EA

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Electronic Arts, most commonly known as: EA, is an American video game company, based in Redwood City, California. One of the most, if not THE most, controversial VG companies today, due to a slew of unethical business practices. Also they're rated as one of the worst companies in America, so go figure.

However, their most infamous and unique practice that everyone absolutely hates is buying out smaller studios with popular games like Bioware and Westwood, only to run their franchises to the ground due to their shitty need to directly intervene in their studios' creative freedom, then discard their desiccated husk later once they inevitably tank. Since EA holds the rights to these franchises now, its next-to-impossible for anyone else to pick-up their slack and try to revive them with new talent, unlike what some other people did recently with another classic.

Relevance to /tg/

In /tg/'s vidya gaem scene, EA has been responsible for the decline and death of some of our timeless classics, such as:

Bullfrog

Possibly the most historically notable, as Bullfrog is the first example most people go to when discussing EA's shutdowns, although it's also relevant that Peter Moloneux was also involved.

/tg/ relevance: Dungeon Keeper 1&2 are usually held to be "recommended reading" for many different kinds of DMs (in particular, ones looking to do an Evil Party Campaign) and designers of certain kinds of board games, for subtly different reasons.

Bioware Games

There's an entire article devoted to it, but in a nutshell:

Dragon Age

First game was groundbreaking and touted as one of the company's classics. Second game was notably plain horrible, thanks to increased meddling on EA's part.

Third game, DA:Inquisition, was notably better, if only because the series fell so hard from grace, its a notable upgrade from the second game. Still though, its a pretty decent game, all around.

Mass Effect

Made the first game, which was touted as video game's answer to Star Wars. Then made the second installment, which many remember the best in the franchise.

The third game is where things went downhill, due to EA assuming direct control over Bioware's development in the game, taking away more creative control from them (infact the writers of the last two games quit), and shifting it away from a narrative, to a more action-y standpoint, placing less attention to story and more on gunplay (and the gunplay is good, the best in the trilogy, but that can't save a game that was known for its storytelling, than shooting mechanics). This all culminated to a lackluster ending that never really satisfied fans, even with the remade ending due to pressure.

Also there was a spin-off called Andromeda, which tanked so badly thanks to a myriad of issues, that its single-handedly responsible for sinking Bioware and the franchise altogether.

Command and Conquer

After buying our Westwood games, EA's involvement with the series went largely unnoticed, at least until past 2005, where their meddling in the series has started a downward trend. From the somewhat gimped Tiberium Wars, to the "what the fuck is this even" Red Alert 3, the boggling RA mobile game that came after that, these were signs that EA didn't really know what to do with the series.

...Then 2010 came in and confirmed our suspicions: EA has no fucking idea what they're doing. C&C4: Tiberian Twilight is widely credited for putting the final nail in the coffin of the C&C franchise. The fanbase hated it. It gutted what made C&C fun in the first place, and overall a terrible exit to one of the founding franchises of the RTS genre. We'd make a joke on how this is familiar, but Sega didn't screw up this badly with another beloved franchise (they did, but still nowhere near as bad).

Just recently in 2018, EA decided to parade its dead corpse like a Bretonnian Grail relique by release its mobile spin off. As if killing the franchise wan't enough, they had to taunt its fans like they acknowledge their own infamy.

Maxis Games

Back in the day, Maxis released at least a couple of interestingly weird titles every few years (SimCity, SimEarth, SimAnt, and The Sims, for example), up until Spore, a big-budgeted game that was less successful then EA anticipated.

That led into SimCity 2013. A game so transparently flawed in so many ways that it's hard to know where to begin. Let's just start with the Always Online DRM requirement that was (transparently falsely) claimed to be "necessary for the experience" (it was no such thing).

/tg/ relevance: SimCity is a model for [many different board games], and the early Maxis non-Sims Sim-games are good sources for anybody looking into game design from a Simulationist perspective.

Warhammer Online

This sums it up pretty well.