My Confusing Relationship with EA

Ah, EA…In reflection, my relationship with you over the years feels like something from a soap opera.  It’s been a roller coaster of love and hate, of rarely equaled joy and all too familiar frustrations.  A recent article on Kotaku in which CEO John Riccitiello states that EA is shifting to a policy of “fewer games, better games,” got me thinking about the company and how my opinion of them has shifted over nearly two decades of playing their games.  Certainly a “quality over quantity” mentality is a bit hard to swallow from the company that has brought us over two dozen titles in the Sims series since its debut in 2000, but the fact remains that EA has fostered some great innovation over the years, though they’re still foremost in my mind for shovelware and poor product support and Riccitiello is aware of this:

I think a pattern EA went on and I think other companies are following right now is the trend of while you’re milking your cash cows and nothing else, it’s a very profitable business. While you’re doing that it feels really good and [Wall] Street loves you. I think EA got into that position in the last cycle. I think other companies are in that position now. I’ve lived through both ends of that. And one of those reasons I spend so much time talking about quality and innovation is I don’t think it’s an end goal. I think it’s a pursuit that doesn’t stop. You will not see a year from EA where I’m not excited about two or three major intellectual properties the world has never heard of. And I won’t go to Madden meetings or FIFA meetings or Need for Speed meetings without saying: What’s different that totally excites me that we’ve never seen before? And you won’t see us doing that and not asking the creative leaders in our building what excites them, because that’s the beat of our business.

Hey, Activision, are you paying attention here?  No, clearly you’re not.

There are many great games for which EA is responsible, however the past decade has served mostly to paint the company as an evil empire.  In my opinion, this is mostly because of the force-fed atrocity that is the Sims franchise, unrealistic development and release schedules (which led to some of the buggiest games ever produced), and ridiculously infuriating DRM.  I could get into other reasons why — like attempted hostile takeovers or treating employees like indentured servants — but honestly, that’s just depressing.  Let’s just keep this about the games themselves.  Recently EA does seem to be changing their tune (though their lack of action with some of the great IPs they own could and should be considered downright criminal *cough*BULLFROG*cough*) and are threatening a return to quality for which we used to know them.

So let’s take a little trip down memory lane and look at my own personal most memorable EA releases and see where that leaves us, shall we?

The first notable EA game I recall playing was 1992′s Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf for Sega Genesis, and ho-lee crap is this a good start.  I played the hell out of this game, despite never being able to make it very far.  For those unfamiliar, Desert Strike had the player controlling a lone AH-64 Apache attack helicopter from a third person isometric perspective, blowing shit up and rescuing stranded friendlies (by dropping a ladder…I’m not really sure where they went when they climbed up to the two-seat chopper, but logic be damned!) in a fictional Persian Gulf country which has just been taken over by an evil dictator.  Yes, fictional.  It did not take place in Iraq, I don’t care if the subtitle is “Return to the Gulf.”  In hindsight, it was perhaps a little too involved for me at just age 7 since your success really depended on at least some degree of planning your routes to mission objectives so as to not run out of ammo, armor or fuel.  It spawned four sequels (Jungle Strike, Urban Strike, Soviet Strike, and Nuclear Strike) though I only played three of them, and recall Nuclear Strike on Nintendo 64 being impossibly difficult.

The '90s were so radical

In 1996, two very cool yet almost universally forgotten games were published by EA: Genewars and Syndicate Wars. These were both real time strategy games developed by Bullfrog, but the similarities pretty much end there.  Since even many a seasoned gamer will give you a bewildered look when you mention either of these titles, I’d say a little info is in order.  But since I don’t trust my memory alone for describing these (Scrimshaw’s the one to turn to there) I’ll allow Wikipedia to do the ‘splaining:

“Genewars is a real time strategy video game for Windows and DOS featuring standard elements of strategy, along with minor terrain editing and, most importantly, cross-species breeding.

Players move through a series of worlds using a small number of sentient humanoids to build small bases and to stun, kill, research, and ultimately breed a variety of animals. Plants are also important, as different plants can be grown and harvested for different purposes. Players must use the various plant and animal species available to them (as well as hybrid animals) to deal with different environments, enemies, and tasks. For instance, a crab is a good armored defender, while a mule is a perfect detritus transporter. The two can be bred to form a creature that is well armored, but also suited to mule work. The more a particular species has been studied and created, the more effective future individuals will be. The primary resource of the game is goop, which is derived from all kinds of biomass.”

This really was a great concept for a game, and its core mechanic of creating hybrid creatures was aped years later by Relic’s Impossible Creatures, though admittedly a bit different.  Again, I believe I was a little too young to really get the most out of Genewars, but the novelty and possibilities were not lost on me.  The only other RTS I can think of that allowed a similar level of customization and general sandbox possibilities (though in a completely different way) was Earth 2150 (one of my personal favorite RTSes).

Syndicate Wars was a completely different beast. Although I had no idea at the time, this was actually the third game in Bullfrog’s Syndicate series, and the game world was fairly well established coming in.  Definitely hop on over to at least the Wikipedia article to get a better idea of this somewhat dystopian world of Matrix-style mind control where citizens see only what corporations want them to through brain implants.   When I first played it, the environment and story were the most interesting things here, but on reflection I realized that there were some gameplay elements that made it pretty far ahead of its time.  Aside from an engaging story, it sported what’s become the standard RTS isometric perspective, but allowed full rotation of the camera as well as pitch control.  The player also upgraded his agents through research of new brain implants as the game progressed, and bought new weapons along the way.  If this sounds interesting I’d encourage you to talk to Scrimshaw about it since this game was his bread ‘n buttah for quite a while.  He still cries himself to sleep over having lost his copy [Actually, I still have my CD for Syndicate Wars, but I can't figure out how to use DOSBox and make it work right.  It was the Gene Wars disc that was unceremoniously destroyed by a high school rival- Scrim].

Two years later we see Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit.  I’m not much of a racing game fan, but NFS3 added the Hot Pursuit mode (duh) which allowed players to either race around a track trying to avoid being pulled over by cops, or as the fuzz doling out tickets.  This was one of the first games I remember playing heavily at LAN parties since it was something pretty accessible to a lot of people and that makes it a pretty significant title for me.

Busted

1999 brings the genius that is Dungeon Keeper 2.  If you’ve never played it, go download it.  Right now.  Seriously.  You can find it online for free.  I’m not even going to describe it because anyone who considers himself a gamer has a moral obligation to experience this game.  I recently reinstalled it, and despite the dated visuals it’s still a fantastic game in nearly every way.  The only downside is poor documentation, which became a bit of a trend in EA’s games after this time.  If you’ve played it you probably know what I mean — some game mechanics were not very well described (I only recently figured out how to group your minions together while using Possession…)  I know that Peter Molyneux didn’t actually have a hand in this one, but it tops the first for me.  The dark humor, the base-building mechanics, the cutscenes…it was just so great.  Also, it appears that Bullfrog really had the whole full 3D environment thing down at this point, eh?  Anyway, this was toward the end of an era for EA, as DK2 was a truly unique IP that they failed to support any further, despite a teaser for DK3 actually being included with the game.  They were still willing to take some chances when DK2 was released and we got better games because of that.  The Dungeon Keeper franchise is one that EA would do well to resurrect in my opinion, and NOT in the form of an MMO.  I can only hope this was one of the projects that was canceled in EA’s recent cost-cutting measures…

It really was good to be bad

Also in 1999, EA publishes the first Medal of Honor for Playstation.  The franchise has been in a downward spiral ever since, usually nipping at the heels of Call of Duty, and I honestly wouldn’t expect the next installment to be anything to write home about…

In what was probably their last big chance-taking release, EA published American McGee’s Alice in 2000.  McGee had been involved in some pretty big projects before Alice, having worked for id Software on Doom, Doom II, Quake and Quake II, but the first game to bear his peculiar moniker was what made him someone to watch.  The beautifully twisted Wonderland to which Alice returns was a blast to explore even if the gameplay was just run-of-the-mill third person action fare, and though I haven’t replayed it recently, I’d still bet that it’s worth giving a go if you’ve never played it.

Earlier in 2000, The Sims was released.  The world has been dumber ever since.

Next up, Battlefield 1942.  The spiritual successor to Codename Eagle (which provided me with what I still consider to be the best multiplayer memories EVER), this was a landmark release.  If you play it after having played every other Battlefield installment, it feels slow, clunky and far too open.  But when it came out in 2002, it was the bee’s knees.  1942 was one of the first multiplayer shooters that really encouraged (if not required) a great deal of teamwork.  For me, it meant it was one of the last games in which I’d jump into a server without at least one friend to play with.

Two years later brought Battlefield Vietnam.  Basically the same engine as 1942, there weren’t really any significant gameplay additions aside from different vehicles (including the first helicopters in the series — unless you count the patched version of Codename Eagle which includes some sort of gyrocopter contraption) and the AI was still dumb as a bucket of hair, but boy howdy was it fun.  I actually enjoyed this one most while playing against countless waves of near-useless bots, something I really wish DICE would have included in the later titles.  Vietnam did seem to suffer from development cycle restrictions though as there were features that were touted before release which didn’t make it in (such as the VC being able to dig tunnels that could be used as spawn points).

Insert Apocalypse Now quote here

Stepping away from the Battlefield series for a moment, 2004 was also the year that The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth was released.  While not introducing anything particularly innovative, Battle for Middle Earth had some interesting elements that made for a very fun RTS experience.  At first, I found the base building system a little too restrictive as you’re limited to a predetermined number of building slots around your HQ/citadel type structure, but it meant that your building decisions required a different strategy than in most other games with the unrestricted building mechanic.  It was also endlessly satisfying to watch the good soldiers of Gondor being thrown through the air when my Troll took some swings with an uprooted tree used as a club.  All in all, Battle for Middle Earth provided a solid fun at a fairly large scale for quite a while through both its single and multiplayer battles.  I also recall a CD key generator making the rounds at about this time that worked for what seemed like every EA game at the time, which made LAN play accessible even for people who hadn’t bought the game.  Not that any of us did that of course.

2005 was the year of Battlefield 2 and the start of a very straining time in my relationship with EA.  BF2 was buggy.  Reeeaaallllyyy buggy.  Not unplayable, but it was rough.  This wouldn’t really have been so bad except for the fact that the version 1.5 patch was released only a matter of months ago.  At first the lack of support probably could have been blamed on DICE instead of EA, but it soon became clear that it was EA’s release schedule that was forcing their games to suffer from a lack of polish and playtesting.  I say this because Battlefield 2142 was released a year later and suffered from being annoyingly buggy as well.  This made for one Battlefield title per year from 2004 to 2006, and unlike Activision, EA was demanding this from one developer.  While 2142 is my personal favorite in the franchise so far, BF2 is the title that brought Battlefield to maturity.  Shortly after, Battlefield Bad Company dumbed it back to the pre-teen years.  After a short time with the Bad Company 2 Beta on PS3 and the announcement that the PC beta was delayed to allow a greater capacity, it looks like EA may finally be giving DICE some time to really work things out, though I’m sure it’s as much to capitalize on the thousands of PC gamers who were given the big fuck you by Activision and Infinity Ward with Modern Warfare 2 as it is actual devotion to a quality product.

Next is 2007′s Crysis.  I finally played it a few months ago.  That’s unfortunately the story for a lot of people I think, due to those ridiculous system specs, but it actually was a good game and I think everyone learned a lot from it.  Like how not to code a game for instance.  Or that “future-proofing” your game may not be the best business decision.  It expanded on Far Cry‘s quasi-sandbox approach where the player is given a set of linear objectives, but is left his own devices when it comes to actually completing them and provided some very fun toys along the way.  Setting that nano suit to max strength to pick up and hurl an enemy soldier sure was a blast, but Ben Parker had it right when he said “with great power comes great responsibility.”  In this case it applies in the sense that, just because I can use my super strong flying fists of justice to punch down a building does not mean I should…at least not while I’m inside.  Yes, I made this mistake more than once, but come on!  This super suit can make me punch the roof off a building but can’t protect me when that corrugated piece of sheet metal comes crashing down on my head?  I think we need a congressional inquiry into these things ASAP.

In the same year we were introduced to Rock Band.  This was and is the EA we had come to know over the previous few years where, as with the Medal of Honor series, they tried to capitalize on a trend and released a boat load of titles in the franchise (I count 13 in two years!).  The upside here is that the subsequent iterations don’t really require a great deal of development time since the foundation is basically the same for every one, and as a result these games aren’t plagued with bugs in the way the Battlefield games have been.

And then there was Spore.  I openly admit to being super stoked for this one as all the pre-release talk had it destined for a place among Will Wright’s greatest achievements.  But somewhere along the line it was decided to dumb it down to the point where it could probably have been a glorified browser game in all honesty.  Throw in that crime against humanity known as SecuROM which limited users to only three installs, and this one went down faster than Paris Hilton at…well, anywhere.  It’s since been announced that EA is abandoning SecuROM, even providing a tool to actually remove it from your computer (what a novel idea!) and views DLC as the new way to create profit in the face of pirating.  It’s so crazy, it just might work…wait, no, not “crazy,” the other one…logical.

EA also had a hand in publishing Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, though I think it’s safe to say that Valve wasn’t going to let them screw with anything there.  But it was a smart move as it attached their name to a high quality title from what has undoubtedly been the most consistent developer of the past decade and change.

There you have it; my own list of memorable EA releases.  You’ll note that there are a few high profile titles which I did not include:

• SimCity — EA acquired Maxis in 1997, which means the original as well as SimCity 2000 (my personal favorite) were not EA titles at their original releases.  Anything with “Sim” in the title after the EA takeover has been largely forgettable.
• Command and Conquer series — EA got their hands on it only since Red Alert 2 (and apparently only got involved in development afterward), and aside from C&C: Generals (which wasn’t really anything spectacular), I haven’t really enjoyed a C&C title to the point where it was worth mentioning.  The recent entries in the franchise have been underwhelming to say the least, though this brings me to another point…

Also posted on Kotaku, Riccitiello said that the RTS genre is in need of “fundamental innovation and not just cooler graphics.”  Whoa, buddy.  That doesn’t sound like the EA we’ve come to know and hate…you’re starting to scare me…but I think I like it.  Unfortunately it seems that this quote is referring more to plans for C&C titles rather than a resurrection of the truly innovative RTS IPs of which EA is already in possession (*cough*ANYTHINGBYBULLFROG*cough*) but if it’s an indication of the overall mentality shift going on over there, it might be something to get excited about.

For all the frustrations and palm-to-forehead moments, EA has provided me with some great gaming experiences and the future actually looks *gasp* bright.  How have the years left you in terms of feelings toward EA?