This is a mistake, not only from an artistic perspective, but from a marketing perspective as well. One of the reasons many of these game companies become as successful as they do is because they have made great games. To suddenly turn away from that direction and start churning out half-assed games as quickly as possible with as much for-pay downloadable content as you can get away with not only makes your games weaker, it also generates negative feedback from players. In an age when consumers can communicate rapidly among large groups and spread ideas at lightning speed, negative feedback has become an Achilles' heel in a way not possible before. When someone posts an extremely angry critique of something in a forum, for instance, others will read that and it will strike them far more powerfully than if they had simply played the game themselves. It creates a sort of "emotional magnifying glass", where every idea and opinion becomes amplified by a magnitude relative to the amount of emotion behind the initial comment.
The result of this, of course, is that negative player response becomes extremely negative player response, and when that gets to a certain point, it becomes extremely bad press. Obviously, I'm thinking about BioWare as I write this. As it is, I have stood as a defender of BioWare for years. I have loved their games, and I'm not just using the word as hyperbole. I have worn their merchandise. However, I cannot deny that their games, in recent years, have been declining. I've still loved them, but there have been some details that seemed rushed. And then we have this whole fiasco over the ending of Mass Effect 3... This has been, I believe, the influence EA Games has had over them since they bought the company. Make more games faster, make more money, which has seemed for a long time to be EA's entire business model. But I think it fails to accept some truths that will be a major chink in its armor.
First, EA is not the only gaming conglomerate out there. Activision has been around the block, and suffered its own losses. Activision ultimately had to make some sacrifices to keep their business going. One of the biggest keys to their readjustment came when they merged with Blizzard Entertainment, the developers behind the wildly successful WarCraft, StarCraft and Diablo franchises. What makes this merger different, however, is that Activision truly needed Blizzard more than Blizzard needed Activision. As Blizzard makes their own games, and were doing quite successfully for many years, they have maintained a significant amount of independence, and have been free to take as much time as they need to develop a game that meets the quality standards they have set for themselves. The result is that, in spite of the increase in their budget they have gained by being part of a larger company, they have managed to produce games of consistently high quality (your mileage may vary, of course, but the general reception of their games has remained steady).
The obvious key here is that Activision truly NEEDS Blizzard. Activision's falling on hard times meant they needed to restructure, and the result was that they found a willing partner that was already doing quite well on their own but felt they could still benefit from being part of a larger company. EA, on the other hand, brings nothing to the table. Instead, EA manages to avoid developing games at all, while at the same time making enormous sums of money off their subsidiaries. Capitalism is not evil, but there is something to be said for what works and what doesn't work in a capitalist society. For years, EA has gotten away with this business model. Unfortunately for EA, however, you can now begin to see some rather nasty cracks in it. The recent blowback against the ending to Mass Effect 3 is just the largest example of these cracks.
I cannot say for sure that the reason the ending came off so rushed and inadequate was a result of a deadline imposed by EA, but it is my suspicion that this is the case. And it really is just the largest scandal to hit the internet. It can't even be considered the "latest" because even MORE criticism is coming over one of BioWare's other large IP's, Dragon Age, as new information comes to light about the development of Dragon Age III. It's beginning to look like a veritable shitstorm of bad news for BioWare alone, which is just one of EA's subsidiaries.
I have been bothered by EA's practices for years, even going so far as to consider boycotting them, but the fact remains that many of the companies they own still produce games I truly want to play, in spite of their faults. But as the years roll on, I find myself worn thinner and thinner trying to defend my interest in these games. It's getting to a point where even I have to admit that I'm losing trust in BioWare, in particular, which has been a game developer who has consistently held my loyalty.
It is my hope now that EA might soon learn its lesson and back off before it is too late; to allow their subsidiary developers to take the time they need to develop quality products, because EA is, at this point, the video game industry's equivalent of Wall Street. They have grown so big that, if they fail now, a huge portion of the industry will crumble with them the same way banks began to fail after Lehmann Brothers fell apart. I can't ask that people boycott EA, because I don't even believe I could hold myself to that promise, but if you can, try to avoid letting them get away with their "quantity over quality" business practices. It's quickly becoming far more destructive than I think anyone even truly realizes.
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