Wilhelm over at The Ancient Gaming Noob posted about the sad state of affairs at the modern incarnation of Electronic Arts. What EA has become over the past thirty years is both sad and despicable: they are often times more damaging to gaming and the industry than they are beneficial. And now the stage is set, as Wilhelm describes, for things to become much worse.
Where EA is going now is clearly tragic: a lot of great developers and teams will be harmed in the impending bloodbath as the Saudis take their share of the spoils. But strangely when I hear the name “Electronic Arts” I still get a brief flicker of positive emotion that originates all the way back in the 1980s. Back in what could be called the “Trip Hawkins Era”, when EA was still focused on producing good games
The Feelings
The 1980s Electronic Arts produced innovative and fun games that covered a broad swath of gaming interests. At the time I was working in computer retail and saw the games on the shelf every day. Several of the computers (Apples, PCs, and Commodore 64s) on the sales floor were always running one or another EA game: they attracted attention and sold reasonably well. The early EA games included a number of memorable titles:
- M.U.L.E.: what I recall most about M.U.L.E. was its iconic opening screen music (see youtube link below)
- Bill Budge’s Pinball construction set: Mostly I played the pre-built tables, but I loved how detailed the game was with the limited hardware of the time
- Archon: Chess, but the pieces fight each other on contact. What more could you want?
But what set the EA games apart was how they were presented. Each game was packaged in a folding cardboard sleeve reminiscent of an LP album cover. Inside one side of the cover was a small manual, and inside a slot in the other side was the disk. The covers were artistic, with bright graphics and well-written cover blurbs.
Front and centre on every title was a list of the lead developers and artists who created the game. This was sometimes accompanied by a photo of the individuals or team involved. The developers were presented as core to the product: if the packaging reminded one of an LP, the artist names felt like being introduced to rising rock stars.
Sad state of affairs
Electronic Arts has been a much different company since the mid 1990s. For thirty years now they have focused more and more on the evil of “shareholder value” instead of creating good games. They treat their people not like artists but like chattel: something to discard when inconvenient.
There is no doubt that EA has made money off the backs of their workers, likely more than they could have as a more enlightened firm. But the underpinnings of that wealth creation are on unstable ground. The Saudi take over is really a clear indicator of a failure of EA’s executive direction, not of success. And Wilhelm is right: the end result will be the decimation of what remains of a once proud brand.