The Gaming News Thread

[Monk]

eurogamer So long, John Riccitiello

Interesting read, but I'm not sure I can fully agree with it. The best games that EA has published I have never once felt they were great because of EA's influence. I never stopped while I played through Dragon Age: Origins and said "Wow EA is really on the ball here." When i played the original BF1942 when I was still in high school, I never once said "EA's really got something exciting here!"

There's something to be said about the publisher-developer relationship from a player's perspective. When it's done right I don't notice it at all. I'm free to enjoy the creative direction of the developer and happy to support them and the publisher who stayed out of their way. When it's done wrong, well, you feel it everywhere, in every aspect of the game: From Mass Effect 3's limited dialogue system and obvious rushed nature to Dead Space 3 micro-transactions.

But just to bite on the article's premise, EA's track record doesn't start and End with SimCity, Mass Effect 3 or Dead Space 3. They've acted with cold business sense for decades and have never struck me as the greatest when it comes to consumer practice. Any old school gamer who hears the words "Ultima 9" will know what I mean. Games published by EA that were good, i've always felt, were in spite of EA's influence and not because of it. The rare exception I suppose would be the Sims franchise, but even those are built on a predatory business model..

I'm not saying Mr. Riccitiello should be held accountable for things his predecessors did, but he certainly didn't do much to reverse the trend. That's perhaps the biggest disappointment for me, if not completely unsurprising. As for where EA goes from here, well, that's the easiest question of all. In a couple weeks we'll all be saying "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."