[pizzathyme]

Like them or not, EA has been a major force in gaming for over 40 years (I used to work there). They invented the term "Game Producer". Their early vision for promoting Game Designers like hollywood Directors was ahead of its time. They have a hallway lined with gold discs of million seller hit games. They basically created the casual gaming industry (The Sims Division, Pogo, Casual Divisions) in a time when games were mostly marketed to boys.

I respect this company a lot, even though they always seem to do things that embitter the gaming community against them.

Unfortunately these types of buyouts usually come with layoffs, after a year of tough layoffs in games. I hope anyone who will be affected can land somewhere safe.

The campus has a labyrinth with a plaque that's always inspired me: "As in life, the walls are only in your mind."

[paxys]

The company you admire died a long time ago. Their focus today isn't on these historic franchises but releasing the same FIFA every year with new forms of microtransactions to hook a new generation of teenagers. And they have already laid off several thousand employees in the last 2-3 years.

[johnnyanmac]

This move will only lay off thousands more, sadly. Like the gaming industry needed even more veterans kicked out.

It's definitely not good times at all, no matter how you feel about the companies. Three of the largest 3rd party western studios in the last 3 years are being bought out. This doesn't bode well no matter where you are or what you consume in the industry.

[hackernewds]

The nice part about this is when employees get laid off they distribute their talents to other companies. And now the barrier to entry to starting a small indie outfit is so much lower. They don't just simply disappear

[meheleventyone]

That’s a very rosey interpretation when lots of veteran game devs are struggling to find work or capital for small studios.

[jerf]

I am old enough to remember a time when I had positive associations with being an "EA game".

The games in question were on my Commodore 64. But still, there was such a time.

EA has a reputation for buying companies and draining all of their reputation for money. The first company that the EA of today did that to was EA itself. There was a time it was just a gaming company.

Actually it was about up to the Origin acquisition that I still had at least some positive feelings for them, before the pattern really settled in. After that, though, I got nothin'.

[fidotron]

> EA has a reputation for buying companies and draining all of their reputation for money

If you saw this from the other side you'd see just how much the reverse was true. This was one of the great mysteries of the place.

It's one of those situations where in the public perception the blame all flows up to EA, but the credit is always with the studios. The truth is somewhere else.

[Aeolun]

I think this is because the credit can never be with those that purely provide money and dictate terms.

Nobody thinks the investors are what make the company. It’s the founders.

[fidotron]

I spent time as a TD on both the dev and publishing sides - the perception all EA (the publisher) is doing is money and terms is very much mistaken.

To take the case of Bioware, the SW:TOR launch was a notable disaster. There is no way in hell Bioware by themselves could have recovered from that, and it took a lot of "external" firefighting to get that under control.

OTOH various decisions many people assume came from EA were actually made by studio heads, against EA wishes, because the studio head thought it would increase their revenue and thus bonus.

One of the reasons Activision outperformed EA was they have a better culture of co-operation between departments. Efforts to improve this at EA never ceased to actually make it worse.

[tanjtanjtanj]

So we can’t fault EA for creating an incentive structure that rewards self-destructive behavior on the part of their acquired studios?

[fidotron]

EA had some prime idiots in finance that did indeed make decrees that were problems.

I cannot go into the juicy specifics but on the EA publishing side you would be hard pressed to find someone that did not think the finance department were engaged in cutting off the company nose to spite the face of whoever in the company they didn't want to pay this week. (OTOH this was because there were supposed historical cases of excessive leniency, which from what I heard may even be understating it). I personally had a lot of trouble with the self fulfilling prophecies of marketing like "we didn't make money from X last year, so we won't do it this year", "that's because we didn't try it last year", "your point?" etc. but many were more sympathetic to that.

[johnnyanmac]

>One of the reasons Activision outperformed EA was they have a better culture of co-operation between departments. Efforts to improve this at EA never ceased to actually make it worse.

Why do you think there was such a clash between departments? There's always some friction because different divisions have different interests, but EA seems to sound particularly bad at this.

I also heard that EA was run very "corportate" like, comparatively speaking. In an era where many other studios would still go for this "fun factor" to build relations. Would that more hard-lined bureaucracy wove distrust compared to the executives that felt like they were on the frontlines with the devs?

[fidotron]

> Why do you think there was such a clash between departments? There's always some friction because different divisions have different interests, but EA seems to sound particularly bad at this.

A distinct lack of an internal single threat to unify against, like a Steve Jobs style figure. I think the closest I saw to this was Peter Moore, who was a nice guy, but (thankfully) does not tolerate assholes at all. The result was the only serious threats were external, so when playing the PR war the handful of problematic studio heads would blame everything bad on EA, while trying to take credit for everything good. Because of their public positions no one has the power to remove those problems (that would be evil EA being evil), so they would steadily float upwards to positions from which they can then terrorize the well meaning studio and department heads.

There were various initiatives I saw (clear billion+ dollar opportunities) that couldn't get going because it required three departments to align in such a way that someone (one of the leaders of the three departments) would get the credit, and the war over who would get the credit would get so intense that the initiative could never happen. (I have heard stories out of Google that suggest this has been even worse there going back to a similar timeframe - some of the VP and above level offsites sounded quite fun).

Similarly I saw people with whole production units they knew were trainwrecks publicly align with another department they secretly hated so when their high profile project crashed and burned they would blame it on the other department. This would be worked out before the project even entered production, and was even well known by third parties that tried to exploit it.

By far the most successful projects there were born from some historic trauma, such as the EA spouse or a giant technical fubar. Those situations provided the impetus to grow up, and they really did. A consequence of this is the FIFA org, in my era, remains one of the most professional software organizations I ever saw, and I was liasing with most of the big tech companies. This also explains why the prevailing EA view was the PS3 hack saved the Playstation by forcing Sony to grow up or go home.

[elephanlemon]

If you had to guess, do you think that SWTOR would have released in the way it did had BioWare been an independent company? (Notably, incomplete and in many ways an uninteresting WoW clone.)

[fidotron]

BioWare would have collapsed as an independent company long before SWTOR ever saw light of day.

They seemed to have failed to understand the scope of preparing to operate a game as a service after launching it until far too late into development, which in fairness was and remains a very common problem for people used to the "fire and forget" style of launches in the past, they just did it in a very high profile way which made all of the problems a hundred times worse.

One thing people overlook a lot is after this died down it was BioWare that bought a small mobile studio called KlickNation. KlickNation were a very interesting team because their expertise was how do you take a tiny audience and make absolutely unheard of amounts of money from them, to a degree that was unbelievable. This obviously appeals to game devs because if you can have 30k players and make the same amount of money as with 3M it saves you a whole lot of trouble.

I cannot really comment any more than that, such is life.

[HankStallone]

Yeah, in the C64 days, when I could afford to buy a game at retail, it would often be an EA game, because they had some of the best. I still remember the logo flashing through the 16-color set, and how you could tell whether the game had a fast-loader by how fast it flashed.

They were pretty universally admired then, as far as I can remember, but not for much longer.

[Aeolun]

I think the good associations died somewhere after C&C Generals.

[gosub100]

I loved playing NHLPA hockey on SNES in the mid 99s. I guess they couldn't get the rights to use "NHL" so they used the "players association" instead?

[antasvara]

You're correct.

The NHL Player's Association (so the PA in NHLPA) is the organization that collectively bargains on behalf of the players in the NHL. That's why all of the players were in the game, but the NHL logo, team logos, and team names weren't.

[skeeter2020]

you're remembering the start, when Trip Hawkins left Apple and really pushed the industry - both technically and culturally - forward. THose days probably died before the turn of the century.

[fidotron]

Yeah, I worked there too and share this sentiment:

> I respect this company a lot, even though they always seem to do things that embitter the gaming community against them.

What I saw, more often than not, was most of the company consisted of the biggest genuine fans of their own products, and it was a few well placed ultra cynical bad apples that persisted in causing such enormous antagonism.

[johnnyanmac]

>it was a few well placed ultra cynical bad apples that persisted in causing such enormous antagonism.

Too bad those bad apples were the ones all the way at the top. Kotick's "we'll charge for reloads during an online match" statements really were a harbinger on what those in power thought of gaming as.

(I had him as CEO too, I understand).

[ddtaylor]

There was a time in the earlier days of EA where the company had value. That time has passed. The company mainly sits on exclusive licenses and makes minimal changes to the franchises in an attempt to milk cash. The cash milking part has gone downhill recently.

I genuinely hope they lose ALL of their exclusive sports licenses. They shouldn't be exclusive to begin with, but enabling these companies to hold the entire place hostage with their inferior and poorly crafted games just drives away competition and makes everyone play something else.

I have zero interest in football, soccer, basketball games, etc. but I did play them as a kid and I know young kids play sports games more. The fact that Madden has been re-publishing that game with the same Groundhogs Day release notes for 20+ years speaks volumes.

[mvdtnz]

> There was a time in the earlier days of EA where the company had value. That time has passed.

The company that just sold for $55 billion?

[sph]

Shareholder value != artistic value.

In fact, in videogaming, they tend to be inversely correlated.

[ddtaylor]

If we're comparing large companies that buy stuff up and milk profits etc. they are losing to other better executed giants like Tencent and Embracer Group.

[chubot]

I worked there too (2002-2004), but didn't that all happen when the founder Trip Hawkins was there? It looks like he left in 1991

I don't think you can meaningfully call EA the same company -- it's more like a different company with the same name, and doesn't deserve respect for its past achievements

By the time I was there, over 20 years ago now, the management was already shitty. The people were great, but the management took advantage of employees' love for games. (I was part of the "EA Spouse" settlement)

---

In fact I now remember an utterly bizarre experience when I was an intern at EA. The CFO spoke in front of 20 interns, and reminded us that our jobs was to make the stock price go up. Like whenever you do anything, you should think about the stock price as your ultimate goal. So the company isn't really about making games?

I mean I can appreciate his honesty, compared to later big tech "make the world a better place" slogans, while also just trying to make the number go up

But it's a weird thing to say to a bunch of 22 year olds, since they have little influence on the stock price, other than trying to increase their knowledge of the craft

There were a number of other shady characters in EA management. They were often brought in from outside

Even though I criticized "don't be evil", I have to say that by and large Google management was much more competent, and they came off as kinder, even though the company changed eventually too

---

I do think it has to do with whether the founder still leads the company -- there has to be someone mission-driven, not just money-driven

I think Trip Hawkins was mission-driven. Larry Page was to an extent, but I think he got sick of managing the company, so he let the optimizers take over

And private equity are almost universally short-term optimizers, in favor of themselves and against customers, which tends to ruin the company in the long term. So I see this as a continuation of a multi-decade trend with EA.

Though I'd be interested in any counterexamples, i.e. private equity that actually made the company better in the long term

[EasyMark]

It seems like these types of buys are often associated with offloading debt to the bought company so that it can be shed to a company that they can then let bankrupt and then pay pennies on the dollar of their debt, if they have to pay anything. EA seems like a prime candidate for that.

[spixy]

Isn't The Sims Division just rebranded Maxis?

[this_user]

It seems likely that they will consolidate their studios and streamline the headcoputn. Bioware may be dead for good, at least to the extent that it is still alive at this point. And there are probably other acquired studios like that.

[jsbisviewtiful]

If Bioware can squeak out one more good Mass Effect it would make for a great swan song. I don't really know what the last EA game I bought was other than the Mass Effect trilogy on Steam. I started avoiding Ubisoft games after Assassin's Creed 3 and EA followed a few years after that- so maybe 2015ish?

[mlindner]

Except the entire idea that games should be promoted like hollywood movies is _exactly_ what precipitated this whole downfall. Games are not movies nor should they be like movies.

Personally I hope there are tons of layoffs. The entire industry needs to be rinsed clean and refreshed, especially the US gaming industry.

[johnnyanmac]

I believe the GP's point was not "games need to focus on cinematics and mind breaking graphics over gameplay". It was how you make brands based on people, not teams. Jane's Combat Simulator, American McGee's Alice in Wonderland, Sid Meier's Games (when Fireaxis had closer relations with them), Clive Barker's Undying.

We have indies who embody their games, but EA was doing this well before that. And AAA companies never really tried doing this since (though some directors did market themselves very well despite that. Like Kojima or Romero). It's a shame we have husks walking under a brand when all the personality has long left.

[falcor84]

Would you mind saying more about this?

Why does promoting games as if they were movies is an issue? Is this just about the rising development costs of AAA games, or is there something else here that you're alluding to?

[mlindner]

A movie is something you watch, a game is something you play. It's not there to tell you a grand story. It's there to wrap some good gameplay in some storytelling packaging. A game is closer to a novel than it is to a hollywood movie. The most loved games (high replayability is a key component) often have quite lacking "story" if any story at all. What makes them shine is how they feel to play, even better if they encourage your own imagination to invent your own story. When you try to make a game into a movie the true focus is lost. If your game can only be played "once" (not including tacking-on achievements/side-quests/etc) then your game is a movie and not a game.

[falcor84]

Thanks for clarifying. I understand your perspective now, but just want to say that this is really different from mine, which might be influenced by my having a relatively strong Need for Closure[0]. I've been a life-long gamer, and have almost never had any interest in replaying a game (at least not until it's been perhaps a decade). When I finish a good game and get to the credits, I have a very strong sense of catharsis, which leads me then to enjoy clicking on that Delete button and starting on the next game. And just to be clear - it's not that I am trying to rush things and be done with the games; I take my time with most games, and I do think a lot about the good ones after, but it's pleasant memories of my time with them, rather than any desire to go back into the fray.

As you can imagine, I mostly enjoy single-player narrative games with exploration and some RPG elements, rather than multi-player ones, or open-ended ones with infinite-replayability mechanics. For reference, some of my favorite game franchises include: LBA, Zelda, The Last of Us, Mass Effect, The Witcher, Portal, Talos Principle, GTA, Kotor, Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closure_(psychology)

[SillyUsername]

Won't happen. They'll buy the next indie game studio that is successful, chew on their profits, then tank that, rinse repeat.

[lentil_soup]

>> Personally I hope there are tons of layoffs

Wow, I guess empathy is not a thing anymore

[johnnyanmac]

Sadly a thing us devs are used to compared to more coporate jobs. We'll take the blame for a lot of issues leadership actively forced the development to go down. We don't set prices or DLC/MTX schemes, and can only push back so much on release dates (especially in the day of "we'll fix it with a Day One Patch").

As a dirty open secret: most "unexpected bugs" found day one are probably on some Jira sheet, been there for months, and were triaged as such to "will fix later". Only magically being prioritized after public feedback that QA teams already expected.