bad?

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  • Evil Monopolies (Score:3, Funny)

    by jo42 ( 227475 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @12:41PM (#8362890) Homepage

    Eh, sort of like Microsoft, no?

    • EA is hardly a monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LordZardoz ( 155141 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @04:57PM (#8365998)
      First, I have nothing against monopolies. However, EA is simply not a Monopoly. They do have competition.

      Nintendo, Sony, Atari(aka Infogrames), Microsoft, THQ, etc, all put out competing proeducts, many of which perform better then EA's games.

      All EA has done is two things. First, they have mastered the art of creating mass market games. Second, they buy up the studios that create the mass market games that they did not create themselves.

      END COMMUNICATION

  • EA used to be the innovator (Score:5, Interesting)

    by scumbucket ( 680352 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @12:48PM (#8362950)
    I remember playing my first EA games back in the 1980's on a C-64.

    Games like M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, Pinball Contstruction Set, Mail Order Monsters, etc. These games were fantastic. EA used to play up the fact that the games they published were created by 'artists', not just programmers.

    But the table turned long ago. Profit became more important than creativity. EA now is afraid to publish innovative titles because they might negatively impact it's balance sheet.

    • Re:EA used to be the innovator (Score:5, Insightful)

      by *weasel ( 174362 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @01:04PM (#8363094)
      It's actually that business-centric attitude which has ensured that EA is the only major third party publisher that's still around from the 80s.

      Everyone else is on life-support or alive by name only simply for the free marketing and publicity one can milk from 'Midway' or 'Atari'. Not even 'Sierra' was that lucky.

      It may seem tragic - but EA is to games what Warner Brothers is to film. Sometimes they get something right - but most of the time they don't. And they're the only ones with the money to put out content on a regular schedule.

      That aside, the only way this would be 'Bad(tm)' for gaming in general, would be if EA was leveraging its advantage in an anti-competitive manner. If it was strangling the distribution chain RIAA-style to keep (comparitive) indy titles off BestBuy's shelves, or if it was essentially blackmailing console developers into schemes to dissuade competition.

      That hasn't yet happened. Although meatspace distribution has been a hackneyed, independent-unfriendly mess for over a decade - it isn't of EA's making.
      • It's actually that business-centric attitude which has ensured that EA is the only major third party publisher that's still around from the 80s.

        Everyone else is on life-support or alive by name only simply for the free marketing and publicity one can milk from 'Midway' or 'Atari'. Not even 'Sierra' was that lucky.

        Activision is still here too, they had a few hits this year, but they seem kind of similar to EA.
        • Activision is still here too

          As with the other companies, some years ago they sacked every employee, so I think that Activision is here just in name only, unless some of the old-timers have returned since.

          Similarly someone recently bought the "Commodore" name, ditto for "Mastertronic" and the other companies.

        • Ah, here we go, from Activisions site [activision.com] the company name/intellectual property was bought by BKH corporation in 1991.

          However, the current crop of stuff from them (e.g. extreme sports games) is quite good too.

      • "It's actually that business-centric attitude which has ensured that EA is the only major third party publisher that's still around from the 80s."


        Not counting Konami, Square, CapCom, the list goes on.
      • "It's actually that business-centric attitude which has ensured that EA is the only major third party publisher that's still around from the 80s." LucasArts is still around, for the same reason you cite for EA. LucasArts just did a far worse job at it than EA did.
    • Anyone have a scan of that poster with Bill Budge and the other founders?

      What EA did better than most game companies in the genesis days was manage money.

  • 20% isn't enough... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23, 2004 @12:50PM (#8362961)
    20% isn't enough of a market share for EA to truly dominate the videogame industy. Compare this to the 90% share of the OS market that Microsoft has... or the 50+% share of the console market that Sony has. While EA is a 900 pound gorilla, we're nowhere close to them 0wn1n9 us all. As far as I can recall EA has never stifled the creativity of the industry... (and no, I don't work for EA)

    • Re:20% isn't enough... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SandSpider ( 60727 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @01:07PM (#8363123) Homepage Journal
      Well, I have worked for EA. They bought out the company I worked for, then put us out of business. And that was because they liked what we were doing. Imagine what they'd do if they didn't like us.

      It's not necessary to have 90% market share in order to dominate the industry. No, they can't buy out Microsoft, but they can cause problems for the small developer.

      =Brian

    • In some industries I've been heavily involved in if you have a 10% market share you're successful, for example banks and stock brokerages. 20% means you likely have a bigger hold than anyone else.

      Think of it this way, if there are 10 major companies in the games industry, then EA counts for two of them. That leaves 8 smaller players on the battle field. Mind you EA is also a publishing house, not just a development house, so they occasionally fund smaller companies who can play by their rules. That gi

  • Not the biggest problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doctor Cat ( 676482 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @01:02PM (#8363067) Homepage
    It's not a situation of a single monopolistic force rather than "a few big publishers" rather than "a lot more little publishers and developers. And while that might lead to somewhat less creativity, that's not the big problem. There was certainly a fair amount of variety in the days when the 8 bit Nintendo was so powerful in the market that Nintedo could make even Toys 'R Us dance like a puppet on their strings.

    More of an issue is that games are so much more expensive now that anyone willing to invest the money at all to cover a development budget is likely to be a lot less willing to take risks. Which usually means churning out clones. I remember watching (and working on) the Ultima series when it went from Richard Garriott churning out an entire game with just hard work (and a little help with the music from his buddy Ken Arnold), to a $50,000 budget for Ultima 5, to a $250,000 budget for Ultima 6, then on up into the millions. Ultima 9 was well into the tens of millions from what I've heard.

    The only way a game company is likely to take a risk on a totally new type of gameplay with multi-million dollar budgets is if they have a "name" developer like Sid Meier or Will Wright. A few of the shareware and budgetware and college student developers that aren't busy churning out clones of Tetris, Pacman, and Shanghai will turn out new things from time to time. But of course they'll never have the flashy graphics of the big expensive titles. Want to look for and/or support innovation? Download some of their work. Maybe someday the mainstream game industry will develop something like the Independent Film world, though so far they haven't gotten too far in that direction (just one festival, the IGF). While having a few big publishers rather than a lot of little publishers might lead to less creativity in games...

    • The only way a game company is likely to take a risk on a totally new type of gameplay with multi-million dollar budgets is if they have a "name" developer like Sid Meier or Will Wright.

      Which seems reasonable, because generally most people aren't likely to risk $50 on a totally new type of gameplay unless it's from a "name" developer like Sid Meier or Will Wright.
    • More of an issue is that games are so much more expensive now that anyone willing to invest the money at all to cover a development budget is likely to be a lot less willing to take risks.
      ...as opposed to the days when SNES and N64 games retailed for US$60-80 each?
    • There's plenty of interesting and creative mods and total conversions--which suggests that its the difficulty of building a competitive 3D gaming engine thats holding back truly independent gaming development--if at some point a free (LGPL or similar) gaming engine on par with currently released commercial games came to exist, one might expect to see a rebirth of independent commercial development.
    • It's not like small producers can't make games. No, the problem is that the industry strives to make the best possible games and the market is ready to support them. This means creating quite complex games with lots of content (levels, textures, etc.), which costs a lot of money, preventing competition by small producers as an unintended side effect.

      It's the same with Hollywood blockbusters. You don't NEED 100 mln to make a great movie, 5-20 mln is often enough. It's just that some studios will invest 300
  • It's my favorite series. Hands down (I play it on the PC). You can argue about other racing games, but I love the feel, or at least I did. Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 rocked. Quite impressive. I still play it online. It was the reason I forked out 200 bucks for a Logitech Momo Force. But Need For Speed Underground is VERY disappointing. In drag racing mode, my wheel simply doesn't work. Downloaded all patches for the game. Downloaded the Wingman 4.3 software. Installed any other patches I could find. That
    • Before some overzealous moderator pounces. The Need For Speed series are EA GAMES titles. The only ones I play in fact.
    • You think that's messed up? On the "playable" demo, there was no opportunity to remap controls at all.

      It just saw I had a controller connected, and assigned the Z-axis to accellerator/brake. Despite the fact that my controller has them as two seperate axes. I was left trying to play the thing with accelerate being take my foot off the pedal, and the neutral point as half accelerating. Flooring the accelerator was actually brake. Ouch. I couldn't even try keyboard controls, as it thought I had my foot hard
    • ..also it could have been a modern version of 'street rod', but alas couple of idiotic design choices(probably to make it more easier to get into? or what?) smash it down.

      like buying upgrades, what good is it when there's no choice in buying them? the choices open up slower than what you have money so it gets just a matter of buying everything as fast as the game 'allows' you to. as a consequence the game becomes just a series of hardening races(not to mention the silly drifting). ..and that leads to that

  • Does it matter? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by zuba_inverse ( 238253 )
    At the basic level, I only buy games that I know I like or in a series that are now sentimental favorites of mine. The only EA games I think I have are 2 from the SSX snowboarding series for my PS2. I think if I had to name the publisher for most of my other games I'd score about 60% or so. I would have a better time remembering the developers. Anyway, if they (EA) release a bunch of stale games, people will look elsewhere. In the games market, there will always be an elsewhere.

  • EA is all that is wrong in the market (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DarkFencer ( 260473 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @01:07PM (#8363124)
    EA buys companies left and right that have made some successful games. They then tinker with the company, forcing them to make less sucessful games. When they make a couple games that aren't blockbusters, the division is gutted and shut down (or just the name is kept).

    They have done this with MANY divisions of their company. Most notably Origin a few years back.

    • Re:EA is all that is wrong in the market (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xian97 ( 714198 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @02:18PM (#8364039)
      I have to agree. Origin was one of the most innovative companies around with the Ultima series, Wing Commander, and one of my favorites, Crusader No Remorse/Regret. After being assimilated by EA, the third in the Crusader series was shelved, and the Ultima series had two very bad releases which were rushed out the door and very buggy to the point of being nearly unplayable.

      Another casualty was Looking Glass Studios, a real innovator in the industry. They practically created the entire genre of modern stealth games with their Thief series. They showed what could be done with a 3D engine besides just making another FPS with Ultima Underworld and System Shock. Both games would really draw you into the story and had serveral innovations over anything out at that time, features like looking up and down while Doom and it's clones just had 2D vision.

      These days I look to Europe for innovation. Most of the new developments I am excited about are coming from smaller studios there, Arx Fatalis, Gothic II, and the upcoming Sacred in the RPG genre to name a few. Serious Sam was another good effort from a small studio. It used the same tried and true formula as many others but somehow managed to bring the fun back to the genre.

      EA tries to dumb down everything they touch to appeal to the lowest common denominator and leaves the real gamers lacking.
    • While EA isn't good... they aren't the worst, either. I really think that title belongs to Interplay. Agreed that EA having such a large share of the market with (primarily) horrible games is bad, but Interplay's tried and true method of shutting down highly anticipated titles and firing their developers before the holidays is downright satanic.
    • Who insist that their developers must never work again if they foolishly attempt to leave "the firm".

      I love Prince of Persia but thinking that it was developed with slave labour makes me uneasy.

  • One thing good about EA is that they have good experience in producing games. In the background, they have a lot of experienced people working behind the games, including sound, well-defined project management qualities. Although they would be seen as an assembly line factory (low innovation, repetitive carbon copy products), it means that we will continue to enjoy mediocre games in relatively on-time delivery. After all, EA will not produce something like 'Duke Nukem Forever'. EA is after volume and ma
  • ... when Bill "Raster Blaster" Budge joined with the initial EA "Artists"? Their first major ad was "Can a computer make you cry?". They had a vision not uncommon for that time, that computers would change society in some very significant ways, and they intended to be part of that, via gaming.

    It was a lofty but honorable vision. They succeeded somewhat at first, but as business took its toll, EA became more and more a money farm. I'm sure there are still people at EA who would at least claim to hold to tha

  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bluesman ( 104513 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @01:19PM (#8363268) Homepage
    "there's a problem when EA has enough money to buy out any studios that bring out a hit game"

    How is this a problem? Sounds like a huge incentive for people to start a small company and create a truly innovative game.

    I think the trouble is more that there isn't anybody really capable of turning the industry on its head several times over. Game fans really do want more of the same thing over and over, especially the sports fans. Baseball hasn't changed, why should the video game based on it?

    If there really were a market or just a desire for out of the mainstream games, and the talent to produce such games, the open source game efforts wouldn't be so pathetic.

    But it's much easier to sit back and whine about how big corporations have made you jaded than it is to be creative.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Flamebait)

      by MMaestro ( 585010 )
      How is this a problem? Sounds like a huge incentive for people to start a small company and create a truly innovative game.

      And whats to stop EA from buying you out? Businesses are businesses. In the real world, businesses can't say "no we won't sell out our soul for millions of dollars and millions more in budgets". Hell look at Bungie. Everyone bitching about Bungie 'selling out' to Microsoft without a thought as to maybe their FINANCIAL SITUATION. Games cost money to make. These are no longer the days wh

      • You're reading the parent backwards. What he is saying is that people will start small companies and create innovative games in order to get bought out. Start small, make a good product, get bought for a lot of money, live well. And although that studio will no longer be producing innovative games, other companies will try to make innovative and successful games so that they can be bought out as well.

        I'm not saying I agree with the idea, but just noting that you seem to have read the post backwards.

  • Madden 2005 (Score:5, Funny)

    by obsid1an ( 665888 ) <{moc.ishcm} {ta} {naidisbo}> on Monday February 23, 2004 @01:23PM (#8363313)
    class Madden2005: public Madden2004 { // Put new roster in here
    }

  • Why its bad (Score:4, Insightful)

    by quantax ( 12175 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @02:06PM (#8363876) Homepage
    I will just use the following facts to demonstrate why EA's domination is bad based based on certain dates for Battlefield 1942:

    Sept 11, 2002 : Battlefield 1942 1.1 pre-release patch is released.

    Sept 13, 2002 : Battlefield 1942 is in stores, mMany issues reported making the game anywhere from fully to non-playable depending on your system, even after patching.

    November 15, 2002 : EA announces addon for Battlefield 1942, Road to Rome. Still no patch for many reported issues.

    November 27, 2002 : Patch 1.2 is released finally, fixes a lot of things, but still some issues.

    January 22, 2003 : Road to Rome is gold

    February 3, 2003 : Patch 1.3 is released.

    Im not even going to talk about secret weapons addon, facts are EA had released an addon for a game before they even had their 2nd post-release patch, and thats damn weak. Any company who announces an addon for a game before that game is reasonably patched is rather poor.

    • Re:Why its bad (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Nyhm ( 645982 ) *
      Large software projects can manage parallel development. Not fixing problems with their product is inexcusable. However, this doesn't mean that have to freeze development on expansions.

      To their internal project management, the two issues may be very separate (e.g., expansion team may be separate from maintenance team). The simplest branching mechanism in a revision control system should facilitate this (except of course MS VSS).

      Does anyone have any inside knowledge on EA project structure?
    • I will just use the following facts to demonstrate why EA's domination is bad based based on certain dates for Battlefield 1942:
      Over a seven month period, they release a game, and an add-on for it, and three patches... And that's bad? I suggest your standards are somewhat cockeyed.

      • Re:Why its bad (Score:4, Insightful)

        by The Evil Couch ( 621105 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @03:11PM (#8364733) Homepage
        if you had tried playing Battlefield 1942 single-player before the 1.2 patch, you would have noticed that the AI was horribly inefficient and any game over 16 bots was completely unplayable on anything but the most powerful system. And anything under 16 bots just wasn't any fun.

        factor in the fact that they released an addon BEFORE the 1.2 patch came out and you get the immediate sense that they're in it for the money, rather than for getting a quality product going.

        There were many other bugs that were begging to get fixed, but for me, that was the most noticeable. When an entire mode of gameplay is broken and you're intent on releasing additional content for a fee, it's obvious where your focus is.

        • if you had tried playing Battlefield 1942 single-player before the 1.2 patch, you would have noticed that the AI was horribly inefficient and any game over 16 bots was completely unplayable on anything but the most powerful system. And anything under 16 bots just wasn't any fun.

          The number of bots that constitutes 'fun' is a subjective and emotional measurement, not an objective one.

          factor in the fact that they released an addon BEFORE the 1.2 patch came out and you get the immediate sense that they're in

          • Fun is not that subjective when you consider that any map where you're on defense and you only need one or two bots doing something intelligent to win, because the opposing side can't advance because they can't decide whether to look left, straight right, duck, go prone, run or shoot, so they do all them as near simultaneously as possible, acting like crackheads going into withdrawl.

            Virtually all of the maps in Battlefield require either one of two things: superior tactics or suicidal charges. Without the

    • I think a better example would have been SimCity 4, a game muddled with countless problems and stability issues that were really only fully addressed in the Rush Hour expansion pack.

  • the other perspective (Score:2, Insightful)

    by spir0 ( 319821 )
    what about those small gaming companies who are struggling and running out of money? they would be stoked to be bought out by EA. They get cash, finish their game, then leave EA and use their money to form another dev studio.

    I'm not saying it's all as easy as that, nor are the contracts likely to allow that in all cases, but that's a small developers dream isn't it?

    There must be some good stories in all these buyouts.

    • Some companies have made it part of their undisclosed business plan to be bought out by the big boys. This means making products good enough to be noticed and acquired but not necessairly displaying their showcase ideas. For startup capital for "the big one" it's not a bad idea, you'll just not get anyone who admits to doing it.

  • EA's Even Bigger Than Implied (Score:3, Informative)

    by ChrisReid ( 613129 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @04:06PM (#8365460) Homepage
    Only $600 Million before December? EA's much bigger than that. Their fiscal year total is projected to be $3 Billion. http://info.ea.com/pr/pr449.pdf

  • 20%?!? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by b-baggins ( 610215 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @04:08PM (#8365482) Journal
    Twenty percent is a dominant market presence? Good grief.
  • Lets look at the current situation with the Desert Combat mod for bf1942. Easily the top mod for the game right now, one of the top mods for all FPS right now.

    The developers just signed up with DICE to develope the next version of it for them and have a budge of $500k. I hope they don't charge for it.

    What happens if EA starts buying up all the good mods, and then decides to charge for them?

    Mods used to be the last bastion of free entertainment for many gamers. You had the original game, but there were

  • crappy games, crappy company (Score:4, Insightful)

    by paradesign ( 561561 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @05:49PM (#8366653) Homepage
    EA in my opinion makes crappy games. I havent bought one in over a decade. If EA spent as much time/money developing new game concepts as i does on "expansion packs" i might buy their stuff. But they stick with the tried and true which to me == old and tired. Sure the sims was cool when it first hit, but not nearly as cool as the original "Sim" games. When Maxis was in control SimCity rocked, now it is lacking a soul. EA has a way of extracting the personality out of a game. I like playing games that you can see the developers passion in. Doom is a perfect example, it was made by people, not a bunch of codemonkeys doing the 9-5. Im sure that EA has plenty of talented people working for them, thats not the problem. The company is too big, to "P.C.", and not willing enough to take risks. It would be nice to see them start a trend for once insted of following them.

  • EA Promoting Innovation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pajon ( 142315 ) on Monday February 23, 2004 @06:00PM (#8366808)
    From what I recall, Will Wright said that The Sims was developed and brought to the market because EA came in and bought Maxis.

    When "independent" the stockholders of Maxis were dragging there feet and di not want to invest in Will's newest dollhouse concept. All that changed when EA bought the company. EA bought Maxis because they viewed Will as the great inventor of SimCity. They gave him free reign on his new project, and probably a ton of cash to work on it with. From that buy out they helped create what I theink is one of the most innovative recent games.

    The expacks are probably a light for their heavy cost, but that does not detract at all from the fresh new game type that The Sims brought to the table. It is a highly successful idea spawning multiple games that are trying to emulate it.

    If it weren't for EA, I don't think The Sims games would be around today.
    • No, originally EA did not want to publish the game after Will Wright showed it to EA executives. When he threatened to walk out, EA wanted to keep the goose that lays the golden eggs and released the Sims. Future versions were of course encouraged by EA.
    • Paradoxically, noone tried appealing to the lowest common denominator in the way Sims does it. And so this stupid mainstream game was innovative in some perverse sense, just like the first "some terrible natural disaster happens" movie or "a huge predator animal starts attacking people" move or "monsters from space attack Earth" movie were innovative. :)
  • The copy of EGM that landed in my mailbox today had this to say:

    First PSP Screen Shown
    Rings goes racing

    Come November when Sony launches its PlayStation Portable (PSP), you'll be knee-deep in Shire...that is, if you pick up EA Games' Middle-earth-set kart racer tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Mordor GP. Scheduled for simultaneous release with the system, the promising racer follows the events of the film as you race on tracks situated all over Tolkien's world--from the hobbits' home to the fo

  • XBox systems may have better hardware specs than GC and PS2 systesm, but EA titles on the XBox fail to include internet playability through XBox Live. It is interesting to see MS and EA duke it out about XBox Live; the arguements on both sides are interesting and compelling.

    Just the same, I don't feel like shelling out my hard earned cash for EA's XBox titles for products that include internet play on the PS2 platform... especially since the XBox title is often similarly priced to the PS2 counterpart.

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