EA Wrecking Franchises

[Jadow]

In the Sim City Societies Thread, Dethfrumbelo wrote "EA is the anti-Midas - they turn gold into shit."

Which got me thinking, how many series has EA ruined or have gone downhill under EA's watch? I'll just list a few, other people can chime in.

1. Sim City
2. Wing Commander
3. Madden
4. Ultima
5. Battlefield
6. Lands of Lore - from HanburgerBoy
7. Command and Conquer - from HanburgerBoy

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Lands of Lore. The first two games are among my all time favorites, but the third completely sucks. They even stuck a Command & Conquer (another ruined franchise, perhaps?) reference into it.

 

[Jadow]

aww yeah Lands of Lore. I beat the first one, never played 2. I got a CD version of 1 that had some voiceover by Patrick Stewart in the cutscenes. It was a good game. A good old fashioned PC RPG.

 

[Polish3d]

I'm pretty sick of EA personally. I'd like to see a growing sentiment in opposition that would make developers re-think any decisions to partner with EA.

 

[JBT]

They didn't ruin BF2. Could it have been better? absolutly. I still loved that game though.

 

[BFG10K]

They didn't ruin Crysis (thankfully).

 

[Coldkilla]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
They didn't ruin Crysis (thankfully).

They JUST published it. Never touched any of the games code. Thank GOD.

I just wish something could stand up to EA... who knows, maybe Crytek will create its own publishing offices, and start cranking open new studios all around the world, start creating more and more games, selling CryEngine2, then later CryEngine3 and so on. Perhaps more and more people will flock to Crytek, and the world can finally be set on its right axis again..

Games like Vigilance: http://www.iedvigilance.com/index_fl.html
I hope its available for consumers

 

[Inspector Jihad]

nba live has been atrocious over the last 2 years.

 

[Maximilian]

Theme Park

Populous

They ruined them by buying bulldog and then simply not using the franchises available, theme park world was awesome, for a 1999 game i would pass it off as a 2002-2003 game, it was waaay ahead of the tycoon series. Populous 3 was pretty fun too, my first strategy game, good fun.

 

[videogames101]

lotr series

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Coldkilla

Originally posted by: BFG10K
They didn't ruin Crysis (thankfully).

They JUST published it. Never touched any of the games code. Thank GOD.

I just wish something could stand up to EA... who knows, maybe Crytek will create its own publishing offices, and start cranking open new studios all around the world, start creating more and more games, selling CryEngine2, then later CryEngine3 and so on. Perhaps more and more people will flock to Crytek, and the world can finally be set on its right axis again..

Games like Vigilance: http://www.iedvigilance.com/index_fl.html
I hope its available for consumers

You think Crytek has that level of influence already? They've only released two games so far, FarCry and Crysis.

If any company had the clout to tell EA to fvck off, I'd bet money on Blizzard and Valve. Stardock is already self publishing, though their games are hardly mainstream.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: Coldkilla

Originally posted by: BFG10K
They didn't ruin Crysis (thankfully).

They JUST published it. Never touched any of the games code. Thank GOD.

I just wish something could stand up to EA... who knows, maybe Crytek will create its own publishing offices, and start cranking open new studios all around the world, start creating more and more games, selling CryEngine2, then later CryEngine3 and so on. Perhaps more and more people will flock to Crytek, and the world can finally be set on its right axis again..

Games like Vigilance: http://www.iedvigilance.com/index_fl.html
I hope its available for consumers

You think Crytek has that level of influence already? They've only released two games so far, FarCry and Crysis.

If any company had the clout to tell EA to fvck off, I'd bet money on Blizzard and Valve. Stardock is already self publishing, though their games are hardly mainstream.

Dont vivendi own blizzard though?

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Soviet


Dont vivendi own blizzard though?

I believe so, but the Blizzard name will sell pretty much anything. If Blizz decided to break with Vivendi and become an independent developer, they'd have no problems self publishing.

 

[pontifex]

wait, did EA even have anything to do with some of those games, like Wing Commander?

I guess maybe you mean they killed them instead of screwing them up?

And didn't EA have the BF series from the beginning?

 

[Skott]

I'm not sure having another big company like EA is the best way to fight EA. I'm thinking if the independent companies stay away from being a part of EA that would be better for us consumers.

 

[TecHNooB]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: Soviet


Dont vivendi own blizzard though?

I believe so, but the Blizzard name will sell pretty much anything. If Blizz decided to break with Vivendi and become an independent developer, they'd have no problems self publishing.

They also polish their games like crazy.

 

[shortylickens]

EA didnt screw up Wing Commander or Populous or Dungeon Keeper, they killed 'em outright.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Any game made by the companies in this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...ic_Arts#Former_studios

 

[CP5670]

To be fair, I thought C&C3 was actually pretty good. I was expecting a lot worse of it given EA's record of messing up great franchises.

 

[sandorski]

Valve and Steam. They just have to finetune the payment method used by Steam. For eg: Steam uses Paypal for CC Payments, but not for other Payment Forms like Electronic Chequing or Direct Deposit through Paypal. Another avenue they could pursue is the end of Hard Copy Sales. No more CD/DVDs, just the Purchase of a Code Key you would Buy at an Electronics/Game store.

 

[gorcorps]

It seems any sort of series EA takes over or is a part of has been doing terrible or is buggy (almost all of their sports games, battlefield, etc...) but I think they're doing alright w/ new games. I love Skate, it completely rocks the TH series in every way, shape, and form.

 

[Jadow]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Any game made by the companies in this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...ic_Arts#Former_studios

Ohh god, EA bought Bioware. NOOOOOOOOO!

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

They did a pretty good job killing Black & White in the form of Black & White 2 - although Molyneux takes part of the blame there. They also killed the Dungeon Keeper franchise. KOTOR is probably dead now too.

 

[T2k]

EA's most abhorrent failure is their absolutely RETARDED, UTTERLY USELESS, multi-login/user management system - perfectly showcases the sheer incompetency that is virulent at EA.
For example I would NEVER BUY any shooter without a proper single-sign-in stats tracking system.
Second THEY DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT BUGFIXING BEFORE RELEASE - every fuckin' EA game I came across int he past few years - not many though because MYSELF NEVER BUY ea FOR LONG-LONG TIME NOW - was horribly buggy at release and they just start patching it afterwards. OTOH it's a tendency now, every publisher takes a shit on you when you buy their titles, they think it's OK to update it later. This is not only fuckin annoying and selling a knowingly unfinished/rotten product but also bad for sales: these retards at EA and other places don't get the point that if it's buggy out of the box I won't buy anything from them (studio and/or publisher) again nor tell anyone to buy it!
Too bad most review sites are completely corrupt and they would never trash any game because they fear loss of ads from that particular publisher...

EA is a wrecked ship, it's going ahead by its weight but I hardly see anything exciting in their lineup.

My only hope is in Valve and Steam, perhaps Epic can sway things a bit. I also happen to like Ubisoft games and if 2K wouldn't be such a bunch of fuckin clueless losers - see the complete chaos and the fuckin illegal rootkit/DRM shit around Bioshock's release - they could have a chance too.

EA is pretty much like RIAA/MPAA for me: disgusting shitty corporate cluster, led by arrogant yet clueless corporate morons who fuck up almost everything they touch including the most east-to-win projects.

 

[Zenoth]

To be honest, when C&C3 was released (and after buying and playing it) I thought "wait a second ... it's actually quite decent, and even good to some extent". It surprised me, but buying Westwood Studios years ago gave birth to my hatred for EA even since. Thankfully, a couple guys from Westwood Studios didn't accept, and they left to create their own company, namely Petroglyph Studios, and honestly I really liked Star Wars: Empire at War and its expansion. And now there's Universe at War coming soon, I really can't wait to try it (hoping it'll be good as well).

Also, Battlefield 2's actual game-play is fun, BUT the game had TREMENDOUS amounts of technical issues, bugs directly related to the poor coding (apparently) skills, and let's NOT even start with the servers browser issues. For me, EA screwed the Battlefield franchise with Battlefield 2142, not BF2 (if it wasn't for the bugs BF2, at its release, would have been great, but it took a LONG time before it stabilized itself after four patches, one of which is SO big, but granted, there's new maps in it that you don't get with the vanilla version).

Overall I don't actually "like" EA, usually I try to avoid them, but I can't help myself but buy a game when it's labeled "Command & Conquer", and I'm saying here right now that I'll certainly buy Kane's Wrath, the expansion pack, even if I know that the A.I will suck and that I won't get other choices but to play on-line to have fun.