Do you know where the name ‘Electronic Arts’ comes from?
The original name for Electronic Arts was Amazin’ Software. Trip Hawkins, the founder of EA Games came up with 'Electronic Arts' because he felt that each video game was a piece of art. The developers were the artists and the game should reflect that. A perfect mentality to start a business, I'd say.
In the early roots of EA Games, the future seemed bright. EA Games have been one of the largest impactful makers of video games. Over time, they made some of the world's most popular and best-selling video games like The Sims, Need for Speed, Madden, and FIFA.
They were an incredibly strong force but a lot of crazy things happened. They won tournaments for the title ‘Worst company in America’, twice.
A popular website called ‘The Consumerist’ asked people to vote for the worst company in America. In 2012, about 250.000 people vote for EA Games. People were surprised that the maker of something fun took this title. It could also have been retail stores or airlines for example.
To know what exactly happened and why EA Games is seen as the worst company, we have to go back in time. In this article, we will take you with us through their journey!
The early beginnings of EA Games
Trip Hawkins was a person with an impressive resume. He got Graduated from Harvard, received an MBA from Stanford, and was one of apple's first 50 employees in the late 1970s. He wanted to create his own company to make video games for the computer and that's why he left Apple after 4 years.
Electronic Arts was born and soon everything went smoothly for EA Games. After a year, he already received five million dollars from private investors. He used this to hire independent creators to put out some of the first video games. Every creator got their name featured on the cover of the game.
Later in the marketing and production of their games, EA Games took the use of sports personalities. This is where EA Sports comes from. Trip Hawkins started distributing these games straight to retailers and by the end of the 1980s, Electronic Arts was the leading producer of software containing computer games.
Then, the time came that consoles seemed to become a more promising market. Understandable, since there were more TV owners than computer owners.
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was taking advantage of this. Nintendo said: ‘’EA can only make games for the NES if they weren’t made available on any other system’’.
EA passed on these terms and took a risk by focusing on the SEGA Genesis. In 1989, EA raised 84 million dollars through an initial public stock offering. A lot of the money went straight toward producing games for the Genesis.
In the early 1990s, SEGA and EA started working together. This made it easier for both of them to propel forward. Their collaboration made their sales for console games went up like crazy and they surpassed their sales for PC games. About 1,5 years later, 300 million dollars in revenue came purely from SEGA Games.
This is how AE Games became a force in the video industry. It was a brand with a strong name and a great developer of video games.
But then everything seemed to change…
EA Games Killed Small Developers
Although EA Games was making a huge profit they were looking for new ways to produce more video games, and expand their business internationally. What they decided to do is to buy small developing companies.
An example of this is Origin Systems. This was a video game developer back in the 1980s. They are known for the Ultima series which was considered to be a groundbreaking early RPG game for the computer.
EA Games got in charge of the development and two years later, they released Ultima 8. But this game was a mess and not how previous Ultima games were supposed to be. The same happened with Ultima 9. These games felt unfinished and there were lots of plot holes (gaps or inconsistency in the storyline).
After this, the reputation of EA games suffered quite hard. They encountered a big drop in sales and EA Games decided to stop continuing on the Ultima series. Origin Systems got shut down.
The same happened with Bullfrog, a video game developer from the UK known for strategy games like Populist. 1995, EA bought them, and by 2001 Bullfrog no longer existed. They merged into EA UK.
A third major example is Westwood Studios, another video game developer from the 1980s. They are known for the Command and Conquer series. EA bought them in 1998, consolidated one of their studios, and 5 years later, you can already feel it coming: they shut down again.
You can compare this with kids cuddling and crushing little rabbits so hard that they die. They think it’s good but the animals can't handle it. A little side note here 😛
To relate this with EA Games, they wanted those developers to do so well that they tried to let them adapt to their process system. They handled aggressive deadlines which made the developers stressed out and hindered in their creativity.
Which is odd, because isn’t this where Electronic Arts officially stands for? ‘’Games are like art and the developers are artists’’. The culture of EA Games was a lot more professional and strict. Despite their attempts of making everything better, everything backfired.
EA Games Disappointed Players
There are plenty of things why so many players worldwide got disappointed with EA Games. We will give you a few examples.
As you have read earlier, many games didn’t function well on launch day. The customer service was rejecting funds, and there were extra maps available for the same price as the game.
Have you played Battlefield 1? This game was very well received by the player base. When Battlefield 5 came out, sales went down by more than a half. Battlefield 5 was missing many features at launch. It was not much of a step forward comparing to Battlefield 1.
EA Games didn’t sit back this time. Patrick Southerland stepped out and calls the fans behind the backlash uneducated.
- ‘’If it's such an issue, don’t buy the game."
Southerland would leave EA Games later that year.
A game that Bioware had been working on is Anthem. This time, Bioware was giving the shots and they would publish a whole new franchise handcrafted from the ground. In 2012, EA Games gave Bioware a go-ahead to create a new IP and gave them 7 years to produce a finished product (Anthem).
The mistake here is that Bioware spent a lot of that time on pre-production. Suddenly, they had 16 months left to develop the game. This is a heavy time crunch!
Anthem got released on 22 February 2019. The development team started around July 2017 after they revealed the game. Can you see what we’re trying to show you here? Could Bioware make all these ideas with pre-production shown reality?
The engine they built the game on was Frostbite, which is a powerful engine but difficult for what Bioware had in mind. A lot of systems had to be created from scratch. Bioware wanted massive creatures in Anthem but they simply couldn’t be programmed in the game. Frostbite struggled to handle it.
When Anthem launched, you probably already know it: there were lots of issues. The game lacks content and is very buggy. On PS4, playing Anthem could cause the entire operating system to shut down. Loading screens could take longer than actual missions. The game turned out to be even worse than the game Andromeda.
Bioware is planning to rebuild the game from the ground up.
Lastly, can you remember the first versions of FIFA? In these versions, players could open certain packs with credits earned in-game. These gave them special footballers and other cool stuff.
When FIFA 9 got released, people could pay for packs with their moms' credit card.
After this, packs began to appear in games, and soon the pay-to-win loot box was born.
FIFA
Talking about FIFA, this is one of the most popular games in the world. There has been a lot of critic about this game. The concept stays the same: about 22 players chasing after a ball. However, it seems that the newest FIFA games like FIFA 21 became the worst version of itself. People call the newest games EA cash-grabs and they don't feel like EA respect their player base. Every new version became a downgrade of what people were expecting. Shouldn't a new FIFA game be better than its previous version?
The Birth of Loot Boxes
Lots of discussions were raised about Loot Boxes in video games. This was seen as a form of gambling. EA Games is the founding father of the Loot Boxes. Once they've put a 'pay-to-win’ system in games, soon this system was found all over the place.
Business-wise, it is an effective way to keep a stream of revenue coming long after the game got sold. But the thing is, players hate this. First, you buy a game and then you have to buy stuff because otherwise, your enemies have a big advantage. Why would you enjoy that?
An example of this is Star Wars Battlefront II. Back in 2017 before it was officially released, it received unprecedented backlash from the gaming community since their loot boxes gave players huge advantages.
People expected the same experience similar to the first 2 games. Surprisingly, there was no campaign, way less content and space battles were gone. Besides, the DLC pass cost almost as much as the game itself.
Disney, the owner of Star Wars also didn't agree with what EA Games was doing. They were promoting gambling to players which of course gave negative publicity for Star Wars.
EA Games claimed:
- ‘’It's not loot boxes, it's surprise mechanics.’’
Isn't this the same as saying: It's not kidnapping, it is a surprise adoption?
EA Games said that they had learned their lesson and they worked towards a new Star Wars game, Battlefront 2 Definitive. Everything seemed alright. Classes were back, the campaign was there, there were space battles and no season pass.
Was this finally the classic Star Wars experience? Yes, they made a game many people enjoyed. Unfortunately, people started to realize something. They had to play the game for like 80 hours to unlock Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. These are major desirable characters in Star Wars.
Or you could also just… buy a loot box.
This whole concept felt very shady. It made the game community feel like EA Games was extracting money from them instead of delivering the best gaming experience.
EA Games then said:
- ‘’The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.’’
Raging from Governments and Politicians
It was not just gamers and media that raged. Mainstream media outlets were reporting this too and soon governments and politicians came in contact with this subject claiming that ‘’EA enabled child gambling on the online Star Wars video game’’.
Belgium and the Netherlands outright banned loot boxes, American senators proposed a bill that would regulate them and the UK underwent talks about loot box regulation.
EA Games: Bad for Employees?
Because developers failed to meet deadlines, EA experimented with in-house development. One day in 2004, someone made a blog about how their spouse was working at EA for 13 hours a day, 7 days a week.
This post got so much attention on platforms such as Reddit that many people were claiming that EA is more concerned with making money than anything else. Are employees more like a way to get money from them? Things such as this blog created that perception.
What do you think about EA Games? Do you see them as an evil empire? Do you think they can turn their bad reputation into a good reputation ever again?
As a huge fan of the Sims series, I want to conclude this article by introducing you to a blog I wrote about Sims 4. Click here and get to know everything about Sims 4, a very successful AE game!
