@Magikf1ngers I do not think it is greed, but yes, it starts a long time ago. It it just that the market lacks competition and so the great publisher can do what they want without having to worry, that others take over. And because many consumers are pleased with it and buy the products anyway. There are lots of people pre-order games before they even played them. They are used to it, that they are flooded with cheap games every year and pay for it. But the niveau of quality decreases constantly, although the technology develops further.
If you want to be save from getting bought up by EA and vanish in the dark hole of flogged ideas, you have to refuse going on the stock marketing. But this means you get less money to grow as business. The stock market is a good thing to get money for your business, especially with new and good ideas. But than companies like EA can also buy shares and they have the money to buy enough to take you over and suck you in with all your good ideas. It would need a strong consumer shift to such companies, so that they can stand on their own.
But the market for games is not such volatile, because many people buy the franchises and products anyway, instead of asking for better products. The so called "fanbase". They spend their time complaining in such forums like this, instead of refusing consumption and try other and smaller companies. The Poles, as examples, have very good developpers with fresh ideas and there are also a few German studios. In Germany, there is a one-man-developper, which designs a SciFi space game totally on his own and it looks pretty good and has some interesting ideas. Although the modding community is in many ways more ambitious and talented, as many high-paid developpers - and they do it for free.
We need more of this to increase competition on the market, we must try to free the market more buy removing copyrights e.g. and it needs more guts to start own businesses for game developpment. We as consumer and gamers have to prevent, that moloch companies like EA suck in all the good ideas and destroy them. There are other companies, which also tend to go this way. It is simple economics: High-performance companies are small and very specialized. In the moment they grow their business model, the quality of their prodcts become worse. Especially, when they begin sucking in competitors. Normally, such companies vanish from the market some day. But we as consumers can speed this up by moving to other products and give new companies a chance, instead of beeing such conservative with our habits.
Indeed. I saw many projects financed and run by crowdfunding, not only in the gaming industry. But you have to deliver, if you want their money, instead that you only put a prize tag on it and nobody knows what is in. To an increasing extent I saw products in the media industry like games or movies, which are not worth the prize or not even worth buying at all, because they lied about or at least exaggarated the content or deceived the consumer about what they get. Many movies this days not even deliver entertainment and I ask myself, what I am paying for than.
Therefore, I do not buy any game at the release. I am mostly many years behind the release, because either the game is crap from the beginning or, what also is a current trend like we saw with Cyberpunk 2077, it is in an unfinised state by release and needs years to get to a finished state. I bought Cyberpunkt for under 20 bugs and Titanfall 2 for also something around it. So I really paid, what it is worth it, because Titanfall 2 was for me only a single-player game, because I am unable to play the multiplayer. And if I would know that, I would not have bought it in the first place.
But as I said, the power lies in our hand. The market gives us, what we demand and if we demand crap, we get crap.
Its almost Christmas of 2021, and I can't play Titanfall 2. Would someone please do something about this!?
@prometheanascent
We'll have to agree to disagree. Facts are - in my 30+ years as an EA customer / fan, I've seen them start out in an awesome place and just grab everything and turn it into tepid nonsense that they advertise really well. They put the effort into advertising because that's how they get people to spend their money. Once we've given our money to EA, their complete and total ambiilance towards their fans really starts to show.
Take Battlefield for instance. It was absolutely revolutionary for its time in 2002. 64 player games, etc. However, they also allowed mods and server rentals and the like, which led to Desert Combat, and DICE taking over the franchise. It's been really good until EA took over management of DICE, and then we have nonsense like Battlefield Hardline, the two entires that had immense potential to be great but got flubbed (BF1 and V) and now the newest entry which had even more potential than the two predecessors, and again - totally screwed it.
Respawn and EA did the same with Titanfall. The first one came out and it was unlike ANYTHING out. It was the literal first video game that implemented the giant robots (whether you choose to call them Titans, 'Mechs, etc) as a very good, very playable central point to the game. Yes, the first Titanfall had flaws, but they were flaws that were inherent in the Steam engine, and weren't serious. The game was awesome.
Then Titanfall 2 comes along - FULL of potential. They told Vince Zampella and Respawn that it needed a single-player campaign, and they made one that was, arguably, perfect. I still play through it when I can't get in a MP match from time to time. However - they totally screwed the launch which hurt the sales, so EA didn't care about it, and Respawn soon followed and stopped caring about it, too. They had the Star Wars game, and some "unannounced game" that has never materialized. Titanfall (the first one) languished for five or six years, completely unplayable because of one rogue hacker that DDOS the pudding out of the TF1 servers. Now they've been doing it to TF2, despite the fact that it was playable for a little bit. Yet - until October or November, they kept selling Titanfall that was unplayable. They keep selling Titanfall 2 - despite the fact that it's unplayable for the most part.
If that's not greed - I don't know what is. Selling a product that is broken on their end, and not doing anything to make it playable.
I get that the market lacks competition. Realistically - EA has a near monopoly because in many cases, when a game is new and revolutionary, EA buys it so they can control it. It's like Microsoft used to do up until Janet Reno started the monopoly hearings. Now EA is doing it, and we need a Janet Reno to investigate EA.
That's why there isn't as much competition now. That's proof that EA is only about greed and the bottom line, and they don't give two squirts about the fans. I'm not talking about the individuals. I'm sure that some, especially those in EA Help and the community managers here, like @EA_Mako and the others that post in here, really want to do things for us, and be able to give us the good news, and wich EA would take control and fix stuff and give the fans what they want. I guarantee you that (and this is coming from my own experience working in the gaming industry) the biggest volume of complaints they get are about stuff that isn't on the client side, or aren't client-side technical issues. At least THOSE issues they can generally fix.
I don't pretend to know what the answer is. My favorite franchises have all been EA with the exception of three (Quake, Doom, and Half-Life and the HL inspired games like Team Fortress, Day of Defeat, etc.). I used to play Battlefield in amateur ladders with my own clan,. We were able to rent servers and build a community around both Counter-Strike and Battlefield, and wound up giving it up when they stopped supporting rental servers.
Then Titanfall came along and far surpassed any other game out there, even with its flaws. I was one of two volunteer mods with the Respawn Titanfall 2 forums, and up until about the last year of those forums, we'd get regular updates from Respawn's community manager. He made a TON of promises to us about the game. He made promises to me personally as well about sending me merch and whatnot - that never materialized. That's not as important as the game is to me, but it shows the overall lack of integrity of anyone in these organizations.
As I've said many times - unless they completely fix Titanfall 2, get a Titanfall 3 out that's quality as they promised over and over again until launch day of Apex Legends, and get the Battlefield series back on track by letting DICE do it on their own instead of interfering with them - I will never spend another dime with EA. I wish I knew how to get more people to do that as well. For me, all I can do is get my son and daughter to not buy EA games, and get my grandchildren to stop wanting / buying EA games. I've done that. I'm working on some of my friends now as well.
I'm tired of, as a fan who helped build Respawn by buying Titanfall day 1, and preordering Titanfall 2 and volunteering much of my time in their forums, that they just basically pooped on everyone. So if they want to keep me as a fan, they're going to have to earn it back. Period.
@Magikf1ngers"If that's not greed - I don't know what is." Because I am capitalist by principle, I do not see the flaws in greed. We are all greedy. If not, we would be such humble, that we would make no progress at all. Humbleness is a nice personal value, but not, if you want to have a striving economy and progress. One would need to examine the market in deepth to see what is going wrong (I think there is a lot going wrong in all markets, btw.).
Personally, it hurts me a lot, when games like Titanfall, Anthem or Mirror's Edge, with so much potential and good ideas, are dumped into trifle. Let it be greed, okay. But why is the greed not focused on making a genius product and get a golden nose with many people buying the franchise for decades? I do not see the entrepreneur thinking behind making a bad product, selling it to only a fraction of people and get the hate of the deceived and disappointed consumers for it. If I would be an entrepreneur, it would hurt my honor.
It is the problem of all monopolies and lack of competition (" It's been really good until EA took over management of DICE." There you have it.). Without competition, you have no incentive to constantly strive to be better - in product as well as in business - because there is no other, which could be better than you and eventually push you out of the market. The people will buy your stuff anyway. Monopolies existens in the market, but the market theory sees them short lived because of the model of the "* economicus", which unfortunatly does not existens in reality. The people are not rational thinking and so the market is very slow to remove monopolies. As long as the people buy EA products and there is no threat for their business, so long this policy of EA will exist.
Take me, for example. I bought Anthem for a few bugs lately and still play it. Why? Because I like the game and the setting (I am a fan of such scifi mech- or suit stuff), because there is no other game like it. I like being a mercenery Iron Man on Pandora and have the freedom to simply fly around and look, what the next corner brings me. But it hurts me so much, that the game is not better or lied about what they promised on the E3. I would bought it for full prise and recommended it to my friends, if it would be, like they promised.
Same with Titanfall 2. The story is genius. Works well for a singleplayer game and even better for a multiplayer game (How many multiplayer games have a good singleplayer story?). Watched tutorials to become better for MP and boom, does not work. I regret buying it, because I dived so much into the story and world, that I wanted more.
Wow, a staggering 401 posts on the subject of TF2 server Dossing.
No solution or calming words offered up by Respawn or EA .
Excepting EA David who offered up something, which is to his credit.
No fix as yet.
The 'hacker' from what I've gleaned seems to hate the Russians and various other races.
Has carried on the attacks over a huge length of time, years and years without any remorse at all.
It's become quiet an unhealthy obsession.
Anyway, heard about this 'Northstar client'. Looks promising. Possibly our only salvation?
Waiting a bit to see how it goes.
Unreal Tournament was extremely successful in it's day due to modding etc.
Fortunately I only play TF2 on EA.
Wouldn't get any more on this platform.
It's just not a good long term bet.
As EA are worth $42 billion they just won't care about that even slightly.
