There are a lot of issues with gamifying the workplace, yes, including fomenting toxic attitudes towards work-life balance and peer to peer relationships.
The normal way to reward somebody working harder is either a permanent raise (bonuses like this keep the reward going only as long as the extra effort is ongoing, normally with diminishing returns for the employee) or a promotion.
Or you could actually not reward working like crazy and instead reward higher productivity within normal working times. Have you never told a peer to go home and rest?
Longer ain’t necessarily harder, though. And really, I don’t give a shit if you work harder. I care about results. I tell my students this–I don’t care if you slaved away for sixteen hours on that paper. If it sucks, it sucks, and yes, there will be someone who got up, dashed it off in twenty minutes, and got an A, while you got a C+ after all your effort. Energy expended is not equivalent to work performed.
First of all, the studio was created by EA, not bought out. It ran for 22 years, which is pretty good for any developer so you’re quite off the mark in regards to the previous points of the discussion. Secondly, they mostly made games based on EA established franchises (Sims, sports etc), except the one hit wonder, the Dead Space series. I suppose you can fault EA for pushing for a broader audience but it takes a lot of… faith to go from one game not turning out not great to “EA bad and everything it touches goes bad” (similar to RickH’s prophetic sounding “inevitable” comment).
Turning it round might be more productive. Has any studio got better/prospered after being acquired by EA? Assuming Respawn doesn’t count (I’ll grant that’s a big if), Maxis is the only one I can immediately think of that might fall into that category, in that it put out several fairly well regarded Sims games post acquisition, but it’s still pretty dubious. I don’t blame EA for Spore (and for that matter I actually kinda like Spore), but it’s hard to make a case that they made better games than they otherwise would have.
Turning around a struggling game dev studio is phenomenally difficult. Oftentimes, the good folks leave and you’re left with a bunch of entrenched mediocre employees (not unlike any industry, I suspect). In the hyper-competitive market for AAA games, where even established franchises struggle to make hits with sequels to huge properties, you simply can’t get anywhere with an entrenched and/or jaded team. It feels like you should be able to, especially with a strong IP, but the reality is far more challenging.
I hate to see them close studios. However, my guess is that they first try to turn them around but that the execs know from experience that if they can’t gain traction within the first 6 months that it’s less expensive to scrap it and start fresh, where it’s easier to attract talent to the “new shiny.” Game dev remains a small-ish community and studios that develop a bad reputation really struggle to bring in top talent.
Sorry, I meant turning around the question from does EA ruin studios to do studios benefit from EA acquisition. Most of the ones people talk about as being ruined were doing just fine when EA took them over. I’m wondering if there are any counterexamples.
I could be wrong, but what I was hearing is that it plays “fine” on the PS5. The problem though is it’s not officially a PS5 game, so when you play on the PS5 you are playing the PS4 Pro version with BC mode that takes advantage of the higher hardware. What that probably means is that if they ban the PS4 version than there is no PS5 version to leave in the store, thus PS5 users can’t buy it either.
Well, financially, some were not. For example, although Origin was making good games, they overextended themselves and were going to go bankrupt anyway. Then EA came in, effectively fixed the money problem, but trashed all their games. So ultimately you could say it all started as the fault of Origin’s management, but it doesn’t change that EA managed to make it worse and eventually threw it all away for almost nothing.
Yup. The bigger issue now is that the X Series and PS5 are just brute forcing their way to a better experience by using the base model version of the game. It’s like the PC version. If you’ve got a good PC, then you’re only getting the “normal” amount of bugs, like Fallout NV at launch. If you have a low-spec PC it’s that plus all the texture load nonsense and broken geometry.
EA doesn’t buy out developers often, let alone buy and dismantle. Just check the list, it’s not exactly jaw dropping. There were some questionable moves in the 90s but, as i said before, that’s a long time ago in a different market and it says nothing about today’s EA.
The whole “EA bad” thing is more of a meme than a fact. The outrage towards the company is unsubstantiated and often hypocritical (“EA and their microtransactions are the work of evil!” … while gamer darling Valve ran a fraud infested gambling racket on CSGO boxes that went on for years).
I agree it can be overdone (and I’m no EA hater, I’ve had an Access sub for ages), especially relative to Valve which is also a place where studios and podcasts go to die, but you can’t pretend it’s just a 90s phenomenon. Bioware, Pandemic, Popcap were all in the 2000s.
Wow, way to go Riot Games, in finding so many categories of games I’m not interested in. But still, I thought they were also working on a single player ARPG as well? No?
Edit: Here we go, from the wiki page:
I guess I was thinking of Project F. Ruined King sounds interesting too, depending on what they mean by tactical RPG.
Thank you are reinforcing my point by tagging me as a rare breed apologist. The hostility EA triggers is fascinating and I would guess it’s related to other types of exaggerated outrage in the gaming community. I’m just pointing out it’s not entirely justified, particularly when other large companies get a slap on their wrist for their shenanigans.
If by reinforcing your point you mean no one in their right mind need bother playing the role of apologist for corporations we’re in violent agreement. ;)
