Recently appointed EA CEO Andrew Wilson spoke out about EA’s notoriously bad reputation during an interview with Bloomberg last month. During the interview that followed their E3 conference, Wilson acknowledged the burden of the mistakes EA had made in the past, and the ways in which it had effected the company’s relationship with the gaming community.
Before Wilson was appointed the position late last year, EA had been the gracious winner of The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America award for two consecutive years, and had become a pariah in the eyes of the community. Known for behaving as though it were a giant IP trampling katamari, EA has been blamed for the run down of many highly regarded studios following acquisition, including Bullfrog, Origin and Westwood Studios. As well as this, it’s negative influence is more than clear in the games it’s surviving studios had produced- notably Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 4.
“In all honesty, as I came into the role there was this sense in the marketplace that maybe we weren’t doing all that we could for the player, and my objective number one was to really re-instil a ‘player-first’ mentality inside the organisation,” Wilson stated “I really think we’re making real progress, and the feedback from the gaming community has been really positive”
In the plan for EA to refresh their image, Wilson stated they intended to keep gamers more informed in terms of the development and release of future titles. Their plan involves revealing upcoming games sooner – as they did at E3 this year with new BioWare IP – and to release betas earlier in order to secure whatever time necessary to perfect their games before launch. EA have followed through on these decisions so far, going live with the Battlefield: Hardline beta earlier than expected in the interest of acquiring feedback, and allowing sufficient time to polish the game in time for release. Wilson described the company’s decision to not release a Need for Speed title in 2014 as a step in the right direction towards these goals. This year will mark the first in over a decade where the NFS series will not have a new instalment, as studio Ghost Games believe the annualised time frame will not allow the ‘extended development window’ necessary to deliver the high quality gamers expect.
EA’s CEO also stated that the company intended to steer away from one off releases, and work on building worlds gamers can play in “for months and months”.
“Our objective is not to give you these small, discrete experiences, but to deliver you an experience you can play across platforms from the minute you get up in the morning to the minute you go to bed at night”
The notion of big publishers refusing to develop one off titles has been one leaving a bad taste in the mouths of gamers for some time. Moreover, EA’s past affairs with clumsy schemes such as online passes, DRM, microtransactions and on disc DLC has done far worse than simply leave the company in bad favour. For the most past, gamers no longer trust the company, and these words fall on justifiably deaf ears. A great deal of players love franchises published through EA – I myself am overwhelmingly and sentimentally attached to the worlds crafted by BioWare, for example – however it is exactly this fondness that makes the decisions and tastelessly strategic moves by EA all the more personal and damning.
For EA to overhaul the practices of the company, and begin a long and mutually nourishing relationship with the community would be an incredible turn around, and certainly one we are quietly routing for. However, statements and short term tactics will not be enough to make this possible. As more and more AAA scandals flood into the industry, distrust is simply a necessary component for all gamers, and it will take copious acts of direct action before EA finds itself seen as anything other than a parasite on the backs of the devs we loved.
