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Not only does Disney shut down Lucastars, they also licence Freaking ELECTRONIC ARTS to develop CORE STAR WARS GAMES for them.
What the hell Disney? Really, What. The. Hell. You could have chosen any game company in the world. Any. And yet you license the franchise to the company voted WORST GAME COMPANY OF THE YEAR, twice in a row. That's right. Two years running.
They're voted worst company because of business practices.
Business practices that make them a lot of money.
Disney likes money too.
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And yet you license the franchise to the company voted WORST GAME COMPANY OF THE YEAR, twice in a row. That's right. Two years running.
I'd just like to point out that gamers are staggeringly entitled, and this proves it. EA was NOT voted worst GAME company of the year....they were voted worst company of the year. Think about that. Some company have executives that steal millions of dollars from investors. But entitled gamers vote EA as worse than those companies because they don't like the ending of Mass Effect.
I'm sorry, but I can't take the whole EA is the worst company thing seriously. It's f*!~ing ridiculous. It doesn't make EA look bad, it makes gamers look like f@~#ing morons.
Tell me a good game that came out of EA in the past 5 years. A good game that didn't end in a f****p.
Battlefield 3 is a great game. It's pretty much what an urban military shooter SHOULD be in regards to multiplayer, with regular balance patches and overall people not being screwed just because they don't no-life the game.
Despite all the b!#**ing, Mass Effect 3 was a good game. Multiplayer was well implemented as well.
Dragon Age: Origins is one of my favorite games of all time, and it was still published by EA. Dragon Age 2 can f*!$ off, however.
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I don't consider games that make craploads of money good. That just means that they have an audience, nothing more.
Sports games generally suck, but unless you play football, you have nothing else to play, as there is PES.
Haven't seen a good MoH game since Allied Assault. The two new ones suck incredibly.
Battlefield...meh...looks amazing thanks to frostbite i agree.
Dragon age 2 is horrible. Dragon age 1 is ok.
For me, they ruined Mass Effect with the ending of 3. It invalidates everything that you strived for during gameplay.
Sims...
Dead Space 1 was good, granted, but 2 and 3 were action shooters with "horror" elements
Guitar Hero kicks Rock band's ass...
Crysis, aside from being amazing looking is one of the dumbest games i've ever played.
SimCity 4 was EA?
Death Spank? Nice...didn't know
CoC after Red Alert 2 sucks really bad
Tiger Woods. Seriously...
Fight Night, not a fan of boxing, so i can't say.
SotD...nice premise, i hate consoles.
Ok, they may have, accidentally, published good games. Still...horrible horrible business decisions...
You may want to rephrase. "I don't consider games that make money good" makes you sound like the very picture of an obnoxious hipster.
But I believe your actual meaning was closer to "Just because a game makes money doesn't MAKE it good" which i can agree with.
As well, just because you don't LIKE these games does not make them BAD.
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I would have made Planescape.
EDIT: To clarify, i don't particularly care about money. To me, it is an unfortunate evil necessity that must be possessed in order to do and acquire things that i love. If a choice was to be made between a beloved game with an amazing story and a low salary, and a horrible game with a crappy story who everyone will hate, but with a lot of money riding on it, i would always, always go with option one.
Aside from the fact that i might go down in history as a guy who did the right thing (a few people do the right thing unfortunately), i would sleep soundly knowing that people actually enjoy content i threw out.
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Not only does Disney shut down Lucastars, they also licence Freaking ELECTRONIC ARTS to develop CORE STAR WARS GAMES for them.
What the hell Disney? Really, What. The. Hell. You could have chosen any game company in the world. Any. And yet you license the franchise to the company voted WORST GAME COMPANY OF THE YEAR, twice in a row. That's right. Two years running.
Occasionally Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil work together.
I don't consider games that make craploads of money good. That just means that they have an audience, nothing more.
Sports games generally suck, but unless you play football, you have nothing else to play, as there is PES.
Haven't seen a good MoH game since Allied Assault. The two new ones suck incredibly.
Battlefield...meh...looks amazing thanks to frostbite i agree.
Dragon age 2 is horrible. Dragon age 1 is ok.
For me, they ruined Mass Effect with the ending of 3. It invalidates everything that you strived for during gameplay.
Sims...
Dead Space 1 was good, granted, but 2 and 3 were action shooters with "horror" elements
Guitar Hero kicks Rock band's ass...
Crysis, aside from being amazing looking is one of the dumbest games i've ever played.
SimCity 4 was EA?
Death Spank? Nice...didn't know
CoC after Red Alert 2 sucks really bad
Tiger Woods. Seriously...
Fight Night, not a fan of boxing, so i can't say.
SotD...nice premise, i hate consoles.Ok, they may have, accidentally, published good games. Still...horrible horrible business decisions...
Thing is, this is all subjective. While many gamers certainly agree with your views on the various games, plenty more disagree. For instance, I absolutely adore Battlefield 3 as a top-quality military shooter and FIFA is miles ahead of PES, again in my opinion.
Do EA make mistakes? Hell yes. They've made plenty of mistakes throughout the years. Paizo make mistakes. Wizards of the Coast make mistakes. Coca Cola make mistakes. All companies make mistakes. When EA makes one, it gets a lot more air time because of EA's size and status. But all companies make mistakes.
But the company that's apparently been voted the worst company in the US has still published a ton of VERY popular games and franchises. There's nothing accidental about it. They know a good franchise when they see one, and the Star Wars franchise is a very good franchise owned by another mastodon in the same industry (entertainment). I for one am more than willing to give EA the benefit of the doubt on this one. They've provided me with an insane amount of gaming fun through the games they've published and I'm not going to get my pitch fork and torch just yet.
I suggest we judge the Star Wars games published by EA on their own merits as computer/video games and don't give up on them well in advance because of the publisher. That's what I'll do, anyway.
And yes, SimCity is an EA-published game developed by Maxis.
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I know I mentioned this in the other thread about LucasArts shutting down recently. Disney's plan - or at least CEO Robert Iger's plan - is no longer about making original material or IPs. It isn't about finding new concepts - this is a company looking to contract with tried, reliable entertainment producers and market the heck out of it to make money.
Hence the reason you are now stuck with one company owning or partnering with Marvel, Lucas/Star Wars, The Muppets, Pixar, and Jerry Bruckheimer Productions. That they would go out and partner with the EA doesn't surprise me - because they fit the same pattern (no matter how loathsome the means by which they got there) of success. That's all Disney cares about doing. Being the imaginative "House of Mouse" is no longer what this company is about.
As for EA's reputation - this isn't just about some fanboys voting them "worse company" over the ending of Mass Effect 3. This isn't about making a few "mistakes" in terms of what they have sold or marketed (and that's been under scrutiny at times as well). Despite their profitability, this is a company that has acquired a heinous industry reputation over more than decade:
-Buying out small game studios and then gutting them for their IP's. Instead of making a quality product, many of their purchased studios then went on to make the worst games in a franchises' history. The only exception so far is Bioware, but let's see how well things go now that the original owners (Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk) have retired and all the IPs are being developed under EA's direct supervision. I'm already highly skeptical of the impending Mass Effect 4, given the inconsistent rumors of what the game will be about.
When three of the biggest names in game design (John Carmack, Peter Molyneux, Richard Garriott) are referring to you as the "Evil Empire" for years, that should be a warning. And when Zeschuk says that EA "gives you enough rope to hang yourself" on product development, I don't think he meant it as compliment.
-The fact that employees were treated like dirt (when they had to work as much 100 hours a week) to the point the company faced class action lawsuits. And even after settling, they are still getting into trouble over it periodically.
-Anti-trust and image infringement lawsuits over the usage of sports athletes and pro team likeness and images either inappropriately or against legal licensing laws.
-DRM and online authentication issues that have prevented the paying consumers from being able to use their products as intended. Issues which they failed to inform consumers of. The two biggest issues were with Spore and the new SimCity, and it had nothing to do with game quality. By the way, the DRM issue was so bad of a violation of consumer trust that another class-action lawsuit was filed.
As somebody else put it, this is hardly good teaming with evil. Neither company is hardly looking to make us - the consumers - happy with this venture. The whole process hardly seems to imply we will be getting a good product. Every company can make a good product, but the issue becomes what happens when the good stuff is outweighed by the bad because of corporate fiat. Just because I enjoy the KOTR doesn't mean I really want a Star Wars Kinect Galactic Dance-Off game. But if it's cheaper to make the latter and they think there's enough money to be made, guess which one EA and Disney will sell you?
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I would have made Planescape.
EDIT: To clarify, i don't particularly care about money.
You might not personally, but how many people do you employ, and how many shareholders have given you their money? That's why companies (including Disney and EA) operate the way they do -- they're complex organisations with many (sometimes conflicting) interests and dependants.
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Tell me a good game that came out of EA in the past 5 years. A good game that didn't end in a f****p.
Calm the hell down. You're getting completely enraged over someone being allowed to make video games. That's insane. Go get mad over something worthwhile.
To everyone else, it's worth noting that the specific three studios that have been put in charge of Star Wars licensed game projects are DICE, Visceral, and Bioware. All three studios are AAA houses with long-running, proven ability to deliver titles that are critically acclaimed and massively successful.
I mean, come on. EA was the obvious, smart choice.
Just because I enjoy the KOTR doesn't mean I really want a Star Wars Kinect Galactic Dance-Off game. But if it's cheaper to make the latter and they think there's enough money to be made, guess which one EA and Disney will sell you?
EA doesn't waste Visceral, DICE, or Bioware on Kinect dance games.
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Absolutely, as the article says...Just because I enjoy the KOTR doesn't mean I really want a Star Wars Kinect Galactic Dance-Off game. But if it's cheaper to make the latter and they think there's enough money to be made, guess which one EA and Disney will sell you?EA doesn't waste Visceral, DICE, or Bioware on Kinect dance games.
While EA studios will develop for the core Star Wars gaming audience, Disney Interactive will focus on delivering new Star Wars games for casual audiences on mobile, social, tablet, and online gaming platforms.
it's Disney Interactive that'll be making Star Wars Kinect Galactic Dance-Off, while it'll be Bioware that make KotNR.
While it remains to be seen how well this will be managed (particularly the "games spanning multiple genres for console, PC, mobile, and tablets" bit), the article is (IMO) saying all the right things at this (very early) stage.
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Eh, I'll reserve judgement when anything controversial actually happens.
Given how I'm in "Wait until it is clear what they will do with the current EU canon" holding mode with Star Wars, anyway, it is hard for me to get worked up over the whole deal.
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Given how I'm in "Wait until it is clear what they will do with the current EU canon" holding mode with Star Wars, anyway, it is hard for me to get worked up over the whole deal.
Personally, I hope they build a big bonfire and throw 90% of the post-Endor EU on it.
I suspect I'm in the minority, but I also suspect I'm right -- Disney won't want to be constrained by the EU and are probably under no obligation to retain most aspects of it they don't like.
Personally, I hope they build a big bonfire and throw 90% of the post-Endor EU on it.
+1!
Killing off Star Wars: Legacy is a crime against fiction. Can't say the same for the rest of the EU, though, I am still very, very bitter about what happened to Anakin Solo.
Even though I'm still disappointed about what they did to SimCity 5 (then again, it was Maxis' responsibility), I am not particularly bothered by this decision.
I mean, yes, I did love those classic LucasArts games like Monkey Island and Fate of Atlantis, but they never had a particularly good track reccord when it came to Star Wars games. Also, from the news it seems it won't neccessarily be EA directly making those games, but its subsidiaries like BioWare, which even considering the blunder of The Old Republic (the MMO, not the "Knights" ones) has a comparatively similar history of Star Wars games as LucasArts.
Just remember that LucasArts was responsible for cringe-worthy stuff like Yoda Stories and Lightsaber Duels, among many others (Star Wars Rebellion was generally hated, though I must admit I did have fun with it on multiplayer).
It's not like they are asking a street painter to take on the legacy of Piccasso. They are just handing the cow to a different milker.
Star wars is a MASSIVE brand. Very few companies could handle a triple A SW game today. The problem is having enough money to market it, allowing a serious development time by a massive team, and being able to distribute it. None of these are free or anything close to cheap, whatever your definition. I was waiting for this, and if you had asked me a week ago, I would have said "hmmm, I was just thinking that there must be money in making bigtime SW games... Most likely, Disney would let one of the major companies do it. EA would be a good fit, wouldn't it?" So not surprised.
And yet you license the franchise to the company voted WORST GAME COMPANY OF THE YEAR, twice in a row. That's right. Two years running.I'd just like to point out that gamers are staggeringly entitled, and this proves it. EA was NOT voted worst GAME company of the year....they were voted worst company of the year. Think about that. Some company have executives that steal millions of dollars from investors. But entitled gamers vote EA as worse than those companies because they don't like the ending of Mass Effect.
I'm sorry, but I can't take the whole EA is the worst company thing seriously. It's f%%%ing ridiculous. It doesn't make EA look bad, it makes gamers look like f+@#ing morons.
This. I've lost count of how many tirades I've read that remind me of an old fanboy from another forum whose complaints and rants became a bit of a laughingstock among my friends. Getting him started on ME was equal parts agonizing ("AUGH, not again! Look, you got him going! We'll be here ALL DAY.") and hilarious ("Aaaaaaand there he goes. Look at him sputter. Wonder how long he'll go before the batteries die?").
Equally frustrating/hilarious was when he would get on other people for ranting about other things (usually things he personally didn't care about) in the same manner, then blow up with a "NO ITS NOT THE SAME" rant whenever someone would point out the similarity.
But then again, that's humanity for you.
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Cool! Maybe now I'll get Battlefront 3 on PS3!
As long as someone makes another quality Tie Fighter Wars, I don't care.
Best. Space. Flight. Sim. Ever.
As long as someone makes another quality Tie Fighter Wars, I don't care.
Best. Space. Flight. Sim. Ever.
I'd love a great X-Wing/TIE Fighter game over X-Box Live to have a squadron of your buddies flying together.
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Of all the sci-fi stuff I've flown in various games, nothing holds a candle to the TIE Defender.
Cool! Maybe now I'll get Battlefront 3 on PS3!AS long as they make it for PC first and then port it to consoles.
Hey, these are wishes, not miracles.
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And console players hate PC games shoddily ported to consoles with terrible controls.
What's your point?
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My point is that i want a game i pay good money for to look good, because i have a computer that can run circles around a PS3 or an XBX360, and reading the specs of the 4 and 720 tells me that they are roughly on par. And when i get a new processor and an graphics card, it will eat them for breakfast. I hate when a game is limited by the hardware of a console it is made for. So i firmly believe that a game should be designed for PC first and console second. Haven't seen shoddily ported PC games for consoles and my brother plays only on consoles. Name one.
Almost every game ported from PC to console has control issues.
Despite being one of my favorite games for Xbox, Dragon Age: Origins suffered from the port. Especially in the menus department.
I'm sure I could think of more given time.
My point being that control (i.e. gameplay) deficiencies trump graphical deficiencies, especially when the games in no way look BAD when ported unless your standards are stupidly high.
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They are. That is why i spent more then 1000 euro to buy my computer. I like pretty graphics.
Dragon age is a game for PC, not xbox, but 2 suffers from heavy console-itis. I assume that it plays well on consoles however.
Trust me, trying to play console games on PC has given me a headache control wise and graphics wise.
But i agree, controls trump graphics.
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Mods can fix a lot of issues you might have with controls. I know the Elder Scrolls games have a strong modding community and some of them fix the whole not elusively designed for the PC thing.
Of course I mostly play Minecraft on my expensive gaming rig. That game is fun! >.>
Really though EA's business practices are kind of toxic for the whole market place no matter if you like or hate their games. Mostly I think they make just kind of boring stuff. Brown FPS of the month, etc.
They don't really have a history that says, "We'll totally respect the license and the fans."
Also to continue the flame wars... Bioware is a bit over-rated. A lot of their gold is over 10 years old and what they did with Star Wars is kind of depressing given the budget.
There will never be another X-Wing or TIE Fighter. That universe was killed by George Lucas ages ago.
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I will offer the counterpoint here. What were the last really profitable games to come out of Lucasarts?
Disney isn't in this to make nerds happy. It cares about making nerds happy to the point where nerds will plonk down their hard earned cash and buy something.
I've seen a lot of folks on the internet (I'm not pointing fingers at anybody here, just speaking out the wrong end of my butt in generalizations) who assume that if a business makes money they are 'teh evils,' and then posit some wonderous magic company that makes games for 'the right reasons' that tends to crash and burn handilly because its leading proponents /pirate their freaking games/.
Most of EA's draconian DRM bs flows out of the principle of they don't want to get ripped off (that and the fact they don't seem to grok how non-sports games work 'What do you mean we can't just update Luke's stats and sell the game as George Lucas' Star Wars 2012?! Its got a Manager mode and everything!)
Just keep this mind. A game designer is making a story, like say an artist in the Rennissance made art. To make art, they required patrons. These days these people are looked down on because well..a lot of artists these days couldn't really get genuine patronage for the stuff they crap out and they fear the spectre of 'real jobs.' These patrons wanted certain things, and the artists provided them. The artist created art, the patron got his product, money changed hands, it was good.
You still see this. Greenlight programs are an example.
Now why is Spook babbling about this? Because EA wants cash. So EA goes to its artists and says 'make a game that will earn more cash,' and they make a game catering to the people will buy it. This isn't a bad thing.
Its not bad that the game is meant to sell to 13 year olds, or the console crowd, or people who like ninjas. Is it bad art? Quite possibly, but EA isn't making art, they're asking for products to sell. EA gets its money, the artist gets his money, people get their product.
Now Spook, someone says 'Why don't I get my product,' and the answers are the following..
Folks like us have income, yes, and we're growing demographically.
We also have the advantage of well, the current free-enterprise system of greenlighting and places like Steam that make products more easilly available.
This means the entry barrier for new products is lower, and the "gate keepers" have less of a say, this means that more people can get what they want and people can provide product. Not all of this product is good, but more options is always a good thing.
The problems that come up again are 1.) We all buy EA's stuff and 2.) Some people pirate.
EA doesn't really care if you complain about their games, but keep on buying them. You bought it, the transaction is complete. You have your shiny copy of the Masters of Teras Kerasi from Lucasarts, Lucasarts doesn't care if you go home and hate it, except that it might cause trouble on their next sale. Ironically, the amount of crap Lucasarts games that came out with Star Wars stamped on them might attribute to why there isn't a Lucasarts division anymore.
But see, with EA, they have Star Wars games, and people keep on buying Star Wars games even with a bad past history. The franchise is like printing gold.
And on the pirate angle, well.. Some jackass pirates a game citing, "Well they overcharge." What does this result in? More DRM and higher prices.
It also results in people complaining that 'Well EA shouldn't raise its prices, that just promotes piracy,' which is akin to saying 'Well she shouldn't dress like that in that neighborhood.' The correct response is 'You can't afford KOTOR 2? Don't buy it. If enough people don't buy it because the price is too high. EA LOWERS THE PRICES to make it more acceptable to the market to make themselves a profit again.' They won't just keep increasing the price exponentially while wringing their hands and laughing like Robber Barons, or if they do, they'll go out of business to competition.
...man I can rant... :/
Well the summary here is.
1.) Don't pirate. It creates DRM and increases prices. Its also illegal and makes you a thief.
2.) Games are a product, they're made to create income to the people making them, not to achieve some glorious starving artist creative fantasy.
3.) If a game isn't good. Do not buy it.Vote with your wallet.
4.) See point 1 as a corallary to 3.
5.) Don't buy games just because they're tied to a franchise title.
6.) Support the games you actually like. With money.
7.) Just because something is a product, doesn't mean it can't be art. The Sistine Chapel's Ceiling is a product. Its also art.
My apologies for ranting. I just hear this kind of stuff all the time.
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DRM? Please, show me one DRM method that hasn't been bypassed in a week after the game's release?
Diablo 3 took awhile. Even after the hacks came out, most were trojans in disguise. Piracy creates the desire for game companies to use always on DRM like Diablo 3. Blizzard sold 12 million copies of always on DRM Diablo 3 so games with extreme DRM can be popular.
IMHO, I buy games based on how much I like them. Game series that EA published that I like are Battlefield, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. I also really liked Mirror's Edge and Kingdoms of Amalur. I like the stories from the Old Republic but the combat is just okay (still believe they should have went with Unreal for the engine).
A Battlefront game by DICE would be very interesting to me. I have not played Dead Space, so I have no opinion on how good a Star wars game from Visceral would be.
How about we wait until the games come out before complaining about them?
If EA makes crappy Star Wars games and no one buys them, they'll go to a different studio. At least this way we have a chance at a decent Star Wars game. That's better than what we've been getting for about the last 15 years while Daddy George slowly strangled everything good out out of his baby.
DRM? Please, show me one DRM method that hasn't been bypassed in a week after the game's release?Diablo 3 took awhile. Even after the hacks came out, most were trojans in disguise. Piracy creates the desire for game companies to use always on DRM like Diablo 3. Blizzard sold 12 million copies of always on DRM Diablo 3 so games with extreme DRM can be popular.
IMHO, I buy games based on how much I like them. Game series that EA published that I like are Battlefield, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. I also really liked Mirror's Edge and Kingdoms of Amalur. I like the stories from the Old Republic but the combat is just okay (still believe they should have went with Unreal for the engine).
A Battlefront game by DICE would be very interesting to me. I have not played Dead Space, so I have no opinion on how good a Star wars game from Visceral would be.
DRM is a mistake, and has never been shown to increase game sales. Likewise, removing DRM has never been shown to hurt game sales, and many companies have experienced better than expected sales after removing it. All DRM really does is piss off consumers who have legally bought your product and encourage them to bypass your DRM*. Companies that insist on always on DRM are making dumb buisness moves that have already hurt some, like EA on Sim City.
Personally, I have stopped buying games from EA because of their buisness practices. Not buying their stuff is all that I can really do to tell them I don't want their rediculous draconian anti-piracy crap. I'm a little disappointed that I wont play ME3, but that is the only thing they have made in past few years that I would have thought to buy anyway.