EA and the Intellectual Monopoly

EA has achieved what many had previously thought impossible: winning the Golden Poo two years in a row. Let's think about that for a moment, shall we? Electronic Arts, a company based around producing retail goods and services, has been the most hated company in America (whether they're truly the "worst" is debatable, but that is irrelevant to my point) two years running.

How do they stay in business if their entire business model is based around consumer purchases? How is it that this is one of the most powerful companies in the video game industry and yet so loathed by its customers? Gamers have many reasons to hate their business practices, including various DRM schemes, excessive DLC prices, pushing their subsidiary developers to push games out the door before they are finished, and so on. However, it's really one problem above all others that ties it all together and leads to the ire they've snowballed through for years on end: hubris.

EA is the only company I know of that consistently berates and objectifies its customers. Not just in the way they often mislead their customers into believing things about their products that ultimately turn out to be false, but also by chiding them and calling them "entitled" and "whiny" when people turn up to complain about it. Their customer service reps aside, most of EA's public statements in representation of the company often take on language that is intentionally intended to minimize any fault by EA and place blame squarely on the heads of the complainants.

Ironically, EA would deny this and say that we are dupes for believing so, but that irony would only be invisible to people who've never had to actually put up with EA's bullshit. In almost any other industry, the public at large would be aghast at their behavior, but EA gets a pass because most people just don't understand video games to really comprehend the issues and complaints against EA.

And, quite simply, how could you convince them otherwise? Why on Earth would anyone feel so compelled to despise them, yet still keep coming back for more? Most people who don't involve themselves in video games would think it seems clear that EA must be doing more good than bad (which, again, is determinant on a sliding scale of good and bad, but most of us have concluded that EA has a LOT of bad).

The answer to that question is in the inherent nature of entertainment and intellectual property. Everyone knows that if you dislike an author, you simply don't buy their books. But what if an author you do like were owned by a corporation that could, at any point in time, take that author's work and do whatever they wanted with it? Say, the author had one story in mind, but then the corporate overlords didn't like it so they had them change it. In the case of most novels, this sort of argument with a publisher happens quite a bit, but if the author decides they don't want to, they can quit and go somewhere else. The book might not get published, or it might get published by another publisher, or it might be self published, but it would remain the author's work.

Now, take that back to our corporate overlords. In this case, the author is no longer a partner to the publisher, but instead a direct employee. Their work is not owned by them, it is owned by the corporation, and if the author dislikes what the corporation does with their work, they are forced to either comply or quit. Either way, the company retains ownership of the intellectual property, and do with it what they choose.

Are the fans disappointed? Very often, yes. But do they come back for more because they already have an interest in the outcome? Yes. Unless the company creates something so unlike what came before as to be completely unrecognizable, the fans come back because there is nowhere else to find that IP.

The word "monopoly" comes to mind, though not in the legal sense. It is the monopoly held by EA on its various intellectual properties that gives it such strength. It continues acquiring existing, successful properties and exploiting them until they can no longer produce any revenue. The fans come back because of their love of the series that, in many cases, was not created by EA to begin with. Instead, it was created by someone else and then acquired by EA.

And this is where we find EA with its "too big to fail" power. They exist in a constant state of being hated, but like addicts, people keep coming back for more. And naturally, over the years, this has resulted in EA coming to the conclusion that it can do no wrong; that their customers are built in. In a word, that they are entitled to their customers. And that is where we find ourselves: seemingly helpless in the face of an exploitative enterprise. How long, I wonder, before their hubris brings them to their ultimate downfall?

Dimensional Death is Recruiting!

Okay, this is a little different from the usual fare.  I'm not one to use my blog purely for personal gain, or to do favors for my friends, but this is an unusual case.  Dimensional Death, the World of Warcraft guild I have been a member of for some time now and have raided rather successfully with, is getting ready to enter the new Mists of Pandaria expansion and prepare for raiding.

I'm mentioning this because we're recruiting, and I'm hoping anyone that reads my blog that plays WoW might be interested in joining up.  We play on the Elune server, Alliance-side.  If you are interested in raiding with a good group of people who are all very friendly, contact Ayasu at the guild website here.

On a related note, Ayasu, our guild leader, is going to be livestreaming her attempt to be realm first to level 90 here and welcomes you to join her.  I don't think she'll manage to do it, but don't tell her I said that ;-)

Moving On, Moving Forward

It has been several months since I finished Mass Effect 3 and was inspired to start this blog, and I think I can finally say I've moved on.  I've found my will to play games once again and found other games I can enjoy, as well as new things to focus on.  "Moving on," however, is not the same as "getting over it."

I'm still somewhat bitter about the whole thing.  It leaves a wound that I am not sure will ever heal.  I do not believe I will ever be able to trust a game developer again the way I did before ME3.  It is a lesson I have learned, and it's one I don't intend to forget any time soon.  The business of video games is a dangerous place where anything can become corrupted by greed or apathy, and I still desire to do anything in my power to promote awareness of these issues among fellow gamers.

A media company holds a lot of responsibility.  They can hold the hopes and dreams of thousands, even sometimes millions, in their hands, and they must be gentle with that power.  To take the imagination of so many who only want to see your work succeed and to crush it as thoroughly and abruptly as ME3 did is, I would argue, criminal in a moral sense.  Other cases, stories peter out slowly over time, and the people who initially saw something they love grow tired and eventually lose interest.  It is less tragic in the emotional sense, but it is still a tragedy, like watching a loved one grow old and wither away.

Like the Tower of Babel, the industry has built itself a mighty ziggurat in the sky but has failed to take heed of the hubris that leads to corruption.  The driving forces of the industry have constructed a platform of success, but success is fleeting.  They have accepted a status quo that they do not want to give up, but as with all things in a market economy, nothing ever remains in a bubble.  The foundation of the industry, the consumers who purchase the products these businesses wish to sell, will inevitably shift, and if these businesses refuse to adapt to the changing patterns, they will crumble to dust.

It is a tragedy to see someone who holds so much possibility fail so utterly, but it is a greater tragedy to stand by and allow it to happen.  I, for one, will do everything in my power to preserve the good that I can while pushing away the bad.  When the businessmen and women who manage the financial end of the market begin to see that their methods no longer work, I will be the one there already working to fix the problems while they struggle to accept their failures.  I hope I am not alone.

What Technology Could Revitalize the Industry?

Previously, I wrote about how the next generation of consoles will not revitalize the industry, but I suppose I should have put a caveat on that: the next-gen consoles will not revitalize the industry unless they manage to include a kind of creative forward-thinking that the last several generations have lacked.

The previous few generations, we were still coming out of the leap from 2D to 3D games. However, this has now come to a point where improvements in technology can only marginally change things as far as graphics, physics and gameplay are concerned. For some time, the industry has been gradually making attempts to break the current mold in meaningful ways, but nothing has truly stuck because the core of the consumer base likes games that they can enjoy for long periods of time without feeling too gimmicky.

It is controversial to bring it up, but hardcore gamers are the lifeblood of the industry. Casual gamers are important, too, but are far too unreliable a market to be the sole customers of any group. This is part of the reason the Wii did so well early on but started falling behind before long: it appealed to casual gamers, but it was a matter of time before much of the gameplay utility the motion control had became old hat and hardcore gamers wanted to sit back down for something more dedicated.

So, motion control didn't stick the way some developers were hoping it would, but that does not mean it is dead. Far from it; the Kinect, in particular, gave a form of motion control that is promising, but didn't quite go far enough.

There is basically one technology short of full on mind control or holograms that could make the next-gen consoles truly refresh gaming, and that technology is augmented reality. We have basic augmented reality capability now, but it has so far only been applied in limited forms and mostly in mobile devices. It has not been fully integrated into consoles yet, but I believe the capability is there.

For those who don't know, augmented reality is something of a middle ground between virtual reality and, well, “regular” reality. It is when you are presented with a visual of the real world, either through a camera-device or lenses with some form of display in them. It allows you to provide visual augmentations and interaction to things in the real world, such as, for instance, taking a map placed on the table and using it for references to play a form of video game with virtual characters on said map.

We have seen some use of this form of technology in Microsoft's Kinect, which can record footage of the player and map their body movements as they interact with virtual objects in a game. Now, imagine that same form of interaction, but reversed: the player now has a device of some sort, perhaps worn on the head, that would allow them to see interactive objects outside their tv set. This could be used for all sorts of purposes: HUDs, extra buttons, throwing fireballs into your tv set; you name it. It would be like the jump to 3D all over again, except that this time the 3D is both literal and fully interactive.

Sadly, I don't expect to see this sort of thing any time soon, if ever. The industry does not seem to have that kind of creativity these days and simply wants to maintain the status quo. I do not foresee that going well, but if my prediction is right, I am hoping that things don't get too much worse, either. In my mind, it seems like we're heading toward another crash in the games industry similar to the one in the 80's.

Will the Next Gen Game Consoles Save the Industry?

In my last blog, I wrote about Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello's insistence that more games is better, but now I want to talk about a similar, though equally foolish, assertion he has made: that the next generation of game consoles will revitalize the market.

Riccitiello has told investors that EA has built its business plan on an assumption that a new generation of gaming consoles would have been out by now, and that hasn't happened. Of course, that didn't result in EA actually adjusting its plans; instead they have simply doubled down and decided to adapt the plan to continue indefinitely. Cue the cheerleaders. Go team. Rah rah.

Ignoring, for a moment, the indefinite length of time EA intends to keep this going, I have to ask the question that it seems like very few are actually asking: would a new generation of game consoles actually revitalize the market?

We have reached a point in technology at which game systems don't really improve dramatically over previous generations. Yes, graphics improve somewhat, processing power improves, more active models can be on-screen at any given time, and so forth, but the technology doesn't make for huge leaps and bounds above previous generations the way they used to because the technology is already at a point where players can't expect dramatic improvements.

Younger gamers might not relate to this, but I and many of my peers grew up through the advent of 3D games. We were blown away by the sudden jump from sidescrolling or top-down games to games where you could move in more than two dimensions. That, believe it or not, was an ENORMOUS jump forward. It created whole new fields of play that did not exist before that.

The problem, of course, is that the human mind can only perceive three dimensions, excluding time, which we can only perceive in one direction. The entire history of the video game industry is exceedingly short, and much of the way games have evolved over the years is based on just these few decades. There will not be a leap forward like bridging the 2D/3D divide again. Some people have claimed that making games truly 3D, like movies, will be a big leap forward like that, but to be honest, that is a pipe dream. It's a gimmick that, while it might be cool for a bit, will ultimately be like the paint on your console, if it even sticks around that long.

A minor leap forward in graphics and processing power will be fun for a while, but unless the games themselves become better, meaning better writing, better gameplay and more original ideas, the polish will quickly fade and become just more lipstick on the pig.

What makes this worse is that better graphics and artistry also demands more man-hours. The current industry already has enormous numbers of people working on a single, large budget production and launching them out the door faster than ever. The profit margins are ridiculously low as it is. More money being spent on the development of these games, and only a small fraction of them actually earn a profit. The amazing thing is that the few that do wind up earning a profit manage to earn enough to make up for the ones that don't, but only barely. And EA wants to broaden that market, meaning producing more large budget games that won't earn enough, which means they'll have to either hire more employees or drive the ones they already have to work even harder to produce more.

See where I'm going with this? The more detailed the graphics get, the more artists are needed to work on them. Add to that the already increasing volume of games on the market and horribly low profits and you wind up with a situation where thousands of artists and programmers become badly overworked and underpaid. If the quality of games frustrates you now, imagine how bad things will be when the entire workforce is overstressed and unable to think clearly in the little time they have to actually think.

Are There Too Many Games on the Market?

I was following news about the EA shareholders meeting today, and the more I listened, the more I became irritated with the whole situation with gaming as it is. John Riccitiello continues offering “more MORE MORE!” when I can't help but feel like I want less. Here I sit, I have so many video games that I've purchased that I haven't even had time to play them all yet. I have a life, I have friends, family and other responsibilities that I need to keep in mind, so I don't have 100% of my time to devote to experiencing all these games, no matter how good they may be. And, let's be honest, even if I had absolutely nothing else in my life, I would still not devote 100% of my time to gaming because I just can't. I am human; I have needs aside from the basic food, water and sleep. I can't just ignore my need for social interaction, no matter how much I may want to.

So, I find myself wondering why Riccitiello is trying to convince people there are all these great games and projects in development and how that's going to turn EA around. Why tell us all how more is going to expand their business when I'm too busy finishing the stuff that I've already got to care? Unless they're developing “Mass Effect 4” or some other game I'd really love to see, I'm not going to care. And that's pretty much the problem with the top-tier games nowadays, it seems: none of them seem good enough to justify their price tag, and even if the price on all of them came down, I still wouldn't care much because I just don't have the time to devote to actually play most of them.

We live in a world where the majority of gamers are adults. A generation has been raised on video games, and as that generation has come of age we have found ourselves being more directly marketed to as a major consumer bloc. But now that we've reached such mass market levels, I think the real reason the industry isn't growing is because it has failed to adapt to the changing demographics. Adults have responsibilities and are far more careful about both their money and their time than children. It stands to reason that, eventually, you would reach a point at which you simply cannot produce more variety because there's already so much variety that your consumer base just can't keep up.

Video games are not movies or novels. There are not many ways you can really accurately compare them as media for telling stories, but you can compare them as time-fillers and as mass market products. Think, for a moment, about film. How many movies are released in a year? Quite a few. But how long are movies on average? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the average is about 90 minutes. That's an hour and a half, and seems pretty reasonable for an average film.

Now, how much time does a player spend on an average video game? That's a lot harder to figure out, but we can generally assume it will be much longer than a movie. 90 minutes out of your day is a significant amount of time, but not an unreasonable amount of time that a person might spend once in a while. Video games often times will be played for hundreds of hours, and even sometimes for days or weeks. Mind you, I'm not talking about days in the sense of how long you are interested in a game, I'm talking about real, total time spent playing a game can be that much. How is someone who enjoys playing games going to ever find the time to play all the games they might be interested in if all the games that are available take that much time out of their lives? And then you have DLC, which, when done right, extends the life of the game even further.

It's sort of like trying to get more advertising revenue from tv commercials by telling your audience to quit their jobs and watch tv all day. It just isn't feasible. Not that I don't love variety, but I love my DVR also because it allows me to watch the shows I want to see without having to schedule myself around them constantly. I believe this is the problem with the mainstream games in the industry: they're all vying for the attention of the same people and finding that too much competition is becoming as bad as not enough competition, like a million different tv shows competing for the same half-hour time slot.

Why is this a major problem? Well, because major publishers are cutting down deadlines and pushing games out faster and faster. The only reason this occurs is because they want to provide greater volume, more games in a shorter amount of time, but this means employees become overworked, quality and, in turn, quality assurance gets cut and we wind up with games that don't live up to their own potential. Huge budgets are being spent on games that will not sell as well as they could because they're being pushed out before they should be. At the same time, games that normally wouldn't have multiplayer are having multiplayer features forced on them as a means of extending their gameplay, meaning the games that do get played are also being played longer.

As a result, consumers find they have fewer opportunities to enjoy games they otherwise would have loved, developers stretch themselves thin to meet demand, publishers waste millions of dollars on risky investments and valuable intellectual property is drained until it is a dry husk of its former self. We find ourselves with publishers encouraging developers to produce the same thing over and over again in an effort to benefit off of what worked in the past instead of experimenting with new, innovative ideas.

In short, when it comes to the laws of supply and demand, we have more supply than we have demand for. Big budget games are being released in droves and aren't making enough money because they're not going through the rigorous testing phase that refines them into truly good games. Major brands are being mass produced and exploited instead of grown and shared. And stock prices are falling and John Riccitiello is making excuses.

Now, excuse me, I need to get back to work on reviewing The Secret World. I don't have time for this shit.

On Extended Cuts, Open Wounds and Band-Aids

So, the Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut was released today.  I played through it earlier this afternoon, and after a very tearful experience (I swear my tears had tears!) and some dinner, I've now had enough time to think on what I witnessed and reflect.

This is extremely hard to write because I've garnered a considerable amount of notoriety since I started this blog, and I fear that what I'm about to say is going to earn me a lot of hate.  I've been flamed, attacked, and publicly humiliated at times.  On the other hand, I've also received a lot of extremely supportive comments and responses that  I can't even say how thankful I am to have received.  I don't even feel as though I deserve them, but they've been my bread and butter for the past few months, so thank you to everyone who has been so supportive.

With that out of the way, I want to say that in general, like the Extended Cut (which, for simplicity's sake, will be referred to as EC from here on).  It makes the ending of Mass Effect 3 a lot better.  It's a lot more satisfying and a lot less frustrating.  It is by no means perfect, and that is probably the center of what I'm going to say here, but it is at least enough that I no longer feel the big, empty nothing I felt before.

Naturally, it is difficult to talk about it without mentioning spoilers, so, while I intend to avoid spoilers as much as possible, I would suggest not reading further if you are concerned.

The claim that there would be no new endings to the game is a bit of a stretch of the truth.  There is a new option at the end of the game aside from the original three, and it is what most of us wanted from it.  It's even a lot more satisfying than I could have expected it to be, though by no means is it a happy ending.  On top of that, most of the plot holes have been filled in, with one or two being left vague clearly by design, which I'm okay with.  Perhaps not thrilled, but it's enough that I can live with it.

Now here's where things get a little controversial.  I forgive BioWare, and thank them for what they have done with the EC.  A lot of people want to remain angry and stomp around, talking about how they can't forgive BioWare for messing things up so badly.  They'll continue to go on boycotting anything and everything BioWare creates, and that is their right, but I personally feel that is the wrong way to go about it.

Many critics will describe this as a band-aid for an open wound, and they would not necessarily be wrong in that assessment.  However, I personally don't think anyone could have reasonably expected much more than that, nor could anyone have reasonably asked for more than that.  No matter what BioWare did, there will never be any way to satisfy everyone.

Allow me to explain: the ending was set in stone, to some extent, after it was released.  People had formed opinions, developed theories, and become devoted to various clashing ideas.  I witnessed the severity of this on the HTL forums myself.  The Indoctrination Theory had grown to a point that it had an almost rabid following, and while the theory itself is fine, some of the ways in which the people that subscribed to it treated people that didn't were so fanatical and, at times, hateful that it threatened to create a massive rift in the community most of us working with HTL had tried to foster.

The thing is, no matter what happened, BioWare could not undo the endings that had been done.  If the Indoctrination Theory was declared canonically untrue, the IT supporters would have revolted fervently.  In the same way, if it was declared canonically true, then those opposed to it would have had the same reaction.  Essentially, this was a theory that had become so polarizing that to change the endings enough to discredit them both would have made the effort of creating the EC entirely pointless.

That said, BioWare made an honest effort to show they didn't like disappointing their fans, and I think they deserve credit for that.  That's not to say that we can't question how this mess came about in the first place; by all means, I feel that is a fair thing to be concerned about, but I feel it is unreasonable to say that BioWare didn't at least care enough to try.

Don't take that as any means to give BioWare a pass, however.  If anything is clear, there needs to be a closer observation of issues of interest to gamers in the industry.  This is a victory for those of us who were upset by the ending and spoke out, but the fight is far from over.  This is merely the end of this battle, but there will be more.  I intend to stick with the HTL community and continue to stay on the front line, fighting to support the cause of gamers everywhere to the best of my ability.

I have communicated personally with Jessica Merizan, BioWare's Community Manager, and I believe she is being sincere in everything she says.  I take her at her word, and I've gotten a lot of flack from some people for supporting her.  But, the fact remains that she's had a rough time and has worked her ass off, and she deserves credit for that.  She's human, as is everyone at BioWare, and I think it would be cruel not to realize that and appreciate them for the things they have done right while admonishing them for mistakes they might make.

Keelah'selai.