On Monday EA struck a multi-year deal with Disney to develop core Star Wars games with DICE, BioWare and Visceral Games all announced to be behind the titles being developed. Now I love Star Wars, I wouldn’t say I’m a uber fanboy but I love the films and games a lot and this news has seriously got me excited as I believe Disney made the right choice with when choosing EA as their brother in arms.
Today Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson provided a look into his ideas for the use of generative AI in the company's development processes.
EA is still a shady shitty company even with or without the help of Skynet. All they will use AI for is new ways to milk loot boxes and come up with the same sports title with a different year on the label. They are one company I truly do hate with a passion. They single handedly ruined some great franchise with their death touch. ME, Dead Space, Alice Returns, Dante's Inferno.
EA layoffs followed by 'Generative AI to Drive Monetization'
I knew it. Wonder what AI salary looks like? Nothing.
And take away creativity, and people's jobs as we've been seeing. Got it.
No thanks. I want my games created by people, not AI.
EA doesn't want to lose their title of worst gaming company ever, always trying their best to remain the champs!
What's sad is that they have so much potential to be a decent publisher.
SSX Tricky / SSX 3
Def Jam Vendetta / Fight for New York
NBA Street
NFL Steet
Mirror's Edge
Bad Company
Burnout 3 / 4 / 5
Remember when EA used to be awesome? It's all over with now. Unpolished, if not out-right broken games these days. Endless monetization and gambling in their sports games, and let's not forget wasting hours of your life trying to unlock characters or equipment using "surprise boxes!"
Gareth, Justin, and JoeyZ look at Layoff news for EA and Sony and reasons behind the downturn in the industry and more.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson writes: "In this time of change, we expect these decisions to impact approximately 5 percent of our workforce. I understand this will create uncertainty and be challenging for many who have worked with such dedication and passion and have made important contributions to our company. While not every team will be impacted, this is the hardest part of these changes, and we have deeply considered every option to try and limit impacts to our teams. Our primary goal is to provide team members with opportunities to find new roles and paths to transition onto other projects. Where that’s not possible, we will support and work with each colleague with the utmost attention, care, and respect. Communicating these impacts has already begun and will be largely completed by early next quarter."
All the big ones doing the same stuff. Terrible. I just hope that all these people are able to get a new job as soon as possible, God know that it is horrible to be left jobless when you have your kids or your parents depending on your financial help
The point I feel is problematic about all of this is that focusing on Owned Ip means more sequels, remasters and more of what was selling last year.
yay
Would have rather them have gone with a better publisher like Activision...
The article makes me think the author doesn't know much about EA and its studios. First don't put quality with madden and FIFA, if they were really good they wouldn't need to buy the license for these two sports.
Bioware with EA already had a chance with the Star Wars License and it was bad and disappointing. I know it's not only the publisher's fault and I agree...which should let you know how downhill Bioware has gone from looking at the first KOTOR without EA.
Edit: Grammatical error, stupid keyboard.
I just want to see some games grounded within the universe of the original 3 films again.
I'd like to head into the trenches of the Death Star with next generation video game tech. omnomnom
This article is just re-stating the obvious, for the most part, and reads like a gushing fanboy's forum post.
My problems with the EA handling are the obvious ones, too. Bioware haven't made a nuanced or great game since Mass Effect, which was prior to their EA buy-out. Dragon Age is a very good game, but it was just them returning to their D&D style with more Mass Effect style conversations. Everything since then has been problematic.
DICE handling Battlefront 3? Are you sure you want Battlefront 3 to just be Battlefield 3 in space? It'd be best to give it back to Free Radical (now Crytek UK), let them finish what they started. I'd like to see how C&C Generals 2 turns out, then see if DICE could handle a Star Wars RTS.
Who the hell would want to play the Sims Star Wars? Sims fans are more like teenage girls and bored housewives, neither of whom would have a particularly vested interest in the Star Wars universe, and I don't think anyone would care too much about how the boring, ordinary people of that universe live their lives (why watch a peasant live his life when you could be controlling an X-Wing or Jedi character?)
The only noteworthy Visceral title is Dead Space, and they've gone ahead and ruined that too with DS3. Star Wars has no real horror elements, so a horror game would be a bad move, and Army of Two Devil's Cartel (as well as Dead Space 3) prove they are only capable of humdrum action games, so I wouldn't get too excited about whatever they're working on.
And seriously, Criterion Pod Racer? Pod racing is one of the dumber things to come out of Star Wars, which is no small feat considering the very movie that spawned it. That's a big fat no from a lot of people (namely: Star Wars fans).
What would be good games, then? Aside from the aforementioned RTS, how about a Sim Empire game in Star Wars by Maxis? Crytek could do a good job of making a Mandalorian Bounty Hunter game, using Crysis' style as a template to expand on (and their flair for visuals would be a massive boon for realizing Star Wars locales). And I'd like to see someone take on space combat (I think Criterion would do VERY well here), but it won't happen. But really, a lot of talent has left EA recently, and many of the studios that saw them though this generation have been losing their luster and penchant for greatness for the last few years. I'm not expecting anything more than Star Wars shovel ware and mediocre action games, with lots of micro transactions and paid DLC, because it's EA we're talking about here.
The sad thing is that we're never going to see much greatness or innovation in Star Wars games because smaller studios will NEVER get a shot. Indies and small studios can't afford that license, and Disney don't care who gets it as long as they get paid for giving to them (i.e. no great risk for them, only the people developing it). Only the likes of EA can afford things like that.