mackintosh wrote:
I will never, ever forgive EA and BioWare for what they did to my beloved Mass Effect. If you do read through The Final Hours though (read a summary online, please don't waste more of your money), you'll find that it was mostly BioWare that butchered their own creation, rather than EA. EA just wanted them to hurry up - the horrible endings and general plotline was all BioWare and their incomprehensibly egregious belief that they simply couldn't get it wrong.

I loved ME when they started leaking info on ME2 i just laughed and walked away, I also the exact same thing with Dragons Age.

Eh well Hopefully Ea will stay far away from Amp. EA has a nasty habit of convincing me to keep my money.

please don't take any offense in this, but if you get bought by EA I expect a full refund of my money.

Ahh the many great franchises that were destroyed by EA. To top the list: Command & Conquer. This came had a legacy of almost two decades, and they destroyed it utterly. Simcity is next on my list.

Just for the point of the 0-day DLC. To be fair some of it may not have been done at the time of the games development cycle. There are instances where yes, it is. But some of it is actually in the months between when the game goes golden master and the time it is released. Just because some one says it is "Finished" does not mean it is on the shelves the next day.



Some games go through extended Q&A processes (0-day patches for that one), DVD pressing, Preparing it for digital release and making sure every one has the same code, and so on. This can lead to allot of time where the devs would be sitting on their hands, so to use that time they make content. Some of it just happens to be available at or just after the point of release.



NOW, the DLC that I have a problem with is the stuff that is on the disk on the day of release that they want you to pay to have unlocked, that is clearly premeditated. But if you have to download it and it does not look to be to essential...then it may have just been the developers earning their pay for a few more months. My 2 cents, perspective is a valuable thing...cherish it.

My favourite game series is Mass Effect franchise. As a fan, I have witnessed how entire (very popular) franchise was totally destroyed by EA corruption. This company is literally gaming industry parasite infection. EA are searching for young, talented, popular and perspective hardcore gaming studios who have proven to be successful with 1-2 titles. Then they give those enthusiasts a lot of money in exchange for some control over their next project, resulting in the buyout. After that EA suddenly changes entire franchise into generic food for EA customers - casual gamers and mindless kids. Profit. Hardcore studio destroyed. Franchise got old and boring, time to repEAt cycle and find new food. I hate them and I will never buy their products.

Monphat wrote:
My favourite game series is Mass Effect franchise. As a fan, I have witnessed how entire (very popular) franchise was totally destroyed by EA corruption. This company is literally gaming industry parasite infection. EA are searching for young, talented, popular and perspective hardcore gaming studios who have proven to be successful with 1-2 titles. Then they give those enthusiasts a lot of money in exchange for some control over their next project, resulting in the buyout. After that EA suddenly changes entire franchise into generic food for EA customers - casual gamers and mindless kids. Profit. Hardcore studio destroyed. Franchise got old and boring, time to repEAt cycle and find new food. I hate them and I will never buy their products.

totally agree.

Its a pain to say but thanks to EA i wasted my money on SWTOR and BF3 i loved bf2 for example in the old day's but bf3 was a let down for me. And SWTOR was like WoW to me to much grind and i am sick of grinding games and monthly subs.

Sadly, that's the side affect of larger game companies and studios, stuff loses that nicely done cohesion in the game after a certain point. And the publishers take this problem and blow it way out of proportion.



The publisher simply wants their money back, they want their investment to have the best return possible, so they do what they think will help. They try to get modern games to focus on being marketable, that means looking good. Publishers these days like to have clips to push out for commercials or posters, so even if the game didn't need a large action area, the publisher might push them to add one, at the very least, they tell you to put a large amount of time and effort into the graphics so it falls under their liking, even if that might harm the gameplay.



The easiest way to have good graphics for a game with lots of assets, is to have a giant production team (can't complain too much myself, means that I have more job opportunities than I otherwise would) or modelers, animators, artists, the whole thing. The problem is with that many people, you go way beyond not keeping a cohesive art style in potential problems. There can be dozens if not hundreds in some cases of people all with their own idea of just what the game should feel like, each one is given X task to do, and they try to do that thing so it looks good, hey, we all like having nice portfolio pieces right? Downside is with everyone doing this, a game comes out with a very overblown visual element, just look at the new call of duty, try to find a single graphic asset that you would not be proud to say that you did at a job interview.



This isn't a bad thing all around, but the publisher loves seeing stuff like this, again, it's great for the marketing teams to make stuff out of. So with both sides being happy, this is how it goes more and more often with large games these days. The problem is that this is where the budget and focus is going, find a group of friends and try to make a game with them, sure you have disagreements but at least you know what your disagreeing on, unlike where you and that other guy three stories down don't even know that you have opposite opinions on the same thing that you are both working towards. Small teams can always focus on the core ideas better, and that is why small games can have that more solid and unique feel or style to them in how they play and are experienced.



And since it's really hard to market a story in quick visual adds that you can post on every sight on the internet, the publisher is more willing to mess with that area, not being their specialty, they are more likely to not understand that what they are doing is bad for the product, so they will make tweaks here and there, offer suggestion about a game mode or potential content that can be packaged as DLC, you get the idea. A publisher is not a game designer, they normally don't know didly about game making, most aren't even really gamers. So they tend to mess it all up, with the one exception in visual and in some cases audio, those are the things that they can see and easily feel, and know how to market. This is why you see lots of games that might "look" good, bur are really bad coming from publishers. At least one reason.



Still, as much as I hate how the mix tends to work these days, it's sad what can happen to a game without a good publisher to support/advertise it. So many old games that did bad in the marketing despite being pretty good, first one that comes to my mind is sacrifice... I think I'm gong to go play some sacrifice now If you'll excuse me.

/end brain dead rant

Uberbasher wrote:
Its a pain to say but thanks to EA i wasted my money on SWTOR and BF3 i loved bf2 for example in the old day's but bf3 was a let down for me. And SWTOR was like WoW to me to much grind and i am sick of grinding games and monthly subs.

I'm an mmo fan the only reason I did not get that was because it had EA on it.



My problem with Ea apart from the business side is the amount of buggy games they released I'm talking about console cartridge games you can't patch

Monphat wrote:
My favourite game series is Mass Effect franchise. As a fan, I have witnessed how entire (very popular) franchise was totally destroyed by EA corruption. This company is literally gaming industry parasite infection. EA are searching for young, talented, popular and perspective hardcore gaming studios who have proven to be successful with 1-2 titles. Then they give those enthusiasts a lot of money in exchange for some control over their next project, resulting in the buyout. After that EA suddenly changes entire franchise into generic food for EA customers - casual gamers and mindless kids. Profit. Hardcore studio destroyed. Franchise got old and boring, time to repEAt cycle and find new food. I hate them and I will never buy their products.

This. EA has a great business strategy: destroy the industry that their company thrives on. They also like having hundreds of thousands of people hate their guts, because it's, you know, good for business apparently. I can't wait until they go under.

I will never, ever forgive EA and BioWare for what they did to my beloved Mass Effect. If you do read through The Final Hours though (read a summary online, please don't waste more of your money), you'll find that it was mostly BioWare that butchered their own creation, rather than EA. EA just wanted them to hurry up - the horrible endings and general plotline was all BioWare and their incomprehensibly egregious belief that they simply couldn't get it wrong.

terricon4 wrote:
Sadly, that's the side affect of larger game companies and studios, stuff loses that nicely done cohesion in the game after a certain point. And the publishers take this problem and blow it way out of proportion. [...]

I agree with pretty much all you say in your post, but I think there's another big reason why big companies produce bland games, and that is fear. When so much money is involved, fear keeps the companies away from risky ideas that haven't been tried before. Instead they choose a safe option and go for a game type that's been tried many times before and obviously have a nice fat player base. A generic FPS is a much safer choice than something weird with strange game mechanics that no one's ever heard of. If you find a weird game it's a pretty safe bet to assume that it's designed by an indie company, and this is the main reason.



It's the same in the film industry. Hollywood has got itself stuck in spectacular visuals with very little originality, for the very same reason.

As of late, the very enjoyable and/or innovative games are being developed by indie dev teams. So I am actually very glad systems like Steam permit small teams publish their games without worrying about finding a big time publisher.

flopsies wrote:
I've started a change.org online petition to stop the buyout

http://www.change.org/petitions/electronic-arts-not-buy-out-amplitude-studios#

I think the OP was making a general statement and just using EA as an example. I haven't read anywhere that this studio may be bought out by a corporation.

I agree. EA wants their fingers on everything. They buy small-time companyes and make them give out a few titles, or perhaps just one. Then, they issue a few cut backs and then they shut the company down. An example here in Norway: EA bought Playfish in 2009 for 400million dollars. (Well, may be difficult to say no to that amount of money, but still) Now, 3 years later they are shut down and the workers are left without work. Some move to other countries to stay in the EA family and some wants to start their own. But still..



So I think it is right they got this:



http://consumerist.com/2012/04/congratulations-ea-you-are-the-worst-company-in-america-for-2012.html

I certainly hope they don't fall for EA. It's a trap!

Anyone heard the rumors? ( quite old "news" thought )



RUMOR: Nexon offer/bid to buy EA!



http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/04/26/ea-spikes-on-report-japans-nexon-makes-takeover-bid/

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nexon-said-offfer-electronic-arts-122914521.html

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=471791



EA is quite bad itself , but Nexon is shit , seriously!

Don't even get me started on UBI-shaft! EA is pretty bad as well, but IMHO if UBI were the only one left- TIME FOR A NEW HOBBY!

Urgh... I hate EA and it's origins.

drewitt wrote:
Don't even get me started on UBI-shaft! EA is pretty bad as well, but IMHO if UBI were the only one left- TIME FOR A NEW HOBBY!

i regret my purchase of anno 2070. The ubi launcher is terrible and sometimes it bugs out with repeated disconnects. It was my first and final purchase of a ubisoft product.

Mechanos wrote:
i regret my purchase of anno 2070. The ubi launcher is terrible and sometimes it bugs out with repeated disconnects. It was my first and final purchase of a ubisoft product.

Their launcher and DRM is purely made to bother people...

EA's a bunch of ******** out to ruin gaming, buying up anyone they don't like just to crush them. If they don't sell, they find another way to either make them sell or put them out of business. We need more independent devs out there doing things right. Here's a good start.

EA is one of those publishers that eats companies and sucks all the creativity out of them. Amplitude, not only should you stay indie, but please keep Games2Gether going...it's a brilliant idea.

The developers sadly don't have independence and that's why they need publishers.Publishers look for advertisment and finance and they care about how much the game sells,not how good it is.They give really short deadlines to the developer teams and so the games get rushed and on release are nothing more than pieces of shit and,certainly,not something the devs themselves really wanted.That is what is going to keep happening with the exclusions being independent developers.



btw,don't isolate EA,there are other companies who are just as bad

I hate EA and large game publishers in general. I LOVE indie games!

i hate EA, it has corrupt all games that it touch and all companys that it eat. Amplitude, good luck and i hope that your will be long live

EA was just OK for me before. Neither bad nor good, just OK...till they decided to FPS-ize Syndicate. That did it, now they're in my bad books. Never touching a single EA product any more.



...and don't get me started on Zynga...

I think that it would probably be a bad thing to get bought out by some larger company that just wants you to make money.

Ive heard several studios that were "no we wont be bought out"... but as the saying goes that if the price is right everything is for sale... ^^

Most ppl here have however worked at the big ones and hence most likely would be less inclined to take a step backwards once they have achieved more individual freedom (except possibly the programmers that are kept under more locks and bars than before but with more access to pizza and a completely sunproof environment.



Still that doesnt mean we cant wish for it to remain as it is.

I Hate EA



That is All

Well, considering the way some great game franchises got massacred through EA ( *cough* DA2 *cough*)... can understand the feeling

also add Syndicate FPS to their list od crimes, and Origin spying on you, they even managed to put microtransactions into Mass Effect multiplayer

Just DA2? Oy...there's a lot more to that. IMHO, ME2 and ME3 both got hit with EA corruption.



And all those other studios EA bought. Bullfrog...Origins..et.c.... *sigh*

Most big publishers does this. Both Ubi and Ea. The bigger they are the crappier the games it seems.



It all boils down to the same general thingy. The devs loose control of the developmentprocess to the finance-ppl and since they lack the proper understanding of how to release a proper software it all goes... yeah well we have all seen the results.

Let's just add the Ubisoft Launcher to the list of atrocities. Maintenance on weekend and no full gameplay while you can't reach the login servers. Just another "great" idea how to make gamers' lives more miserable without actually making the games worse.

-I dont think this guys left there job in a big company just to be bought back to a new big comapny daming lots of stuff. it would supprise me.

It is not only the large companies that launch games that are not ready. Firaxis has done it, but they may be considered large. KB did it with SoTs II and you can find plenty of examples. Only company that comes to mind that seems to have a solid record is Blizzard.

yes but they realse games that are old.

vmxa wrote:
Only company that comes to mind that seems to have a solid record is Blizzard.

Blizzard has a strong track-record, but I believe it's largely because Activision, the publisher (actually, Vivendi owns Activision, so Vivendi is the real publisher), doesn't directly interfere. Blizzard exists as a separate entity from Activision, with independent management. I think Blizzard's past success also gives them some leverage. Hopefully, Blizzard will be able to continue producing games without much influence from the publisher.

Blizzard and EA are stock concerns. Money is the only One Whats important.

vmxa wrote:
It is not only the large companies that launch games that are not ready. Firaxis has done it, but they may be considered large. KB did it with SoTs II and you can find plenty of examples. Only company that comes to mind that seems to have a solid record is Blizzard.

CiV had one of the worst launches ever ... until SOTSII came out ... I was there for both, the first one with a preorder and the second one with a day 1 purchase. SOTSII was simply a mess at release, there is no other way to describe it or quantify it. CiV had a major issue for foreign users, if your XP O.S. was not in English the game crashed at start up; they took more than 2 weeks to fix this. To this day these are the only games I ever regret buying, out of hundreds over many years.



EA was not always as bad as it is today, but sadly nowadays they are the only publisher I hate and the word is not strong at all in this case. Origin is the only way to buy digitally BF3 and ME3, at least for non US/Europe users; but the problem is that for anyone else outside those territories, the prices are in Euros. It wouldn't be that bad if the exchange rate was sensible, but when it's 1$=1€ you know they are simply ripping you off. Moreover why ANYONE should have to pay more for the same thing? Steam tried that with european users in 2010 and they had to go back to the real prices, nowadays almost all prices make sense. However in Origin the non US/EU users issue was reported on April last year and nothing has been done, they still expect the rest of the world to be ripped off. Not to mention that Origins Terms of Service and EULA is pretty much saying they can take whatever info they want from your PC and before you say that other services do the same, no other service like this has so much power over your information as Origin.

All



I just wanna raise a thread to show support for an independent studio staying independent and not being bought out by a larger group, i.e. EA.



Long Live Amplitude Studio's!!!!!!!

reynanuy, I hear you. I pre order Civ 5 as well. I have not played it since the first month. At least I waited on SoTs II till I got it cheap, but got almost no play out of it. I have to go back to Outpost to have such a bad product.

The main problem of the gaming industry today, in my humble opinion, is that it is a mass product supposed to appeal to the big crowd. It leads to a watering down of what makes games fun, such things like a learning curve, or difficulty for example.

For more than a couple of years I have had the feeling that the gaming industry cares mostly about how good a game looks, how cool it sounds but not really about the real content: story, gameplay.

I remember some very silly things from my first days as Everquest player... playing an elf, spawning in Kelethin, being in the middle of a forest and not being able to orient myself... You had either to follow the roads or actually develop the talent to feel in which direction you were going otherwise you could get lost in the woods. Dying meant a naked corpse run with the possibility to die again. Compare that to WoW today....

I mean, there is a reason why, for example, so many people still like BG1 and BG2, and it is definetly NOT the graphics or the game engine or the nostalgy AD&D trip... It comes down to one thing... the story arc was awesome!



OK, I stop with my rant, could continue, but then I would foam at the mouth and my colleagues would wonder why.

Sharidann wrote:
The main problem of the gaming industry today, in my humble opinion, is that it is a mass product supposed to appeal to the big crowd. It leads to a watering down of what makes games fun, such things like a learning curve, or difficulty for example.

For more than a couple of years I have had the feeling that the gaming industry cares mostly about how good a game looks, how cool it sounds but not really about the real content: story, gameplay.

I remember some very silly things from my first days as Everquest player... playing an elf, spawning in Kelethin, being in the middle of a forest and not being able to orient myself... You had either to follow the roads or actually develop the talent to feel in which direction you were going otherwise you could get lost in the woods. Dying meant a naked corpse run with the possibility to die again. Compare that to WoW today....

I mean, there is a reason why, for example, so many people still like BG1 and BG2, and it is definetly NOT the graphics or the game engine or the nostalgy AD&D trip... It comes down to one thing... the story arc was awesome!



OK, I stop with my rant, could continue, but then I would foam at the mouth and my colleagues would wonder why.

That is just so damn right. I totally agree. The same goes for Fallout 1-2, Planescape: Torment and Dragon Age. Not to mention awesome easter eggs and the almost infinite replayability. There are different ways to finish stuff depending on stats, class, gender etc. And ofcourse one has to try them all. Whom could ever forget the Big metal unit or The crushed whale and the potted plant etc

Alderbranch wrote:


That is just so damn right. I totally agree. The same goes for Fallout 1-2, Planescape: Torment and Dragon Age. Not to mention awesome easter eggs and the almost infinite replayability. There are different ways to finish stuff depending on stats, class, gender etc. And ofcourse one has to try them all. Whom could ever forget the Big metal unit or The crushed whale and the potted plant etc

Anyone still remembering good old Kangaxx? XD

Golden parts of his body and rogue stone to enter. I also remember my solo-run where my inquisitor kicked his ass alone aswell as later on mr gorgon too.

While you vets ramble about games I have not heard of, I'm going to put in my 2 cents.



I honestly don't like big companies. I usually despise them. A personal experience made me hate EA and I only let them off the hook in special cases. I also let Bioware off the EA hook due to their games being less tainted. I solve a lot of my big company issues by trying non large company things. I picked up the ST.patricks day Indy Royal Bundle, and I love it. Those are the games I love. They are untainted by Ea and Ubisoft. I loved DLC quest and am still playing through Jolly Rover (which, I might add, Had me grinning ear to ear every time someone spoke). Those games have heart and you can tell the creators put a lot of care into those games. I also enjoy playing a lot of console games, which helps me get around a lot of EA bull. One of the only large companies I don't hate is Microsoft, and i'm still pretty P****d that they charge for Customer Support.



Now, you may return to your internet caves.

Danne wrote:
While you vets ramble about games I have not heard of, I'm going to put in my 2 cents.

Then as a vet-suggestion. Please go look for the games. They are usually still found in bargain-bins most of them. Atleast you can find good walkthroughs when you get stuck nowadays which ofcourse can be a bit of a spoiler too.

Danne wrote:
I also let Bioware off the EA hook due to their games being less tainted.

0 day DLC.

their latest ending is either worst ending in history or worst scam in history ,

I would say that they are shownig definite signs of EA indoctrination.

Poor bioware, used to so good, imo the king of rpg's. Now look at them, tainted by EA, SICK!

Smight wrote:
0 day DLC.

their latest ending is either worst ending in history or worst scam in history ,

I would say that they are shownig definite signs of EA indoctrination.

My brother tried to defend that dlc. He still thinks it is okay. He went on to say something about how "they took the time to make it" (thus should get paid for it) to which I said "they made it while they were making the core game, before it was released. They can release it with the game, as part of the game not dlc." A lot of other shit was said, and I have to say it was not a pleasant conversation. I don't know how on earth he can defend that, but I figure it is because he is younger. I doubt he ever really played any games that didn't have dlc but expansion packs (aside from sims games).





That being said, I read the title and thought EA was trying to pick this game up. "figures they'd wanna pick a game up like this." But yeah, publishers can do a lot of bad. Though... I don't normally go out of my way to refuse to pick up a game I want because I hate the publisher. I will refuse to buy full price, or even refuse to pick it up on sale in certain circumstances until it is at a price I agree with (a fine example would be the deathspank games. They're on sale this weekend at 50% off; however ea had the balls to up the price (back) to 15 dollars right before the sale. So in my mind it is only 25% off, and I refuse to pay for it if they're going to try to pull that stunt.) I won't touch a game if it has certain drm (always online for a single player game), unless I really want it...

EA would never buy out something like this, it has too small of a demographic.

I've started a change.org online petition to stop the buyout

http://www.change.org/petitions/electronic-arts-not-buy-out-amplitude-studios#