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Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. It is time for

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Speaker 1: a tech Stuff Classic episode. This episode is the part

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Speaker 1: two to last week's part one, The Electronic Arts Story

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Speaker 1: Part two. It originally published on May two thousand thirteen,

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Speaker 1: which is interesting because the previous one published on May,

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Speaker 1: which means these published back to back. I must have

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Speaker 1: missed a day or something. But I'm not gonna miss

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Speaker 1: a beat because we're going to pick up where we

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Speaker 1: left off and continue the Electronic Arts Story. Let's listen in.

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Speaker 1: One thing I didn't mention at the end of the

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Speaker 1: last podcast was that was the year e A purchased

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Speaker 1: Origin Systems, and that's the game company that was founded

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Speaker 1: by Rich Garriott, the guy who created the Ultimate series,

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Speaker 1: and they also had another series. They had James Combat

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Speaker 1: simulate simulators. They also had the Wing Commander series, and

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Speaker 1: so that was a big move on their part. But

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Speaker 1: then we move on into and that's when the three

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Speaker 1: D O console actually hit the market. Uh, and then

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Speaker 1: e A also released the first Need for speed for

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Speaker 1: the three D O because e A was actually a

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Speaker 1: partner in that three D O console experiment. They were

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Speaker 1: not the whole owners of that, which I guess in retrospect,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure the company thinks is a good thing. But

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Speaker 1: they were partners, so it wasn't like Hawkins had severed

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Speaker 1: all ties once he left e A. Uh. Now again,

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Speaker 1: we're not going to mention every single release that Electronics

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Speaker 1: Arts had um Electronic Arts I should say had throughout

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Speaker 1: their history. That it would be ridiculous, and you'd also

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Speaker 1: get tired of hearing A say FIFA. Uh like thirty

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Speaker 1: or forty time we say FIFA. He's just that word.

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Speaker 1: First of all, I didn't if you're in the United States,

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Speaker 1: you're probably thinking, I don't know what that means. And

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Speaker 1: even if you're not, after you've heard it that many times,

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Speaker 1: it starts to lose all meeting and become something of

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Speaker 1: a cone that we're just saying over and over to

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Speaker 1: achieve enlightenment. But so I don't have anything for for

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Speaker 1: ninety four, Lauren, do you? I don't want to skip

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Speaker 1: over you you've got anything that was? That was actually

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Speaker 1: the year that Hawkins resigned as chairman of the board

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Speaker 1: for e A. Okay, so now he had actually not

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Speaker 1: just left as the CEO, but also left the board

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Speaker 1: of directors. Uh inve e A acquired a company called

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Speaker 1: bull Frog, which was a game development studio in the

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Speaker 1: United Kingdom, and they were known for a couple of

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Speaker 1: different series, their theme park series and their series called Populus.

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Speaker 1: Did you ever see Populous, Lauren? I did not see Populous.

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Speaker 1: I did play some of the theme parks. Okay. Well,

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Speaker 1: Populus was a game where it puts you in the

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Speaker 1: role essentially as as like a god, and it was

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Speaker 1: a job to try and shape landscape so that fild

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Speaker 1: stuff and worship you. Right, yeah, this this is what

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Speaker 1: m Yeah. Indeed, I was about to say that this

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Speaker 1: is what I think black and White because that was

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Speaker 1: the same studio later on Black and White definitely was

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Speaker 1: was something that was inspired by the populist games. You

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Speaker 1: could definitely tell that Populus was was not quite as

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Speaker 1: sophisticated as that, and there were there were different ways

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Speaker 1: of winning Populace. You had opponents that would also have

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Speaker 1: their own worshippers, and you were trying to dominate the world.

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Speaker 1: So if you wanted to go over to the your

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Speaker 1: opponent's side when your opponent wasn't looking, and start digging

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Speaker 1: down until all of the villages were submerged in water

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Speaker 1: and all the little villagers drowned. And it was both

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Speaker 1: entertaining and horrifying at the same time. All of these series,

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Speaker 1: by the way, we're serious that he had published and

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Speaker 1: so um so the acquisition of bull Frog was kind

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Speaker 1: of a good following steps since they had done pretty well.

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Speaker 1: Right yeah, now now he has decided that they want

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Speaker 1: this as an actual part of their development team, not

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Speaker 1: just a title that they published. Once Bullfrog joined the A,

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Speaker 1: they the division began to develop the Dungeon Keepers series,

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Speaker 1: which reached some acclaim I thought, I always thought it

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Speaker 1: was a very entertaining series. And that same year, in

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Speaker 1: ninety the Sega Saturn platform launches, and so does a

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Speaker 1: platform that would become one of the most disruptive platforms

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Speaker 1: in video game console history, because at this point Nintendo

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Speaker 1: is pretty much the heavy hitter. I mean, Nintendo is

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Speaker 1: owning video game consoles. Sega keeps coming out with consoles

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Speaker 1: that from a specs perspective, might beat out whatever the

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Speaker 1: Nintendo console is at that time. But but just but

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Speaker 1: just that the games. The programming that was going on

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Speaker 1: for Nintendo was incredible, right, Yeah, the Nintendo had all

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Speaker 1: the momentum, so Sega, while it had its fans, just

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Speaker 1: didn't have nearly as many as Nintendo did. Well. Was

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Speaker 1: also when we saw Sony get into the game with

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Speaker 1: the PlayStation console, and that really shook things up. You know,

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Speaker 1: a CD based console that had far more graphic ability

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Speaker 1: than the Nintendo consoles did. Uh. And that that gave

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Speaker 1: e A a lot of opportunities as well to develop

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Speaker 1: for yet another platform, because remember e A wants there

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Speaker 1: to be as many platforms as possible because it means

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Speaker 1: that no single platform has enough power to tell e

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Speaker 1: A what to do. Um. And then e A also

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Speaker 1: starts to port several three d O titles to the Saga, Saturn,

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Speaker 1: and Sony PlayStation platforms in order to take advantage of

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Speaker 1: the thirty two bit processing power. So in this sense,

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Speaker 1: they didn't have to develop new titles. They just had

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Speaker 1: to retool these titles for the three D OH so

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Speaker 1: that they would work on these other systems. Now, I say,

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Speaker 1: just that's still a pretty big thing to have to do,

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Speaker 1: but it does. It's different from having to build a

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Speaker 1: game from the ground batch. Yeah, you don't have to

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Speaker 1: go through the whole conceptual phase at all. Uh. I

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Speaker 1: don't have anything for ninety six, so we're gonna go

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Speaker 1: right into nine seven. Sounds good. So e A in

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Speaker 1: ninety seven acquires Maxis, And this is this is a

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Speaker 1: big one, folks, because this is the company that was

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Speaker 1: responsible for sim City. The first sim City game came

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Speaker 1: out in ninete, so almost a decade earlier, right and

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Speaker 1: h And since then, will write who is who's the

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Speaker 1: designer for Maxis had had been making all kinds of

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Speaker 1: all kinds of related titles as sim Earth, Sam Aunt. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I was a big fantasy man. Yeah. Yeah. On the

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Speaker 1: on the s n E S it was. It was

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Speaker 1: great Aunt simulation. Man, I got it. Sounds so goofy

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Speaker 1: and I had so much fun playing it. I'm not

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Speaker 1: going to argue with the goofy part, but hey, I

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Speaker 1: like lots of goofy stuff, so I am not one

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Speaker 1: to talk. And once e A acquires Maxis, that's when

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Speaker 1: will Wright starts to work on a game that would

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Speaker 1: become an important part of e A's arsenal. In fact,

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Speaker 1: you could argue it's the most important game that e

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Speaker 1: A ever came out with, and that is the SIMS.

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Speaker 1: So will Wright starts to work on the SIMS back

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Speaker 1: in ninety seven. It would be a few years before

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Speaker 1: that game would come out. Uh. E A also gets

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Speaker 1: into the online gaming market. They launch Ultima Online, which

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Speaker 1: was one of the earliest, at least one of the

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Speaker 1: earliest successful massively multiplayer online role playing games in the

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Speaker 1: Western Hemisphere. So Ultima Online goes live and starts to

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Speaker 1: prove the model that online gaming could be a thing.

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Speaker 1: Keeping in mind this is before broadband penetration had really

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Speaker 1: spread out throughout the United States. Uh, there were people

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Speaker 1: who are playing this on dial ups. Oh my goodness. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so it was you know, this was the earliest

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Speaker 1: days of that, and it was before really in those days,

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Speaker 1: it came down to Ultima Online or ever Quest. Those

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Speaker 1: were the two big names. And it wouldn't be until

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Speaker 1: the world of Warcraft that that dynamic gets really shaken up. Um,

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Speaker 1: and you had people who were hardcore fans of one

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Speaker 1: and hated the other anyway. That that same year, nine seven,

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Speaker 1: bull Frog chief Peter Mullineux leaves e A to start

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Speaker 1: a new studio and supposedly one of the reasons he

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Speaker 1: left was that he felt that e A was getting

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Speaker 1: two hands on in game development, that they were interfering

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Speaker 1: too much in the actual development of games, and that

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Speaker 1: he felt that the pressure was to establish a game

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Speaker 1: and then just churn out sequels right right, And this

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Speaker 1: is in U is in direct opposition to eas original

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Speaker 1: mode of operation, wherein they were they were treating game

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Speaker 1: developers with extreme respect and kind of letting them do

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Speaker 1: whatever they wanted on the principle that whatever they wanted

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Speaker 1: would be awesome. Yeah, and yeah, and but but since

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Speaker 1: then had, as we discussed in our previous episode, decided

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Speaker 1: that that, yeah, that that the real way to go

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Speaker 1: is to create brands and and really um push the brandin,

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Speaker 1: find a brand that resonates with an audience, and then

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Speaker 1: all you have to do is keep on creating uh

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Speaker 1: sequels to that and that, and people will buy it

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Speaker 1: because you've established an audience for it. This is not

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Speaker 1: an unusual idea. We see it all across video games.

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Speaker 1: I mean you could think another media too, of course. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you can think of dozens of franchises that exist. Only

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Speaker 1: you can look at entries to various franchises where you

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Speaker 1: think this really didn't live up to what the original

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Speaker 1: was or what later entries were. This was clearly something

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Speaker 1: where a company was trying to cash in on a

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Speaker 1: previously existing title. Um and and in some cases it's

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Speaker 1: it can be the death of a franchise or or

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Speaker 1: even an entire company. Well. Then moving on, in n

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Speaker 1: Electronic Arts moves its headquarters from San Mateo to Redwood City,

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Speaker 1: and e A also acquires yet another company, Westwood Studios,

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Speaker 1: which was the company that developed the Command and Conquer series,

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Speaker 1: which are real time strategy games. Um. I'm terrible at

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Speaker 1: real time strategy games. I'm just I can't. I don't.

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Speaker 1: I don't have a brain from either. I can't. I

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Speaker 1: can't manage. Yeah, I cannot manage the many assets. I

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Speaker 1: can't keep track of everything. Obviously, if I were going

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Speaker 1: up against Kirk and Spock, they would be able to

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Speaker 1: defeat me because I can't think three dimensionally. Um Also,

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Speaker 1: Electronic Arts formed a partnership with Square, being the Japanese

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Speaker 1: game company that's that's most famous for for RPGs like

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Speaker 1: say Final Fantasy. You might have heard of it. Um

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Speaker 1: and Uh, Square and and e A worked out this deal.

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Speaker 1: They formed a Square E A here in the States

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Speaker 1: and E A square over in Japan. Uh. The idea

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Speaker 1: of being to transfer titles that were happening in each

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Speaker 1: place to the other and and see see how they did,

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Speaker 1: you know, try to try to bring stuff that wasn't

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Speaker 1: being seen in each country over to the other, because

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Speaker 1: there were I think, especially in the Final Fantasy series,

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Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, there were a couple of entries

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Speaker 1: in the Final Fantasy Series that happened in Japan that

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Speaker 1: at that point had never been seen in the United States. Correct,

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Speaker 1: and uh, and and people were you know, RPGs had

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a following over here, but but

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Speaker 1: none of the really big cool titles were coming over

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Speaker 1: and so and so. So I meant that you had

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Speaker 1: to have like a Japanese game console, and then you

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Speaker 1: had to import the titles because of course, the the

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Speaker 1: media for the Japanese consoles would not work on the

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Speaker 1: United States. It literally would not play correct. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you know, aside from the fact that you would have

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Speaker 1: to learn Japanese in order to play them very effectively,

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Speaker 1: which is a whole other issue. But um, but yeah, so,

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Speaker 1: so each square E A and A square each had

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Speaker 1: a stake in the other um which which which is

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Speaker 1: an interesting fun business model. And uh in that same year,

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Speaker 1: they brought um Bashida Blade to Parasite Eve and Zeno

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Speaker 1: Gears all to the American market for the PlayStation. Huh wow,

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Speaker 1: so another big move on e A's part. Also kind

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Speaker 1: of interesting to see a an alliance in the video

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Speaker 1: game world. Uh. Some people would call that, uh frightening

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Speaker 1: because you know, when you're talking about being such a

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Speaker 1: big power player and you already have a reputation for

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Speaker 1: scooping up smaller companies and then to make an alliance

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Speaker 1: with another big company, just that starts to make other

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Speaker 1: people feel really nervous, kind of nervous. Yeah. Seven years

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Speaker 1: after e A had acquired Origin Systems, Richard Garriott, who

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Speaker 1: finished work on Ultimate nine, which was the final uh

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Speaker 1: He also seems to feel very similar to the way

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Speaker 1: other people who departed e A felt that that it

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Speaker 1: was just it was not the most ideal creative environment, right.

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Speaker 1: Apparently a bunch of his former team members, of former

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Speaker 1: Ultimate team members felt very much the same way because

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Speaker 1: after e A canceled Ultimate Online to UM at the time,

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Speaker 1: a bunch of a bunch of them jumped ship to

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Speaker 1: go join Garriott at the new company that he had formed,

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Speaker 1: Destination Games. UH. Garriott would not see very much success

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Speaker 1: here in the United States over the next several years,

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Speaker 1: but recently interesting thing is that he had a kick

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Speaker 1: started campaign for a new game that is inspired by

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Speaker 1: his old Ultimate series, and the kickstarter funded in like

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Speaker 1: two days, it was, and then went on to meet

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Speaker 1: lots and lots of stretch goals. Anyway, back to e

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Speaker 1: a h. Still in they published their first Medal of

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Speaker 1: Honor game, which is again another one of those big

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Speaker 1: franchises that UH that they're very well known for, and

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Speaker 1: that debuted on the PlayStation platform. UH. And that same year,

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Speaker 1: Sega debuts a new video game console called the Dreamcastcast.

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Speaker 1: I own a Dreamcast. I like it a lot. I

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Speaker 1: actually got my Dreamcast after the Dreamcast had already run

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Speaker 1: its course and was no longer in production. UH. And

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Speaker 1: I inherited a lot of games from a friend of

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Speaker 1: mine who was not really playing them anymore. And you know,

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Speaker 1: I think Dreamcast it's another one of those things where

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Speaker 1: we've done an episode of about Sega. We did a

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Speaker 1: full thing about Sega's um Uh successes and it's it's

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Speaker 1: notable failures and it's interesting. Again. The Dreamcast was one

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Speaker 1: of those consoles that was phenomenal. It performed really well

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Speaker 1: potatoly if you stacked it up against its competitors, but

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Speaker 1: it just, you know, it just never never really caught on.

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Speaker 1: It never cut onto the to the extent that it

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Speaker 1: needed to in order for a viable platform. I think

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Speaker 1: it was a little bit niche for for the for

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Speaker 1: the mainstream American market real time especially um Also that

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Speaker 1: year was when Square e A put out the Final

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Speaker 1: Fantasy Anthology, which brought some of those games that had

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Speaker 1: not been published yet in America over here. So in

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Speaker 1: two thousand, that's when the SIMS debuts, and it is

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Speaker 1: a huge success, and it really gave e A a

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Speaker 1: access to a brand new audience, which we usually refer

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Speaker 1: to as women. It turned out, it turned out that

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Speaker 1: they didn't know at the time when they were producing

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Speaker 1: the SIMS. They had no idea that was going to

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Speaker 1: resonate with a female audience. And in fact, when they

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Speaker 1: were first building the SIMS, it was just going to

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Speaker 1: be a a way of building homes, and then they

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Speaker 1: created these little virtual characters to inhabit the homes and

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Speaker 1: realized that it was way more interesting to see what

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Speaker 1: the virtual characters were up to than to build out

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Speaker 1: the houses. So that's when the SIMS focus shifted to

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Speaker 1: these virtual people, and your job was to give them

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Speaker 1: as much of a life as you possibly could, which

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Speaker 1: became increasingly difficult than the game, where you're thinking, I

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Speaker 1: don't have enough time. That's just like real life. I

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Speaker 1: don't have enough hours to give this person a good

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Speaker 1: job and a and a satisfying social life. Still have

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Speaker 1: them go to the bathroom without having a terrible accident

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the living room. But uh, Anyway,

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Speaker 1: it was a huge performer, and they immediately started to

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Speaker 1: to develop expansion packs for the SIMS and also go

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Speaker 1: into development for the sequels to the SIMS because it

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Speaker 1: was clear they had touched the nerve and that It's

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Speaker 1: also the year and two thousand, that's when Sony launched

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Speaker 1: the PlayStation two. Yeah. Um. Meanwhile, back on the PlayStation one,

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Speaker 1: Square e A put out Crymno Cross that year, which

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Speaker 1: is my the only RPG that I've ever played all

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Speaker 1: the way through. I'm not really an RPG person. I

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Speaker 1: love that game with a burning and fiery passion. It

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Speaker 1: is it is the best. Um. But but I think

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Speaker 1: that it's interesting that, uh. I mean, although it had

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Speaker 1: been out already in Japan, I think it. You know,

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Speaker 1: they were like, no, that's PlayStation two. Whatever, this one's

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Speaker 1: fine on the PS It'll still sell really well. And

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Speaker 1: Sony was very good about supporting their old consoles even

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Speaker 1: when they're introducing a new one. PlayStation two games were

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Speaker 1: developed for the PlayStation two well after PlayStation three debuts.

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Speaker 1: So um, they have a very different strategy compared to

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Speaker 1: say Microsoft. And speaking of Microsoft, in two thousand one,

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Speaker 1: that's when Microsoft launched the Xbox. So now we have

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Speaker 1: even more competition in the video game console world. At

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Speaker 1: this point, e as just having kittens. Nintendo launched the GameCube,

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Speaker 1: and e starts developed games for all the three major

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Speaker 1: console platforms, which of course does not include Sad Trombone.

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Speaker 1: So Xbox, PlayStation two, and GameCube are all great platforms

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Speaker 1: for e A to develop for. They just they see

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Speaker 1: that as endless opportunity. So uh. They then that same

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Speaker 1: year closed the Bullfrog division of e A. Now this

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Speaker 1: this kind of brings us to another thing that people

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Speaker 1: have criticized EA for, not just the fact that they

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Speaker 1: bought up companies, but that they would later go on

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Speaker 1: to close them when they realized that they weren't performing

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Speaker 1: quite as well as they wanted. Yeah, they just the

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Speaker 1: things weren't working out. And a lot of the people

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Speaker 1: who worked for these divisions came out and said, well,

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Speaker 1: the reason things didn't work out is because they were

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Speaker 1: so adamant on us producing a brand and just concentrating

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Speaker 1: on that brand as opposed to letting us develop do

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Speaker 1: what we do, which is developed games. And so you

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Speaker 1: have this series of stories of all these different divisions

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Speaker 1: being or different companies rather being bought up and turned

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Speaker 1: into divisions for e A later getting closed. Um that

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Speaker 1: you know, some would say that all e A was

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Speaker 1: really doing was buying up competition and shutting it down.

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Speaker 1: You know that that ultimately that's what turned out to

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Speaker 1: be the case. Uh oh yeah. Whether or not it

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Speaker 1: was intentional is absolutely you know, that's that's that's completely

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Speaker 1: beside the point. It didn't matter if it was intentional

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Speaker 1: or not. That was the effect, right, So, uh, it

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Speaker 1: was it was kind of rough and around that same time,

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Speaker 1: e starts to make licensing agreements to make games based

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Speaker 1: on films and other properties. Uh. These included big name

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Speaker 1: properties like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Godfather,

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Speaker 1: and James Bond. I think that that fits in really

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Speaker 1: well with their strategy of of latching onto brands and

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Speaker 1: not necessarily producing the best games, because a lot of

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Speaker 1: those titles, especially in those early days, were not not playable.

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Speaker 1: I mean, and and that's that that goes back all

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Speaker 1: the way, you know, and any film title games kind

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Speaker 1: of spotty. There are a lot of times where I

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Speaker 1: feel like like companies rely very heavily on the name

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Speaker 1: of the franchise to sell copies, and so therefore the

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Speaker 1: amount of time and effort you need to go in

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Speaker 1: and build a very compelling game sometimes slips through the cracks.

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Speaker 1: So um, you know, in that case, you end up

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Speaker 1: getting these games that are based on these beloved franchises,

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Speaker 1: but they failed to really live up to gamer expectations.

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Speaker 1: This happens. I mean, you can spend hours naming all

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Speaker 1: the superhero games that just didn't live up to expectations.

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Speaker 1: Not you know, there are a few that have been phenomenal,

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Speaker 1: but they are way more that weren't so not a

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Speaker 1: problem that only e A possesses. Certainly, certainly not. Also

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, I should put in that

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Speaker 1: UM Square A put out Final Fantasy ten, So that

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Speaker 1: was that was one of those I remember seeing the

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Speaker 1: previews for Final Fantasy ten when that was coming out

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Speaker 1: and thinking that that looked like a put particularly beautiful

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Speaker 1: game at that time. But things have changed. It doesn't

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Speaker 1: Things that were once the most gorgeous thing you could

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Speaker 1: imagine have not necessarily aged. Well, do you have anything

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Speaker 1: for two thousand two, I do not excellent. Two thousand three,

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Speaker 1: e A shuts down Westwood Studios and moves all the

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Speaker 1: remaining stuff to EA's Los Angeles studio. The Westwood was

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Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, and so they shut that one down.

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Speaker 1: So there's another example. They did not keep everybody. They

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Speaker 1: laid off quite a few people, but the people who

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Speaker 1: did remain were then moved to Los Angeles. UH And

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Speaker 1: then two thousand four, wait, Lauren, I didn't see your

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Speaker 1: high sign. My bad. We have we have an intricate

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Speaker 1: system of hand signals going on in the background here.

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Speaker 1: I know. Two thousand three, UH Square decided UM their

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Speaker 1: their relationship with e A had been slightly degraded, and

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Speaker 1: also they had been UM flirting a little bit with

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Speaker 1: with Enix stud Deos over in Japan and UH and

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Speaker 1: so Square dissolved their relationship with e A, UM bought

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Speaker 1: back all of their shares and formed Square Enix, which

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Speaker 1: would continue to produce the rest of the series that

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Speaker 1: people that they were known for excellent, well, excellent for them,

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Speaker 1: not so great for e A necessarily. In two thousand four,

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Speaker 1: e A went ahead and dissolved the Origin Systems division,

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Speaker 1: so that was the ultimately the division that produced the

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Speaker 1: Ultimate Games. That one was formally no more as of

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Speaker 1: two thousand four. E A also acquired Criterion, which was

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Speaker 1: that was the company that had developed the Burnout games.

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Speaker 1: Anyone who's familiar with those the driving games that get

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Speaker 1: really super crazy, Yeah, I really love those games. I'm

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Speaker 1: not a big driving game kind of guy, but those

394
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Speaker 1: particularly are very arcady. Yeah, yeah, they're They're a little

395
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Speaker 1: bit less focused on the physicalities of driving, and so

396
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Speaker 1: if you're not a huge car buff, the Burnout series

397
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Speaker 1: is pretty fun because all the crashing parts some other

398
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Speaker 1: games don't let you do. The crashing parts are pretty

399
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Speaker 1: pretty spectacular and play a large part in most of

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Speaker 1: those games. Uh. And then there that was the same

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Speaker 1: year that someone on live journal who had the handle

402
00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:17,639
Speaker 1: e A Spouse posted a rather uh critical post about

403
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Speaker 1: e A saying that they had some draconian practices as

404
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Speaker 1: far as employment goes, that people were being forced to

405
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Speaker 1: work super long hours six days out of the week,

406
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Speaker 1: they weren't getting compensated for overtime. Um. There were a

407
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Speaker 1: lot of pretty ugly accusations, and eventually some uh, some

408
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Speaker 1: spouses and some employees of e A got together and

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Speaker 1: they filed a class action lawsuit, in fact, a few

410
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Speaker 1: class action lawsuits against e A, and that ended up

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Speaker 1: leading to massive changes in the A and in the

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Speaker 1: industry in general, because other companies saw what was happening

413
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Speaker 1: and they thought, we better fixed this before it happens

414
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Speaker 1: to so uh. In two thousand six, e A settled

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Speaker 1: a lawsuit that was brought against it by a bunch

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Speaker 1: of graphic artists and awarded the graphic artists fifteen point

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Speaker 1: six million dollars in unpaid overtime. And in two thousand seven,

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Speaker 1: the court awarded plaintiffs of a class action lawsuit fourteen

419
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Speaker 1: point nine million dollars and unpaid overtime. So this this

420
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Speaker 1: is a different group. It's not the same one twice.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, that was a big deal. And obviously e

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Speaker 1: A did not want to court any more problems down

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Speaker 1: the line, and so they started to really take a look.

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Speaker 1: Uh and in two thousand five, e A purchased jam

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Speaker 1: Debt Mobile. So two thousand five, this is before the

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Speaker 1: iPhone comes out. EA makes its first move into the

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Speaker 1: mobile gaming world for for phones, not not mobile devices

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Speaker 1: like game Boy or whatever. You know. It had been

429
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Speaker 1: developing games for platforms like that for a while, but

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Speaker 1: this was the first time it started to really look

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Speaker 1: into using um cell phones, not even smartphones yet as

432
00:24:06,359 --> 00:24:09,840
Speaker 1: a potential gaming platform. And uh, and that was a

433
00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:13,119
Speaker 1: smart move. I mean, we're seeing more and more that

434
00:24:13,760 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 1: mobile devices are making a huge impact on the gaming industry,

435
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:21,280
Speaker 1: So that was a Whoever was the person who said

436
00:24:21,359 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 1: we should do this was really they were really looking ahead.

437
00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:26,960
Speaker 1: And that's also the year two thousand five would be

438
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:31,320
Speaker 1: the year when Microsoft launched the Xbox three sixty. We'll

439
00:24:31,359 --> 00:24:34,280
Speaker 1: be right back with more on the electronic arts story,

440
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:44,040
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. Al right. So

441
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:46,400
Speaker 1: let's see, I think, according to my notes, we left

442
00:24:46,440 --> 00:24:48,920
Speaker 1: off in two thousand five, So two thousand six, e

443
00:24:49,119 --> 00:24:54,919
Speaker 1: A acquires Mythic Entertainment. Mythic Entertainment was responsible for the RPG,

444
00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:58,879
Speaker 1: the m m O RPG Dark Age of Camelot that

445
00:24:58,960 --> 00:25:02,080
Speaker 1: they viewed back into thousand one, So now e A

446
00:25:02,240 --> 00:25:05,720
Speaker 1: has decided to acquire another m m O RPG. They

447
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:10,240
Speaker 1: saw that as a way of of maintaining a steady

448
00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:13,040
Speaker 1: stream of revenue. You've got all these people who are subscribing,

449
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:16,399
Speaker 1: so that was the strategy there, And that was the

450
00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:20,120
Speaker 1: year the e A also acquired Digital Illusions CE better

451
00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:23,600
Speaker 1: known as Dice and Dice is the company that made

452
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:27,840
Speaker 1: Battlefield nineteen two. So two thousand six is also the

453
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:31,480
Speaker 1: year that Sony launched the PlayStation three and and Nintendo

454
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:34,480
Speaker 1: launched the week exactly, both of them one year behind

455
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:36,760
Speaker 1: the Xbox three six, which had had a head start,

456
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:40,880
Speaker 1: uh and uh, well not a full year, but several

457
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:45,760
Speaker 1: months behind anyway. But also what I thought was interesting

458
00:25:45,840 --> 00:25:50,320
Speaker 1: was I found a statistic here from Bloomberg Business Week

459
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 1: that said it was an article that was published in

460
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:54,959
Speaker 1: two thousand six. So that's why I put it here,

461
00:25:55,000 --> 00:25:57,199
Speaker 1: because we're talking about two thousand and six here. They

462
00:25:57,280 --> 00:26:00,800
Speaker 1: said that from nine until present day, which at that

463
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:04,000
Speaker 1: time was two thousand six, e A averaged about one

464
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:07,760
Speaker 1: point two acquisitions per year. It was buying up more

465
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 1: than a company per year if you average it out

466
00:26:10,119 --> 00:26:13,040
Speaker 1: over those years, and that one third of the companies

467
00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:18,920
Speaker 1: that had purchased in it eventually shut down. So that's

468
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:21,360
Speaker 1: again showing that that kind of trend that I talked

469
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:25,000
Speaker 1: about earlier, the criticism that people have laid against it, saying,

470
00:26:25,119 --> 00:26:28,639
Speaker 1: you're buying up these companies and when you are, uh,

471
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:33,960
Speaker 1: and you stripped the industry of the talent these people have,

472
00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: and then you end up closing it down when it

473
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 1: doesn't meet whatever your performance measurements are. Certainly not to

474
00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 1: say that those people didn't go on to do other things,

475
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:46,720
Speaker 1: but but yeah, yeah, but and it's not necessarily it's

476
00:26:46,720 --> 00:26:50,239
Speaker 1: not necessarily the good business model for anyone in the industry, right,

477
00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:52,880
Speaker 1: anyone else. And the big criticism would be those those

478
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 1: guys and those men and women could have been developing

479
00:26:56,119 --> 00:26:59,800
Speaker 1: games during that time that would have potentially changed the industry,

480
00:26:59,880 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 1: but they couldn't because they were under contract or part

481
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:06,280
Speaker 1: part of this larger organization where they had nowhere else

482
00:27:06,320 --> 00:27:08,680
Speaker 1: to go At that point. Um, yeah, I mean it's

483
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 1: from from e A's perspective. It's doing all the smart

484
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 1: business moves. So they're from a gamer's perspective or an

485
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:18,320
Speaker 1: industry analysts perspective. They might say this is not good

486
00:27:18,359 --> 00:27:20,120
Speaker 1: for the industry, or the gamer might say this isn't

487
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:22,080
Speaker 1: good for me because I'm not getting great games out

488
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:24,440
Speaker 1: of it. E A's point of view is that this

489
00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 1: is I'm making money. Yeah, it's solidifying my position. Money.

490
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:31,399
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Money is the a when you're a business

491
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:36,679
Speaker 1: turns out. Yeah yeah. And I know this isn't financial stuff.

492
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 1: So I didn't mean to blow your mind's there about

493
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:42,399
Speaker 1: how money is. Okay. So two thousand seven, e A

494
00:27:42,560 --> 00:27:47,359
Speaker 1: acquires BioWare. BioWare made some of my favorite games of

495
00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 1: all times. Still does uh ballers Gate. I love the

496
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:55,280
Speaker 1: Baller's Gate games, but the Kicking Phone just this, Um,

497
00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:59,440
Speaker 1: there's a fantastic character who has a little hamster and

498
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:02,480
Speaker 1: he shouts out random things when you go into battle

499
00:28:02,560 --> 00:28:07,159
Speaker 1: with him, and it's endlessly entertaining. They also made Planescape Torment.

500
00:28:07,320 --> 00:28:09,879
Speaker 1: They made the Star Wars Nights the Old Republic Games

501
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:12,840
Speaker 1: Co Tour, which, again I was a huge fan of

502
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:16,200
Speaker 1: the Cotour Games. They made Mass Effect, which I've played

503
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: a little bit of. I never played it all the

504
00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:21,240
Speaker 1: way through, and Matt Frederick would probably hit me if

505
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:23,399
Speaker 1: he were in the room, because it's actually his copy

506
00:28:23,520 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 1: of the game that I have and I haven't returned

507
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 1: it yet. Um. That year they also acquired Pandemic Studios,

508
00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:33,800
Speaker 1: which was the company that brought us Star Wars battle

509
00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 1: Front and also the game Destroy All Humans, as well

510
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 1: as some other titles. And that was the year that

511
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:45,080
Speaker 1: that Probst steps down as CEO. He had been CEO

512
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:48,720
Speaker 1: since Hawkins had left the company. It was supposed to

513
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 1: be more temporary than that, wasn't it. I think I

514
00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 1: believe so. But he had led the company throughout those years,

515
00:28:55,840 --> 00:29:00,480
Speaker 1: uh so from two thousand and seven and he's still

516
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 1: on the board, but he ends up stepping down and

517
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 1: John Richard Tello a Tillo I guess it should say

518
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:11,840
Speaker 1: Richie Tello becomes the new CEO, and he says the

519
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 1: company is going to undergo a reorganization to address the

520
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:18,040
Speaker 1: problems they've had where they've been acquiring and trying to

521
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:21,560
Speaker 1: assimilate and then shutting down all these different companies that

522
00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:25,479
Speaker 1: they've been going after over the years. So, I mean

523
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:28,320
Speaker 1: this is this is an issue that all big companies have.

524
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 1: If you acquire a company, there's always a culture shock

525
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: era that allows it because unless the two companies are

526
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:40,240
Speaker 1: practically ideally well aligned, yeah, there's gonna be culture shock.

527
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:43,440
Speaker 1: So sometimes a company does this so quickly that they

528
00:29:44,400 --> 00:29:47,760
Speaker 1: there's never that period that you need to adjust and

529
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:50,120
Speaker 1: have things work out. So he was saying, let's take

530
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 1: the time to really look at how our company is

531
00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 1: structured and make sure that it makes sense. That was

532
00:29:56,120 --> 00:29:59,680
Speaker 1: his That was his statement from the the get go

533
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 1: when he started right. Also unrelated to that, but in

534
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 1: addition to the other games that they published that year,

535
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 1: that was the year that they published harm Nix's Rock

536
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:14,200
Speaker 1: Band along with MTV Huge huge title. I mean, you know,

537
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:17,880
Speaker 1: Guitar Hero had been in the years before already kind

538
00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:22,840
Speaker 1: of uh had revolutionized the idea of rhythm games on consoles,

539
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 1: and Rock Band ended up taking that and dialing it

540
00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: up to eleven. As spinel Tap would love to say,

541
00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:33,200
Speaker 1: and uh, I mean, I've had a blast playing Rock Band.

542
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:35,600
Speaker 1: Even though I adore, I adore the series. It's terrific.

543
00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 1: My musical talent is is pretty negligible, but I still,

544
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 1: you know, any game that makes you feel like a

545
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:44,480
Speaker 1: rock star is pretty pretty cool. It is, it is,

546
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:46,760
Speaker 1: And also karaoke in your own home is pretty cool.

547
00:30:47,040 --> 00:30:50,080
Speaker 1: And also a little cheat boxes that allow you to

548
00:30:50,480 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 1: hook up real electronic drum sets to the game and

549
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 1: actually rock out. It's pretty neat, pretty neat. Yeah. So

550
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:02,440
Speaker 1: we then move on into two thousand eight, where e

551
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:07,640
Speaker 1: A has a an attempt to acquire another big name,

552
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:12,920
Speaker 1: Take two Interactive, which you know gamers will recognize that

553
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:18,000
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty famous studio. So e A made a

554
00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:21,400
Speaker 1: move to acquire take to Take two turned down the

555
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 1: initial offer that e A made, and then, uh, the

556
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:29,640
Speaker 1: negotiations kind of got a little quiet. But everyone kept

557
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:32,040
Speaker 1: an eye on this because they were really wondering if

558
00:31:32,120 --> 00:31:35,280
Speaker 1: e A was in fact going to acquire yet another company,

559
00:31:35,320 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 1: and some people were really worried about what the fate

560
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 1: of Take two would be. Yeah. I think that part

561
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: of the reason that it fell through was also that

562
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:45,360
Speaker 1: the the economic crisis that year, yeah hit them really hard. Yeah,

563
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:50,960
Speaker 1: So e A's attempt to acquire Take two fails, and

564
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:56,560
Speaker 1: that year the entire world entered into an economic crisis,

565
00:31:56,680 --> 00:32:00,160
Speaker 1: and it affected lots of industries, you know, Realist eight

566
00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 1: being the big famous one in the United States banking

567
00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 1: as well, but it also hit companies like e A

568
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 1: and uh e A end up announcing that was going

569
00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 1: to cut more than a thousand positions across all of

570
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 1: its divisions, which ended up being around ten to eleven

571
00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:20,120
Speaker 1: of its workforce, and that the company lost over six

572
00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars in the last quarter of two thousand

573
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:27,440
Speaker 1: eight due to accommodation of the economic crisis and just

574
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 1: the fact that it's game releases had not performed very

575
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:34,520
Speaker 1: well in the market at all um and there their

576
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:38,720
Speaker 1: stock took a big tumble. So in August fifte of

577
00:32:39,280 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 1: of two thousand eight, their stock was valued at forty

578
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 1: eight dollars and twenty four cents per share. By December

579
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:48,720
Speaker 1: twenty six of two thousand eight, it had fallen to

580
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:52,719
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars and thirty two cents per share, So, uh,

581
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: not not quite losing half its value, just under at drop,

582
00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:02,040
Speaker 1: but it's but a whole bunch, that's that's terrible, and

583
00:33:02,120 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: it really what it signaled was that investors had lost

584
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:08,160
Speaker 1: a lot of confidence in the company. Now, keep in

585
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 1: mind the value of your company is based upon how

586
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:14,280
Speaker 1: many stocks are out there. If you're a publicly traded company,

587
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:16,200
Speaker 1: the value of your company, in part at least, is

588
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:18,960
Speaker 1: determined by how many stocks you have, and how how

589
00:33:19,040 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 1: many stocks are out there in the market, and what

590
00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:25,160
Speaker 1: they're the actual value of each stock is. So you

591
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:27,440
Speaker 1: kind of multiply those two numbers together and you get

592
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 1: a rough estimate of what the value of the company is. Well,

593
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 1: when you lose fifty percent of your stock price, that

594
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:35,200
Speaker 1: means that your company is losing fifty of its value.

595
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:38,400
Speaker 1: More or less oversimplifying, but that more or less is

596
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:42,960
Speaker 1: what it means. Well, two thousand and eight wasn't all bad.

597
00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 1: They did come out with a game that ended up

598
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: getting a lot of critical acclaim and a lot of fans,

599
00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:51,920
Speaker 1: which was Dead Space. I was never a big Dead

600
00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:54,920
Speaker 1: Space player, but I know some people who can recite

601
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:58,200
Speaker 1: everything about that game, including all the little hidden stuff

602
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:00,600
Speaker 1: that you had to find to get the backstory right right.

603
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 1: Also in the negative column that was two eight was

604
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:05,160
Speaker 1: a year that they were hit with a class action

605
00:34:05,280 --> 00:34:10,320
Speaker 1: lawsuit over the undisclosed edition of Secure Rom DRM software,

606
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:13,840
Speaker 1: along with games like Spore for the PC and and

607
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:17,400
Speaker 1: the lawsuit was about the fact that they had included

608
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 1: this this this uh digital rights management software without telling

609
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:24,280
Speaker 1: anyone about it, that it was separate from the game software,

610
00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:27,600
Speaker 1: and that it was basically impossible to uninstall, even after

611
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:29,800
Speaker 1: you would uninstalled the video game. Yeah, so e A

612
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:33,560
Speaker 1: was falling under the same trap that Sony did, where

613
00:34:33,920 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 1: in an effort to try and keep its intellectual property safe,

614
00:34:38,160 --> 00:34:42,279
Speaker 1: it had kind of over well, not kind of it overstepped. Yeah, yeah,

615
00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:44,759
Speaker 1: you know. The point was to prevent people from from

616
00:34:44,800 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 1: installing it more than I think it was eight times,

617
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:51,000
Speaker 1: three times, six times a number of times, right, right, Well,

618
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where, you know, someone who

619
00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:55,359
Speaker 1: buys the game, their argument is I should be able

620
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:57,720
Speaker 1: to install this as many times as I want, because

621
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:00,160
Speaker 1: you know, if I buy a new compute, it or

622
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:02,640
Speaker 1: I want to be able to transfer the stuff I

623
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:05,880
Speaker 1: own onto that computer. It's not that I'm you know,

624
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:08,799
Speaker 1: installing it on all my friends machines. I just want

625
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 1: to be able to play my game. And the other

626
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:13,040
Speaker 1: argument against that is that we don't want you to

627
00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: install this on or your friends machines. Right uh. In

628
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:18,759
Speaker 1: In other DRM news, that year, that was the year

629
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:22,319
Speaker 1: that UM the e A announced plans to require PC

630
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 1: owners of things like Mass Effect and Sport to authenticate

631
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:28,719
Speaker 1: their copies every ten days, even if they were playing

632
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:32,800
Speaker 1: the game offline. Yeah. Um, and this this is this

633
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:36,279
Speaker 1: becomes a common thread in e A as well, this

634
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:39,839
Speaker 1: idea of having either a persistent Internet connection or at

635
00:35:39,960 --> 00:35:43,239
Speaker 1: least using the Internet every now and then to again

636
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:46,600
Speaker 1: verify that you have a legitimate copy of the game.

637
00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:49,040
Speaker 1: So not only would you have to retain whatever the

638
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:51,320
Speaker 1: disc was, you would have to have that in your machine.

639
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:53,240
Speaker 1: You would have to then make a connection to the Internet,

640
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:55,520
Speaker 1: and then the Internet would make sure that that, in

641
00:35:55,600 --> 00:35:58,799
Speaker 1: fact was your registered copy so that you could play

642
00:35:58,880 --> 00:36:01,360
Speaker 1: the game you wanted. Even if you were able to

643
00:36:01,560 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 1: just move everything on the game into your computer and

644
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:08,000
Speaker 1: it's a single player game, you still had to do that.

645
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 1: And a lot of players objected. Yeah, yeah, especially you

646
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:13,560
Speaker 1: know two thousand eight. You know, most people had had

647
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:17,000
Speaker 1: pretty good Internet connections at that point. It was getting better,

648
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:19,400
Speaker 1: but not everyone wanted to be connected to the Internet

649
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:22,839
Speaker 1: all the time. And you know, the people who bought

650
00:36:22,880 --> 00:36:25,720
Speaker 1: the game pointed out that this was really a hassle

651
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:28,800
Speaker 1: for the legitimate game player and people who were pirate

652
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:32,040
Speaker 1: into the game, were breaking this encryption, They were using

653
00:36:32,239 --> 00:36:36,719
Speaker 1: keys that would allow them to right so that they

654
00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 1: wouldn't they didn't have to authentic kate. They were playing

655
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:43,880
Speaker 1: pirated copies that they got for free that didn't have

656
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: this DRM in it. And so the players, the legitimate

657
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:49,919
Speaker 1: players who had bought the game say it, said, look,

658
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 1: you're only punshed us. You're not you're not stopping piracy,

659
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:55,759
Speaker 1: and you're making the game a miserable experience for the

660
00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:58,600
Speaker 1: people who actually paid to play it. Yeah. This this

661
00:36:58,719 --> 00:37:02,800
Speaker 1: never did go into effect, this particular bit of of

662
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:05,160
Speaker 1: d r M. On the A side, they relented pretty

663
00:37:05,239 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 1: quickly after community feedback, which was highly highly negative as

664
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:11,280
Speaker 1: you can imagine. They however, did not learn their lesson

665
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 1: from it, because they would not they would incorporate it

666
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:18,400
Speaker 1: again in the future. Two thousand nine, e A acquires

667
00:37:18,480 --> 00:37:21,400
Speaker 1: a play Fish, which was a developer of casual games.

668
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:24,200
Speaker 1: They had seen how Louis was doing and they thought

669
00:37:24,360 --> 00:37:27,080
Speaker 1: let's get in on that as well. Um they also

670
00:37:27,120 --> 00:37:30,000
Speaker 1: went ahead and cut another fiftred employees, which was about

671
00:37:30,080 --> 00:37:34,520
Speaker 1: sevent of its workforce, and they shut down Pandemic Studios

672
00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 1: that year. So get another example of them acquiring and

673
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:41,399
Speaker 1: then shutting down a company. Uh, and next I don't

674
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 1: have anything for me neither. But inn in the summer

675
00:37:45,560 --> 00:37:50,680
Speaker 1: they acquired pop Cap Wow. Yeah, another casual games developer.

676
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:53,840
Speaker 1: So lots of lots of mobile content all that. Yeah,

677
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: they're ones who owned like The Jeweled and stuff like that. Right.

678
00:37:57,120 --> 00:38:00,399
Speaker 1: They also released Star Wars the Old Republic Blake, which

679
00:38:00,440 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 1: was a Star Wars based m m O RPG. Uh. Now,

680
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:05,640
Speaker 1: we had one person asked us if we could talk

681
00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:09,040
Speaker 1: more about Star Wars the Old Republic and why did

682
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:12,160
Speaker 1: it move from a subscription based service too free to

683
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:16,480
Speaker 1: play with micro transactions and and how you know, what's

684
00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:19,520
Speaker 1: the story of its failure if you want to look

685
00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 1: at it in that way? All right, As so I

686
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:25,440
Speaker 1: actually played Star Wars the Old Republic. I I subscribed.

687
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:27,400
Speaker 1: I was one of the subscribers. I was one of

688
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:29,759
Speaker 1: the people who got who rolled his eyes when I

689
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:32,120
Speaker 1: heard that was going to free to play because I

690
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:34,800
Speaker 1: had actually bought a I think I was like a

691
00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:40,640
Speaker 1: twelve month subscription in advance. But so Star Wars the

692
00:38:40,680 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 1: Old Republic takes place thousands of years before the events

693
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:48,320
Speaker 1: of the Star Wars movie series, but it puts you

694
00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 1: in either a a Sith role or a Republic role,

695
00:38:54,200 --> 00:38:57,000
Speaker 1: and you have different storylines that we play out based

696
00:38:57,040 --> 00:38:59,799
Speaker 1: upon the type of character you were playing. I think

697
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:01,920
Speaker 1: part of the problem was that it, even though it

698
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 1: was an M M O RPG, more frequently than not

699
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 1: it felt to me like a single player game. It

700
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 1: felt like another sequel to Cotur, which isn't a bad thing.

701
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:14,000
Speaker 1: The Coach War games were great. I very much enjoyed them,

702
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:18,000
Speaker 1: even though the second co Tour game obviously had an

703
00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:21,399
Speaker 1: entire section that was left unfinished because you could see

704
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:22,960
Speaker 1: it on your map, but you couldn't get to it

705
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:27,280
Speaker 1: in uh in the actual game. Anyway, the Old Republic

706
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:30,080
Speaker 1: felt like another sequel to that. It didn't feel as

707
00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 1: much like an M M O RPG. You didn't have

708
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:35,440
Speaker 1: as many people partying up together and the kind of

709
00:39:35,480 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 1: interactions that you would normally expect from and not after

710
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 1: the initial launched like there was a lot of interest

711
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:44,440
Speaker 1: in it very early on, but that kind of dropped

712
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:45,919
Speaker 1: off quickly, and part of the problem was that people

713
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:49,600
Speaker 1: were completing the storylines for the characters very very quickly,

714
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:52,799
Speaker 1: and once you did that, you didn't really have any

715
00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:55,640
Speaker 1: incentive to keep playing so it was just like if

716
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:57,279
Speaker 1: you had played a single player game all the way

717
00:39:57,280 --> 00:39:58,839
Speaker 1: through and then you're thinking, all right, well that was fun,

718
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:01,359
Speaker 1: but now I want to sell this game and get

719
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:03,520
Speaker 1: some money back, and then I'm going to buy another

720
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:06,919
Speaker 1: new game. That's kind of what people were thinking. Well,

721
00:40:07,680 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 1: subscribers started to drop off from this game, and e

722
00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:13,239
Speaker 1: A's response was that, well, you know, we could either

723
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:16,439
Speaker 1: pull the plug on it entirely, or we could try

724
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:19,880
Speaker 1: and switch our strategy and get more people interested in

725
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,640
Speaker 1: this game. But obviously the subscription models not really working.

726
00:40:23,719 --> 00:40:25,640
Speaker 1: So what if we dropped the subscription and go to

727
00:40:25,719 --> 00:40:29,600
Speaker 1: free to play, and instead of making money through people subscribing,

728
00:40:29,960 --> 00:40:32,759
Speaker 1: we make money by selling items in the game for

729
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:38,839
Speaker 1: real money, small amounts of money micro transactions. But um,

730
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:43,120
Speaker 1: and you could still play it for free without buying anything,

731
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:45,680
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't have access to the entire game. There'll

732
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:47,360
Speaker 1: be sections of the game you could not get to

733
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 1: because you would have to purchase them in order to

734
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 1: have access. And all of the micro transaction items were

735
00:40:53,239 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: the super powerful cool things with rainbows and unicorns or

736
00:40:56,640 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 1: whatever the you know, Star Wars equivalent of rainbows in

737
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 1: the cub lights. So I realize you're not familiar with

738
00:41:03,320 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 1: the venerable franchise known as Star Wars. Yeah no, never

739
00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:11,319
Speaker 1: never seen any of those scruffy looking at um. So, yeah,

740
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:14,880
Speaker 1: the that was the whole response there was to switch

741
00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 1: order free to play and do micro transactions. Now, this

742
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:20,960
Speaker 1: is another thing that e A has received a lot

743
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: of criticism for as the whole micro transaction approach. I

744
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:28,360
Speaker 1: can't say the word criticism either, obviously, but the micro

745
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:33,080
Speaker 1: transactions are that's another way to try and generate revenue,

746
00:41:33,120 --> 00:41:35,400
Speaker 1: and if you make your game free to play, it

747
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:38,919
Speaker 1: may be the only way unless you incorporate lots of advertising,

748
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:41,440
Speaker 1: and either way most players kind of react in a

749
00:41:41,520 --> 00:41:44,000
Speaker 1: negative way. Yeah, that has also been something that e

750
00:41:44,080 --> 00:41:45,840
Speaker 1: A has gotten a lot of flak for, is the

751
00:41:46,040 --> 00:41:49,719
Speaker 1: the inclusion of kind of kind of annoying out there

752
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:52,440
Speaker 1: advertising in the middle of their games. Right. Well, the

753
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:56,960
Speaker 1: disappointing performance of Star Wars may have also contributed to

754
00:41:57,040 --> 00:42:01,040
Speaker 1: another dip in e AS stock prices in twelve of although,

755
00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:03,920
Speaker 1: but before we move on, just thank you Chaz our

756
00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:06,239
Speaker 1: listener from Twitter for for writing in about that. Yes,

757
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:09,000
Speaker 1: thank you very much, yea, And we have a few

758
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:10,640
Speaker 1: more questions. We will address at the end of this

759
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:13,879
Speaker 1: episode as well. Also in twenty eleven, something else big

760
00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:18,239
Speaker 1: happened to e A. E A had the honor is

761
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:22,440
Speaker 1: the wrong word for it had had the unfortunate um

762
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 1: role as Lull's SEC final target. Lulls SEC being Laugh

763
00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:33,080
Speaker 1: Out Loud Security was kind of a an offshoot of Anonymous.

764
00:42:34,040 --> 00:42:38,880
Speaker 1: It was not necessarily related directly to Anonymous, but it

765
00:42:39,040 --> 00:42:42,359
Speaker 1: was a group of of hackers who decided that they

766
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 1: were going to cause as much trouble as possible really

767
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 1: for the main reason they wanted to do it was

768
00:42:48,080 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 1: to show that they could. And uh, boy, I bet

769
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:52,800
Speaker 1: they're regretting that decision right now because as of the

770
00:42:52,880 --> 00:42:55,960
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast, Uh, four of them have been

771
00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:59,920
Speaker 1: sentenced to between a year and two years in very

772
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:05,759
Speaker 1: US uh jails or juvenile facilities. Well, so, yikes, I

773
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 1: guess they weren't quite as Anonymous as they thought. Uh. Anyway,

774
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:14,239
Speaker 1: they hit EA as their final target before disbanding, and

775
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 1: uh they ended up releasing the log in information of

776
00:43:18,280 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 1: thousands of people who were playing Battlefield Heroes. So uh

777
00:43:22,880 --> 00:43:25,080
Speaker 1: that was a big black eye. A had to reset

778
00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:27,200
Speaker 1: all that and send emails out to everybody saying you know,

779
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:30,719
Speaker 1: it was compromised and you need to change passwords and

780
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:34,800
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Uh. In twelve he wins

781
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:40,839
Speaker 1: another awful uh distinguishing feature. Here they were called they

782
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 1: they were named the worst company in America by the

783
00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:46,080
Speaker 1: Consumerist And this is a this is a thing that

784
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:48,520
Speaker 1: that the consumers does every year. They've been doing it

785
00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:51,239
Speaker 1: for a while. They gave a Golden poo award. Yes

786
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:55,879
Speaker 1: they do. It's a very distinguished Uh. Yeah. The way

787
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 1: it works is that they set it up like a

788
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:02,200
Speaker 1: tournament bracket and they let people vote on which company

789
00:44:02,239 --> 00:44:05,399
Speaker 1: they think should progress in the bracket. And that year

790
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:09,440
Speaker 1: e A took home the Golden Pooh. It's final opponent

791
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: was the Bank of America. Now keep in mind this

792
00:44:12,239 --> 00:44:15,279
Speaker 1: is all from reader votes, it's not I mean, I

793
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:17,640
Speaker 1: think I think the consumers is the one that ultimately

794
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:20,360
Speaker 1: decides which ones are in the brackets, but the readers

795
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 1: are the ones who determine which companies progress. Right, And

796
00:44:23,080 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 1: this is the Internet, and there are some gamers on

797
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:27,479
Speaker 1: the Internet, so so I'm sure that that is part

798
00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 1: of why e A made it that far. But but also,

799
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:33,839
Speaker 1: I mean, was when occupy was happening, So so think

800
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:36,560
Speaker 1: I mean there were thousands of people on the streets

801
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:41,520
Speaker 1: protesting the actions of corporations like Bank of America, and

802
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:45,560
Speaker 1: e A still still beat them out. Yeah, by I

803
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 1: think it was like close to to you know, twenty

804
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:52,160
Speaker 1: six or something like that. It's really like that. So

805
00:44:52,400 --> 00:44:55,640
Speaker 1: it was it wasn't even close. It's a runaway. But again,

806
00:44:56,040 --> 00:44:58,920
Speaker 1: you know the platforms the internet. Gamers like the Internet,

807
00:44:59,000 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 1: so you know, keep that all in mind. It's kind

808
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:03,120
Speaker 1: of it was kind of skewed to e A, is

809
00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:05,799
Speaker 1: what we're saying. We've got a bit more to say

810
00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 1: about e A, and then I'll have a lot more

811
00:45:08,320 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 1: to say about e A in a follow up episode

812
00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:22,399
Speaker 1: right after this break. So why did it win Worst Company? Well,

813
00:45:22,560 --> 00:45:26,000
Speaker 1: some of the the suggestions were because it had stripped

814
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:28,960
Speaker 1: the video game industry of talent through all those acquisitions

815
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:33,520
Speaker 1: and then shutting down competitions. Are shutting down competing studios,

816
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:36,240
Speaker 1: I should say. So they not only bought up competing

817
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:38,160
Speaker 1: studios but then shut them down, which then meant that

818
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 1: that talent and those games would often become inaccessible. There'd

819
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 1: never be another one because e A would own the

820
00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:49,239
Speaker 1: intellectual property but not have anyone to actually develop the

821
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: games anymore, at least the people who had developed it

822
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:55,440
Speaker 1: were gone, so it would be a completely different experience. Uh.

823
00:45:55,520 --> 00:45:58,359
Speaker 1: Then there was also sighting of the use of micro transactions,

824
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 1: just like I said, Uh, especially for any games where

825
00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:04,680
Speaker 1: you already had to buy a game and then on

826
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:07,120
Speaker 1: top of it, have micro transactions within the things that

827
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:09,279
Speaker 1: we're not free to begin with. Yeah, So the idea

828
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:11,399
Speaker 1: of buying like a sixty dollar game and then having

829
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:13,600
Speaker 1: to spend more money within the game in order for

830
00:46:13,680 --> 00:46:16,239
Speaker 1: it to be a satisfying experience that did not sit

831
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:19,360
Speaker 1: well with a lot of people who voted in this. Also,

832
00:46:19,640 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: the one of the things they cited were the exclusivity

833
00:46:22,200 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 1: deals that e A had made with organizations like the NFL.

834
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 1: Now that's a big deal now for e A, and

835
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:31,040
Speaker 1: made perfect sense. That meant that they had tied up

836
00:46:31,120 --> 00:46:34,320
Speaker 1: the NFL license that they were the only company that

837
00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:38,400
Speaker 1: could put out an official NFL affiliated football game, and

838
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:40,719
Speaker 1: the same thing is true for other sports as well.

839
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:44,760
Speaker 1: They made exclusivity agreements with other sports agencies, but NFL

840
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:49,440
Speaker 1: is an easy example. So e A then shuts down

841
00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:54,360
Speaker 1: competition because no other game company can make an official

842
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:58,400
Speaker 1: NFL licensed game. They can't use the actual team player

843
00:46:58,520 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 1: names or anything. And I'll you know, another football strategy

844
00:47:02,120 --> 00:47:04,320
Speaker 1: game could certainly be enjoyable. When you don't have that

845
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:07,480
Speaker 1: brand recognition behind it, it becomes a lot harder to market, right.

846
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 1: I mean why if if you're a fan of football

847
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:12,959
Speaker 1: and you want to play as your favorite football team

848
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:15,480
Speaker 1: with you, with the actual players who are on that

849
00:47:15,640 --> 00:47:18,719
Speaker 1: team as your as your players, then you had to

850
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:20,920
Speaker 1: go with the A because no one else had the

851
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:23,719
Speaker 1: licensing agreement that would allow them to do that. And

852
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:26,600
Speaker 1: so that, you know, people said, like, you're essentially saying

853
00:47:27,239 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 1: we're the only game in town. Yeah, you're you're further

854
00:47:29,760 --> 00:47:32,880
Speaker 1: further shutting down the opportunities of other studios. Right, So

855
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:36,000
Speaker 1: that was another reason why they got a lot of votes.

856
00:47:36,600 --> 00:47:42,560
Speaker 1: Uh So the tournaments came out pretty badly for e A. Uh,

857
00:47:42,680 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 1: It's showed that that he had a real problem with

858
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:48,120
Speaker 1: public perception of the company. UM and e A tried

859
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:52,440
Speaker 1: to kind of uh respond to that, and and a

860
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:54,800
Speaker 1: lot of people thought that their response was lackluster. This

861
00:47:54,800 --> 00:47:57,600
Speaker 1: would happen again, but we'll get to it. Yeah, I

862
00:47:57,600 --> 00:48:01,120
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil it, but yeah, year also was

863
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:04,040
Speaker 1: when e A released Mass Effect three, which may also

864
00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:06,880
Speaker 1: have affected its standings as Worst Company in America because,

865
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:09,160
Speaker 1: as I recall, there were a lot of people who

866
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:11,560
Speaker 1: were not happy with the way that game ended. Yeah,

867
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:13,520
Speaker 1: didn't they didn't they wasn't that the one that they

868
00:48:13,560 --> 00:48:17,280
Speaker 1: released a different ending to that you could you could download.

869
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:20,279
Speaker 1: There were, as I recall, there were there may have been,

870
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:21,839
Speaker 1: I think there might have been, but I know there

871
00:48:21,880 --> 00:48:24,440
Speaker 1: were at least three different endings that were already in

872
00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:27,280
Speaker 1: the game. But some people argued that the three different

873
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:30,080
Speaker 1: endings were not distinct enough that you know, you would

874
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:32,920
Speaker 1: have small details that were different, but that in the

875
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:35,320
Speaker 1: grand scheme it felt like what you had done in

876
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:38,759
Speaker 1: the series of games did Yeah, it defeats the entire

877
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:41,919
Speaker 1: purpose of the Mass Effect series exactly. It felt like like, well,

878
00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 1: while the whole game makes it feel like you're going

879
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:49,040
Speaker 1: to have this huge impact, ultimately, if the differences aren't

880
00:48:49,160 --> 00:48:51,400
Speaker 1: that great, then it means that you know, what you

881
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:53,440
Speaker 1: did didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things,

882
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:55,840
Speaker 1: which from an existential point of view is kind of interesting.

883
00:48:56,200 --> 00:48:59,560
Speaker 1: But from a gamer player, uh, you know, experience, maybe

884
00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:01,600
Speaker 1: not so much far right right, it's not called nic

885
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:04,960
Speaker 1: The game so therefore, so so people said that they

886
00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:07,880
Speaker 1: felt that the game had the end game in particular,

887
00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:09,960
Speaker 1: had been rushed, and that it just wasn't a fitting

888
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:15,239
Speaker 1: capper to it. Uh and Penny Arcades been Kuchera, and

889
00:49:15,440 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 1: I apologize if I'm miss uh mispronouncing his name. He

890
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 1: criticized the company for concentrating on free to play games

891
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:25,240
Speaker 1: and micro transactions, and he also said that the company

892
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:28,279
Speaker 1: was failing to create compelling retail games. So you're saying

893
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:31,280
Speaker 1: that the games that you are selling for sixty dollars

894
00:49:31,680 --> 00:49:34,480
Speaker 1: aren't really good good and the ones that are free

895
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:38,720
Speaker 1: to play with micro transactions are irritating. Right. So penny Arcade,

896
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:41,840
Speaker 1: by the way, has nine hundred and twenty two comics

897
00:49:41,960 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 1: that are tagged e A in their system, which as

898
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:47,520
Speaker 1: of the recording of this podcast, yes as well, Yeah,

899
00:49:47,560 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 1: as of as of Tuesday, I think actually Tuesday or

900
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:53,080
Speaker 1: Wednesday of this week, so they're there. There might have

901
00:49:53,160 --> 00:49:57,319
Speaker 1: been more uh since since then, but it just which

902
00:49:57,400 --> 00:49:59,920
Speaker 1: just goes to show that the gaming community has had

903
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 1: a lot to say and a lot of criticism to

904
00:50:02,600 --> 00:50:05,600
Speaker 1: lob against the company over the years. And UH and

905
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 1: in John Richard tell O stepped down as CEO and

906
00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:13,160
Speaker 1: as a member of the board. Uh. Here's a direct

907
00:50:13,239 --> 00:50:15,600
Speaker 1: quote from one of the blog posts that was written

908
00:50:15,920 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 1: that he wrote about this. He said, I am writing

909
00:50:18,160 --> 00:50:21,000
Speaker 1: with some tough news. I have resigned my position as

910
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:23,680
Speaker 1: e AS CEO. I will be around for a couple

911
00:50:23,760 --> 00:50:25,480
Speaker 1: of weeks and I hope to have it at the

912
00:50:25,600 --> 00:50:28,280
Speaker 1: chance to say goodbye to many of you. Larry Probest

913
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:30,960
Speaker 1: will be stepping in as executive chairman to help smooth

914
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:35,120
Speaker 1: the transition. Uh. E A also continued to lay off

915
00:50:35,239 --> 00:50:39,000
Speaker 1: employees in part as a streamlining effort at this time.

916
00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:41,920
Speaker 1: And so Probest comes back in. You know, he had

917
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:47,279
Speaker 1: stepped down and now he was interim CEO. Uh and

918
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:50,759
Speaker 1: uh that's as of the recording of this podcast, that's

919
00:50:50,760 --> 00:50:53,879
Speaker 1: still the case. They hadn't found a permanent replacement yet. Yeah,

920
00:50:53,960 --> 00:50:55,839
Speaker 1: but they Yeah, that was That was another ten percent

921
00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:58,920
Speaker 1: of global staff that was laid off as of May

922
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:02,480
Speaker 1: of this year. So tough times over at e A.

923
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:05,760
Speaker 1: They also said that they planned to open a Dice

924
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:10,320
Speaker 1: l A office uh where they would be developing games,

925
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:13,560
Speaker 1: including Star Wars games, because they made a deal with Disney,

926
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:17,480
Speaker 1: which of course acquired the rights to the Lucas Arts

927
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:23,480
Speaker 1: stuff earlier, and they won the Worst Company in America

928
00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:26,160
Speaker 1: for the second year in a row. And most of

929
00:51:26,200 --> 00:51:28,480
Speaker 1: the reasons this is the first time that any company

930
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:30,719
Speaker 1: has ever done this, by the way, done a tow

931
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 1: for and they they the reasons are pretty much the

932
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:37,880
Speaker 1: same as But also there was another controversy that happened

933
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:41,600
Speaker 1: between those two times that ended up costing the company

934
00:51:41,640 --> 00:51:44,479
Speaker 1: big time, which was the launch of sim City five,

935
00:51:44,600 --> 00:51:48,000
Speaker 1: one of the most anticipated games in a long time.

936
00:51:48,040 --> 00:51:50,279
Speaker 1: I mean, like there's certain titles that when you hear

937
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:54,120
Speaker 1: about them coming out, people old school gamers get really excited.

938
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:57,080
Speaker 1: Diablo three is a great example of a game that

939
00:51:57,160 --> 00:52:00,320
Speaker 1: got a lot of people talking months before it amount.

940
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:03,080
Speaker 1: Sim City five is another one of those where people

941
00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:05,560
Speaker 1: who are fans of the sim City franchise were really

942
00:52:05,680 --> 00:52:10,080
Speaker 1: excited by this game. But the big issue was that

943
00:52:10,239 --> 00:52:12,400
Speaker 1: sim City five was a game that requires you to

944
00:52:12,480 --> 00:52:14,520
Speaker 1: have a persistent connection to the Internet in order to

945
00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 1: play it. Even if you're just playing single player offline,

946
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 1: it's just you and your computer, but you still have

947
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:22,920
Speaker 1: to have a persistent Internet connection, and they had some

948
00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:26,120
Speaker 1: server issues when the game launched, which meant that people

949
00:52:26,160 --> 00:52:28,279
Speaker 1: couldn't play the game they had just bought, they had

950
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:31,040
Speaker 1: spent the money, the game was in their hands, they

951
00:52:31,120 --> 00:52:33,840
Speaker 1: wanted to play a single player game, and they couldn't

952
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:38,040
Speaker 1: do it because the servers weren't working. Now, that tells

953
00:52:38,120 --> 00:52:40,640
Speaker 1: you that this is a huge problem. That that's another

954
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:44,120
Speaker 1: example of why the persistent internet connection thing is an

955
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 1: argument that people say makes for bad gaming experience, because

956
00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:51,680
Speaker 1: when you have a technical issue on the game providers end,

957
00:52:52,440 --> 00:52:56,440
Speaker 1: then it's adding a completely unnecessary extra step that a

958
00:52:56,520 --> 00:52:58,879
Speaker 1: lot of things can go wrong with, right, And if

959
00:52:58,920 --> 00:53:02,480
Speaker 1: it's an online game, than that's just the way that works, right.

960
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:05,239
Speaker 1: But when it's a single player game, then people have

961
00:53:05,360 --> 00:53:08,840
Speaker 1: a real hard time feeling it's infuriating and uh, you

962
00:53:08,920 --> 00:53:11,040
Speaker 1: know again, a lot of people say that the whole

963
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:13,879
Speaker 1: reason for this was just so that e A could

964
00:53:13,960 --> 00:53:17,480
Speaker 1: have another kind of DRM there that you know, that's

965
00:53:17,520 --> 00:53:20,200
Speaker 1: not e A has denied that. They said that's not

966
00:53:20,320 --> 00:53:24,000
Speaker 1: the reason, but that's the reason everyone says, says is

967
00:53:24,160 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 1: a lot of people suggest that's the real reason. Let

968
00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:29,840
Speaker 1: me put it that way. Sure. They also made headlines

969
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:32,840
Speaker 1: in February and March when UM the CFO Blake Jorgensen

970
00:53:32,880 --> 00:53:36,640
Speaker 1: announced that all future titles would involve micro transactions. Uh.

971
00:53:36,760 --> 00:53:39,880
Speaker 1: He backpedaled really hard a week later. Um let it.

972
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:43,239
Speaker 1: That did not get a great reaction, and again that's

973
00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:45,840
Speaker 1: probably what contributed to it winning the Worst company in

974
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:49,680
Speaker 1: America again. Yeah, despite all of this, their their stock

975
00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:54,440
Speaker 1: has been rising dramatically over the course of so far.

976
00:53:55,040 --> 00:53:58,880
Speaker 1: Um and uh really really interestingly, as of as of

977
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:02,319
Speaker 1: this week, the a couple of the really high level

978
00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:04,840
Speaker 1: people have been selling off a lot of their shares

979
00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 1: in their own company's stock, like fifty seven thousand of

980
00:54:09,719 --> 00:54:13,719
Speaker 1: their shares. Wow. That is Uh. I'm actually looking it

981
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:16,440
Speaker 1: up right now because it's actually a little lower than

982
00:54:16,480 --> 00:54:18,200
Speaker 1: it was when I wrote it down. Because originally we

983
00:54:18,239 --> 00:54:20,319
Speaker 1: were going to record this episode the day before. We're

984
00:54:20,320 --> 00:54:23,680
Speaker 1: actually recording it right We're gonna record it yesterday. This

985
00:54:23,760 --> 00:54:28,359
Speaker 1: doesn't mean but on May fifteenth, fifteenth, the stock price

986
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 1: was at twenty two dollars and fifty cents when I

987
00:54:30,640 --> 00:54:35,480
Speaker 1: looked at originally right now on May sixteenth, at four

988
00:54:35,680 --> 00:54:38,799
Speaker 1: forty four pm Eastern time, more information than you need

989
00:54:38,880 --> 00:54:41,480
Speaker 1: to know, it's at two and two cents. So it's

990
00:54:41,560 --> 00:54:45,640
Speaker 1: dropped almost fifty cents, right around fifty cents since I

991
00:54:45,920 --> 00:54:49,800
Speaker 1: checked it yesterday. So it's still and it's obviously not

992
00:54:50,040 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 1: at that pre August two eight high when it was

993
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:56,759
Speaker 1: in the high forties and lower fifties, but it's but

994
00:54:56,800 --> 00:55:00,200
Speaker 1: it's dropped a great deal since then. Um I think

995
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:03,240
Speaker 1: I think that that well, as of as of Wednesday,

996
00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:05,719
Speaker 1: as of the May fifteenth, anyway, shares where shares were

997
00:55:05,800 --> 00:55:10,319
Speaker 1: up very nearly for the course. Yeah, so it's it's

998
00:55:10,760 --> 00:55:14,399
Speaker 1: I think volatile is a safe word to use. Yes, Yes,

999
00:55:14,680 --> 00:55:18,320
Speaker 1: that that's There's a lot of very very important financial

1000
00:55:18,440 --> 00:55:20,640
Speaker 1: publications that are talking about e A right now, which

1001
00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:22,560
Speaker 1: I which I always find fascinating, and and all of

1002
00:55:22,600 --> 00:55:25,320
Speaker 1: them are going like, be cautious, don't actually invest, we

1003
00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:27,400
Speaker 1: don't know about this thing. Yeah, there does seem to

1004
00:55:27,440 --> 00:55:32,480
Speaker 1: be a real problem with consumer confidence in an investor

1005
00:55:32,640 --> 00:55:34,879
Speaker 1: confidence in a e A. And again that can really

1006
00:55:34,920 --> 00:55:37,799
Speaker 1: affect that. You know, e A is a multibillion dollar

1007
00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:41,080
Speaker 1: industry company right now. It's you know, it's revenues can

1008
00:55:41,200 --> 00:55:44,640
Speaker 1: be over a billion dollars, can be over three billion

1009
00:55:44,680 --> 00:55:47,239
Speaker 1: dollars in a good year, and so when you're talking

1010
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 1: about that, it's kind of weird to think that it's

1011
00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:53,000
Speaker 1: it's value as a company is in question. That suggests

1012
00:55:53,040 --> 00:55:56,200
Speaker 1: that there's been some pretty serious missteps or that something's

1013
00:55:56,239 --> 00:55:58,879
Speaker 1: really funky with the industry in general, right right, well,

1014
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:00,839
Speaker 1: you know it's I think it's just basically that thing

1015
00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:03,759
Speaker 1: where they're not really they're not really heating all of

1016
00:56:03,960 --> 00:56:06,880
Speaker 1: all of this this feedback that they're getting from from

1017
00:56:06,960 --> 00:56:09,920
Speaker 1: all of their their from their fans, and that's you know,

1018
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:13,719
Speaker 1: like and they also just renew their license with with

1019
00:56:13,960 --> 00:56:17,680
Speaker 1: them the Football Association with a FIFA FIFA and the

1020
00:56:17,719 --> 00:56:23,200
Speaker 1: soccer soccer So yeah, sure, football whatever go back to

1021
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:29,120
Speaker 1: France until um so and and FIVA is one of

1022
00:56:29,200 --> 00:56:33,000
Speaker 1: those titles that consistently does really well for e A. Sure,

1023
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:35,440
Speaker 1: and and you know again like it's it's understandable why

1024
00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:39,960
Speaker 1: would they would want that exclusivity? Now, we asked our

1025
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:42,360
Speaker 1: listeners if they had any specific questions they would like

1026
00:56:42,480 --> 00:56:46,040
Speaker 1: us to address, and uh, we We've talked about some

1027
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:47,560
Speaker 1: of them already, so I'm not going to go over

1028
00:56:47,640 --> 00:56:49,880
Speaker 1: all of them, but I've got two left that we

1029
00:56:50,040 --> 00:56:53,600
Speaker 1: can chat about really quickly. Peter from Facebook said, what

1030
00:56:53,840 --> 00:56:56,600
Speaker 1: was the most popular e A game? And if you

1031
00:56:56,719 --> 00:57:00,480
Speaker 1: go from the debut of e A till present day

1032
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:03,320
Speaker 1: and you look at all the units sold. The SIMS

1033
00:57:03,600 --> 00:57:06,200
Speaker 1: comes out on top with a level eleven point twenty

1034
00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:10,600
Speaker 1: three million units sold globally according to VG Charts, and

1035
00:57:10,719 --> 00:57:13,920
Speaker 1: second place would go to Need for Speed Underground. Now

1036
00:57:14,800 --> 00:57:17,600
Speaker 1: that that doesn't surprise me, because the SIMS is one

1037
00:57:17,600 --> 00:57:19,600
Speaker 1: of those games that had a very wide appeal. I

1038
00:57:19,640 --> 00:57:21,280
Speaker 1: mean I loved it when it came out. I thought

1039
00:57:21,320 --> 00:57:23,920
Speaker 1: this was such a cool innovative game. Also, I thought

1040
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:28,160
Speaker 1: it was funny to lock people out of the bathroom. Um, yeah,

1041
00:57:28,200 --> 00:57:30,720
Speaker 1: I did some pretty cruel things. A good good thing

1042
00:57:30,760 --> 00:57:34,480
Speaker 1: to know about you, Jonathan, That's great, that's why. Uh.

1043
00:57:34,560 --> 00:57:38,880
Speaker 1: And then Ian he asked also on Facebook if I

1044
00:57:38,920 --> 00:57:41,560
Speaker 1: could give a rundown of some of the PR meltdowns

1045
00:57:41,640 --> 00:57:44,640
Speaker 1: the e A has had. I could, but that's a

1046
00:57:44,840 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 1: full episode. So I'm going to give you, Um, I'm

1047
00:57:47,840 --> 00:57:52,360
Speaker 1: gonna give you three examples of PR attempts that e

1048
00:57:52,560 --> 00:57:56,640
Speaker 1: A maybe did not handle very well. This isn't just

1049
00:57:56,880 --> 00:58:00,360
Speaker 1: like coming out and saying, uh, we didn't do this right,

1050
00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:02,400
Speaker 1: We're going to do better. This is this is, this

1051
00:58:02,480 --> 00:58:06,280
Speaker 1: goes beyond this. This comes into marketing mistakes. Okay, three

1052
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:09,960
Speaker 1: big marketing mistakes. Keep in mind that this might not

1053
00:58:10,120 --> 00:58:13,520
Speaker 1: be entirely EA's fault. They could have partnered with a

1054
00:58:13,600 --> 00:58:16,640
Speaker 1: marketing firm that came up with a terrible idea and

1055
00:58:16,720 --> 00:58:19,640
Speaker 1: he just ran with it. Um One of them was

1056
00:58:20,040 --> 00:58:24,960
Speaker 1: when e A was marketing the game Dante's Inferno, right,

1057
00:58:25,160 --> 00:58:27,960
Speaker 1: remember that, yeah, which had all these different characters that

1058
00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:33,120
Speaker 1: were based off the Seven Deadly Sins. So the promotion

1059
00:58:33,280 --> 00:58:36,919
Speaker 1: for the Sin of Lust came around and right around

1060
00:58:36,920 --> 00:58:40,360
Speaker 1: the same time as Comic Con An e A had

1061
00:58:40,640 --> 00:58:44,800
Speaker 1: a booth at Comic Con where they had some young

1062
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:50,200
Speaker 1: ladies dressed in costume models colloquially known as booth babes

1063
00:58:50,800 --> 00:58:55,760
Speaker 1: to promote their games, and they had their Sin to

1064
00:58:55,960 --> 00:59:00,960
Speaker 1: Win campaign, which was a contest that encouraged people to

1065
00:59:01,280 --> 00:59:06,720
Speaker 1: quote commit acts of lust unquote with costumed reps at

1066
00:59:06,800 --> 00:59:10,320
Speaker 1: e A's booth. Later on, the team clarified this as

1067
00:59:10,360 --> 00:59:14,120
Speaker 1: saying that they were just trying to tell people to

1068
00:59:14,600 --> 00:59:18,720
Speaker 1: take photos with these reps and then tweet and share

1069
00:59:18,760 --> 00:59:22,840
Speaker 1: them in various ways. But no, that doesn't sound like

1070
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:28,920
Speaker 1: that thing like, yeah, I'm I I remember I had

1071
00:59:28,960 --> 00:59:32,320
Speaker 1: completely blocked that from my memory, but I remember exactly

1072
00:59:32,400 --> 00:59:38,000
Speaker 1: how offended I was by that, because it was really offended. Actually, yeah, yeah,

1073
00:59:38,080 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 1: not a great move. Okay, So here's another one. This one,

1074
00:59:41,040 --> 00:59:43,439
Speaker 1: this one really makes me scratch my head. So there

1075
00:59:43,600 --> 00:59:47,480
Speaker 1: for a promotional campaign for the game Mercenaries to E

1076
00:59:47,680 --> 00:59:51,360
Speaker 1: a converted a London gas station to make it look

1077
00:59:51,400 --> 00:59:54,400
Speaker 1: like a military depot, so it was like a depot

1078
00:59:54,440 --> 00:59:56,560
Speaker 1: that you would see in the game Mercenaries to which

1079
00:59:56,600 --> 00:59:59,000
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. I mean, we've seen promotions like that,

1080
00:59:59,200 --> 01:00:04,560
Speaker 1: like the The Simpsons, Quickie mark type stuff. They had

1081
01:00:04,760 --> 01:00:07,320
Speaker 1: a bunch of a bunch of life size column dolls

1082
01:00:07,440 --> 01:00:11,040
Speaker 1: on London Underground for a while, that clever stuff. So

1083
01:00:11,960 --> 01:00:14,240
Speaker 1: what's the big deal about converting a gas station into

1084
01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:18,360
Speaker 1: a military depot. Well, they had this campaign where anyone

1085
01:00:18,520 --> 01:00:22,400
Speaker 1: stopping at the military depot slash gas station would get

1086
01:00:22,520 --> 01:00:27,360
Speaker 1: seventy dollars worth of gas for free. Keep in mind

1087
01:00:27,480 --> 01:00:30,280
Speaker 1: that the game doesn't cost that much, which meant that

1088
01:00:30,400 --> 01:00:32,680
Speaker 1: even if every single person who stopped at that gas

1089
01:00:32,760 --> 01:00:36,000
Speaker 1: station then went out and bought a copy of Mercenaries

1090
01:00:36,000 --> 01:00:38,240
Speaker 1: to still be losing money. You still are losing money.

1091
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:43,280
Speaker 1: And they ended up screwing up traffic patterns so badly

1092
01:00:43,320 --> 01:00:45,479
Speaker 1: in London once people found out they could get free

1093
01:00:45,560 --> 01:00:50,280
Speaker 1: gas at this station that it caused a massive traffic

1094
01:00:50,360 --> 01:00:54,600
Speaker 1: snarl and even ended up with government censure of e A.

1095
01:00:55,560 --> 01:00:58,320
Speaker 1: Cost him about fifty dollars to convert the gas station

1096
01:00:58,400 --> 01:01:02,040
Speaker 1: into a military depot. Seventy bucks of gas per person

1097
01:01:02,080 --> 01:01:04,880
Speaker 1: who stopped. Yeah, not the most effective use of your

1098
01:01:04,920 --> 01:01:08,720
Speaker 1: marketing dollars, you might argue. And here's the third one.

1099
01:01:09,440 --> 01:01:13,800
Speaker 1: So godfather to the game coming out and e A,

1100
01:01:14,280 --> 01:01:18,920
Speaker 1: like many companies, tries to court the gaming press by

1101
01:01:18,960 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 1: sending out publicity kits. They have various little gifts in them. Right,

1102
01:01:23,040 --> 01:01:27,120
Speaker 1: horses head No, no horses had, no fish, okay, no connoli.

1103
01:01:28,080 --> 01:01:32,320
Speaker 1: Brass knuckles. They send out brass, actual brass knuckles, actual

1104
01:01:32,320 --> 01:01:36,880
Speaker 1: bras knuckles, which, by the way, not legal and also

1105
01:01:37,120 --> 01:01:40,920
Speaker 1: illegal to send by may. So then they had to

1106
01:01:41,000 --> 01:01:43,880
Speaker 1: send a message to everyone they had sent a package

1107
01:01:43,920 --> 01:01:46,640
Speaker 1: to saying could you please send back those brass knuckles

1108
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:51,360
Speaker 1: and please don't sue us. Three examples of marketing failures

1109
01:01:51,400 --> 01:01:54,480
Speaker 1: on e A's part. Now, there are plenty of other

1110
01:01:54,560 --> 01:01:57,280
Speaker 1: examples of e A coming out and apologizing or not

1111
01:01:57,640 --> 01:02:01,240
Speaker 1: apologizing for something, like when they won the America's Worst

1112
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:03,360
Speaker 1: Company the second time. There was a blog post that

1113
01:02:03,440 --> 01:02:06,120
Speaker 1: essentially said we can do better, but a lot of

1114
01:02:06,200 --> 01:02:10,560
Speaker 1: people viewed it as kind of a backhanded slap at gamers,

1115
01:02:10,800 --> 01:02:14,320
Speaker 1: and not not like so much as owning up to problems,

1116
01:02:14,400 --> 01:02:18,360
Speaker 1: but rather saying, uh, you know, people perceive it as this,

1117
01:02:18,480 --> 01:02:22,680
Speaker 1: so we can change their perception. So uh and I'm

1118
01:02:22,720 --> 01:02:26,240
Speaker 1: paraphrasing obviously, sure, but but nonetheless it no, they they've

1119
01:02:26,280 --> 01:02:28,680
Speaker 1: they've not always had the best attitude about that sort

1120
01:02:28,680 --> 01:02:31,000
Speaker 1: of thing, or at least that seems to be the

1121
01:02:31,080 --> 01:02:33,800
Speaker 1: implication anyway, you know, because we're all reading this through

1122
01:02:33,880 --> 01:02:36,240
Speaker 1: our own lens, and perhaps the way they intended it

1123
01:02:36,320 --> 01:02:39,640
Speaker 1: and the way that we're interpreting it are just wildly different. Oh. Absolutely,

1124
01:02:39,680 --> 01:02:44,000
Speaker 1: And you know, and it's an understanding, understandably upsetting situation

1125
01:02:44,120 --> 01:02:45,800
Speaker 1: to be in um to to have to be the

1126
01:02:45,800 --> 01:02:48,760
Speaker 1: company's representative coming off of something like that. Yeah, there's

1127
01:02:48,840 --> 01:02:51,200
Speaker 1: there's ever you know, it's you know that that's the

1128
01:02:51,280 --> 01:02:52,800
Speaker 1: kind of thing that if if I had to write that,

1129
01:02:52,960 --> 01:02:55,040
Speaker 1: I would draft it like nine and a half times

1130
01:02:55,080 --> 01:02:56,760
Speaker 1: and get everyone in the office to read it and

1131
01:02:56,840 --> 01:02:58,800
Speaker 1: make sure there was absolutely no way that it could

1132
01:02:58,800 --> 01:03:01,840
Speaker 1: be perceived as being negative to the fans that I

1133
01:03:01,920 --> 01:03:04,400
Speaker 1: had piste off. So much to begin with. Yeah, that's fair,

1134
01:03:05,000 --> 01:03:08,840
Speaker 1: and that wraps up this classic episode of text Stuff.

1135
01:03:09,280 --> 01:03:12,080
Speaker 1: Almost forgot the name of my own show, The Electronic

1136
01:03:12,280 --> 01:03:14,560
Speaker 1: Arts Story Part two, As I said, I'll have to

1137
01:03:14,640 --> 01:03:17,680
Speaker 1: do another part. I might even just go and do

1138
01:03:17,960 --> 01:03:21,240
Speaker 1: a full redo of the story from beginning to end,

1139
01:03:21,280 --> 01:03:23,560
Speaker 1: because I do a much deeper dive these days than

1140
01:03:23,640 --> 01:03:26,640
Speaker 1: I did back in those days. So if you guys

1141
01:03:26,680 --> 01:03:28,960
Speaker 1: would like me to do that, If you have suggestions

1142
01:03:29,000 --> 01:03:32,520
Speaker 1: for other topics, maybe there's another company or technology or

1143
01:03:32,560 --> 01:03:34,280
Speaker 1: a trend or something you would love me to cover

1144
01:03:34,440 --> 01:03:37,160
Speaker 1: on tech Stuff, reach out to me. The handle both

1145
01:03:37,200 --> 01:03:40,360
Speaker 1: at Facebook and on Twitter is tech Stuff hs W

1146
01:03:40,600 --> 01:03:49,200
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff

1147
01:03:49,320 --> 01:03:52,440
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from

1148
01:03:52,480 --> 01:03:56,240
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

1149
01:03:56,400 --> 01:04:00,360
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Three