the same can be said of SWTOR now as well, with Bioware both misleading (and in some cases outright lieing to) the playerbase, removing content so early in the game, and cancelling upcoming highly anticipated patch features 6 hours before the patch is due to go live...
that said, i'm fairly certain that the root cause of the issues with both WAR and SWTOR are down to EA management, and not the studios themselves. so again, i feel for everyone involved. but at the same time, just log in and read general chat at any point, and you'll understand why WAR went downhill, and why it looks like SWTOR will likely follow. (hint: developers doing the exact opposite of what was asked).
/endrant.
i atribute failure of most ALL new mmos to the fact that the mmo genre is dead. and every publisher and their mother are just pushing out mmos constantly.
for a mmo to be really suscessfull long term it needs a player base that are likely to pick up a game, and play it a lot, for a looong time, with little deviation. theres a small percentage of those people in the world. and they all play wow. when a new game comes out they may jump over and test it out, but then they go back to wow. same with warhammer and starwars, there was enough interest from those fan bases to get a good launch and substain it for a while, but eventualy it will trickle down to low numbers. but it seems everyone thinks they will make the new WoW and be rich forever.
I personally just don't get where all the MMO fever is coming from. It's being demonstrated time-and-time again that it's just not profitable to try and break into that market, but every year, loads of attempts materialise - and usually collapse not long thereafter.
The 'fever' comes from greed. They look at WoW and think that they can grab a marketshare, but it fails because Blizzard did it right and took their time getting it right.
Will there be another game that can match the accomplishments of WoW? Probably, but it won't happen over night. It will be an IP that took years to develop it's customer base as Rhinokey mentioned.
I don't think 'greed' is the right word for it. I try to profit from the work I do, and I think everyone here does the same. Considering the likely risk of failure, trying to get rich off the next big MMO isn't much of a get-rich-quick plan anyway. Cloning out the same sports/fighting/FPS game every year, with minor changes but loads of DLC, maybe that's greedy. Spending millions of man-hours to roll the dice on a hopeful WOW-killer long shot? Huge gamble, and maybe the worst option for trying to make money in games.
The 'fever' comes from greed. They look at WoW and think that they can grab a marketshare, but it fails because Blizzard did it right and took their time getting it right.
Will there be another game that can match the accomplishments of WoW? Probably, but it won't happen over night. It will be an IP that took years to develop it's customer base as Rhinokey mentioned.
^ This.
Also what would give someone else a big one up is if they did everything right like blizzard did with wow except change the payment system to actual game time played, I.E. if you payed for 1 month the system counts game time played for 1 month, then asks you to pay for more time.
Might not be as profitable as wow is, but I always hated my time running out and I hardly played at all. Then I started playing my game time through to get my moneys worth.
Also what would give someone else a big one up is if they did everything right like blizzard did with wow except change the payment system to actual game time played, I.E. if you payed for 1 month the system counts game time played for 1 month, then asks you to pay for more time.
Might not be as profitable as wow is, but I always hated my time running out and I hardly played at all. Then I stated playing my game time through to get my moneys worth.
Thats a great idea, actually. However, It might also be hard to market, since a lot of people will see "$15 for 7 days!" (or less) and think wtf?!
I quite like the idea too. One of the biggest turn offs of subscription based games for me is that I feel like I don't get my money's worth. If I buy a subscription for 1 month, but can only play for 2-3 hours a week, is it really worth spending £10?
If that £10 translated to 50 hours of gameplay, I might change my mind. Little Jimmy who plays for 8 hours straight a day might complain (since his monthly binge has gone from £10 to a whopping £50), but there's no reason to also not keep the monthly subscription open too.
Or the studios that monitor and log all of your keystrokes. Personal emails and msn conversations? logged, banking info, personal family conversations, everything logged and followed in real time by your manager if they want. This was a big publisher as well (not EA).
To be fair, I think the point is not to be doing those things on the company's computers. That doesn't exactly jive with practical work-life though.
I'm at EA Vancouver right now, and I have never been screened at the door or anything, and have never had a problem from plugging a portable drive/iPhone into my computer. They might have done that in the past though, I'm not sure.
That said, I think we were told to not plug anything into the computers at some point. Also, I'm just a QA scrub so maybe they don't monitor my machine in the same way. I have all the same app's and access as dev does though, perforce and whatnot. EAC is sort of weird in that the sports games are sort of separate from everything else, so it is possible that they do monitor Blackbox people differently.
Anyway, it's all really good advice. I wasn't even aware that there was software that could detect plugging a usb drive in. Good tip.
I'm at EA Vancouver right now, and I have never been screened at the door or anything, and have never had a problem from plugging a portable drive/iPhone into my computer. They might have done that in the past though, I'm not sure.
That said, I think we were told to not plug anything into the computers at some point. Also, I'm just a QA scrub so maybe they don't monitor my machine in the same way. I have all the same app's and access as dev does though, perforce and whatnot. EAC is sort of weird in that the sports games are sort of separate from everything else, so it is possible that they do monitor Blackbox people differently.
Anyway, it's all really good advice. I wasn't even aware that there was software that could detect plugging a usb drive in. Good tip.
yeah, my friend was on Fifa back around 2004 - 2006.
They wouldn't 'screen' you like pat you down or anything, but they would keep an eye out for HDDs and digital cameras.
There are no lay-offs as such, we always have projects growing and morphing. At any given time there are new people coming in and others leaving. EA is growing and hiring and building teams to support the growing demand for digital games and services.
Replies
i atribute failure of most ALL new mmos to the fact that the mmo genre is dead. and every publisher and their mother are just pushing out mmos constantly.
for a mmo to be really suscessfull long term it needs a player base that are likely to pick up a game, and play it a lot, for a looong time, with little deviation. theres a small percentage of those people in the world. and they all play wow. when a new game comes out they may jump over and test it out, but then they go back to wow. same with warhammer and starwars, there was enough interest from those fan bases to get a good launch and substain it for a while, but eventualy it will trickle down to low numbers. but it seems everyone thinks they will make the new WoW and be rich forever.
Will there be another game that can match the accomplishments of WoW? Probably, but it won't happen over night. It will be an IP that took years to develop it's customer base as Rhinokey mentioned.
^ This.
Also what would give someone else a big one up is if they did everything right like blizzard did with wow except change the payment system to actual game time played, I.E. if you payed for 1 month the system counts game time played for 1 month, then asks you to pay for more time.
Might not be as profitable as wow is, but I always hated my time running out and I hardly played at all. Then I started playing my game time through to get my moneys worth.
Thats a great idea, actually. However, It might also be hard to market, since a lot of people will see "$15 for 7 days!" (or less) and think wtf?!
If that £10 translated to 50 hours of gameplay, I might change my mind. Little Jimmy who plays for 8 hours straight a day might complain (since his monthly binge has gone from £10 to a whopping £50), but there's no reason to also not keep the monthly subscription open too.
To be fair, I think the point is not to be doing those things on the company's computers. That doesn't exactly jive with practical work-life though.
That said, I think we were told to not plug anything into the computers at some point. Also, I'm just a QA scrub so maybe they don't monitor my machine in the same way. I have all the same app's and access as dev does though, perforce and whatnot. EAC is sort of weird in that the sports games are sort of separate from everything else, so it is possible that they do monitor Blackbox people differently.
Anyway, it's all really good advice. I wasn't even aware that there was software that could detect plugging a usb drive in. Good tip.
yeah, my friend was on Fifa back around 2004 - 2006.
They wouldn't 'screen' you like pat you down or anything, but they would keep an eye out for HDDs and digital cameras.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-04-25-ea-montreal-sees-small-number-of-layoffs-in-reorganization?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=european-daily
remember the quote:
so it begins.
" many will be assigned to new projects at EA, others will leave the company."
...no, they will be let go...they won't leave willingly!
...