My first rant in the "Grinds My Gears" collection that will potentially be my blog if I can get approvals.
First thing's first, I am not the only one who has a problem with EA lately, a lot of us have noticed the decline in quality released by EA. Could it be that they have been placed in such a high position due to their success way back in the Playstation 1/Nintendo 64 Era?
I think that the reason why they have declined in their quality is because of their long run at the #1 spot. Since there is no competition anymore for some of their sports games, which in my opinion is where they acquired that "#1 spot". Well there is 2K sports, which I will get into later, but they bought the license to the NFL, NCAA football, and the AFL.
Two of these stood the test of time and helped EA reach the top. The third is just there and it seems as if they picked it up just so that no one else can get it because they made two games and it doesn't appear that they are planning another since the AFL season has already started and I have seen no advertisement for a AFL 08/09.
Starting with Madden, it was a great thing...back when there was others out there giving it a run for it's money. There was a year when there was about 5 different NFL games being released all at about the same time, I believe it was 2003 and I will try to recall the games: Madden 2003, NFL Fever(2003?), NFL 2k3, Gameday 2003, and there may have been another one, but I can't remember. Of course Madden pretty much was the best one out there, but it obviously felt the competition brewing because the next installment, Madden 2004, was the most revitalized Madden game I had ever seen before. There were so many added features to that game, that I couldn't possibly learn all of them in my few months of game play I had with the game.
Then came the year 2004, and instead of a big SEGA logo slapped on front of the case, it was a 2K logo, along with ESPN, all of those logo over top of the picture of the newly acquired Philadelphia Eagle, Terrel Owens. It went by the name ESPN NFL 2k5 and it was being sold at the balls low price of $20, brand new. EA went on to release Madden 2005 with Ray Lewis on the cover.
The response for ESPN NFL 2k5 was so much higher than expected, and I was a EA fanboy at the time, so I looked all the hype as just that, and told everyone that all those extra features were stupid and unnecessary. I had never even played the game and just told everyone they were speaking crap. The only new features added to Madden 2005 were the camera thing were you shine a light on your intended receiver(kinda lame) and the hit stick(which is pretty good). Even the NCAA Football 2005 outshined the quality of gameplay in Madden 05 that year. But as that year proved to EA, quality does not really matter when the bulk of people buying and playing your game are casual gamers.
It was then, I believe, that EA realized that they no longer needed to make a good game in order to sell and outdo their competition. They also aren't stupid, so they bought the football licenses so that ESPN would not come that close to them again.
That was also the year that I first played a basketball game not made by EA(not including games before Playstation 1). I played ESPN NBA 2k5 and was blown away by it from the beginning and never went back to EA Sports basketball since then, which is saying a lot since I was a die hard EA Sports fanboy back then.
All of EA Sports' competion has gone way down, and the only thing standing between them and being the number undisputed sports king is 2K sports and it's great line up of basketball games and their retaliation in buying the MLB license. Even worse, EA has the nerve to put "#1 NFL/NCAA Football Game" on the back of all their cases when there is no one else out there to make one, cocky, obsessive, I don't know but that just doesn't seem right to me.
I still believe that they are feeling the heat especially with 2K's NBA 2k8 and College Hoops 2k8 out there getting better ratings then their NBA Live and March Madness games, by at least a whole point each. Even though at this point there will be no College Hoops 2k9 this year, some speculate that EA had something to do with this, I think it was a money issue due to them not selling as many as they should last year due to the casual gamers' blindness to quality games. Seriously, I know people that will point out things that are wrong with 2k games and then I show them where they are wrong and still get "well, Live is still better I don't care what you think" out of them.
Along with 2K's low selling of their sports games last year, their owner, Take Two, did not get to the selling point with all the rest of the games that they put out, including game of the year(according to a few of websites), Bioshock. With this issue, comes EA trying to buy them up and continue to demolish all of their competition not just in sports, but Bioshock and The Orange Box got a lot of comparison and were neck and neck in competions for game of the year. Luckily for us, Take Two turned them down, but EA is persistant and they are going to the shareholders to try to sway them, before the release of a certain game that could make the shares worth more than EA is offering...*cough cough* Grand Theft Auto 4*cough cough*
Although I don't believe EA likes competition that is on par with them, they do try to compete with others(Activision) in what appears to be an attempt to take them out of whatever they were once the king of producing. Like the publishing of Rock Band in competition with Guitar Hero. A lot of people will say Rock Band is better, and that is fine, but what happens when Rock Band 2 is released and EA does something cheap like change nothing but the songs, or makes you buy new peripherals(extremely not likely but possible). Same goes for Skate, everyone loves Skate and instantly compares it with Tony Hawk. This was EA's intention, to make these games good on their first try(or first few) just to get everyone over to their game. They seriously must not like Activision though(or vice versa), I was reading some confrontation those two were having earlier this year where one was backing Xbox 360 and the other backing Playstation 3.
I'm not saying that everything done by EA is bad, but when the people in your own official forums(completely filled with EA Fanboys) are complaining about the lack of quality in your games, something is wrong and should be dealt with. I liked Burnout Paradise, not everyone does, but for me and others who like to just have fun and not worry about technique while driving(and realism), this is a great game, although not perfect.
Not everything done with their sports games are awful either, NBA Live and March Madness players looked a lot better than 2K's players. I also buy NCAA Football every year, partially because I have no other choice, and also because I still hate Madden NFL football(and I have played 08 to make my claim legit) and would rather feed my football gaming urge with college football.
I just don't want Ea to keep "acquiring" all these different companies and producing like, 80% shoddy games. Not that they should all be perfect either, they should really take into consideration customers instead of money, and since customers keep buying, this will never happen. They are obviously aware of the competition or their low quality because they extended their license with the NFL. Someone needs to go to their main HQ and kick em in the nuts and say "HEY, STOP GIVING US CRAP! GET YOUR $**T TOGETHER!" or start a boycott or petition or something. There should be a GDA - Game Developers Anonymous - for devs/publishers that have an addiction to money and releasing shoddy games.
Either way this is why ELECTRONIC ARTS(mostly EA sports) GRINDS MY GEARS!!!
Please feel free to criticize me heavily so that I learn, I really want to produce quality(unlike EA) blogs that people will enjoy reading/talking about. Also, if this gets approved, I will continue my bloggin with the next thing to "Grind My Gears" and you can help me decide what to write about. My list for next consists of one of these: Sony, Microsoft Fanboys, and Retards who give stupid reasons for not liking games(not fanboys).
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I agree completely
Good stuff
I'll bring more of this kind of stuff if people really like it
I nominate Microsoft Fanboys for your next blog.
Nice job btw...I still plan on writing one up some day
and nice story image =)
Great first blog post man, you said what we were all thinking and brought up some points that I hadn't thought of yet. It looks like EA at least listened to us in one aspect with them rectifying that Bad Company DLC fiasco. I really do hope they get their crap together WITHOUT having to purchase anymore developers, with all of the resources they have they should have a way better track record. Keep up the good work and I look forward to your next post.