EA Shenanigans

T

Tannhauser

Venerable Relic of the Wastes
Orderite
I'm quite frankly surprised that no one has made a thread on this so far.

In case people haven't been following the various gaming news, these last few days have seen quite a few things concerning EA, specifically how they use their employees.

It started on November 10th, when an anonymous Live Journal entry by someone claiming to be the significant other of a EA employee decried their work practices.

In the next few days, it was revealed that EA employees are preparing a class action law-suit against EA. You can read two different articles from Gamespot and 1Up.

Today a former EA manager, Evan Robinson, wrote an article on why the EA work practices don't work, "It’s Not Just Abusive. It’s Stupid."

In addition, the thread at IGDA (International Game Developers Association) on the matter is an interesting read.

Edit: Another Live Journel entry, by Joe Straitiff, a fired EA employee.
 
Puuk didn't seem to happy with the place from what I remember. I would say that it's amazing that the richest company in the industry treats it's workers so bad, but really it seems to be more normal than not. Exploit the poor and desperate and ye shall reap the rewards!
 
I really hate seeing corporations take advantage of people for reasons Im sure everyone knows. However, I cant understand how a respected name like EA would resort to something like that when they are clearly succesful and are only causing problems for themselves...hope the suit gives those workers lots of reimbursement.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
Even the infamous Derek Smart (information for those who need it) has something to say on the matter!
Derek Smart said:
The game industry doesn't have rock stars (only naive gamers and foolish media proper, tend to think that) - we have eclectic and mostly eccentric artistes working in a tier based structure that amounts to being just short of a glorified and highly complex [and somewhat illegal] pyramid scheme.

Everyone wants the game industry business to mimic the Holllywood structure; but the only way that is going to happen, is if the emulation or adoption of that scheme is devoid of publisher interference.

The IGDA in its present form, is useless and crippled in the protection of the interests of game dev members, due in part by the fact that it doesn't particularly know WHAT to do FOR its members. Taking a page from likes of other Hollywood organizations, unions etc, would go a long, long way to curbing this abuse of game dev talent.

As I've said over the years and in no uncertain terms, the industry needs a union that models other unions (e.g. the Hollywood unions are pretty robust and studios know better than to mess with them) and makes the interests of its members paramount. Once that happens - the IGDA is the only such organization (though crippled in more ways than one) that is currently in place to pull it off. The problem is, I doubt that ANYONE at the top (1) has a clue how to go about doing it (2) is brave enough to even dream it, let alone suggest it (3) has the clout to get heard, make waves without fear or reprisals, reprimands or whatnot.

We need a union with leaders who have balls and whose balls aren't connected by aligator clips to publishers, distributors or retailers. Given that most in the industry would rather talk shit, trash and whatnot all day long than stick their head out, NOTHING is going to change, period.

So, if you're in a sweat shop and don't know what to do about it, get psychiatrict help, get a prescription, lay low and hope that you get to work long enough to put your kid through college.

I'm gonna go take a shower now.

[end]
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Perhaps the only intelligent contribution the man has in gaming. It's kind of ironic that he, of all people, would understand that problem. Odin and the other admins have seen an article with a list of problems in the game industry, which I'm working on in conjunct with a few more topics on Fo3. EA's problems will be covered at length. Puuk can get a few of the more modern ones, but I remember when a certain EA exec stated that in no uncertain terms that game design did not matter; only the investors mattered.
 
Its insane how EA treats their employees, 85 hours weeks are INSANE.
Also they do not produce that good games.
Only good ones are the EA BIG and EA Sports ones.
 
st0lve said:
Its insane how EA treats their employees, 85 hours weeks are INSANE.
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They actually took this from Origin, where employees would put in that much time during crunches, but the part that EA fails to notice is that their lineup has become shit while they work the slave farm. I do know the 85 hours was something Origin did on a volunteer basis and people did work that hard, but it wasn't for EA's poor working conditions, they just happened to be real developers who loved the design versus the white trash ninjas they have developing UO expansions.

Also they do not produce that good games.
Only good ones are the EA BIG and EA Sports ones.
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This becomes even more amusing when you take my favorite morons at a gaming rag, GMR. These numbskulls actually tried to say that EA had "mopped up the competition in the sports-sim market and deliver solid games for other genres" last year. Sports sim, I might believe, although sports games are only a fraction of EA's former producing power and the above statement also assumes that their dollhouse simulation exists in genres other than "dollhouse simulation". Now it's just dry-humping The Sims until that becomes old hat for enough people. So then it becomes even more amusing

Someone might want to tell their "editors" that most of EA's lineup came from before they fucked apart Bullfrog, Origin, Westwood, and a number of other good developers, most of which they offered little support for while they unscrupulously took design concepts and warped them into shallow, money-centric versions of themselves. So how the hell does that make "EA's breadth and depth continues to go unchallenged. The EA Sports line will sell millions of copies as usual, and The Sims 2 sell all those millions and more." Damn, no wonder EB has so many sports and Sims games in returns, GMR's clueless staff is hopelessly EA's collective bitch. I really fail to see how a rehashed game concept, a couple of token console games, a war FPS bandwagoneer, a stupd online service of cloned browser-based games, and sports games really makes anyone who has been around the game industry for more than 5 years think that EA has any "breadth and depth" left, but maybe I haven't been licking enough leaden paint to be as "informative" as GMR's editors. Does The Sims Online bring any memories? It is obvious the GMR kid publishers are too young to remember when EA published a wide selection of titles.
 
st0lve said:
Only good ones are the EA BIG and EA Sports ones.
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Disagree on sports games. All the major EA's sports game franchises has been quite medicore if not bad for at least 4-5 years from now.

Fifa series has been the worst of them. The game series has been dumbed down arcade toy for kids not very familiar with football (soccer) as a sports game and wants only fast paced fun. This would be fine if the game wouldn't been self proclaimed as ''simulation'' game. Reviews on last few Fifa games hasn't been flattering to say the least (if they were, they're full of shit). Fan feedback is even more uncomplimentary. Now that Fifa isn't the only football simulation game on PC anymore and magnificent Pro Evolution Soccer series for PS2 has emerged on PC market too, it's all over for Fifa as a succesfull franchise. More and more people are ''converting'' from former fifa-fan to pes-fan, because of excelent gameplay and replayability this game offers unlike the last 5-6 fifas, only strong points of which has been many licenced club teams and good soundtrack.

NHL isn't that bad, despite orientation towards the same action-packed arcade without any signs of deep simulation game. It's also the only ice-hockey game for PC, but I haven't been playing the latest one (2005) because of the heavily downgraded gameplay in mine (and many other ice-hockey loving people's opinion).
NBA has been almost the same for 5-6 years or so. The same old engine has been exploited as an old mule. They tweak it every year adding some new cool moves and features (like all-star weakend)and that's all. Really not worth paying annual fee for so little work they're doing to improve the series. Just try to play NBA98 and then NBA2005. Almost nothing except graphics has been improved.

Only sports game that receives excelent reviews and applause from the crowd, is Madden series, but I can't give you my opinion on this. I'm really not into rugby with no rules, americans call football. :P I believe the good feedback has a good ground though. Oh yeah, there's also Tiger Wood's Golf and it's also got quite good reputation, but seriously, how many people play those marginal video games such as various golfgames, skiing, athletics or curling. :P

However, there's some constant and quite numerous EA Sports fanboying crowd that has arised in 10 years time as it's first sports games has been issued in 94'. But now it mainly consists of kids who doesn't realise and don't give much shit if the game is really that good to buy it. They'll make their parents buy annual NBA and NHL anyways. Just because it's released and it has latest team lineups and kits. This is a main target group that EA depends on which is the reason for little or no improvements in their sport games. Why invest more hard work if we can earn the same profit without it?

Not sure what do you ment by ''BIG''. If that's Battlefield series, I don't see them as something outstanding. Just a fine FPS multiplayer fun, nothing more.

That said, I can't remember any superb game developed by EA in recent years. Maybe someone could refresh my memory.
 
Fifa series has been the worst of them. The game series has been dumbed down arcade toy for kids not very familiar with football (soccer) as a sports game and wants only fast paced fun. This would be fine if the game wouldn't been self proclaimed as ''simulation'' game. Reviews on last few Fifa games hasn't been flattering to say the least (if they were, they're full of shit). Fan feedback is even more uncomplimentary. Now that Fifa isn't the only football simulation game on PC anymore and magnificent Pro Evolution Soccer series for PS2 has emerged on PC market too, it's all over for Fifa as a succesfull franchise. More and more people are ''converting'' from former fifa-fan to pes-fan, because of excelent gameplay and replayability this game offers unlike the last 5-6 fifas, only strong points of which has been many licenced club teams and good soundtrack.
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Very much so. I thought the last FIFA game might be better, I'd hear some decent things about it, but no, the new PES blows it away.
And furthermore, the latest FIFA game (both the demo and the full game (no, I didn't buy it)) is so fucked that it ran too fast on my laptop. That's right, they're such incompetent programmers that somehow they managed to have the game run too fast permanently on my laptop (too fast being running from one side of the field to the other in two seconds), probably because they failed to incorporate the fact that Pentium M chips run faster than their GHz setting might tell you to save power, and another probably being not incorporating the possibility of someone using a Radeon Mobile. Ah well.

EA Big, however, is good. They're the "extreme sports" part of EA, with some quite good games.

Meh, personally I feel that if these game developers can't stand up for themselves, they're fucked. It isn't that hard to go on strike, you know.
 
st0lve said:
Also they do not produce that good games.
Only good ones are the EA BIG and EA Sports ones.
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Maxis was owned by EA when they made Simcity 3 and 4, so technically EA produced those games.
 
Sander said:
And furthermore, the latest FIFA game (both the demo and the full game (no, I didn't buy it)) is so fucked that it ran too fast on my laptop. That's right, they're such incompetent programmers that somehow they managed to have the game run too fast permanently on my laptop (too fast being running from one side of the field to the other in two seconds), probably because they failed to incorporate the fact that Pentium M chips run faster than their GHz setting might tell you to save power, and another probably being not incorporating the possibility of someone using a Radeon Mobile. Ah well.
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Heh, given Joe Straitiff's added statement above and my own experiences with EA, it wouldn't surprise me that someone might have to resort to using a program loop as a clocking reference in order to meet the "crunch", or that one of the managers actually had one put in.

The managers were never too programming or design savvy at Electronic Asshats. They know only the blocks, not the important details, and as long as the blocks are there being worked under slave labor, they are happy. Hence why they have destroyed every gaming studio that became a part of them. When nobody is desperate enough to go to them for publishing years down the line, then hopefully EA will die out.
 
Possible explanation: Rosh is not surprised by the fact that linking to a non-existent thread results in "The topic or post you requested does not exist" message.
 
Actually, Rosh linked to a forum you don't have access to. It's where submitted news ends up. So you don't miss out on the fun, this is what he was linking too.

Advertising for EA’s Armies of Exigo on No Mutants Allowed

Hi again-

We are just following up with you on an e-mail we sent last week. We are looking to advertise on your site for EA Games’ release, Armies of Exigo, at $0.10 per unique click. If you are interested in being an advertiser for this campaign, please go to http://www.hypemakers.net/exigo/ to sign up (your information will not be shared with any other party) and to see the banners available for use.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Or, if you would like to discuss other rates, please submit them with verification of your traffic and information on your ad-tracking capabilities. We look forward to working with you!

All the best,

(Name omitted)
HypeCouncil
http://www.hypecouncil.com
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So that's how the annoying banner ads annoy me to an amazingly annoying end. Interesting. And annoying.
 
You forgot to put the most important line in there, Kotario:

Erin Consalvi
Shameless Spammer Hired by EA
HypeCouncil
http://www.hypecouncil.com


Check out the rest of the HypeCouncil site and you can see other names like UbiSoft, Namco, Bruno Bumblefuck's Atari, Crack Division, Midway, and Buena Vista Games. A Google search will show you what other gaming sites this shithead and others have been spamming for gaming companies.

Odin said:
did we ever get those ads ?
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My guess is that Telefragged or UGO might have opted into those, as we have those annoying, chunky, clunky, crappy Flash ads, as a couple of the games in those ads are from the aforementioned game companies.
 
Roshambo said:
Shameless Spammer Hired by EA
HypeCouncil
http://www.hypecouncil.com
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hype:
1. Excessive publicity and the ensuing commotion: the hype surrounding the murder trial.
2. Exaggerated or extravagant claims made especially in advertising or promotional material: “It is pure hype, a gigantic PR job” (Saturday Review).
3. An advertising or promotional ploy: “Some restaurant owners in town are cooking up a $75,000 hype to promote New York as ‘Restaurant City, U.S.A.’” (New York).
4. Something deliberately misleading; a deception: “ [He] says that there isn't any energy crisis at all, that it's all a hype, to maintain outrageous profits for the oil companies” (Joel Oppenheimer).


how do they come up with such a name? sjeez.

of course, it seems to work, as most cashhounds like EA go for hype over quality...
 
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