There's a recent book called "Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America", and seeing this news makes me want to revisit it. The author outlines the usual tactics used by private equity firms to turn a functioning business into their own short-term profit factory, often driving the business into bankruptcy in the process. EA already has a reputation as a semi-broken company, but things can probably get a lot worse.
One method they use is the consolidation of a bunch of small, related businesses. For example, PE firms buy out all of the local veterinary offices in a tri-city area, cut costs, lay off the most qualified vets and replace with less-qualified ones, increase prices for services, and operate a local monopoly.
Clearly, that particular tactic is much harder to pull on the massive oligopoly that is the gaming industry, but it was the one that stuck with me from the book. There are more baffling ones like selling off all the company's real estate, making them rent it back at a much higher rate than their current mortgages (which may already have been paid off), and then filter revenues out of the company via "consulting fees" paid to themselves and their friends for this bad advice.
The book is a little bit repetitive, and some of the tactics are beyond my grasp, but I'm excited to make a personal bingo card of them and see which ones get used on EA as they drive it into the ground.
EA is the perfect candidate for private equity to destroy. There are zombie companies that need to be eviscerated, digested, and then excreted back into the world. The megacompanies of the video game industry are the result of a broken market and this is "nature healing itself." The free market will course correct and private equity is a perfectly acceptable vehicle for something like EA
I read this book, and it's OK but both repetitive and biased. Surprisingly more "textbook" oriented works on PE are harder to find. Wiley had one but it's about 10 years old. The term "PE" also covers a lot of different models, from the worst 80's-style LBO "greed is good" ones, to honest invest-advise-stay out of the way funds. These modern huge deals almost always seem closer to the former. Having now been very close to two PE buy-outs and a big VC funding event, I think I actually prefer VC. Everyone is very transparent and open about what they are trying to do: pour rocket fuel on a fire and get rich. PE wants it all: big annual cashflow, cut all mid/long term costs (R&D, investment, etc) a juicy multiplier on the sale when they flip it to the next PE fund. Most recently I was at a 15 year old company that was doing 25% YoY ARR growth - amazing right? Well no, we were not covering our debt servicing from the most recent PE purchase, so had to cut everywhere and had a hiring freeze. You couldn't get any support to build for the next decade, because funds don't last that long and you don't want to be selling a company in the middle of a project that isn't generating revenues this year. It all makes me mad, sad and very tired.
We don't need to guess here though. PIF and Silver Lake have a pretty solid track record of over-investing in companies. Affinity Partners seems to be a shell company for the Trump family so I don't see them being active.
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."
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.
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.
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
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'.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
>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?
> 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.
Repairing and recovering from that outage required the Playstation org at Sony to adopt a degree of professionalism wrt all tech dev and operations that started paying off remarkably quickly.
At the time a good number of people thought as a result of all this Sony would be pushed out of the console business.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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)
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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
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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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I'm not sure how to feel about this. EA has already been pretty terrible for years; pushing their origin storefront, pushing microtransaction hell in games, lazy [sport franchise] [current year] releases, etc. I think the last good year for EA was probably in the 2000s. Usually these sorts of acquisitions make the product worse, and EA might get "worse" in some strict sense, but there's not much to lose.
Finally the beginning of the end of EA. The greedy bastards ruined so many franchises and chased so many fads that their absence will be a net positive. I do feel bad for the devs working there... but them having to find new jobs is genuinely the only negative aspect in all of this.
I have very little respect for any company that is only interested in the next couple of financial quarters and in making their shareholders as much money as fast as possible (while all else can go f itself). And that's exactly the kind of company EA was for at least a decade. Good riddance.
>I do feel bad for the devs working there... but them having to find new jobs is genuinely the only negative aspect in all of this.
In this job market, that's a pretty big negative. And EA was one of the biggest employers in the US. This is this industry's equivalent of Wal Mart leaving the market. The damage will be felt for years.
I think you're also downplaying the last extinguishing of hope for any non-sportsball IP's to be revived. Those wishing for Need for Speed, Mass Effect, Burnout, Dragon Age, and many many more IP's over the last 40 years aren't just going to say "good riddance".
I am finding myself having some conflicted feelings on this.
First, I absolutely hate who is buying them. Especially as a huge Bioware fan with a Mass Effect tattoo.
That being said, putting aside who is buying them for a moment. I would actually be happy to see more gaming companies going fully private. I feel like the need for constant growth (instead of just sustainability) is what has caused much of the issues in the current gaming market.
So not exactly super excited about how exactly this is happening, but I do hope that we can see other gaming companies do it with better sources.
To expand on this, the central issue is disreputable people obtaining a high degree of control over an industry; that their interests overlap is of little relevance - if anything, it’s a viable smokescreen for PR campaigns.
Muhammad Bonesaw grew up on Age of Empires, and enjoys(/enjoyed) CoD. They also want to use it to shape global perspective. I think signs are good, or at least less-bad.
By making sure that Saudi Arabia is portrayed as an ally in the game’s canon rather than generic MENA terrorists.
It sounds silly at first but the US military has been doing something similar for ages with Hollywood, at least since WWII. The difference is the armed forces use access to military equipment for filming as the carrot rather than financing the productions directly.
From a gamers perspective, anything trying to actually convey a message would be a win against grey-goop slop franchise titles that play it so safe they can barely convey more than “you hero. Kill bad guy”.
That the message is going to be “Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are tier-1 allies / partners / powers” depends on your perspective. Lots of gamers outside the US these days!
I mean, presumably the same way the US military has been using AAA shooters (and Hollywood) to shape global perspective the last few decades. I can't say I'd be against a few big titles where the brown guys get to have the starring roles...
That said, given Saudi Arabia's whole vibe, one can't expect that angle to go all that well for anyone else's representation (Women, Israelis, LBGTQ+ folk...)
I feel that the Saudis purchasing EA is specifically a good sign that future EA games won't be profit-focused at the expense of quality.
I was talking to the GP and P comments in regards to the company's focus. They discussed the problems of current EA and whether future development would be increasingly profit-driven at the cost of quality.
>>I feel like the need for constant growth (instead of just sustainability) is what has caused much of the issues in the current gaming market.
>I'm not sure the investment group attempting to diversify Saudi oil income is going to be less profit oriented than the stock market in general
I suspect that EA was not purchased with profit as the primary motive, and that decreasing quality further would run counter to their aims.
I think their motives are more sinister and subversive. I'm not sure what the relevant equivalent term to (e)sportswashing is for this. Gamewashing or whatever. I think buying EA is going to be a prominent example of it.
My comment included calling Saudi Arabia's Crowned Prince Mohammed bin Salman by his nickname Mohammed Bonesaw. This refers to his alleged direct order to assassinate and butcher Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
The 15-person Saudi agent hitsquad used a bonesaw to dismember Khashoggi, hence the nickname.
This makes clear from tone and context that I do not feel that the Saudis buying EA is a good sign overall.
I realise that relying on tone and context clues to remove ambiguity is not good accessible writing so I apologise for that.
PIF bought the English football club Newcastle ~4 years ago, and have raised season ticket prices by 15% since then. They have capitalists at the helm who don't care about soft power.
To be fair, if they're actually buying it for the whole sportswashing thing and not for the short-term cash profits, could it maybe be a good thing for the games? Better games == more effective sportswashing?
A company taking themselves private could be pretty good, but leveraged PE stuff will demand profit to pay down the loan and pretty much always have the same motivation for growth as investors.
Not necessarily. Private ownership can give you the benefit of operating at a stagnate revenue since it still represents a positive income stream for the owners.
This is an impossible status for public ownership as people don’t want a stock that stays at 10usd for multiple subsequent quarters. They see it as an investment. So you either have to offer significant dividends or find a way to show growth. If not, investors lose interest and your value drops, despite being perfectly profitable.
That’s not to say this private owner set will be happy with that, but that’s the benefit private ownership offers over public capital.
I don't understand why we would have an expectation for the owner of a company to be happy with a stagnant investment, so the players of their games can get more bang for their buck?
It's something that feels good, but when you dig into the nitty-gritty of it, it's basically a "This guy should take the hit so we as a group can enjoy the fruits of it"
If the theory is that PIF's involvement is the video game equivalent of sportswashing, this is pretty much exactly what we should expect – the Saudi's expected return on their investment is improved perception and more opportunities to exercise soft power, with less concern around financial returns.
You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding capital and capitalism.
A “stagnant” company isn’t a failed one. It’s profitable. But perhaps it has saturated its market, or otherwise has no other avenues of growth without handicapping what it excels in. This is fine, as long as it continues to increase with inflation (as it should, if it’s increasing its prices to match so) it will stay profitable and increase your capital at a sustainable and normalized rate.
Or, you can force them to continually increase that profit rate infinitely in a closed system, an impossible ask.
This is literally the concept of “late stage capitalism”. What do you do when there is no more growth to sustain because you’ve saturated the closed system that is earth? You can either go hyperaggressive and eat into other avenues, hoping you can beat their incumbents (but either way, one is going to lose their own profit) or continually increase your profits by lowering quality and production costs. Thus why things like coke “used to taste better” or why Ford’s “used to be built better”.
Private capital isn’t beholden to that requirement. It’s an advantage, not a disadvantage. They simply need to remain competitive and everyone wins: the labor gets a stable job, the owners get a stable income, the industry gets stable (if not increasing, from better technology) products, etc.
The idea that people should be content with an investment that has 0% real return in a very risky environment (video game development) is not a serious argument, and not one that you would respect either.
If you have $100M tied up in a game company that (maybe!) returns 3% a year (matching inflation), why the hell wouldn't you sell it for $100M, and then go put that in bonds which will return 5% with much less risk and no work or time needed on your part?
Again, it's not fair to expect charity from owners (public or private) so you can stretch your dollar further. Whether we are talking about video games, napkins, coffee beans, or warehouse leases, it's all investments that give returns, and generally people with money are extremely smart about good and bad investments, just like you would be if you were in that position (i.e. not voluntarily taking 3% when 5% is easier and safer).
> The idea that people should be content with an investment that has 0% real return in a very risky environment
I literally outlined the return. You are receiving the profit from a very profitable firm, which compounds year over year. Literally, you could not call that 0% (or “near 0%”) even in the most reductive of arguments.
Let’s simplify it for you: I buy a magic well for 1000usd. It gives me 500usd/yr. In 10 years, I’ve gotten 5000usd. Somehow that’s 0%, in your math. Additionally, from here on out, I’m making pure profit off of the well.
Again, you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of even basic capitalism. I suggest you read up on it, which might be difficult as you seem unwilling to read even the entirety of what you’re responding to.
Sorry if that wasn't clear, it would be returns matching a 3% annual inflation. So you are never growing except to cancel out inflation.
Which again circles back to the same question "Why should you voluntarily restrict growth to inflation (to appease others who want more for less) if other investments returned more (on top of inflation) with less work?"
I'd prefer you use actual examples than magic wells. We wouldn't have any problems in society if we had magic wells that printed a 50% ROI annually. We don't. Riskier assets usually land in the 10-20% ROI, but the risk dictates bad years too, so it's not really steady. Steady ROIs of 5-8% are obtainable. 50% ROI is penny stock/meme stock territory.
the owner of a company gets the profits, and that's what he lives off of. investors in public companies get a share of the profit as well, of course, but it's usually vanishingly small because it's split by every investor. So for privately traded companies the people who own them can make their living just based on the money left over after they pay all their expenses, but for investors in public companies the only feasible way for them to have more money at the end of the day is for the company to be worth more money at the end of the day because their potential profits from dividends are baked into the stock price. The owner doesn't take a hit, because his profits are (revenue - cost) not (value of company at buy-in) - (value of company at sell-out)
Dividends don't exist for a private company and I never said they did. And that's why a private company can exist without growing and a public company can't. If you look up the thread, you'll find that it's all in response to someone else posting "Private ownership can give you the benefit of operating at a stagnate revenue since it still represents a positive income stream for the owners", which is exactly what I said here. The owners of private companies profit when there's money left over after all the expenses are paid. The owners of public companies only profit when there's more money left over this year than last year because that will induce people to be willing to pay more for the shareholder's stake, and that increase in the value of the stake (which should reflect an increase in the value of the company) is the profit for a shareholder. So as a private owner if there's a million dollars left over after every year I make a million dollars but as a shareholder if there's a million dollars left over after every year I make more or less nothing.
The classic PE business model is buying underperforming businesses, cutting costs, optimising their operations, and then selling the company for a profit after a couple of years (or taking it public). PE are usually less focussed on growth and more focussed on squeezing the most out of what is already there.
BioWare doesn't have to be active for PE to crap on their legacy.
BioWare games notably moved the needle forward on allowing same-sex relationships in their games. [0] Should we expect that such things might be removed from the existing titles under Saudi ownership?
Honestly I disagree and I feel like this is largely parroted without playing the games.
SWTOR was maintained pretty well for a while and was fun.
The issues with ME3's ending were blown way out of proportion and was still a fantastic trilogy.
Andromeda had its issues no doubt about it but I am still mad at a certain website deciding that they were going to just go hard on attacking it. It was a fun game, it had some development issues and some nasty bugs at launch. But was still fun.
Anthem... man that game had potential but just was not ready to ship. Was a ton of fun to play and I loved the bits of story we got but it really was just a tease of a story sadly.
DA Veilguard... definitely not up to the standard that Bioware set but there is still something uniquely Bioware about the characters that I fell in love with. That games potential was not helped by a vocal minority being mad about one specific character and not caring about anything else in the game.
Has Bioware gone down since their peak? Yeah. But I think claims that they are dead are overblown and people parroting it on youtube for clicks sure isnt helping that sentiment. Play the games and make your own decision.
> Andromeda had its issues no doubt about it but I am still mad at a certain website deciding that they were going to just go hard on attacking it. It was a fun game, it had some development issues and some nasty bugs at launch. But was still fun.
My wife and I have played through the trilogy twice together. I've played it solo separately once. We're talking about a third joint play through soon, I expect we'll start it before the end of the year.
We made it six or so hours into Andromeda and dropped it, with no desire to ever revisit. Characters, gameplay, and story, all three failed to appeal to us at all. Trying to get into it was a chore, and after three or four feature-films worth of time with zero fun experienced, we cut our losses.
(agreed about ME3's ending, but to be fair we didn't play that until they fixed it, the original presentation does seem really bad from what I've read about it)
> The issues with ME3's ending were blown way out of proportion and was still a fantastic trilogy.
I did play the game and no they weren't. The issues truly started with ME2, but ME3 was an awful game that was an embarrassment to the standard of quality set by ME1. Dragon Age also went downhill starting with DA2 (which again I did play at least some of it though I didn't bother finishing because I hated it).
You're obviously still enjoying their work and that's cool. I'm genuinely glad you still do. But don't act like everyone is just being haters who don't play the games and parrot things that other people say. I did play Bioware's games, and that's why I no longer play them and consider them to be long since dead.
I think the problem is that both ME1 and DA1 are fundamentally different games from those that came after. I think at the time I used to think that ME1 and DA1 were built to a PC game standards, and ME2+ and DA2+ were built for consoles.
Most companies started doing the same around that time. It's easier to port a game designed for a controller to PC than a game designed for keyboard and mouse to consoles.
Bioware was always trying to reinvent the wheel. They never wanted to make the same game twice. It was both their strength and their weakness. Every time they released a sequel, it felt different than the previous game (except maybe ME3).
In my opinion, ME2 was the last unambiguously good game Bioware released. They made a few good games after that, but every game starting from DA2 also had major issues.
> Anthem... man that game had potential but just was not ready to ship. Was a ton of fun to play and I loved the bits of story we got but it really was just a tease of a story sadly.
Anthem came across to me that it had most of its story "filed off" at the last minute. I can't prove it, but Bioware was said to have been working on a Mandalorian game for years and so much of Anthem from the KOTOR-like macguffin that gives the title of the game to the underutilized Cantina in the main hub to the fact that AT-ATs (under a slightly different name) just show up in the middle of plot like you should have already been expecting them feels like Bioware in the very last minute had to pull every Star Wars character and Star Wars reference out of a game that was designed to be a Star Wars Mandalorian simulator.
At least as a player of Anthem, I think it's a tale of weird timing that EA was afraid of losing access to the Star Wars license in the wrong week, and also didn't anticipate that Disney would heavily promote a Mandalorian themed TV show not soon after the expected release date. As an officially licensed Star Wars Mandalorian simulator, just as or just before the first couple of seasons of The Mandalorian were premiering could have been incredible. Anthem hints that it was almost that in such weird ways it's hard not to wonder if EA and Bioware just got Anthem's timing wrong.
(It's also not hard to blame Anthem's weird timing for messing up Andromeda by consequence. Andromeda's team got retasked away from story DLC to help Anthem in whatever its last weird rush was, which in my theory is the "removing Star Wars from it" and I still think Andromeda was only one good story DLC from being among the best of the series.)
Interesting theory but there’s not a chance that it’s true. Anthem had been in development for like 6 years by the time the idea for the Mandalorian was even pitched by Favreau.
The weird story absence was due to the studio trying to make it one of those live-service “forever games” that would make them infinite money.
> Anthem had been in development for like 6 years by the time the idea for the Mandalorian was even pitched by Favreau.
People have been wanting to make Mandalorian-focused videogames since essentially the Star Wars Holiday Special invented Boba Fett. (See also all the Mandalorian armored classes in SWTOR.) I'm not saying Anthem was influenced by what would come to be the TV show, I'm saying Anthem was timed with coincidence that if EA's executives had sold Anthem as a Mandalorian videogame it might have been lucky to come out when the TV show did and got a huge audience. It's a weird twist of fate.
Also, yes the live-service pivot also is a reason to expect some under-development of story so that it can come out in later expansions, but also Anthem never really had a clearly defined expansion roadmap, so I think it was more than just the live-service game pivot that damaged Anthem's attempts at storytelling.
I'd say Bioware has been through a rough time for over a decade, between pulling in new directions to avoid being just a factory that spits out sequels and being pushed into whatever area the business/owner side wanted, but after clearing their plate by shipping and drawing a line under Dragon Age I think they need to prove themselves.
Apparently they're working as support for other studios while they do pre-production on the next Mass Effect, and that game needs to walk the line between staying true to the identity of the old games and bringing in new entrants. They're an established operating studio, but I'm not sure that counts for much when the mega publishers can shut down and start studios on a whim, they need to justify staying around whether that's because they make games that sell or because having a workforce in Canada is worthwhile.
Looking at Bioware's history they are also an interesting company.
It does seem like they tried to avoid just becoming the "Mass Effect and Dragon Age" developer but that did not really work that well for them. Maybe that turned out to be a distraction. I think it also did not help that everything they put out was compared to both of those and seemed to have an expectation that it had to be as big or was a failure.
It isn't like they had a constant stream of massive hits. Don't get me wrong I love Jade Empire but how many people actually remember that game exists?
Likely also did not help that their 2 biggest IP's also had gameplay that very different from eachother.
I am (or maybe was until this news) cautiously optimistic about the next Mass Effect.
Regarding ME4 (or is it 5?) the weasel word I keep coming back to is 'potential', it could be great, but whether they can accomplish that is something we can't say on the outside.
It relates to one of my bugbears about how a subsection of gamers have grown to dislike the big productions often for some valid reasons, there's a lot of potential pitfalls in making a game like ME, but a company like EA is the only place that big impressive experience can be done. Right from the earliest previews introducing ME1 they were going into the cinematic style of it and how good it looked, which was an evolution of what they'd done before with Jade Empire/KOTOR (and still seems to be there with parts of DA:Veilguard). While there's (again, potential) competition in the coming years from Exodus by Archetype, and Owlcat's The Expanse: Osiris reborn games, it's hard to see them providing quite what could be done at the largest games companies.
Microsoft paid dividends every year in the 2000s and their share price barely ever broke $40. Most shares in large companies are owned by pension funds, mutual funds and hedge funds. Without share appreciation, the value of these funds don't grow. They make far more money through share price growth than they do in dividends, so they advocate for the company to operate in a way that makes that happen.
This $56B company just took on an additional $20B in debt for this to go private. Now not only do they need to make profits, they need to squeeze even more juice to pay the interest on that $20B.
This will probably result in more money extracting schemes and less editorial freedom, even without thinking about MBS having a massive amount of influence in the company now.
Yup, many private equity deals ultimately are to break a company up into spare parts (to sell individual IPs/sub-brands to the highest bidder.) The extra debt the buyout saddles the company with is in part to build a bankruptcy case to kick off that spare parts auction.
A company going private is, in general, a good thing because they're less shackled by investors and capital.
However this is the rare exception because this is more about oligarchs making a play for total control over the media sphere rather than any sort of financial independence. That said, cornering the entertainment side of things is going to be much harder especially since the people that do this kind of thing have zero clue what a video game even is or how to make a profitable one.
Not referencing the Saudi Arabia portion here specifically but LBOs as documented in the book Barbarians at the Gate (covers Nabisco/RJR tobacco) gives me basically zero hope for the future of EA. EA was already rabid cost-cutters and RIF specialists, and they won the most hated company award for however many consecutive years for a reason. Giving them crushing debt to go along with their propensity to give large executive bonuses and stomp their workforce is not a good recipe long-term
Are there any examples where a company was purchased via a leveraged buyout and the company went on to be more profitable afterwards? Because the only examples I know of resulted in the purchased company going bankrupt fairly quickly.
First of all, investment banks are awash in capital thanks to 14 years of ZIRP and massive profitability. They don't like keeping cash on hand, so that means they dole it out into investments, some of which will flop.
Second, banks are the primary creditor in these deals, meaning they get paid first. They don't do these deals without ensuring that the company has enough saleable assets to ensure they get their pound of flesh. Lots of companies have billions in pension-earmarked reserves they don't have to pay out on if they declare bankruptcy. Guess who gets first dibs on that cash.
Third, they can shift the risk by selling their interest in these companies to another party. They are not stuck with it forever.
Image you have a goose that lays golden eggs. You could just keep selling the eggs every year but somebody comes up to you and offers you 2 billion dollars now and the public market values your golden egg business at 1.5 billion dollars so it seems fair.
It turns out that if you kill the goose there's a cache of 3 billion dollars worth of eggs within it.
The goose is gone and everybody made money off of it's demise.
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PE (not always) is effective at finding under-valued companies and ensuring that they record the value on the PE's books.
Because it sometimes works. But it also sometimes destroys the companies.
But the “works” here is to just make PE richer in the short term, not to actually improve the company in the long term. That short term thinking leads to many impractical decisions that have caused bankruptcies
Because the goal is short term profit, not long term business success. It makes absolutely no difference if the company survives the process or not, what matters is that the PE firms extract their money from the process.
I think if you actually reflect on the matter you would realize that PE firms need to be able to sell the business in order to make money, and that they do in fact sell the business for a profit in the majority of cases. The extremely rare cases of yore where you could buy a business for less than the value of its assets and simply sell off the assets and leave the carcass for bankruptcy are long gone.
Many sports teams come to mind. Pretty much any F1 team that exists is now worth a lot more on paper than it was purchased for. A few EPL teams come to mind too.
[1]
“ The Glazer family’s acquisition of Manchester United remains controversial to this day.
Their £790m takeover in the summer of 2005 came by way of a leveraged buyout: when a significant amount of borrowed money is used to fund the acquisition of a company, with the debt secured against that company itself.”
leverage increases the disparity of returns (so some companies are definitely out of business because the of the leverage put on them) but by far the vast majority of LBO’s are at least moderately successful.
I don't think you're right. During its last fiscal year on the stock market, Twitter reported a net loss of $221 million.
We don't have exact insights to X.com's books, but we have credible reports from the Financial Times that they produced over a billion dollars in ebitda in 2024. This is completely possible with a 50% revenue drop. They laid off 80% of the company, something like 6,000 people.
A big part of why Twitter needed to cut expenses drastically after the buyout was that it suddenly had an extra >1$ billion of yearly debt repayments to handle.
Did not helped they alienated paying customers (as in companies selling ads) at around the day 2 by literally ignoring them and not providing the service.
IIRC Musk wanted to get an LBO, but wasn't able to find anyone willing to loan the money.
Keep in mind that a LBO is actually a good deal for the bank, because if the purchased company goes bankrupt, the bank can recoup their investment by liquidating the company.
However, that only works if there are assets to liquidate. This can include physical assets, valuable IPs, or favorable lease agreements. In other words, anything that someone else would want to purchase.
Twitter, being a website, doesn't have a whole lot of assets they could sell. Which meant that other collateral was required for Musk to secure financing.
> However, that only works if there are assets to liquidate
Ownership of the company itself can be sold, but this only works if there's someone who believes the company was overvalued. Unfortunately for Musk, Twitter's market cap dropped by tens of billions between the time he locked-in his offer and the deal's effective date. It's hard to find banks to fund your LBO when you're paying significantly more than what the market believes the company is worth.
Beautiful turnaround if those figures are reliable, but like Munger calls them, EBITDA tends to bullshit metrics derived by cobbling up bullshit to hide that a company is losing cash.
Just like Figma booking $700M in 2023 profits which was only possible because of the $1b Adobe breakup fee. Proceeded to lose $732m on $749m in revenues the very next year.
It would be fantastic if EA went away. They've been such a blight on the entire industry, killed off or destroyed so many good franchises, developers, and studios.
I was hoping the launch of early access skate. would be received poorly, it was due to the beloved franchise being made into a Fortnite-like money grabbing scheme, would cause them to run backwards and fix it releasing an actual skate series game with some live service features but a solid focus on the original franchise. However that hope is dwindling.
Does EA 202X stomp their workforce? I had a vague idea that this was largely a thing of the past.
The wiki article linked cites a lot of abuse, but all of it is nearly 2 decades old. My understanding was that it course corrected, and is one of the better gaming firms to work for ATM.
Jason Schreier (sp?) is probably the journalist with the best track record on covering EA and it’s generally been rotten all the way down. His recent book Play Nice focuses on just Blizzard but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does one on EA someday because they are in a league of their own when it comes to toxic workplace practices
From a cursory search, he dunks on mismanagement in EA fairly regularly, but I'm not finding a lot of evidence of him reporting on worker abuse. (Layoffs in a failing sub-studio are shitty, but aren't that. Vision whiplash is shitty, but is also not that. Management mandates to implement features that you know will tank your game are shitty, but are also not that.)
I'll defer to people who claim to work there now (avanderveen in the other replies). If you want my perspective, your parenthetical is describing worker abuse. Severance-avoidant layoffs and crunch are shitty and _are_ worker abuse -- in my opinion.
EA won the most hated company award because video game players are dramatic. Charging $5 for a launch DLC is a drop in the bucket compared to the ways that some larger more critical companies can affect your life.
EA has been a target of scorn for a while because of a laundry list of issues (including pay-to-win schemes, loot boxes, treatment of employees, etc.) which is long enough to warrant its own dedicated wikipedia page.
TBQH Valve/Steam is a major factor in this gambling in games scene but gamers love them. So I don't think this is the real reason gamers have a problem with EA.
My defence with Valve is that at least on their stuff you most of time get stored credit. With the rest it is same, but it is actually drown the drain.
For me, it's their support for linux and their easy return policy for games that don't end up working. Gaben could light an orphanage on fire and I'd forgive him.
Not so, but if you're to pick one company over all the others as being the most deserving of your ire, EA seems like a rather strange choice compared to, say, Nestlé [1], Chiquita [2], The Coca-Cola Company [3] or Shell [4]. One might even wonder if there isn't something wrong with your priorities.
Well that's all well and good, but the ignorant masses who called EA the most evil company did so for basically the same reasons that you'd critique those other companies. Big corporations that put out productions designed to do nothing but take money from (often poor) people at the expense of their health.
To me, the constant criticism of gamers over the issue reads like shilling for that pathetic open letter EA put out in response. Classic deflection from a toxic entity.
Sure, their “crimes” are minor compared to RealPage raising rents on everyone but it wasn’t because gamers were dramatic. It was most hated because it was so in your face.
Nah, EA's history is laden with terrible decisions, killing creative teams, neglecting good project's marketing and killing them in the process because they had another internal game in the same genre and the like. It's a fucking cesspit of a company.
And they sit on a lot of good franchises and they literally do nothing with them.
Video game players are hilariously, pitiably dramatic. I remember the announcement of $80 Mario Kart being dangerous,immoral,evil.
Guys... I spent that much at a bowling alley with 2 other people; once, for 2 hours of bowling and a soda. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm saying that in terms of recreation, compared to anything else, it's still insane bang-buck. Let's also not forget video games are discretionary spending, meaning they could charge $400 and it would still not be any more immoral than an expensive handbag. It would just mean that I'm not buying it, just like how I don't buy expensive handbags.
Edit for reply: > In general, if you find yourself thinking a group of people are "just being dramatic" then you're probably missing context.
According to what law of reasoning is this true?
According to Occam's razor, the most likely explanation is simply dopamine addicts getting frustrated they'll be feeling even more guilty about their spending habits, as they continue spending regardless. Otherwise, an $80 game doesn't hurt any more than seeing a $1000 monitor stand.
Edit for reply 2: > Why edit rather than reply?
Because "posting too fast, please slow down, thanks" is a blunt and poorly thought through instrument.
> Video game players are hilariously, pitiably dramatic.
I'm a gamer and I 100% agree with you.
The simple fact is, AAA game prices have been stuck at $60-70 for 30 years. Despite $60 in 1995 being worth ~$127 today, games are still $60. They haven't kept up with inflation. Games are relatively cheap while development costs for AAA are ridiculously high.
A typical SNES game had 10-30 people working on it and would have it done in 1.5-3 years. AAA games will have typically 1,000-3,000 and could take 3-7 years, so we're talking 100-200 times the development cost.
Now, compare the best-selling SNES games [0] to the overall best-selling games [1]. Modern AAA games barely reach 10x the unit sales as old SNES games.
I agree, but just want to add that part of this was offset by CDs being cheaper than cartridges. When the two overlapped with the N64 and PS1, N64 games were about $10-20 more expensive. Turok and Doom 64 for example were originally $75-80, and MGS & FF7 were on the higher side at $50. Digital delivery has probably had a roughly similar effect.
Are you sure you got your info right? I'd not be surprised if they've been stuck at $60 after adjusting for inflation, i.e. costing around $30 in 1995.
100%. Easily verified by doing Google image searches for "SNES game ad". Most games were in the $50-70 range (Note that you'll see some images with prices up to $95, but that's Canadian dollars). It was only as the SNES generation was ending that you started seeing some games around $30-40.
Agree 100%. The talk around gaming remains negative even these past few years as weve seen an insane and growing number of incredible games. This year has an embarrassment of riches in GOTY contenders. There is some very angry and dysfunctional subculture of ranting in the gaming forums that is totally disconnected from reality.
They actively seek out an $80 buggy game to hold up as an emblem of how broken all of gaming is even if there are 100 other amazing games. There’s tons of bad movies and TV and art too, but those cultures celebrate the good stuff instead and ignore the chaff. Gaming forums have some kind of perverse rage echo chamber that’s not representative of most gamers. It’s reminiscent of political discourse where a lot of people just want to “vent” really. The idea of “venting” as commonly understood doesn’t work in big social spaces, it only amplifies the bad stuff as everyone is surrounded by toxicity.
> Let's also not forget video games are discretionary spending, meaning they could charge $400 and it would still not be any more immoral than an expensive handbag. It would just mean that I'm not buying it, just like how I don't buy expensive handbags.
This is a problem in the video game community, where they feel that they have to buy new games, new hardware, etc. because their identity is built on being a "gamer" and they have to maintain that identity. That's why you see so much toxicity about cosmetics, microtransactions, raising prices, buggy games on launch - these people literally cannot help themselves from buying everything, so they feel like their only recourse is to complain (and in some cases, harass others) about it relentlessly.
> I spent that much at a bowling alley with 2 other people; once, for 2 hours of bowling and a soda
This has nothing to do with the pricing of video games - you could easily have spent 10-100x more, or 10-100x less on some other form of entertainment for the same period and same number of people, and it will have little bearing on the pricing of games.
> they could charge $400 and it would still not be any more immoral than an expensive handbag.
Charging $400 for games would change how a lot of people perceive the morality of playing cracked games for $0. Game companies aren't magnanimously charging $60 in 2025 because gamers are "dramatic" - they are doing so because that's how their bean counters are telling them to price their own games.
I play a lot of Paradox strategy games. There is a new game coming out that they sold a premium edition with three pre-sold DLC (for something like $20 additional) with a roadmap of a year of post-release development. Some people are outraged that something is planned to be developed and released 6 months after release because that is somehow keeping pay walling game that should have been in the base release. The prices of games are incredibly low. Seeing a movie in theaters costs $20 a ticket and theyll charge $8 for the soda, and gamers are outraged by a $10 dlc that cost $100k+ to develop.
The problem is that DLCs are annoying. They lead to fragmentation and in some ways lead to being unable to experience everything. And they leave you with the feeling that you are being milked.
In the 90s it was simple - you get the game, 12 months later you get the expansion, then comes the sequel. The problem with DLC is the same as with objects - there are too many of them and they are too small. And the ratio of game/dollar is not that good.
Are people pointing out that trump is marching us into autocracy and fascism 'dramatic' or just paying attention. Any communities gripes are just 'drama' if you don't know what they are talking about.
This is proving the point. This is an extremely dramatic reaction to someone pointing out that the cost of entertainment has lagged behind inflation, especially when you take into account increased budgets and cost per hour.
At some point, the debt buyers will (or should) balk over the track record of this debt, or the company has enough collateral that they're happy either way.
The debt buyers are the same people that created that debt (the people doing the LBO in the first place). They force the company they just bought to pay them loan terms they set for the privilege of buying the company they just bought. That's why LBOs are pretty much a corporate Ponzi scheme. It's just too bad it is a currently legal Ponzi scheme. It might be nice to have legislation to prevent it.
> The debt buyers are the same people that created that debt (the people doing the LBO in the first place)
Sometimes, but not always. I did a quick search on who it is for EA, but didn't find anything.
> They force the company they just bought to pay them loan terms they set for the privilege of buying the company they just bought.
If the buyers are also the lenders, yes.
> That's why LBOs are pretty much a corporate Ponzi scheme.
It's not a Ponzi scheme because it's not multi-level and no one's left holding the bag. In the case of buyers also lending, there isn't even a sucker in the deal. If the company goes bankrupt, it either goes into chapter 13 bankruptcy, restructures debt (that the owners are paying?!), then continues doing business, or it goes into chapter 7 bankruptcy, liquidates, and pays debt holders with assets that are sold off. If you bought it and this is your goal, it seems easier to buy the company and immediately sell off its assets. Why bother with the hassle of LBO if the company is worth more dead than alive? Holding the debt is actually a sign of confidence in the company.
With the LBO cases you hear about PE doing, the debt holders can end up holding the bag. It's also not a Ponzi scheme because they're big boys making big boy deals. It's risky debt that's hard to price and everyone knows it.
You could argue employees are left holding the bag, but not really, since the company didn't owe them anything beyond a last paycheck. They're affected, but that's not the same. Bondholders actually lose money.
The brand reputation gets milked while cost cutting measures result in subpar products and services. Growth targets are gone, now you optimise for cutting costs faster than you lose market share.
It’s not a Ponzi scheme, it just feels like a scam when consumer brands cash out at your expense (the loyal consumer) and slowly bleed the company dry.
You do have to note that this is not a universal feature of PE-backed business.
Take for example power tools, where most of the big players are privately held and owned by PE firms. Reputation and customer loyalty are profitable in this line of business, so QA and product development are alive and well.
"It's not a Ponzi scheme because it's not multi-level and no one's left holding the bag."
Not multi-level YET. I've seen many companies undergo multiple LBOs, which only inflate things and leave someone holding an empty bag at the end. It can become one very, very quickly.
Videogamers have fickle tastes that can change on a whim, and the entire dev stack for game development is becoming more accessible and commoditized, creating massive amounts of competition. Even more so when it comes to squeezing beloved franchises out. Multiple franchises have died under EA (Sim City anyone?), and one of the top franchises EA owns basically has morphed into a "Middle East combat simulator" (Battlefield).
I'm sure the Saudi investors think this might be one way to get influence over the west, or maybe they just like playing FIFA, but I can see this buyout becoming a big stinking turd investment in the long run.
> Multiple franchises have died under EA (Sim City anyone?)
Cities: Skylines managed to fill that gap, but then C:S2 was an utter dud on release.
I think part of the problem is that we've reached a point where the players expect each individual citizen to be simulated, with the traffic to match, but doing that creates such a massive demand on CPU power that even a modern monster system will struggle once your city reaches the high 6-digit population. Simulating 100K vehicles in real time isn't easy. Even if you're not rendering them all because of draw distance limitations, you're still running path finding regularly if you want vehicles to be smart and try to bypass traffic jams, not to mention just trying to make them respond to traffic signals and not rear-end each other.
That's the difference between the VC and PE models. VC, at least in theory, allocated capital to new ideas. PE squeezes "efficiency" out of what exists.
The value is probably all in the licenses that EA has. Why start studios when you only need 3 or 4 to produce yearly updates to Madden, FIFA, NHL, and PGA.
AAA gaming feels so tired (and tiresome) that this news barely registers for me. The last EA game I played was the excellent C&C remaster - and EA's main contribution was getting out of the way of the project. They still own the rights to a ton of legendary IP - SimCity, Command & Conquer, Battlefield, but I don't have illusions that new iterations of that IP will be any good.
I know this is probably part of the Saudi strategy of "sportswashing"[1], but I don't really care about EA or their legacy anymore.
> The last EA game I played was the excellent C&C remaster - and EA's main contribution was getting out of the way of the project.
Not only did they get out of the way, but they actively hired the studio that sprung up from the corpse of the original developers (Westwood): Petroglyph. Not only letting the original designers/developers do their thing, but giving them a chance to work on their own baby again.
It’s rare for larger companies to be willing to humble themselves for something like that, so they gained an iota of respect from me.
> The last EA game I played was the excellent C&C remaster - and EA's main contribution was getting out of the way
I still remember the “Westwood Studios Proudly Presents…” on the RA2 intro cutscene and that pride really shined through. Even the installer for the game was a blast (full-screen, dropped you into a faux game-UX and gave you a military briefing with their kickass soundtrack while the progress bar ran). Modern AAA games lack the soul that games of this time had.
Being a 1970's child that grew up with games alongside the industry, nowadays I mostly play retrogaming, retrogaming inspired, or digital versions of board games.
The quest for realism without gameplay of many AAA games, with exorbitant prices, and GB sized textures, is not something I care about.
I may spend more time playing something with Atari 2600 graphics, and enticing gameplay than caring about latest COD.
I would be busy for hours playing Laser Squad, Quazatron, ATF,....
I recently watched a youtube video by a gamer about 20 years younger than me who had discovered older games and was reflecting on how deeply different they feel compared to modern games.
The big difference she observed is that older games don't hold your hand the way modern games do. They expect you to think hard, work hard, use trial and error, and generally, in her words, "use your brain." She spent a while talking about how old games have a manual where new games have a lengthy tutorial, automap, quest log, helpful companion constantly telling you what to do next, etc. etc. etc.
She didn't quite get there herself, but the juxtaposition really brought it home for me: the reason modern AAA games hold your hand is because they have to. Because they're just too big: too many game mechanics, too many locations, too much story, etc. etc. etc. If they tried to just sit back and let the player play the game for themself, nobody would would even scratch the surface of the game before they get bored and leave.
It was a little liberating because I finally realized I really can just stop paying attention to AAA games in general, and I don't have to feel weird about it. I'm not going to say they're bad. Plenty of people enjoy them enough to support a company the size of EA. But I'm now prepared to recognize that the kind of gameplay experience that I grew up on and continue to find most compelling is fundamentally incompatible with a AAA-sized budget.
> the reason modern AAA games hold your hand is because they have to.
Their target consumer now is as high a percentage of the population as possible; they aim for the lowest common denominator being able to play and thrive in the game. Hence, needing insane levels of handholding and guidance in the game.
In the past, it was mostly just geeks/nerds playing video games, and so things didn't need to be dumbed down to that level.
> In the past, it was mostly just geeks/nerds playing video games
This just isn't true. I was there in the 80s and 90s. To an approximation, everyone played video games. The limiting factor was wealth more so than nerdiness; games cost a lot more in real terms back then.
Some specific games, like CRPGs, tended to be aimed at nerds. But that was about fantasy RPGs more so than video games - it goes along with tabletop RPGs and Dragonlance books. But you also have people who went out and bought a new computer with a CD-ROM drive just so they could play Myst, because that game was legitimately a pop culture fad that summer.
And then in modern media we have some selective retelling because a lot of the history is being told by people who themselves are deep into geek culture and also have a case of main character syndrome.
Plenty of my friends who were less than geniuses enjoyed these same games I did.
Games now just focus more on lower engagement players. It's easier than ever to get into a game but, easy come, easy go. Frustration just serves to get someone to move on rather than buckle down and persist. Previously, when gaming was less easy to get into, the population of gamers self selected to people who had already significantly invested in the hobby and were much more dedicated to it.
I think the ability to solve the obtuse puzzles and deal with unexplained mechanics had a lot more to do with lack of alternative options and the sunk cost fallacy rather than superior intellect.
I think this is more relevant. Like everything, most games today are optimized to maximize engagement and keep people with low attention spans hooked. There are plenty of intelligent people who could invest a bunch of time into solving a puzzle but just don't care to.
I remember playing Myst as a not-particularly-bright grade schooler and banging my head against puzzles for weeks without making any progress. It wasn't some great intellectual challenge -- I was just bored and didn't have any other games to play. I can't imagine I would have stuck with it if I could have watched YouTube or played Fortnite instead.
> the reason modern AAA games hold your hand is because they have to.
This doesn’t touch on one key difference between games now vs. games then: there were some secrets in games that you just didn’t ever know about unless there was a (printed) walkthrough, or through the word of mouth of friends. The Legend of Zelda is a great example.
Nowadays, many games can be 100%’ed without even having to jump online or ask someone for help. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing.
I’m playing the Metroid Primer Remaster on the Switch 2 (originally for the GameCube), and even it can be 100%’ed without having to look much up or without even a manual.
A _great_ spin on this is Tunic, which has an in-game manual that you find pages of as you play, and is written in an in-game language so you kinda sorta need to work things out based on the diagrams and other notation.
At a base level, it tells you about abilities that you have from the beginning of the game but don't know the buttons to press to trigger them, but it goes much deeper.
Back in the day, I remember a Blizzard interview on pre-Wrath WoW raid design. They explained how they didn't like that they spent a ton of money and effort developing end-game content that less than 1% of their playerbase would ever see. And development costs have only risen since then.
Moreso than needing handholding due to game mechanics or "too much" anything, I've always felt that it stems from a developer need for players to experience what you made. Or even just convincing the accountants that each additional cost of development will directly impact the majority of players (aka they don't get stuck or give up halfway through.)
Exactly. It makes little sense to fund development that few players will ever see. A developer/publisher could instead cut that content and keep the money as profit.
That's why I think novelty and 'old AAA game' richness has a ceiling development_cost : unit_of_content ratio.
There are things that were feasible for Fallout 1 to do that accountants would lose their shit over today, precisely because they were relatively cheap then and astronomically expensive now.
... the real travesty is the corollary of that though: that gameplay/difficulty must ensure a maximum number of players see all the content.
Which has led to the 'impossible to fail' gimmicks that make modern AAA games feel less satisfying.
Honestly, it feels like Rockstar and Valve are the only ones making truly great AAA games these days...
(But mostly because they're on stable financial footing and willing to take as long as it takes)
Elden Ring not having a questlog is just dumb. I don't play everyday, I don't remember exactly where I went and did what, and coupled with bizzare questlines it results in poor experience.
So I wouldn't pull in questlog with rest of stuff. You need history if you have any sort of side quests.
Elden Ring is a game that I really wanted to like. I really tried to like. But it failed me, so I dropped it, never to return.
I enjoyed the exploration, the setting, the cryptic writing. Even some of the more obtuse game design decisions appealed to my tastes, such as the lack of a quest log and a map that is just a geographical representation of the world, with minimal markers. It forced me to pay more attention to the world, recognize the terrain, learn the paths to navigate, etc. It was a game where I really was ready to lose myself in.
But it ultimately failed to have minimal respect for my time, and for that I hated it.
First when I accidentally killed a boss that could be spared. I didn't want to kill him, I just happened to be too strong and failed to react mid combo when he surrendered. The game fucking auto saved and I had to start over from scratch.
Second time when I was in the middle of a conversation when I was interrupted by my wife. I couldn't load a game to watch the cutscene again. It fucking autosaved again. I had to read a transcript online to understand what was going on. Total immersion killer.
Lastly, I remember a boss that took me like 40 attempts to kill. I am okay with the challenge. I am not okay with having to go through a mostly boring gauntlet of enemies for each attempt. It offered no challenge, I just felt like I was filling a form before each attempt. A long, 10m long form.
> Because they're just too big: too many game mechanics, too many locations, too much story,
This was my thinking exactly while playing the two most recent God of War games. So many more mechanics, endless weapon crafting/upgrade options, side quests and minigames. Maybe I just have rose-tinted glasses, but the originals seemed so much more focused.
hear me out: I think this is a function of distribution mechanisms to at least some extent. when I was a kid in the 90s you could make a game that deep because when I bought or rented it it was the only game that was both new and available to me, so I focused on it for weeks at a time. When you got bored you couldn't quickly switch to a new game, so you explored the game you have because the only alternative was switching back to a game that you've already beaten up for 200 hours. Why was tony hawk pro skater such a great franchise? Because it rewarded you for being good at the game mechanics by opening up new parts of each level as you got better at things, meaning exploration and skill development went hand in hand. Why do I know that soldiers in metal gear solid do a cute little booty wiggle if you point the gun at them long enough? because I played the game so often and for so long that I've done things like point a gun at a soldier for 10 minutes just to see what will happen. I don't actually think that modern games have to hold your hand because of their size. I think that players will explore a big open world left to their own devices. I think that there are games like minecraft and dorf fort that throw you into a complex world with no tutorial beyond trial and error and that players love them for it. I know these aren't technically AAA games but minecraft is the best selling game of all time so the broad appeal is there. I just think that the way we used to play video games followed a really high level loop of frustration->exploration->gratification loop but now every moment of frustration has to compete with the ability to get immediate satisfaction from a different game that can be downloaded and installed in 2 minutes.
I am, however, very with you when it comes to not paying attention to AAA games despite being the kind of person who plays games every day. I agree that no one is offering deep experiences anymore outside the Soulsborne genre, which just isn't fun for me, so I end up focusing on novelty more than anything. My favorite game of all time is a top down roguelite stealther called Heat Signature that I've put hundreds of hours into and done at least one thing that the developer believed to be impossible based on the tutorials (kidnapping someone using only a lethal weapon). The last game I was truly excited about was a quest 1 VR game that was called Help Yourself at the time. Its changed its name since, but the idea is still really cool: it's a puzzle game that involves shooting targets with a gun. It's a bit hard to explain but the tldr is that you have to orchestrate multiple copies of yourself across multiple runthroughs until you shoot all of the targets. A typical level might have to targets with a wall between them such that there is no place where a player has line of sight to both targets, but there is a gap between the wall and the ceiling. On the first runthrough, an instance of you shoots the target on the right, then throws the gun over the wall. On the second runthrough, an instance of you is recreating the action of shooting the target on the right and throwing the gun over the wall, and another instance of you that you're currently in control of walks over to where the gun will land, waits for it to be thrown, then picks it up and shoots the other target. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GENqINO7pXY has some gameplay footage. I haven't had my brain bent by something like this since Portal came out.
> I may spend more time playing something with Atari 2600 graphics, and enticing gameplay than caring about latest COD.
The first good console for me was the NES. I enjoyed the Atari 2600, but only because it was the best at that time. But I can still enjoy a good NES game.
There aren’t many games on the Atari 2600 that I would still consider fun today. Maybe not necessarily because of graphics, but the graphics were pretty bad too.
It’s interesting that most modern retro-style games seem to keep a higher color and resolution than even the last great 2D generation (SNES/Genesis).
There are some games that hold try to that generation’s specs, though, but I don’t see many go as far back as the NES (and especially not the 2600).
There’s a small niche of people that make/have made modern NES games (actual cartridges for the actual console or remakes of the console), and those that play them, but I’m not aware of any super popular ones. If anybody’s aware of any, let me know!
"Graphics" is really the key word in that sentence.
And even then it's just the aesthetic that's fun. I don't think anyone aside from a small core of enthusiasts who really enjoy a technical challenge are particularly nostalgic for the 2600's sprite count or palette limitations, let alone the compute, memory, and data storage constraints.
Fellow retro gamer here, though I typically find my fill in 8/16 bit era games. I too seldom get enjoyment from contemporary AAA games, and have stopped paying attention to those many years ago.
When I to find joy in recent titles, it is typically indie games, or titles from small studios.
Part of it may be that photorealism as a graphical style does not appeal to my senses, but that is not all. I think that in many ways contemporary games have the need of keeping me busy and engaged. When I hear that a game is 200+ hours of content, instead of being intrigued I feel just overwhelmed.
One of the most groundbreaking trilogies in gaming with tons of potential and it’ll get relegated to the dustbin of history no doubt.
If I was absurdly rich I’d buy up lots of underused and/or abused IP and start a game studio around it. I feel like that would be a good business if you have the capital to handle game dev costs
I assume the acquisition is mostly about the sports games and Battlefield but EA really is sitting on some fantastic IP: Bioware, Westwood, and Maxis were all great studios.
I think "were" is the correct tense. EA's dictates for SimCity (2013) ended up crashing that franchise entirely, and a decade into The Sims 4, EA has admitted it's planning on endless expansion packs for Sims 4 rather than making a Sims 5, with the community largely debating whether or not the best Sims game is Sims 2 or Sims 3.
Right, they have plenty of good and dormant IP, they're just uninterested in or bad at executing on it. Cities Skylines (1, not 2) did well, for example.
For those who want to play it. Mass Effect Legendary Edition plays great on a Steam Deck or medium pc, but also has 4k reolution. It’s €6 at the moment.
> RIP Mass Effect and by extension BioWare. One of the most groundbreaking trilogies in gaming with tons of potential and it’ll get relegated to the dustbin of history no doubt.
Maybe I started with BioWare too early, but everything after NWN felt incredibly empty... in that 'world breaks if you look left or right of the main plot' Call of Duty way.
Which is fine, but always gave me an itch that I was really strapped into a plot-on-rails amusement park ride rather than a world.
When first person games became a destination for gaming (and not just another genre that we move on from — like "fighting games") is when I checked out of gaming. I know, I know, there are no doubt plenty of cool indie games out there (and other genres) but I guess in the meantime I found other ways to spend my time and haven't really looked back into games.
(I think too "AAA" as a moniker is kind of a huge red flag for me anyway. Like how "Now a Major Motion Picture" means it will be artless and instead appeal to a broad demographic in the most banal of ways.)
A new civilisation game just got released, the most well known mainstream gaming series are either third person (GTA) or sport games (Fifa), there is the witcher - in no way has gaming be reduced to first person games, not even AAA.
EA is a big publisher, so things like Split Fiction/It Takes Two get sprinkled in with their yearly shovelware of new paint jobs for Madden, NHL, FIFA, The Sims 4, etc too. I'll also give them credit that not every remaster is crap (Mass Effect Legendary Edition was great).
Yeah, admittedly my perspective is that of someone who thinks sports games peaked with NBA Jam (1993). The only other sports games I play are racing sims - which are also in a bad place, but I digress.
NBA Jam; NFL 2K (and 2K1, 2K2) on the Dreamcast; the first three Tony Hawk games, the THQ "pro wrestling" games on the N64; Ice Hockey, Punch Out!, World Cup, Dodgeball (really, any of those Kunio Kun sports games) and Bases Loaded (first one only) on the NES; the Mutant League games on the Sega (especially Hockey). What the Golf?, Golf Story, the Mario Golf games. Mario Tennis (any of them, they're pretty much all good, the latest one on the Switch is great). Super Baseball 2020 on the Neo Geo.
There are two big audiences for sports games, I think, and I'm in the one that doesn't give a shit about realism or real team names or real-world rosters. I have no interest whatsoever in modern EA-type sports games, and most (not quite all) of my favorites for any give sport are from the '90s or '00s. I would characterize myself as a pretty big fan of sports games, actually (look at that list! I have put lots of time into pretty much all of those! I didn't even list all of them, like snowboarding games) but don't have any interest whatsoever in the latest EA NFL games and such.
well then clearly you cannot be trusted on this issue, as sports games peaked with nba jam tournament edition (1994)
fr tho you and the OP are talking about two different things here. it's possible to be an avid gamer who just does not care about sports games, in which case EA is both an absolute titan of the industry and of little to no relevance to you
The PIF of Saudi Arabia has been a big investor in Take-Two (the parent of 2K Sports) since 2021, which is relevant to the larger discussion about Saudi "sportswashing".
Not entire - football has Football Manager (def a niche compared to FIFA/EAFC, but still pretty major), and FIFA will one day publish their FIFA game (there was a licensing disagreement, so EA rebranded their game to EAFC, and FIFA kept the name and will presumably launch a game with it some day).
Thinking about EA (or any big publisher) as a monolith is quite counterproductive to generate a mental model. In practice it is several studios with an overlord. Some studios might still be independent enough that the overlord just stays out of the way.
While that's true, there's also often a noticeable trend of games moving in a similar direction across a publisher - for example the disastrous live service attempt from Bioware (Anthem). Whether this is due to top-down pressure or just corporate vibes or culture, publishers definitely seem to have an impact on what kind of games get made.
As much as I love bf4, I will say bf1 really hit it out of the park. It was a fantastic game that ran well at launch and basically only got better with the dlcs. It's servers also seem to be immune to a ddos that regularly kill bf4 servers.
I believe that Battlefield 4 was the last good Battlefield game. Biggest asset was fully self-hostable servers that provided progression, community control, and allowed gaming clans/organizations to actually community-build. Nowadays, forced matchmaking and limited party sizes really eliminate the ability to build large communities.
The consolidation of publishers/developers in controlling all of the online experience has started limiting online gaming's ability to be a reasonable third place.
BF4 was broken on launch, with servers crashing from people simply playing the objective. These studios have been serving people garbage for close to two decades by now. They deserve their fate.
BF4 was a massive redemption story. It started rough, yes, but it went on to become probably the best sandbox shooter ever released. Sorry if you didn't have the patience to make it through the initial 6 months. You missed out.
Battlefield was always jank built on top of an innovative (or just finally achieved) idea of large battles with vehicles that worked. 1942 wasn't really innovative but the technical achievements of player count and not shitty vehicles made it a novel experience.
The further they moved away from that, the more generic it became. I don't want to say any one was really the "last good one" but the last one I put significant time into was BF2 but I played all pc versions up to 4 and you're right, it was absolutely broken on launch. It's not why I haven't played one since but I never did go back to BF or even really FPSs since. They all seem like CoD clones now, even (or especially) the CoD franchise and it's tiring.
I'm sure the game will be well received, but the beta was enough to put me off from buying it, and you're talking to someone who bought bf5 and 2042 despite misgivings, so I have a pretty low bar.
The maps I've played are pretty much all close quarters maps with the exception of liberation peak. It's pretty clear they're courting the COD playerbase. The maps that do have vehicles are so small it makes no sense to have anything but humvees. They've once again given assault pretty much everything it needs to be a god class. No thanks. Not my battlefield, and I say this as someone who's got like 4k hours in bf3/4.
How much of the new Battlefield actually been coming from EA though? I feels like the relatively new "Battlefield Lab" (which EA seems to have a really hands-off approach with so far) seems to be the main credit for that.
Has there been any interviews or anything that clarifies how much EA been involved? Otherwise I'd continue give credit to the developers rather than the publisher.
Battlefield Studios is just a bunch of EA owned studios, DICE, Criterion, Ripple Effect (formerly EA LA). It's not a separate entity. EA corporate put Vince Zampella in charge of the whole thing.
Between the fact that I'm on the "no time" part of the "time to play but no money, money to buy but no time, pick one" saying, indies, some still-functioning Japanese studios, and the burgeoning "AA" segment of the market, where people in the 2020s use 2020s technology with a team of maybe a dozen or two to put out what would have been AAA games produced by hundreds of people in the 2010s, I've had no use for the AAA space for a while. Or the gacha space; you don't need to create an open wound in your wallet just to play some decent games.
I've noticed this attitude is not yet "mainstream" but the first and the second derivative of its prevalence ought to worry the AAA industry. If their moat essentially collapses to "we can afford to spend a bazillion dollars on marketing" their death won't be too many years behind.
Which is ironic given the origin of the name, Electronic *Arts* once positioned themselves as a haven for “software artists,” treating games as creative works on par with music and film. Now they feel more like a licensing machine, recycling IP until it’s dry and chasing live-service revenue. The contrast between what the name promised and what the company became is kind of bleak.
The irony really kicks in when you start to remember all the arguments for how capitalism leads to the best products. Seems we forgot to clarify "best for who?", but it's clear at least shareholders won something.
Indie games are a product of capitalism too. RimWorld, Stardew Valley, Minecraft, etc. All products a functioning market just as much as the latest AAA shovelware is.
It's thanks to capitalism that you get to choose which one you want to play.
Eh, I think we'd probably have a lot more indie games if we did not live in a society with few safety nets where one really needs a good paying job to survive.
> You're saying that like it's some obvious truth, and only exists because of capitalism, yet you provide no proof it is actually like that.
You're statement about EA and capitalism implies that the current market is a result of capitalism. If the market is a capitalist market, as you a state, then all the products of that market can be equally attributed to capitalism, can they not?
Capitalism (the free market, more accurately) is what led to those games existing and your ability to choose to play them. You can easily imagine a world where software engineers were subject to licensing requirements (like lawyers, doctors, etc) and software that was run on your PC was subject to a state approval process.
The ability of a single person to use their time and money how they see fit to create products that other people can choose to use (or not use) based on their own personal choice is the ideal of capitalism.
> You're statement about EA and capitalism implies that the current market is a result of capitalism.
Why does it imply that? The only implication that is clear from what I initially said is that capitalism can turn good companies like EA into whatever it is today, not that every single product on the market is the result of capitalism.
EA has an interesting strategy on offering a good value for their paid EA Play and EA Play pro plan. For example, if you find yourself in these specific genres:
Sports:
- Madden
- FC Soccer
- F1
This area should grow to cover other major sports. Others have mentioned how strong the sports offering is, and it’s also worth noting how strong Wii Sports was for the monumental success of the Wii.
FPS:
- Battlefield more or less
The Battlefield universe can cover anything you can dream of when it comes to FPS, so that’s another platform that is still a growth sector imho.
It is an undeniably strong influence in the video games scene, with increasing revenue each year apart from minor tumbles. I despise what it stands for, but EA being called irrelevant?
Tariffs on any game that fails to meet some specific condition that EA does. Pump the stock on EA. Drop stock prices on other companies. Buy them up. Repeat.
Plus you can pull a Facebook/YouTube/Tiktok and use it to push impressionable people politically towards you. Media made for viewing is all a state enterprise at this point. Interactive media (games) have been looked over, but it seems that won't be the case anymore.
The Saudis through the PIF are heavily invested in entertainment brands and sports to distract from the fossil fuels (and worse) that create most of those investment funds.
As to Kushner's-specific role, could just be cynically seen to money itself, as a US-based middleman of the PIF deal trying to take a cut. "Administrators" in these sort of private equity buyouts (leveraged buy outs) can make a lot of fast, stupid cash in a grift that probably should be illegal but still currently is not. (LBOs saddle the company being bought out with a lot of debt to pay the "Administrators" what they think they are worth. That debt often leads to the original company going bankrupt and selling their IP at auction to highest bidder and the "Administrators" also take their cuts of those auctions. It's a corporate ponzi scheme that no matter how many huge companies it takes down like Sears or Little Debbie or MGM or many more we still haven't actually put a law on the books to stop it.)
> The investors are betting that AI-based cost cuts will significantly boost EA’s profits in the coming years, people involved in the transaction told the Financial Times.
It halfway makes sense. EA is priced at current game production costs, but if that goes down, it'll be worth more. The other side of that is that someone might be able to vibe code with "make the next iconic video game franchise in the vein of Zelda or Pokemon." If EA's sports license moat is strong enough, this might not be an issue, but otherwise, it feels like that cuts both ways.
It’s also not a given that AI will improve the cadence of their workflow to begin with. I could easily see a churn-heavy org incentivizing devs to throw workslop over the fence and offload the responsibility of verification to other teams.
Vibe coding absolutely does not work at the scale of an EA Sports game. Even if it could get to a compileable state, there will be loads of performance and memory issues. The kind of code needed for these codebases aren't exactly going to be scraped on Github.
And then there's console code rooted in NDA's. Throwing that into an LLM is a great way to be blacklisted as a publisher.
I buy that vibe coding doesn't work at that scale, and there will always be an investor that thinks it does (these aren't being led by traditional tech investors) who's willing to pay, thinking there's an opportunity.
The NDAs don't matter. If there's an exception for tooling like Github, that'll be enough, and enterprise AI code platforms will all hear the same concern and say they don't retain anything. What does matter is there isn't much training data on programming for modern consoles.
Tools like Git are fine. A 3rd party server like Github is an entirely different playing field. For console SDKs I wouldn't even trust a private Github account. There's a reason the industry standard is whipping up your own perforce server instead.I'm doubtful they'll make an exception for a company that wants to train on their data without consulting them.
But this is all speculation. I haven't seen a recent SDK that talked about these issues, so maybe this is already talked out
Am I wrong in reading this will add 20b in debt to EA the company, and not the purchasers? Because it seems like just servicing that debt will immediately put the company in a bad position.
Taste is subjective, but as someone who have played: Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights, MDK2, Shattered Steel, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age: Origins, Command & Conquer: Generals 2, Anthem on their release dates, I'd rank them in that order. So to me Mass Effect 2 wasn't one of their best games, but it was also not one of their worst.
Mass Effect 2 is the primary reason I've only played Mass Effect 3 once, because I just can't get myself to go through 2 again despite having replayed Mass Effect 1 several times. I don't think it's a terrible game, on the technical side it improved so many things, but I just don't like the story. To be fair, Dragon Age and Anthem were the only ones that really dissapointed me.
I wouldn't personally go that far; having recently replayed all three back-to-back, I'd say that they're just very different types of games.
ME1 is a an excellent story-driven action RPG with clunky combat and issues with environment size/complexity due to technological limitations of the platform it was built for.
ME2 is a very good story-driven third-person shooter with excellent combat and a thin veneer of RPG elements that has overcome a lot of the technical issues with ME1 despite the same platform/engine.
ME1 by far has the better story and I enjoyed it more than ME2 on my first playthrough years ago, but now, already knowing the story, ME2 was more fun to play this time. It's a shame they couldn't have improved on everything good about the first one instead of turning it into a shooter.
Personally, I'd love to see the whole trilogy reimagined and remade as a single giant open-world action RPG, but that's probably never happening.
To this day, I would love to have a trilogy of games that were like the first one. Alas that Bioware basically immediately abandoned the direction of the first game for a much worse one in a misguided attempt to try to appeal to the mass market.
You're right. The sense of wonder and exploration I got playing ME1 was just totally absent in ME2. But it was nonetheless a pretty good game in its own right, and for many people, a game they enjoyed more than the original.
I loved ME1 and was disappointed by ME2 because I loved ME1 so much. I devoured the lore, every codex entry, and even the long elevator rides where you had to listen to news reports about your earlier actions. The world-building was so much better, and all of this was reduced to a minimum in ME2.
ME1 was an epic space RPG with action elements, while ME2 was an action game built around a collection of crew side stories with lighter RPG elements.
ME2 was not particularly good. The characters were good, but the gameplay was severely dumbed down and the main story was flat out bad. I don't know who at Bioware thought it was a good idea to force the player to work for Cerberus (basically space Nazis, for anyone who hasn't played Mass Effect), but it wasn't a good idea. You can't just railroad the player into working for bad guys in a game that is supposed to celebrate player choice. Not only that but they mishandled the villains, and the entire Collector plot was a waste of time that didn't contribute to the overall story. ME2 was the beginning of the decline in Bioware's quality and it never stopped after.
Spidey senses tingling: so they have access to a huge install base (millions of kids/teenagers/adult gamers), often times with rootkits/spyware on kernel level (anti cheat), often games needs admin mode to even work, with most devices having microphones/webcams, often with high speed fibre connections... What could possibly be the reason for buying EA? Direct view into family life of citizens around the world. Nice way to gather kompromat.
>What will PIF, Silver Lake and Affinity partners do to monetize such client software, beyond games, that is pre-installed on 1 billion devices?
How is this different than something like Broadcom buying VMware? Corporate machines are probably far juicier than a bunch of 18-35 yr olds computers. Not to mention that a wide install base also means if they go rogue it'll be detected even faster.
> Corporate machines are probably far juicier than a bunch of 18-35 yr olds computers.
"Jucier" in what context/for what? Say you wanna influence how people feel about social issues, what computer user is "jucier" then? Not saying that that's the plan or whatever, just that the context matters.
>Say you wanna influence how people feel about social issues, what computer user is "jucier" then?
How are you going to "influence how people feel about social issues" without being overly obvious? In contrast there's plenty of nefarious stuff you can straightforwardly do on corporate machines: insider trading, corporate espionage, sabotage, PII theft, ransomware, and credit card fraud just to name a few.
Was anything of value lost? EA was long dead due to its predictable and constant lack of content creation abilities, and Saudi Arabia isn't known for even involvement in great creative contents. Meanwhile, Nintendo Switch 2 is still sold out in some places. This feels more like EA shareholders got an exit than SA gained anything.
Why? Both are probably also buying to participate in the media/culture-war. So it's in their interests to also have some good products to sell. The worst that might happen is that all the good games are now leaning more to Arabian/Chinese culture, instead of US/Europe, which is not even a new development, Asian culture has been quite prominent in Western Countries because of Japan and South Korea, and China has been also growing in the last years. And China has some really funded productions, usually playing in the top of their genre.
Though, the cancer of gambling will continue spreading.
I don't know about you but I don't want my entertainment money to finance slave labor, cultural oppression, military invasions or butchering journalists. Could be a Canadian thing.
AAA gaming has looked bleak for the past 15 years, I still do not know why is it such a guiding star for the video gaming world. It is the artistic equivalent of Henry Ford’s assembly line where risk is low, marketing budget is high, and the result is mediocre and bland slop.
AAA gaming is blockbuster cinema. It’s for people that don’t really care about the artistic medium. It’s mass entertainment at the industrial level.
As someone who works in the Middle East at a large company, I expect that next step will be a small army of current and ex-McKinsey MBAs to arrive at EA to "set strategies", "implement operating models", "run transformation exercises", "track value creation", and so on.
On the upside, maybe they will release a new AAA Dilbert game though!
Wonder how PE intends to transform a company that was already trying every slimy PE trick.
[x] - Employees are overworked and underpaid
[x] - IP treated as infinite cash cows loaded with micro-transactions
[x] - Games turned soulless in pursuit of wide 'rated E' appeal
Sports is ~50% of their revenue. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a sports-washing exercise where revenue growths takes a back set to normalizing Saudi Arabia to the new generation.
My made up history of EA is that EA was acquired because a Saudi princling's Dad got mad at him for becoming a whale for EA. So in order to cut costs at home, he just told PIF to buy EA so he can defraud his money back.
People forget that most 'gamers' aren't the hardcore terminally online strong opinion type you'll find in internet forums. Most are playing FIFA, Madden, and various other sports games. They don't have any opinion on EA other than "that's that company that makes the cool games I like".
People don’t like to hear it but they make products people want and those products are acceptable enough in quality.
The millions of people who play FIFA, Madden, and Battlefield don’t sit around on niche forums bashing EA for not making enough innovative indie-style titles.
EA even puts out titles that are legitimately critically acclaimed every once in a while (Split Fiction as a recent example).
>bashing EA for not making enough innovative indie-style titles
Its not even that, both Mass Effect and Dragon Age are fantastic series with latest games being mediocre at best. If they did the same thing as before it would be more successful, so they clearly don't know what is the right thing for the customers.
The final state of Mass Effect Andromeda was arguably a solid game after the most embarrassing well-publicized bugs got patched (“mostly positive” on Steam) The story may not be the best but there really isn’t anything wrong with the gameplay.
Dragon Age: Veilguard was actually a solid game, and it got review-bombed by angry right-wingers. It does make some traditionalist fans upset but it’s not some kind of disaster like it’s been painted to be.
Its not about being "solid game", it did not match EA's own sales expectations - thats all. If "angry right-wingers" can make your game fail then maybe you don't understand your target audience, which is what I am talking about.
EAs customer base has been pretty negative on the state of the product for the last several years. I can't imagine this move will do anything but accelerate the trends driving brand dissatisfaction.
Customers feel like they are being treated like ATM machines, while the tens of billions of revenue are clearly not going into new, exciting creative endeavors. I suppose all of this makes sense when you consider that EA is a 45 year old company.
Yeah, business-people famously don't like to sit on things that have a 1% chance of being valuable in the future, usually selling them off to smaller entities so the fans of those things can actually enjoy them.
I wondered about a situation similar to this for the King of the Hill reboot. Seemingly almost every episode contains exuberant praise for Saudi Arabia. Hank would mention how it felt more America than Texas, and how much he loved Saudi Arabia over and over. I haven't seen any public information about Saudi funding being involved, so maybe this is all baseless.
Back in the 80s there was a Playboy article about how influential the Saudi's in USA because of their overflowing oil money. I guess it never changed they just got a good PR management to fix their image for a few decades and they are in the spotlight again.
I want to start by saying I have no skin in the game here. While not perfect, Saudi has very clearly moved "Westernly" on many ideas, most notably social and economic ones. It can even be argued that their recent moves in that direction have made it near impossible for the other large economy companies to move too far the other way. Th
At what point does the narrative about their investments on the larger stage become less pejorative?
"Why does everybody have such a low opinion of this oppressive theocracy?" Gee, it's such a mystery.
Remember when the current leader of Saudi Arabia lured a Washington Post journalist into a Saudi consulate, had him tortured to death, and cut into pieces to dispose of the evidence? What a bunch of merry pranksters. We really should lighten up.
>Maybe the narrative changes when their approaches towards human rights does?
Clo$e. The narrative change$ whenever the $audi$ decide that they want it to. U$ually, thi$ involve$ $omething, but I can't figure quite what that "it" could be.
>While not perfect, Saudi has very clearly moved "Westernly" on many ideas, most notably social and economic ones.
My man, they can kill you for drawing a stick figure.
Let that sink in.
SA is still a single-export economy, and those who are smart enough to get out of SA, do so. From personally having very close relationships with a few folks who worked on the NEOM project, the Saudi locals are not prepared to do any work at all, just spend money and export the work to consultants. It's about posturing, not rolling up their sleeves.
Yeah. They don't have a good track record, and that's before the (partially justified) Islamophobia kicks in.
Before anyone thinks I'm Islamophobic, I equally detest and mock all religion.
I do find it funny that if there is an afterlife, Abraham is there, and absolutely befuddled as to why all of his disciples seem to hate each other and want to kill each other.
> While not perfect, Saudi has very clearly moved "Westernly" on many ideas, most notably social
Citation very much needed. It's still a country where you can be executed for being gay, protestors against government projects get murdered in the streets, and anyone vaguely critical against the government (that includes being critical for things which have since been allowed, like women driving) being imprisoned for long periods of time. Oh, and did they not execute a dissident in a consulate? Did they not bait various government detractors living abroad to return to Saudi under threat of harm to their families?
It's still a reactionary theocracy. It has liberalised, socially, in the years since MBS has had de facto control, there is no denying that; but they're nowhere near "westernly".
> At what point does the narrative about their investments on the larger stage become less pejorative?
When their sportswashing and investmentwashing ends up entirely working. It will probably take years, Khashoggi's murder was still only 7 years ago. It will also depend a lot on how their World Cup works, a lot of the world will be watching that one closely and it will have big ramifications.
Sure, 2 inches per year, 2 steps ahead 1 step back in a good year. In 2000 years they may approach current levels of personal or religious freedom that average western country has. Till then, its absolutely horrible place if you are in any sort of minority group, or woman, or want that pesky freedom for you or your children.
The USA isn't the only country in the "western world", please stop equating the two.
Even for Britain, France, Germany, the countries with the biggest far right/reactionary political groups, where there are legitimate chances for them to end up in power, none of them are religious. Or even that socially reactionary for that matter.
Since only nine Vice-Presidents have succeeded through death/resignation, and zero Speakers of the House, I don't think there is much danger of a theocracy even if the Speaker wants there to be one. Furthermore, in the unlikely event he becomes President, Congress still passes the laws and the Courts still require the laws to be constitutional. The whole system is designed to thwart things like this.
But let's not ignore the danger from the Left. Sure, a transcendant, self-sacrificing God is out of the picture, but enthroned in his place is My Self-defined Sexual Identity, or depending on the variety, Those We Define to be Oppressed. In the new atheist Puritanism, dissent will get something worse than wearing a scarlet letter. The problem isn't theocracy, per se, its the fact that dissent is not tolerated, and the Left isn't any better here.
Never mind third in line, the dude who is currently President just put out a memorandum declaring "anti-Christianity" to be on the same level as "support for the overthrow of the United States Government."
I really wouldn't go this far, there is _way_ too much religion in US politics for proper separation of church and state. When elected politicians regularly quote religious documents in their reasoning for making decisions, agreeing and disagreeing with others, etc. you can't claim a theocracy isn't on the cards.
No, it has not. But you cannot deny that religion being a visible, daily, part of politics, and being very often quoted as justification for political, and even worse, judicial decisions, is closer to a theocracy than it is to separation of church and state.
> There is the COVID sect. They even masked themselves outdoors in public - like the women in Iran back in the day. Without any evidence - and they did it even against evidence. It was a very religious thing
Bloody hell are we still at this nonsense today?
Public health authorities, across multiple continents, said to mask up. Did it limit spread? Yes, it did, and studies proved so. What the hell is your problem there? May I remind you the initial heavy weeks with makeshift morgues in ice rinks and refrigerated trucks, and military hospitals being deployed? Lockdowns and masking and vaccine mandates were reasonable, and reasonably effective, remedies for how horrific things could get (and did get, at the start, in multiple countries).
> There is the climate sect. There are many young followers with strong believes - but nobody has ever read any book on atmosphere science. And nobody has read any recent paper on the subject. Once you do, you'll find it very surprising how little substance is behind their dogmas.
Aha, so trusting the scientific consensus is "a sect". Do enlighten us, how is climate change not real? Or is it real, but God given? Or what is your deal?
> Another group now shouts for war - and if you listen to them they're about as intelligent as the worst kind of crusaders back in the day.
What war? Putting Russia back in its place? Si vis pacem, para bellum. The only thing a bully would understand is strength.
PIF also has a controlling stake in SNK (who just released a new fatal fury videogame), and has a close relationship with TKO, especially including Saudi Arabia getting a WrestleMania. MBS is known to love "attitude era" WWE wrestling and this move tells me he was probably also a big fan of FIFA growing up.
Of course this is entertainment-washing at the end of the day, but I just find it funny the that MBS is going about it: buying EA the same way I would buy a used copy of NHL 97.
It's an interesting move because the PE playbook is to buy a company and jack up the prices and cut half the workforce while doubling the workload of the other employees.
EA is already widely reviled for this stuff so it will be like getting blood from a stone
Take a company already known for its cynical “value extraction” approach to games, barely fostering enough life within its doors to squeeze out acceptable versions of games that used to be truly Great from among their vast hoard of IP—take that company and add 20 billion dollars of debt and private equity overlords and I can only assume we get something akin to the blood orgy from Event Horizon but in game company form.
For a moment, I thought you were saying they bought FIFA itself. Which doesn't seem out of the question, FSM knows they're for sale in every other way.
FIFA the game, I guess this comes with the context of it being EA.
Maybe this will be part of a bigger acquisition... or maybe they have already acquired everything they could, except that they don't want make FIFA look like a bad saudi organization?
i mean the new owners are going to jettison everything that doesn’t make money sand hyper optimize the rest even more. It’s basically the end of EA, even such as it was.
Although I'm not optimistic, there's a small chance this might shake up the sorry state of EA Sports. The incessant focus on microtransactions and features that are essentially just sports themed slot machines over actual solid gameplay has kept me far away from those games for a long time.
EDIT: I think I might have worded that poorly. I do NOT think a change is going to happen, at least not one for the better, especially considering the actors involved in the buyout. I think it's optimistic to think that it will.
Correct: “the transaction will be funded by a combination of cash from each of PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners as well as roll-over of PIF’s existing stake in EA, constituting an equity investment of approximately $36 billion, and $20 billion of debt financing.”
EA currently carries about $2.6bn in non-current liabilities of which $1.5bn is long-term debt. So an order of magnitude more debt.
As someone who grew up loving sports games and has been turned away from any modern sports games because of the desire to flood them with all the stuff i see as just legalized gambling for children...
i like this potential optimism. Even if its not likely, its fun to imagine this being a turning point where EA is suddenly just doing things to make games better, rather than chase numbers, and because of that, the competition is forced to match that better gameplay.
I just would love to see where sports games could ACTUALLY be at if a high percentage of the team wasn't focused on horrible predatory in game purchases/questionable card games that just skirt by the legal system for underage gambling.
I think the odds of an acquisition by private equity resulting in fewer microtransactions and slot machine mechanics are indistinguishable from zero. You should probably instead be preparing for them to be amped up five- or ten-fold.
I don't think they are. Quite a lot of EA franchises seem to be struggling to appeal even to their core base lately. The Sims has gone through similar issues with trying to push paid content over quality, with a recent update to allow selectively disabling packs with new content apparently just corrupting the installation and making it impossible to actually run a lot of the time. From what I've read about the most recent Dragon Age game, meddling from EA also caused a lot of late changes in the game's development that ended up influencing the lackluster reception, which in turn was used as rationale for shuttering future development of Dragon Age games.
Things really do seem bad enough that clearly something drastic is needed if anything is going to change, For an unhappy fan of one of the many EA franchises, I don't have any trouble imagining that even a major change that's unlikely to produce good still offers more hope than the status quo. If there's a 1% chance that taking EA private will improve things, it still probably is more likely than things improving with the current management.
One method they use is the consolidation of a bunch of small, related businesses. For example, PE firms buy out all of the local veterinary offices in a tri-city area, cut costs, lay off the most qualified vets and replace with less-qualified ones, increase prices for services, and operate a local monopoly.
Clearly, that particular tactic is much harder to pull on the massive oligopoly that is the gaming industry, but it was the one that stuck with me from the book. There are more baffling ones like selling off all the company's real estate, making them rent it back at a much higher rate than their current mortgages (which may already have been paid off), and then filter revenues out of the company via "consulting fees" paid to themselves and their friends for this bad advice.
The book is a little bit repetitive, and some of the tactics are beyond my grasp, but I'm excited to make a personal bingo card of them and see which ones get used on EA as they drive it into the ground.
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