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Arthur_Parker
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Reply #105 on: June 27, 2006, 05:13:55 AM

If EA and SOE make up the Axis of Evil, how come it's ok to buy a SOE game and not an EA one?

Back on the Asia issue for one second, why is WoW's success in the west a more valid reason for EA's purchase than WoW's success in the East?  Given that over 50% of WoW players are in Korea, China & Taiwan.
schild
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Reply #106 on: June 27, 2006, 05:36:09 AM

I wasn't aware that SOE was part of the Axis. What's SOE's crime again? Making a bunch of games that average out to be of mediocre quality (assuming EQ is baseline, SW:G is worse and EQ2 and Planetside are better)? Oh oh, did they have Starforce? SOE is nothing compared to EA. They're a fly on the wall. Not even comparable.

-

Blizzard had and has a HUGE built in market in Asia. Specifically because of Starcraft. It made sense for them to pimp their shit over their. EA doesn't have that built in market. Their biggest titles, The Sims and Madden (and then NCAA, BF, etc) don't fare well over there. Well, The Sims might have. But I bet people called it "Starcraft for Pussies" or something equally ridiculous. Anyway, EA has a better chance of breaking into the American MMOG market than they do anywhere else in the world.

Meanwhile, Japan - which isn't mentioned often when it comes to online gaming (or PC Gaming at all) - isn't even on the radar. MMOGs of huge games have not fared well. The most notable being FFXI, Front Mission Online, Dynasty Warriors BB, and Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine. Oh, and Phantasy Star. Which is all very odd to me considering the Indie PC Scene (doujin shit) is positively huge in Japan.

Also, Americans are finicky compared to all easterners (excluding Japan, who have Gaming ADHD much worse than we do). The Chinese and the Koreans - ESPECIALLY THE KOREANS - play a game with an assload of people and stick with it. Remember, Korea did not have consoles until recently. They're not used to the completely broken Hollywood style of NEW ENTERTAINMENT EVERY WEEK GUARANTEED that we've been forced into for the last 15-20 years.

Point being, breaking easterners away from WoW will be a shitton harder than making us westerners move on to something else. My opinion? They're better off resurrecting old licenses and letting Mythic have their way with them for a few years. The MMOG market isn't ready for a brute force attack from a bunch of greedy stockholders and morons. Syndicate could probably be shoehorned into some sort of dark future MMOG where people choose a corporation at character creation. Hell, it could even out-politic Eve if EA had a single creative bone left.
Arthur_Parker
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Reply #107 on: June 27, 2006, 08:47:56 AM

What's EA's crime again?  I know they kill mmo's and development studios, do you think that's intentional?  I thought it was just because they are clueless.  If they stop being clueless and released a decent mmorpg, I'd buy it.  Maybe it's a cultural difference, here in the UK, I think EA is bad news sure, but I don't boycott their products.  If EA really is further down the mmorpg shit list than SOE, I guess I totally missed that before.

The whole Asian thing came about because I can see how EA finds WAR attractive for Asia as well as for US+Europe.  You listed lots of reasons why they could well fail there, I don't disagree with any of that.
Llava
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Reply #108 on: June 27, 2006, 09:08:37 AM


That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell. -Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
Arthur_Parker
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Reply #109 on: June 27, 2006, 09:23:45 AM

Yeah I read that ages ago, forgive me but so what?  This isn't the third world if an employer is taking the piss you can go elsewhere.
Llava
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Reply #110 on: June 27, 2006, 09:33:29 AM

And so that makes it totally cool to fuck over your employees.  Cause hey- someone else might not be doing it.

That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell. -Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
Xanthippe
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Reply #111 on: June 27, 2006, 09:37:05 AM

I doubt that EA is continuing this practice, after being hit with lawsuits.  Settling the class action suit for ~$15 million surely cost them more than it would have to pay people according to standard labor laws to begin with.

(I really don't understand why people allowed themselves to be abused this way, quite frankly.  There is not enough money nor love in the world to make me go to work for someone 11 hours a day 7 days a week.)

And I just don't give a shit, frankly, other than on some abstract basis.  EA's treatment of their employees is not going to prevent me from buying one of their games.  Their employees are adults who are free to work or leave; they're not slaves.  I haven't given up eating chocolate, either, but I'm more likely to do that than not buy an EA game.

Mythic is like an old boyfriend who I want to give another try, but he hooked up with the town slut.  He's tainted, but I still want to believe that he's not, not really tainted, and that I won't come down with a disease.

Arthur_Parker
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Reply #112 on: June 27, 2006, 09:39:57 AM

Llava , So they didn't win a massive payout over that in a lawsuit?

Employment law in the UK is a lot more clear on the issue, you can't force someone to work more than 40 hours a week and you can't make someone work for free.  You guys sue people, it works for you, different strokes for different folk.
Lantyssa
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Reply #113 on: June 27, 2006, 09:58:43 AM

There is a mob rule that takes over in a situation like that.  A few tight deadlines turn into accepted practice.  Everyone else is working themselves to death so you feel you have to keep up or risk your job.  Sure you could quit, but EA owns most of the game studios where you live.  Being unemployeed and while trying to find work, possibly in a another city or country, in a fairly competative field, is not a position most people want to be in either.

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Merusk
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Reply #114 on: June 27, 2006, 10:33:56 AM

You can't force people to work over 40 hours, or work for free here either.  At least not directly.  By proxy, however, you give them deadlines and workloads that pretty much require it.   Employees do it, or they're out on their asses looking for a new job, because they didn't get their projects done and blew deadlines.  All perfectly legal.  Plus there's a ton of equally-skilled replacements out there just itching to get into that vacant seat.

The same situation happens in Architecture not only in the US but internationally.   Kids who want to have that shiny "A-list" name on the resume will work for an Eisenmann, Graves or Pei for peanuts if not free, doing hours and hours of work that would make a sweatshop taskmanager impressed.  The same is true of the games industry.  Too many people and too few jobs.

Yes, it's stupid, no I don't feel bad for the idiots who put themselves in that position. However I also I don't feel the people who take advantage of that situation are in any way deserving of praise or - as a consumer - my money.

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Sairon
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Reply #115 on: June 27, 2006, 10:44:34 AM

I dislike EA because they're cheap fuckers who cares absolutely nothing about games. Okay, so the jocks are happy in their ignorance with the sports title, but that doesn't change the fact that it's the same game they sell every year, just with rehashed player line ups and some extra polish. Also the take the milking to the maximum. So battlefield 1942 did great, get ready for expansion time! The last expansion to 1942 was a huge freaking rip off. I have nothing against releasing expansions as long as they're good, but with EA behind the wheels it's all about the milking of a product.
WayAbvPar
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Reply #116 on: June 27, 2006, 11:00:41 AM

In EA's defense, I like how they are handling the BF2 updates. 1 expansion with a box for the shelf (although it sucked IMHO), and a couple of minor expansions for download only at a small price point ($10). Probably stuff that would have been free in the past though.

When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM

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HaemishM
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Reply #117 on: June 27, 2006, 11:55:20 AM

And so that makes it totally cool to fuck over your employees.  Cause hey- someone else might not be doing it.

Unfortunately, just about everyone IS doing it. EA just happens to be the worst at it. But EA would never ever have been able to make people work those kind of crunch time hours indefinitely if the entire fucking video game industry had not made crunch time something to be expected near the end of a project.

In short, EA is just the head cocksucker in a long line of cocksuckers. I challenge any dev on here to tell me one company they've worked at that hasn't made them work at least 1 month or more of continuous crunch time to get a release out on time.

schild
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Reply #118 on: June 27, 2006, 12:08:04 PM

In the defense of all gaming companies. Crunch Time mostly occurs due to developers being a bunch of fat lazy gamers. Seriously, if people kept on track and actually did their work instead of having "dick around and do nothing" Friday and "I don't like Monday I think I'll sleep in Monday" and maybe put an extra hour or two in here or there - well - things would be a bit different. It also doesn't help that on any given project there's always one or two rockstars in the company that have really important work to do and have a propensity for coke and hookers.

Well, maybe not coke and hookers, but you get the idea.
WayAbvPar
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Reply #119 on: June 27, 2006, 12:38:26 PM

Diet Coke and platonic friends?

When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM

Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood

Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
Righ
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Reply #120 on: June 27, 2006, 01:07:09 PM

It's standard operating practice in the computer business for the spoils of war to be big boy toys:

Apple -


Oracle -


Microsoft -

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Lantyssa
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Reply #121 on: June 27, 2006, 01:12:51 PM

In the defense of all gaming companies. Crunch Time mostly occurs due to developers being a bunch of fat lazy gamers. Seriously, if people kept on track and actually did their work instead of having "dick around and do nothing" Friday and "I don't like Monday I think I'll sleep in Monday" and maybe put an extra hour or two in here or there - well - things would be a bit different.
I find it hard to believe that the game industry as a whole is any worse at managing their time than every other company out there.  Construction might be the closest equivalent.  While they do have overruns, I am not aware of them having crunch times to anywhere near the same extent.

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HaemishM
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Reply #122 on: June 27, 2006, 01:14:47 PM

In the defense of all gaming companies. Crunch Time mostly occurs due to developers being a bunch of fat lazy gamers.

And that the people running those companies are either fat lazy gamers themselves, or are suits like at EA with less soul than Pee Wee Herman.

And of course, cruch time isn't specifically relegated to the gaming industry, as much of corporate America treats its IT/programming departments as if they WERE computers instead of just people (marginally) people who work with computers. It excuses no one, and pretty much implicates them all in their fecally-coated bubbles of profit.

schild
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Reply #123 on: June 27, 2006, 01:18:00 PM

That's only one way to slice it though. The other is to question the idea of reasonable. Maybe Valve and 3D Realms have it right. Games take time, don't rush them.

Perhaps crunch time exists not to finish on time, but to finish early.
HaemishM
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Reply #124 on: June 27, 2006, 01:24:43 PM

Or because running Microsoft Project is hard and stuph.

Llava
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Reply #125 on: June 27, 2006, 02:13:13 PM

Quote from: Arthur Parker
Llava , So they didn't win a massive payout over that in a lawsuit?

The point is, you asked what makes them the badguy.  I pointed to an example of them very clearly being the badguy.  There are very few other articles available on the internet showing concrete evidence of shitty actions on EA's part.  Rarely is it so concrete.  But, fact is, they were dicks, they are dicks, that particular situation may have been resolved, but that doesn't magically make them not dicks now.


I challenge any dev on here to tell me one company they've worked at that hasn't made them work at least 1 month or more of continuous crunch time to get a release out on time.

Quote from: Jack Emmert
Third, our Cryptic company culture is not one of 12 hrs./day, 6 days/week. We believe that our employees have families, friends and outside interestes. One's job should enrich life, not detract from it. We're very proud that we don't run a sweatshop (as opposed to the horror stories in the industry).

Just sayin'.

That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell. -Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
HaemishM
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Reply #126 on: June 27, 2006, 02:28:21 PM

Good on them.

Arthur_Parker
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Reply #127 on: June 27, 2006, 03:03:18 PM

Quote from: Arthur Parker
Llava , So they didn't win a massive payout over that in a lawsuit?

The point is, you asked what makes them the badguy.  I pointed to an example of them very clearly being the badguy.  There are very few other articles available on the internet showing concrete evidence of shitty actions on EA's part.  Rarely is it so concrete.  But, fact is, they were dicks, they are dicks, that particular situation may have been resolved, but that doesn't magically make them not dicks now.

Very clearly to you maybe, very clearly to a court of law as well.  Not to me.  Large companies quite often treat people like shit, that's nothing new and not restricted to the games industry.  It's not right, but I don't see how that one example makes EA worse than SOE, who forced a entirely changed SWG onto the poor stupid bastards who had played it for years.  As a gamer I view shafted players as being a worse crime than shafted staff.

There is always a better job out there, my count so far is three flat out "this job sucks" quits.  I recently got shafted by losing a shift bonus and forced to work a shift pattern that's actually worse than the one I was on.  It hasn't really affected my view of the IT company I work for, I know it's one of the largest in the world and it's not personal slight directed at me.  I just went for another job within the same company and more than made up for the lost salary that way.  There's worse things in the world than your employer treating you like shit, they only get away with it if you are stupid enough to let them.
Sairon
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Reply #128 on: June 27, 2006, 03:11:28 PM

There is always a better job out there, my count so far is three flat out "this job sucks" quits.  I recently got shafted by losing a shift bonus and forced to work a shift pattern that's actually worse than the one I was on.  It hasn't really affected my view of the IT company I work for, I know it's one of the largest in the world and it's not personal slight directed at me.  I just went for another job within the same company and more than made up for the lost salary that way.  There's worse things in the world than your employer treating you like shit, they only get away with it if you are stupid enough to let them.

While I do think you have a point, the employer has a huge advantage when it comes to jobs like the ones in the games industry. There's loads of people wanting in and very few positions available. It's like how female models had to perform sexual services to their employer, because that was the only way to get in to the industry. However if it's working McD then you wouldn't take any crap because you know there's tons of those jobs available, and hopefully you're not aiming to end up at McD for the rest of your career.
Arthur_Parker
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Reply #129 on: June 27, 2006, 03:20:46 PM

They chose a very competitive field, nobody turned up on their fifth birthday and said "here's your game industry badge, look after it son".
Yoru
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Reply #130 on: June 27, 2006, 06:36:05 PM

That's only one way to slice it though. The other is to question the idea of reasonable. Maybe Valve and 3D Realms have it right. Games take time, don't rush them.

Perhaps crunch time exists not to finish on time, but to finish early.

In my experience so far, crunch cycles happen for two reasons.

(a) We bit off more than we can chew and are unable/unwilling to adjust our schedule accordingly.

-or-

(b) Feature Creep after the planning/spec deadline and we're unable/unwilling to adjust the schedule accordingly.

There's a reason for Scotty's old engineering advice, whereby the boss asks for a schedule and the good engineer replies with a schedule about four times as long as he thinks it will actually take.

Of course, if you don't actually have a schedule or any organization supporting scheduling.. well.. then you might as well just be a bunch of guys in a garage.
Trippy
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Reply #131 on: June 27, 2006, 09:16:22 PM

In the defense of all gaming companies. Crunch Time mostly occurs due to developers being a bunch of fat lazy gamers.
Um no, that's not how it works.
schild
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Reply #132 on: June 27, 2006, 09:18:04 PM

In the defense of all gaming companies. Crunch Time mostly occurs due to developers being a bunch of fat lazy gamers.
Um no, that's not how it works.

Oh oh oh oh oh oh, do tell!
Trippy
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Reply #133 on: June 27, 2006, 09:45:21 PM

There's a lot of reasons for EA to acquire Mythic, but the Asian market isn't one of them.
They still need something to sell to China and a WoW clone was presumably at or near the top of their shopping list. The EA busdev people can worry about forging relationships with the China publishers/operators.
schild
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Reply #134 on: June 27, 2006, 09:46:34 PM

While they do have interest in China, I don't think competing with WoW by buying Mythic (and having them make a game) was their solution. If it was, I have a bridge to sell them.
Cheddar
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Reply #135 on: June 27, 2006, 10:05:47 PM

Ah shit, its admin vs admin.  WHO WILL WIN!  I demand a clay fight version of this.  Even though its hollow. 20 bucks on Trippy!

No Nerf, but I put a link to this very thread and I said that you all can guarantee for my purity. I even mentioned your case, and see if they can take a look at your lawn from a Michigan perspective.
Trippy
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Reply #136 on: June 27, 2006, 11:41:58 PM

In the defense of all gaming companies. Crunch Time mostly occurs due to developers being a bunch of fat lazy gamers.
Um no, that's not how it works.
Oh oh oh oh oh oh, do tell!
There an old software development adage which goes "Good, fast, cheap: pick two." A slight variation on that is "Feature complete, working, on time: pick two.".

As Yoru said above software "death marches" typically come about because nobody is willing to budge on either the scope of the project or the timeline or both. Unfortunately the reality of software development is that it's very hard to estimate how long things will take which is why you often run into the above problem. Sure there are plenty of incompetent programmers around and even fat lazy programmers who like to play games but software companies don't last long if they are staffed by those kinds of programmers. Given EA's history and the nature of the video games industry I think we can safely assume that lazy and/or incompetent programmers don't last very long there.

If you read "EA Spouse"'s original article, her complaint is not that there was a crunch time at, say, the end of project but that the entire project was one long death march. In other words, EA expected their workers to put in long hours *all the time* so it was not the case, again, that there were a bunch of lazy programmers not doing their jobs which forced everybody to work longer hours at the end to make up for that lost time. In other words EA's death marches are not brought about because of the factors Yoru mentioned -- they are (or were, dunno if things have changed) simply EA's standard operating practice.
schild
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Reply #137 on: June 28, 2006, 12:00:22 AM

I had a lot here. I just deleted it. I'm gonna stand by the lazy developer bit, having known lazy developers, and yea, I'll admit - the combination of lazy developers and obscene release dates/milestone schedules result in bad news.

Edit: Also, I don't look at EA as the norm. They are, rather, the anomaly.
Sky
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Reply #138 on: June 28, 2006, 06:33:05 AM

The reason companies pull that shit is that there are people willing to put up with it.

I work in a public library instead of some datacenter because, for me, working 9-5 and getting state vacations/holidays is worth 5 figures of salary lost. I figure I could pull in roughly double or more what I make here, but I'd not have nearly the time to enjoy it and probably live in an area where cost of living ate up much of the difference anyway.

America is a free country, the free market pretty much works (until you factor in third world suppliers, but that's another topic, eh?).
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Reply #139 on: June 28, 2006, 07:19:09 AM

It is a fact that any corporation will squeeze as much work out of their resources as possible with the least outlay of cash.  If you think a corporation sees you as anything other than a resource with a maintenance cost akin to a rented forklift or leased building, you need to wake up.  As people who intend to play in the American Corporate Hardball League, the individual workers need to look out for themselves.  There does need to be some solidarity amongst the workers, which doesn't mean unionizing, but at least concerted complaining, otherwise the guy that doesn't play ball is eliminated and some other chump fills his seat.  There are rules and regulations that benefit both sides; the corporation knows the rules and how to bend them, so as a corporate drone it is in your best interest to know how to play the game as well.  Think of it as RL L2P.

One day, I'll write that article about the numerous parallels between MOGs and real-life.

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