The Critical Analysis of EA/DICE
BFV is officially dead as of June 2020. Wow. I would never have thought that one could mess up a Battlefield to such a degree that it goes down as one of the biggest flops in the history of game development. The worst about the whole situation is that the managers/leaders at EA/DICE are actually convinced they did a good job. The degree of incompetence showed by both DICE and EA is just astounding. How can a legitimate big business like them be so full of hot air?
Well, it is becomes really clear really fast if you look around;
- Firstly, take a look at Glassdoor.com (a platform where employees share their opinions/stories about their companies anonymously). WoW. It is always funny when your hyptothesis about how something is are actually confirmed. Apparently, most DICE employees absolutely loath the way EA/DICE operate. Management doesn't have the slightest clue what the community thinks or wants. Feedback from the actual programmers and the community is structurally ignored or dismissed as not being relevant. Also, the persons who decide what makes it into the game seem to come up with the most idiotic features that receive plenty of criticism from the team but is just bluntly ignored. Eventually when these features make it to the game and blow up in their face they shift the blame. Well, Poo flows downwards, not upwards.
As one DICE employee remarks on Glassdoor: ''Being a visionary isn't necessarily a bad thing but they have failed to inspire confidence in that vision. Instead, they did the exact opposite by forbidding negative criticism and discussion as their way of addressing low morale and skepticism. This, among leadership's other consistently backwards ideas and policies, just reduced morale more and more. The worst part was that it wasn't hard to see why their vision wouldn't work. Leadership was just stubborn and refused to back down or admit that they're wrong even after negative reception from nearly all parts of the process. Instead, leadership chased their vision even harder.''
Well this one was probably most obious in the party that DICE/EA held after receiving the community backlash from BFV's initial release trailer. I mean come on.....literally the entire community raged at the fact it did not look like WWII in the slightest, as well as that they did not appreciate the ''Fortnite'' hype that BFV was attempting to lift on. So you organise a company party that literally ridicules your entire clientbase by showing this large screen featuring comments from the community ''GeNdErFiEld 5'' etc. WHAT IN GODS NAME!? I am a PR-Manager at a quite large corporation in Europe and this just made me lose it. Who in gods name hires these people? It almost looks like the entire leadership of DICE/EA is under the constant influence of narcotics. Just take a look at Glassdoor, it makes a good read and you will just be astounded at the amount of stupidity in these companies.
-Secondly, the accountability. OH GOD THE ACCOUNTABILITY! There is none whatsoever! This also heavily connects to the point I made earlier. * flows downhill not uphill, and as explained by multiple employees of DICE at Glassdoor, there is no accountability whatsoever. There is only office politics and there are stupid people in high positions who make stupid ideas. When this doesn't work there is no one that takes responsibility for it! And this also flows down to the consumers. Accountability by game developers has always been quite the issue since these are companies that you mostly interact with on a virtual basis. Here they hide behind (often worthless) ''Contact & Support'' features. You can't step into the store and face these scammers with their worthless products and service. There is no accountability towards the consumers in any way. Ofcourse it was already public knowledge that most game developers don't care about their consumers whatsoever they only want their cash, which became painfully more clear with all the lootbox crap. EA/DICE view their consumers as filfthy plebs that much is sure. Again, closely monitoring Glassdoor it becomes clear that the management still doesn't have the slightest clue as to why BFV has flopped so badly, while the forums and online communities (Reddit etc.) are FULL of constructive feedback as to why the game sucked. Funniest thing is, they are mostly simple things like ''Give the Germans the right color of uniform'' or ''Fix the TTK''. If literally all your consumers tell you this you should listen.
Another employee:
''Design had become an almost entirely top-down experience. The ideas leadership came up with were designated MVP to shut down criticism and to prevent resources from going to other systems. This made it difficult for everyone else to implement their designs and even then, leadership demanded revisions and would not discuss their reasoning beyond simply not liking a specific part, nor would they approve the design until those revisions were made. Their cronies did not have to undergo nearly as much scrutiny. Needless to say, these political games are not the kinds of games the company and its employees should be playing.''
This is probably the funniest of all. DICE/EA literally went out of their way to delete any negative criticism and comments about why the game was so bad. Quite ironic while attempting to make a game about a war started by a ruthless dictator known for exactly these methods.
So know, what do we have? A game that is part of a prestigious AA-title, which claims to be a WWII shooter, doesn't have any actual WWII in it whatsoever (D-Day, East-Front, Italy, ACTUAL WWII UNIFORMS), which doesn't take into account any community feedback whatsoever, and now to top the cake: instead of actually building upon the dim light of hope that was the Pacific Theatre DLC, some genius decided it is time to abandon BFV as a whole! WHAT!? By this time they have literally alienated most of their playerbase. Most people are seriously convinced that this is not just the end of BFV, but BF as a franchise. Nobody trusts them anymore and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the leadership is totally oblivious of the hate people have for Battlefield now.
Someone could probably sue EA/DICE for this shitshow as they have proven to be nothing more than scammers of their own consumers as well as their employees. If Gordon Ramsay had a ''Kitchen Nightmares'' edition aimed at game developing companies he would most definately close it down immedeatly and advise the owner to fire everyone.
Well, can't wait for this to be either deleted as EA/DICE don't accept criticism or some EA ''Community manager'' comes along and tells us ''this is not at all my experience at this company blablabla''.
BFV, the game that had the potential to be the best WWII shooter ever but became the biggest flop ever due to incompetent (and narcisistic) PC executives.
+1 never buying anything again lol, along with most of the player base.
