The Electronic Arts Revival

Once upon a time, I was a wee lad in college applying for internships.  I had an interview with EA over the phone, at the end of which they asked me if I had any questions.  I asked them what they thought they were doing to advance the medium of Video Games.

They didn’t like that so much.

See, inherent in a question like that is the implication that I don’t really think you ARE doing anything to advance the medium, because if I did, I wouldn’t have needed to ask.  The interviewers mumbled something about graphics, and we ended the interview there, neither of us being particularly impressed with the other.  I went to go work for Microsoft instead, which eventually resulted in my position with Xbox now.

EA has in the past decade purchased and then eviscerated some of the most best and most promising studios the world had to offer.  In addition to this lovely practice, they had the unfortunate habit of working their employees to death and discarding their burnt out husks, primarily on insipid franchises which change only incrementally from year to year, and yet are released for full price.

John Riccitiello said he was going to turn this around.  Apparently I’ve assumed that CEOs and Politicians seems to share the trait of spewing whatever bullshit the public wants to hear, but it seems EA has actually gone and done it.

Dead Space, above, looks scary and fucking awesome.  Do you know that this game is banned in three countries?  That’s a far cry from the policies of the old EA.  Spore (say no more) comes out on Sunday.  Mirror’s Edge, a critically acclaimed first person runner, is a game that does not contain the color green.  BattleForge is an RTS that uses a collectible card game mechanic to drive gameplay (through micro-transactions even).

EA, you’ve either totally lost your shit, or you’re starting a Renaissance.  Either way, I forgive your past sins, and I look forward to what you’ve got to say for yourself in the future.

What is a Successful Game?

From a critical standpoint, Metacritic is about objective as things are likely to get. My own research uses Metacritic, and most of the industry looks to it for the “official” critical score. Steam embeds the Metacritic score right in the interface, and Microsoft announced yesterday that a low Metascore will be one of the trigger points for having your game de-listed from XBLA.

That said, the critical score isn’t the be-all and end-all of life. Gamasutra ran an opinion piece by former Eidos president Keith Boesky to that effect earlier today. Boesky’s main point is that critical success is not indicative of commercial success. It becomes intrinsically dangerous to pivot your entire business model on the critical reviews of your products.

If you look at a publisher like EA, they produce games that are commercially viable, even lucrative, but consistently receive mediocre reviews from critics. EA has published only three of the top 20 games on the 360, and is the developer on none of them. Additionally, of the hundreds of games EA has published since the release of the Xbox 360, only a handful have a Metacritic score above 80 for that system. EA’s new CEO, John Riccitiello has taken this to heart, having several times publicly stated that EA will be concentrating their efforts on producing newer, higher critical quality games than have been seen in recent years. That said, Riccitiello has also been quoted as saying that “You don’t cash MetaCritic, you cash cheques.”

There’s certainly a balance to be struck between the realities of business, and trying to create a game that tickles the critics. At the end of the day, I think that all of this concern is smoke and mirrors for the developer. All a developer can really do is try to create an amazing experience, to push the envelope of what’s possible with a technology, and to manipulate a player in new and interesting ways. If you can work your craft well enough, and on a scale that will appeal to a broad enough group of people, both the critical acclaim and commercial success will come. Understanding how to do that is where the mastery comes into play.

A Week in Cuba

As previously mentioned, I went on vacation last week, and apparently the world does not stop while I’m laying on the beach.

Big news of the last week.  Apparently it was GDC or something.  I wasn’t there, so if you want juicy GDC goodness, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Microsoft

• Microsoft, in a new initiative called Dreamspark is making much of its developer software free to students.  This software includes Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server, XNA Game Studio, XNA Creator’s Club Subscription, and Expression Studio.  That should be plenty of tools for would be game developers to muck about in.  Details are here.
• Microsoft is dropping support for HD-DVD with the discontinuation of the add-on for the Xbox 360.  All remaining units are being cleared at firesale for $50.  I would not be surprised if there was a Blu-ray add-on in the future.
• Microsoft announced during the GDC 2008 Keynote a new service, the so-called Xbox Live Community Games.  Under this service, users can build a game using XNA Game Studio, and then upload it directly to a community portal where the game is democratically reviewed.  The reviewing process is intended to look for infringing or objectionable material.  The best of these games get automatically uploaded to Xbox Live for the masses to enjoy.  No specifics on pricing, or if the developer is getting kickbacks (as one would assume they would if Microsoft is collecting on their work).

Sony
On the Sony side of things, Phil Harrison, one of the founding members of Sony Computer Entertainment, and the president of SCE Worldwide Studios, has submitted his resignation.  Changes in leadership often come with widespread changes across the board, but it depends on the size and momentum of the company in question, and Sony is rather largeish, so I would not anticipate a massive change in the direction of their games.

Australia

Australia is talking about finally getting a new rating that will allow more mature titles to be sold there.  Unfortunately, I doubt this will alleviate the massive delays they usually incur before North American/Japanese release, and release to the land down under.

Electronic Arts

EA is offering to buy Take Two!  I would suggest in reaction to the recent Activision/Vivendi merger, EA is looking to add some more meat to its already colossal frame.  EA’s new CEO John Riccitiello has mentioned that he’s extremely unhappy with the scores EA’s games have been getting of late, so there might be some incentive to own some games that are critically acclaimed (which might have fueled the recent acquisition of Bioware as well).  Take Two is brimming with talent, including the developers of the Grand Theft Auto series (Rockstar), Bioshock (2K Games), and Civilization (Firaxis).  While EA’s initial bid is a bit lower than Take Two is looking for, most analysts are expecting this deal to go through eventually at some price point.

On a side note, Take Two is the current owner of one of my favorite IPs of all time, the Tex Murphy series.  This series was created by Access Software (later renamed to Indie Built) in the 90s.  Microsoft acquired them for the Links Golf series, and then sold the company to Take-Two who then shut it down.  While a revival is not likely at EA, it’s marginally more likely than at the parent who shut them down in the first place.

EA has a habit of killing great teams by using simple business math.  If you have everyone using the same tools and processes, costs are lower.  Unfortunately, this slows down and breaks the dynamic that produced the great team in the first place.  This is something you can do with teams that are having trouble realizing their full potential, perhaps due to infrastructural problems, but when you acquire a really solid team, it’s important that you just leave them alone to do their thing.  Riccitiello seems to be aware of this, so perhaps Take Two’s properties are not going to join the legacies of Westwood, Bullfrog, and Origin.

Havok

Havok is free, to which I say, OMGWTFBBQ.  Well, okay, it’s only free on the PC, but as of May 2008, you at home will be able to download your very own copy of Havok Complete (which includes the Physics and Animation packages).  This is a non-commercial license, but it allows hobbyists to get their hands dirty with the most widely used physics engine in the PC gaming space, which is good for companies looking to hire people who know Havok already.  This theoretically lays some groundwork for Havok’s more specialized products for behavioral animation, deformable solids, and cloth rendering.

And that’s all that happened this week, I’ll be posting on a more semi-regular basis now.