Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Looks Dot coming every Hey there, everyone, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren and we
Speaker 1: want to get into the second part on our look
Speaker 1: at e A Electronic Arts. Now, as I recall, we
Speaker 1: left off in nineteen in our last episode, that is correct,
Speaker 1: and Trip Hawkins the third had just departed the company
Speaker 1: that he had founded to go and work on three
Speaker 1: D O a and ultimately failed game console that was
Speaker 1: perhaps ahead of its time. He later described the decision
Speaker 1: as as having two children, one a teenager and one
Speaker 1: an infant needing open heart surgery. That yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: thing that he said, so subtle, Mr Hawkins, Um, well,
Speaker 1: and you know it was again the three D. Oh.
Speaker 1: I think the problem was again it was ahead of
Speaker 1: its time. It was it was a very expensive console,
Speaker 1: and ultimately people could argue that that the lack of
Speaker 1: compelling games also really hurt it in those early days. Ably,
Speaker 1: But it debuted like four D N dollars, which at
Speaker 1: the time, yeah, well, I mean you know, yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean you look at it in today's dollars, it
Speaker 1: would be a bunch more right, right, right, yes, but
Speaker 1: a console today coming out of four not unusual at all,
Speaker 1: although again inflation makes that different. But the point I'm
Speaker 1: trying to make is that it was the sort of
Speaker 1: console that we see today. It was the kind of
Speaker 1: consulate was an entertainment center. Anyway, he had moved on
Speaker 1: nine two. Also, one thing I didn't mention at the
Speaker 1: end of the last podcast was that was the year
Speaker 1: e A purchased Origin Systems, and that's the game company
Speaker 1: that was founded by Richard Garriott, the guy who created
Speaker 1: the Ultimate series, and they also had an other series.
Speaker 1: They had Jame's Combat simulate simulators. They also had the
Speaker 1: Wing Commander series, and so that was a big move
Speaker 1: on their part. But then we move on into and
Speaker 1: that's when the three D O console actually hit the market. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then e A also released the first Need for
Speaker 1: Speed for the three D O. Because e A was
Speaker 1: actually a partner in that three D O console experiment,
Speaker 1: they were not the whole owners of that, which I
Speaker 1: guess in retrospect, I'm sure the company thinks is a
Speaker 1: good thing. But they were partners, so it wasn't like
Speaker 1: Hawkins had severed all ties once he left e A. Uh. Now, again,
Speaker 1: We're not going to mention every single release that Electronics
Speaker 1: Arts had um Electronic Arts I should say had throughout
Speaker 1: their history. It would be ridiculous. And you'd also get
Speaker 1: tired of hearing a say FIFA, uh like or fourtieth
Speaker 1: time we say FIFA. You just that word? First of all,
Speaker 1: I didn't. If you're in the United States, you're probably thinking,
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means. And even if you're not,
Speaker 1: after you've heard it that many times, it's starts to
Speaker 1: lose all meeting and become something of a cone that
Speaker 1: we were just saying over and over to achieve enlightenment.
Speaker 1: But so I don't have anything for for ninety four, Lauren,
Speaker 1: do you? I don't want to skip over you if
Speaker 1: you've got anything that was That was actually the year
Speaker 1: that Hawkins resigned as chairman of the board for e A. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now he had actually not just left as the CEO,
Speaker 1: but also left the board of directors. Uh inve e
Speaker 1: A acquired a company called bull Frog, which was a
Speaker 1: game development studio in the United Kingdom, and they were
Speaker 1: known for a couple of different series, their theme park
Speaker 1: series and their series called Populus. Did you ever see Populous, Lauren,
Speaker 1: I did not see Populous. I did play some of
Speaker 1: the theme parks. Okay, well, Populus was a game where
Speaker 1: it puts you in the role essentially as as like
Speaker 1: a god, and it was your job to try and
Speaker 1: shape landscape so that people could film stuff and worship you. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: this this is what Yeah, indeed, I was about to
Speaker 1: say that this is what I think back and White,
Speaker 1: because that was the same studio later on Black and White.
Speaker 1: Definitely was was something that was inspired by the populist games.
Speaker 1: You could definitely tell that Populus was was not quite
Speaker 1: as sophisticated as that. And you know, there were, uh,
Speaker 1: there were different ways of winning Populace. You had opponents
Speaker 1: that would also have their own worshippers, and you were
Speaker 1: trying to dominate the world. So if you wanted to
Speaker 1: go over to the your opponent's side when your opponent
Speaker 1: wasn't looking, and start digging down until all of the
Speaker 1: villages were submerged in water and all the little villagers drowned,
Speaker 1: and it was both entertaining and horrifying at the same time.
Speaker 1: All of these series, by the way, we're serious that
Speaker 1: he had published and so um so the acquisition of
Speaker 1: bull Frog was kind of a good following steps since
Speaker 1: they had done pretty well. Right yeah, now now he
Speaker 1: has decided that they want this as an actual part
Speaker 1: of their development team, not just a title that they published.
Speaker 1: Once bull Frog joined the A, they the division began
Speaker 1: to develop the Dungeon Keepers series, which reached some acclaim
Speaker 1: I thought, I always thought it was a very entertaining series.
Speaker 1: And that same year, in ninety the Sega Saturn platform launches,
Speaker 1: and so does a platform that would become one of
Speaker 1: the most disruptive platforms in video game console history because
Speaker 1: at this point, Nintendo is pretty much the heavy hitter.
Speaker 1: I mean, Nintendo is owning video game consoles. Sega keeps
Speaker 1: coming out with consoles that from a specs perspective might
Speaker 1: beat out whatever the Nintendo console is at that time.
Speaker 1: But but just but just that the games, the programming
Speaker 1: that was going on for Nintendo was incredible, right yeah,
Speaker 1: the Nintendo had all the momentum, so Sega, while it
Speaker 1: had its fans, just didn't have nearly as many as
Speaker 1: Nintendo did. Well. Was also when we saw Sony get
Speaker 1: into the game with the PlayStation console, and that really
Speaker 1: shook things up, you know, a CD based console that
Speaker 1: was had far more graphic ability than the Nintendo consoles
Speaker 1: did uh, And that that gave e A a lot
Speaker 1: of opportunities as well to develop for yet another platform,
Speaker 1: because remember e A wants there to be as many
Speaker 1: platforms as possible, because it means that no single platform
Speaker 1: has enough power to tell e A what to do. Um.
Speaker 1: And then e A also starts to port several three
Speaker 1: d O titles to the Saga, Saturn, and Sony PlayStation
Speaker 1: platforms in order to take advantage of the thirty two
Speaker 1: bit processing power. So in this sense, they didn't have
Speaker 1: to develop new titles. They just had to retool these
Speaker 1: titles for the three D OH so that they would
Speaker 1: work on these other systems. Now, I say, just that's
Speaker 1: still a pretty big thing to have to do, but
Speaker 1: it does. It's different from having to build a game
Speaker 1: from the ground much. You don't have to go through
Speaker 1: the whole conceptual phase at all. Uh, I don't have
Speaker 1: anything for ninety six, so we're gonna go right into
Speaker 1: ninety seven. Sounds good. So e A and n acquires
Speaker 1: Maxis And this is this is a big one, folks,
Speaker 1: because this is the company that was responsible for sim City.
Speaker 1: The first sim City game came out in mind, so
Speaker 1: almost a decade earlier, right and uh and since then
Speaker 1: will write who is who's the designer for Maxis had
Speaker 1: had been making all kinds of all kinds of related
Speaker 1: titles as sim Earth, Sam Aunt. Yeah. I was a
Speaker 1: big fantasy man. Yeah yeah. On the on the s
Speaker 1: N E S it was. It was great Aunt simulation. Man,
Speaker 1: I got it. Sounds so goofy and I had so
Speaker 1: much fun playing it. I'm not going to argue with
Speaker 1: the goofy part, but hey, I like lots of goofy stuff,
Speaker 1: so I am not one to talk. And once e
Speaker 1: A acquires Maxis, that's when will Wright starts to work
Speaker 1: on a game that would become an important part of
Speaker 1: e A's arsenal. In fact, you could argue it's the
Speaker 1: most important game that e A ever came out with,
Speaker 1: and that is the SIMS. So will Wright starts to
Speaker 1: work on the SIMS back in ninety seven. It would
Speaker 1: be a few years before that game would come out.
Speaker 1: E A also gets into the online gaming market. They
Speaker 1: launch Ultima Online, which was one of the earliest, at
Speaker 1: least one of the earliest successful massively multi player online
Speaker 1: role playing games in the Western Hemisphere. So Ultimate Online
Speaker 1: goes live and starts to prove the model that online
Speaker 1: gaming could be a thing. Keeping in mind this is
Speaker 1: before broadband penetration had really spread out throughout the United States. Uh,
Speaker 1: there were people who are playing this on dial ups.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Uh. And so it was, you know,
Speaker 1: this was the earliest days of that, and it was
Speaker 1: before really in those days it came down to Ultimate
Speaker 1: Online or ever Quest. Those were the two big names,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't be until the world of Warcraft that
Speaker 1: that dynamic gets really shaken up UM, and you had
Speaker 1: people who were hardcore fans of one and hated the
Speaker 1: other anyway. That same year, nine seven, bull Frog chief
Speaker 1: Peter Mullineaux leaves e A to start a new studio,
Speaker 1: and supposedly one of the reasons he left was that
Speaker 1: he felt that e A was getting two hands on
Speaker 1: on in game development, that they were interfering too much
Speaker 1: in the actual development of games, and that he felt
Speaker 1: that the pressure was to establish a game and then
Speaker 1: just churn out sequels, right right, And this is a
Speaker 1: UM is in direct opposition to ease original mode of operation,
Speaker 1: wherein they were they were treating game developers with extreme
Speaker 1: respect and kind of letting them do whatever they wanted
Speaker 1: on the principle that whatever they wanted would be awesome. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But but since then had, as we discussed in our
Speaker 1: previous episode, decided that um that, yeah, the that the
Speaker 1: real way to go is to create brands and and
Speaker 1: really am push the brand, find a brand that resonates
Speaker 1: with an audience, and then all you have to do
Speaker 1: is keep on creating uh sequels to that and that,
Speaker 1: and people will buy it because you've established an audience
Speaker 1: for it. This is not an unusual idea. We see
Speaker 1: it all across video games. I mean you could think
Speaker 1: another media too, of course. Yeah, you can think of
Speaker 1: dozens of franchises that exists only and you can look
Speaker 1: at entries to various franchises where you think this really
Speaker 1: didn't live up to what the original was or what
Speaker 1: later entries were. This was clearly something where a company
Speaker 1: was trying to cash in on a previously existing title.
Speaker 1: Um and in some cases it's it can be the
Speaker 1: death of a franchise or or even an entire company.
Speaker 1: Well then moving on, in n Electronic Arts moves its
Speaker 1: headquarters from San Mateo to Redwood City, and e A
Speaker 1: also acquires yet another company, Westwood Studios, which was the
Speaker 1: company that developed the Command and Conqueror series, which are
Speaker 1: real time strategy games. UM. I'm terrible at real time
Speaker 1: strategy games. I'm just I can't. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: have a brain from either. I can't. I can't manage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I cannot manage that many assets. I can't keep track
Speaker 1: of everything. Obviously, if I were going up against Kirk
Speaker 1: and Spock, they would be able to defeat me because
Speaker 1: I can't think three dimensionally. UM. Also, UM Electronic Arts
Speaker 1: formed a partnership with Square, being the Japanese game company
Speaker 1: that's that's most famous for for RPGs like say Final Fantasy.
Speaker 1: You might have heard of it. UM and UH, Square
Speaker 1: and and e A worked out the steal. They formed
Speaker 1: a Square e A here in the States and e
Speaker 1: A Square over in Japan. UH. The idea being to
Speaker 1: transfer titles that were happening in each place to the
Speaker 1: other and and see see how they did. You know,
Speaker 1: try to try to bring stuff that wasn't being seen
Speaker 1: in each country over to the other, as there were
Speaker 1: I think, especially in the Final Fantasy series, if I'm
Speaker 1: not mistaken. There were a couple of entries in the
Speaker 1: Final Fantasy series that happened in Japan that at that
Speaker 1: point had never been seen in the United States. Correct
Speaker 1: and uh and and people were you know, urpgs had
Speaker 1: a little bit of a cult following over here. But
Speaker 1: but none of the really big cool titles were coming
Speaker 1: over and so and so. So I meant that you
Speaker 1: had to have like a Japanese game console, and then
Speaker 1: you had to import the titles because of course, the
Speaker 1: the media for the Japanese consoles would not work on
Speaker 1: the United States. It literally would not play correct. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, aside from the fact that you would have
Speaker 1: to learn Japanese in order to play them very effectively,
Speaker 1: which is a whole other issue. But um but yeah,
Speaker 1: so so each square e A and A Square each
Speaker 1: had a stake in the other um which which which
Speaker 1: is an interesting fun business model. And uh. In that
Speaker 1: same year, they brought um Bashida Blade to Parasite Eve
Speaker 1: and Zeno Gears all to the American market for the PlayStation.
Speaker 1: Huh wow. So another big move on e A's part.
Speaker 1: Also kind of interesting to see a an alliance in
Speaker 1: the video game world. Uh. Some people would call that,
Speaker 1: UH frightening, because you know, when you're talking about being
Speaker 1: such a big power player and you already have a
Speaker 1: reputation for scooping up smaller companies and then to make
Speaker 1: an alliance with another big company, just that starts to
Speaker 1: make other people feel really nervous. Kind of nervous. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In seven years, after e A had acquired Origin Systems,
Speaker 1: Richard Garriott, who was the founder of Origin, leaves e A.
Speaker 1: He had finished work on Ultimate nine, which was the
Speaker 1: final UH entry into the Ultimate series. Besides the online
Speaker 1: stuff and UH, he also seems to feel very similar
Speaker 1: to the way other people who departed e A felt
Speaker 1: that that it was just it was not the most
Speaker 1: ideal creative environment, right. Apparently a bunch of his former
Speaker 1: team members, of former Ultimate team members felt very much
Speaker 1: the same way, because after e A canceled Ultimate Online
Speaker 1: to UM at the time, a bunch of a bunch
Speaker 1: of them jumped ship to go join Garriott at the
Speaker 1: new company that he had formed, Destination Games. UH. Garriott
Speaker 1: would not see very much success here in the United
Speaker 1: States over the next several years, but recently interesting thing
Speaker 1: is that he had a kick started campaign for a
Speaker 1: new game that is inspired by his old Ultimate series
Speaker 1: and the kickstarter funded in like two days, it was,
Speaker 1: and then went on to meet lots and lots of
Speaker 1: stretch goals. Anyway back to E A. H. Still in
Speaker 1: they published their first Medal of Honor game, which is
Speaker 1: again another one of those big franchises that UM that
Speaker 1: they're very well known for, and that debuted on the
Speaker 1: PlayStation platform. UH. And that same year, Sega debuts a
Speaker 1: new video game console called the Dreamcastcast. I own a Dreamcast.
Speaker 1: I like it a lot. I actually got my Dreamcast
Speaker 1: after the Dreamcast had already run its course and was
Speaker 1: no longer in production. UH. And I inherited a lot
Speaker 1: of games from a friend of mine who was not
Speaker 1: really playing them anymore. And you know, I think Dreamcast
Speaker 1: it's another one of those things where we've done an
Speaker 1: episode of about Sega. We did a full thing about
Speaker 1: Sega's uh successes, and it's it's notable failures and it's interesting. Again,
Speaker 1: the Dreamcast was one of those consoles that was phenomenal.
Speaker 1: It performed really well, particularly if you stacked it up
Speaker 1: against its competitors, but it just, you know, it just
Speaker 1: never never, It never cut onto the to the extent
Speaker 1: that it needed to in order for viable platform. I
Speaker 1: think it was a little bit niche for for the
Speaker 1: for the mainstream American market real time especially um. Also
Speaker 1: that year was when Square e A put out the
Speaker 1: Final Fantasy Anthology, which brought some of those games that
Speaker 1: had not been published yet in America over here. So
Speaker 1: in in two thousand, that's when the SIMS debuts, and
Speaker 1: it is a huge success, and it really gave U
Speaker 1: e A a access to a brand new audience, which
Speaker 1: we usually referred to as women. It turned out, it
Speaker 1: turned out that they didn't know at the time when
Speaker 1: they were producing the SIMS. They had no idea that
Speaker 1: was going to resonate with a female audience. And in fact,
Speaker 1: when they were first building the SIMS, it was just
Speaker 1: going to be a a way of building homes. And
Speaker 1: then they created these little virtual characters to inhabit the
Speaker 1: homes and realized that it was way more interesting to
Speaker 1: see what the virtual characters were up to than to
Speaker 1: build out the houses. So that's when the SIMS focus
Speaker 1: shifted to these virtual people, and your job was to
Speaker 1: give them as much of a life as you possibly could,
Speaker 1: which became increasingly difficult than the game where you're thinking,
Speaker 1: I don't have enough time. That's just like real life.
Speaker 1: I don't have enough hours to give this person a
Speaker 1: good job and a and a satisfying social life, still
Speaker 1: have them go to the bathroom without having a terrible
Speaker 1: accident in the middle of the living room. But uh, Anyway,
Speaker 1: it was a huge performer, and they immediately started to
Speaker 1: to develop expansion packs for the SIMS and also go
Speaker 1: into development for the sequels to the SIMS, because, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was clear they had touched the nerve. And that's
Speaker 1: also the year in two thousand, that's when Sony launched
Speaker 1: the PlayStation two. Yeah. Um. Meanwhile, back on the PlayStation one,
Speaker 1: Square e A put out Crymo Cross that year, which
Speaker 1: is my the only RPG that I've ever played all
Speaker 1: the way through. I'm not really an RPG person. I
Speaker 1: love that game with a burning and fiery passion. It is.
Speaker 1: It is the best. Um. But but I think that
Speaker 1: it's interesting that, uh. I mean, although it had been
Speaker 1: out already in Japan, I think it. You know, they
Speaker 1: were like, no, that's PlayStation two, whatever, this one's fine
Speaker 1: on the PS. It'll still sell really well. And Sony
Speaker 1: was very good about supporting their old consoles even when
Speaker 1: they're introducing a new one. PlayStation two games were developed
Speaker 1: for the PlayStation two well after PlayStation three debuts, so um,
Speaker 1: they have a very different strategy compared to say Microsoft.
Speaker 1: And speaking of Microsoft, in two thousand one, that's when
Speaker 1: Microsoft launched the Xbox, So now we have even more
Speaker 1: competition in the video game console world. At this point,
Speaker 1: e is just having kittens. Nintendo launched the game Cube,
Speaker 1: and EA starts developed games for all the three major
Speaker 1: console platforms, which of course does not include Sad Trombone.
Speaker 1: So Xbox, PlayStation two, and GameCube are all great platforms
Speaker 1: for e A to develop for. They just they see
Speaker 1: there as endless opportunity. So uh. They then that same
Speaker 1: year closed the Bullfrog division of e A. Now this
Speaker 1: this kind of brings us to another thing that people
Speaker 1: have criticized e A for, not just the fact that
Speaker 1: they bought up companies, but that they would later go
Speaker 1: on to close them when they realized that they weren't
Speaker 1: performing quite as well as they want to. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: just the things weren't working out, And a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who worked for these divisions came out and
Speaker 1: said well, the reason things didn't work out is because
Speaker 1: they were so adamant on us producing a brand and
Speaker 1: just concentrating on that brand as opposed to letting us
Speaker 1: develop do what we do, which is developed games. And
Speaker 1: so you have this series of stories of all these
Speaker 1: different divisions being or different companies rather being bought up
Speaker 1: and turned into divisions for e A later getting closed.
Speaker 1: Um that some would say that all e A was
Speaker 1: really doing was buying up competition and shutting it down.
Speaker 1: You know that that ultimately that's what turned out to
Speaker 1: be the case. Uh oh yeah. Whether or not it
Speaker 1: was intentional is absolutely you know. That's that's that's completely
Speaker 1: beside the point. It didn't matter if it was intentional
Speaker 1: or not. That was the effect, right, So, uh it was.
Speaker 1: It was kind of rough. And around that same time,
Speaker 1: e A starts to make licensing agreements to make games
Speaker 1: based on films and other properties. Uh. These included big
Speaker 1: name properties like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Godfather,
Speaker 1: and James Bond. I think that that fits in really
Speaker 1: well with their strategy of of latching onto brands and
Speaker 1: not necessarily producing the best games because a lot of
Speaker 1: those titles, especially in those early days were not not playable.
Speaker 1: I mean, and and that's that that goes back all
Speaker 1: the way, you know, and any film title game is
Speaker 1: kind of spotty. There. There are a lot of times
Speaker 1: where I feel like like companies rely very heavily on
Speaker 1: the name of the franchise to sell copies, and so
Speaker 1: they're for the amount of time and effort you need
Speaker 1: to go in and build a very compelling game sometimes
Speaker 1: slips through the cracks, so um, you know, in that case,
Speaker 1: you end up getting these games that are based on
Speaker 1: these beloved franchises, but they failed to really live up
Speaker 1: to gamer expectations. This happens. I mean, you can spend
Speaker 1: hours naming all the superhero games that just didn't live
Speaker 1: up to expectations. Not you know, there are a few
Speaker 1: that have been phenomenal, but they are way more that weren't.
Speaker 1: So it's not not a problem that only e A possesses. Certainly,
Speaker 1: certainly not. Also in two thousand and one, I should
Speaker 1: put in that um square A put out Final Fantasy ten,
Speaker 1: So that was that was one of those I remember
Speaker 1: seeing the previous for Final Fantasy ten when that was
Speaker 1: coming out and thinking that that looked like a particularly
Speaker 1: beautiful game at that time. But things have changed. It
Speaker 1: doesn't Things that were once the most gorgeous thing you
Speaker 1: could imagine have not necessarily aged. Well, do you have
Speaker 1: anything for two two? I do not excellent. Two thousand three,
Speaker 1: e A shuts down Westwood Studios and moves all the
Speaker 1: remaining stuff to e A's Los Angeles studio. The Westwood
Speaker 1: was in Las Vegas, and so they shut that one down.
Speaker 1: So there's another example. They did not keep everybody. They
Speaker 1: laid off quite a few people, but the people who
Speaker 1: did remain were then moved to Los Angeles. UH. And
Speaker 1: then two thousand four, wait, Lauren, I didn't see your
Speaker 1: high sign. My bad. We have we have an intricate
Speaker 1: system of hand signals going on in the background here,
Speaker 1: I know. Two thousand three, UH Square decided UM their
Speaker 1: their relationship with EA had been slightly degraded, and also
Speaker 1: they had been UM flirting a little bit with with
Speaker 1: Enix Studios over in Japan and UH and so Square
Speaker 1: dissolved their relationship with e A, UM bought back all
Speaker 1: of their shares and formed Square Enix, which would continue
Speaker 1: to produce the rest of the series that people known
Speaker 1: for Excellent. Well excellent for them, not so great for
Speaker 1: e A. Necessarily. In two thousand four, e A went
Speaker 1: ahead and dissolved the Origin Systems division, so that was
Speaker 1: the ultimately the division that produced the Ultimate Games. That
Speaker 1: one was formally no more as of two thousand four.
Speaker 1: E A also acquired Criterion, which was that was the
Speaker 1: company that had developed the Burnout games. Anyone who's familiar
Speaker 1: with those the driving games that get really super crazy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really love those games. I'm not a big driving
Speaker 1: game kind of guy, but those particularly, they're very arcady. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're a little bit less focused on the physicalities
Speaker 1: of driving, and so if you're not a huge car
Speaker 1: buff the Burnout series, it's pretty fun. All the crashing
Speaker 1: parts other games don't let you do. Yeah, the crashing
Speaker 1: parts are pretty pretty spectacular and play a large part
Speaker 1: in most of those games. Uh and then there. That
Speaker 1: was the same year that someone on live journal who
Speaker 1: had the handle e A Spouse posted a rather uh
Speaker 1: critical post about e A, saying that they had some
Speaker 1: draconian practices as far as employment goes, that people were
Speaker 1: being forced to work super long hours six days out
Speaker 1: of the week, they weren't getting compensated for overtime. Um,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of pretty ugly accusations and eventually
Speaker 1: some uh, some spouses and some employees of e A
Speaker 1: got together and they filed a class action lawsuit, in fact,
Speaker 1: a few class action lawsuits against e A, and that
Speaker 1: ended up leading to massive changes in the A and
Speaker 1: in the industry in general, because other companies saw what
Speaker 1: was happening and they thought, we better fixed this before
Speaker 1: it happens to us. So uh. In two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: e A settled a lawsuit that was brought against it
Speaker 1: by a bunch of graphic artists and awarded the graphic
Speaker 1: artists fifteen point six million dollars in unpaid overtime. And
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, the court awarded plaintiffs of a
Speaker 1: class action lawsuit fourteen point nine million dollars and unpaid overtime.
Speaker 1: So this this is a different group. It's not the
Speaker 1: same one twice. So yeah, that was a big deal.
Speaker 1: And obviously e A did not want to court any
Speaker 1: more problems down the line, and so they started to
Speaker 1: really take a look for UH. And in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: e A purchased jam Debt Mobile. So two thousand five,
Speaker 1: this is before the iPhone comes out. EA makes its
Speaker 1: first move into the mobile gaming world, uh, for for phones,
Speaker 1: not not mobile devices like game Boy or whatever. You know.
Speaker 1: It had been developing games for platforms like that for
Speaker 1: a while, but this was the first time it started
Speaker 1: to really look into using um cell phones, not even
Speaker 1: smartphones yet as a potential gaming platform. And uh, and
Speaker 1: that was a smart move. I mean, we're seeing more
Speaker 1: and more that mobile devices are making a huge impact
Speaker 1: on the gaming industry. So that was a Whoever was
Speaker 1: the person who said we should do this was really
Speaker 1: they were really looking ahead. And that's also the year
Speaker 1: two thousand five would be the year when Microsoft launched
Speaker 1: the Xbox three sixty UM and so that that brings
Speaker 1: us about to the halfway points. So before we dive
Speaker 1: into the second half, I wanted to take a quick
Speaker 1: break and thank our sponsor. Alright, so let's see. I
Speaker 1: think according to my notes, we left off in two
Speaker 1: thousand five, So two thousand six, e A acquires Mythic Entertainment.
Speaker 1: Mythic Entertainment was responsible for the RPG, the m m
Speaker 1: O RPG Dark Age of Camelot that they viewed back
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, So now e A has decided
Speaker 1: to acquire another M M O RPG. They saw that
Speaker 1: as a way of of maintaining a steady stream of revenue.
Speaker 1: You've got all these people who are subscribing, So that
Speaker 1: was the strategy there, and that was the year the
Speaker 1: e A also acquired Digital Illusions CE better known as
Speaker 1: Dice and Dice is the company that made Battlefield nineteen two.
Speaker 1: So two thousand six is also the year that Sony
Speaker 1: launched the PlayStation three and and Nintendo launched the week exactly,
Speaker 1: both of them one year behind the Xbox three six,
Speaker 1: which had had a head start uh and uh, well
Speaker 1: not a full year, but several months behind anyway. But
Speaker 1: also what I thought was interesting was I found a
Speaker 1: statistic here from Bloomberg Business Week that said it was
Speaker 1: an article that was published in two thousand six, So
Speaker 1: that's why I put it here because we're talking about
Speaker 1: two thousand and six here. They said that from nine
Speaker 1: until present day, which at that time was two thousand six,
Speaker 1: e A averaged about one point two acquisitions per year.
Speaker 1: It was buying up more than a company per year
Speaker 1: if you average it out over those years, and that
Speaker 1: one third of the companies that had purchased in it
Speaker 1: eventually shut down. So that's again showing that that kind
Speaker 1: of trend that I talked about earlier, the criticism that
Speaker 1: the people have laid against it, saying, you're buying up
Speaker 1: these companies and when you are, uh, and you stripped
Speaker 1: the industry of the talent these people have, and then
Speaker 1: you end up closing it down when it doesn't meet
Speaker 1: whatever your performance measurements are. It's certainly not to say
Speaker 1: that those people didn't go on to do other things,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, yeah, but and it's not necessarily it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the good business model for anyone in the industry,
Speaker 1: anyone else. And the big criticism would be those those
Speaker 1: guys and those men and women could have been developing
Speaker 1: games during that time that would have potentially changed the industry,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't because they were under contract or part
Speaker 1: part of this larger organization where they had nowhere else
Speaker 1: to go at that point. Um, yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: from from e A's perspective, it's doing all the smart
Speaker 1: business moves, so they're from a gamer's perspective or an
Speaker 1: industry analysts perspective, they might say this is not good
Speaker 1: for the industry or the gamer might say this isn't
Speaker 1: good for me because I'm not getting great games out
Speaker 1: of it. E A's point of view is that this
Speaker 1: is I'm making money, yeah, solidifying my position. Money. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Money is thea when you were a business turns out?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And I know this isn't financial stuff. So
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to blow your minds there about how
Speaker 1: money is. Okay. So two thousand seven, e A acquires BioWare.
Speaker 1: BioWare made some of my favorite games of all times.
Speaker 1: Still does uh Bolter's Gate. I love the Ball's Gate games,
Speaker 1: but the kicking for just this um there's a fantastic
Speaker 1: character who has a little hamster and he shouts out
Speaker 1: random things when you go into battle with him, and
Speaker 1: it's endlessly entertaining. They also made Planescape Torment. They made
Speaker 1: the Star Wars Nights the Old Republic games Cotour, which
Speaker 1: again I was a huge fan of the Cotour games.
Speaker 1: They made Mass Effect, which I've played a little bit of.
Speaker 1: I never played it all the way through, and that
Speaker 1: Frederick would probably hit me if he were in the
Speaker 1: room because it's actually his copy of the game that
Speaker 1: I have and I haven't returned it. Yet um that
Speaker 1: year they also acquired Pandemic Studios, which was the company
Speaker 1: that brought us Star Wars battle Front and also the
Speaker 1: game Destroy All Humans, as well as some other titles.
Speaker 1: And that was the year that that Probst steps down
Speaker 1: as CEO. He had been CEO since Hawkins had left
Speaker 1: the company. It was supposed to be more temporary than that,
Speaker 1: wasn't it. I think I believe so. But he he
Speaker 1: had led the company throughout those years, uh so from
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, and he's still on the board,
Speaker 1: but he ends up stepping down and John Richie Tello Tello,
Speaker 1: I guess it should say Richie Tello becomes the new CEO,
Speaker 1: and he says the company's going to undergo a reorganization
Speaker 1: to address the problems they've had where they've been acquiring
Speaker 1: and trying to assimilate and then shutting down all these
Speaker 1: different companies that they've been going after over the years. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is an issue that all
Speaker 1: big companies have. If you acquire a company, there's always
Speaker 1: a culture shock era that follow it because unless the
Speaker 1: two companies are practically ideally well aligned, yeah, that's there's
Speaker 1: going to be culture shock so sometimes a company does
Speaker 1: this so quickly that they the there's never that period
Speaker 1: that you need to adjust and have things work out.
Speaker 1: So he was saying, let's take the time to really
Speaker 1: look at how our company is structured and make sure
Speaker 1: that it makes sense. That was his That was his
Speaker 1: statement from the the get go when he started right.
Speaker 1: Also unrelated to that, but in addition to the other
Speaker 1: games that they published that year, that was the year
Speaker 1: that they published harm Nix's Rock Band along with MTV Huge, huge,
Speaker 1: huge title. I mean, you know, Guitar Hero had been
Speaker 1: in the years before already kind of uh had revolutionized
Speaker 1: the idea of rhythm games on consoles, and Rock Band
Speaker 1: ended up taking that and dialing it up to eleven.
Speaker 1: As spinel Tap would love to say, and uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've had a blast playing Rock Band. Even though I adore,
Speaker 1: I adore the series. It's terrific. My musical talent is
Speaker 1: is pretty negligible, but I still, you know, any game
Speaker 1: that makes you feel like a rock star is pretty
Speaker 1: pretty cool. It is it is, And also karaoke in
Speaker 1: your own home is pretty cool. And also a little
Speaker 1: cheat boxes that allow you to hook up real electronic
Speaker 1: drum sets to the game and actually rock out. It's
Speaker 1: pretty neat, pretty neat. Yeah. So we then move on
Speaker 1: into two thousand eight where e A has a an
Speaker 1: attempt to acquire another big name, Take two Interactive, which
Speaker 1: you know gamers will wreck unize that it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: famous studio. So e A made a move to acquire
Speaker 1: take to Take two turned down the initial offer that
Speaker 1: e A made, and then uh, the negotiations kind of
Speaker 1: got a little quiet, but everyone kept an eye on
Speaker 1: this because they were really wondering if e A was
Speaker 1: in fact going to acquire yet another company, and some
Speaker 1: people were really worried about what the fate of Take
Speaker 1: two would be. Yeah. I think that part of the
Speaker 1: reason that it fell through was also that the the
Speaker 1: economic crisis that year, yeah hit them really hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So e A's attempt to acquire Take two fails, and
Speaker 1: that year the entire world entered into an economic crisis
Speaker 1: and it affected lots of industries, you know, real estate
Speaker 1: being the big famous one in the United States, banking
Speaker 1: as well, but it also hit companies like e A
Speaker 1: and UH. E A end up announcing that was going
Speaker 1: to cut more than a thousand positions across all of
Speaker 1: its divisions, which ended up being around ten to eleven
Speaker 1: of its workforce, and that the company lost over six
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars in the last quarter of two thousand
Speaker 1: eight due to accommodation of the economic crisis and just
Speaker 1: the fact that it's game releases had not performed very
Speaker 1: well in the market at all um and there their
Speaker 1: stock took a big tumble. So in August fifteen, of
Speaker 1: of two thousand eight, their stock was valued at forty
Speaker 1: eight dollars and twenty four cents per share. By December
Speaker 1: twenty six, of two thousand eight, it had fallen to
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars and thirty two cents per share. So, uh,
Speaker 1: not not quite losing half its value, just under at drop,
Speaker 1: but it's a whole bunch. Yeah, that's that's terrible, and
Speaker 1: it really what it signaled was that investors had lost
Speaker 1: a lot of confidence in the company. Now, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: the value of your company is based upon how many
Speaker 1: stocks are out there. If you're a publicly traded company,
Speaker 1: the value of your company in part at least is
Speaker 1: determined by how many stocks you have, and how how
Speaker 1: many stocks are out there in the market and what
Speaker 1: they're the actual value of each stock is. So you
Speaker 1: kind of multiply those two numbers together and you get
Speaker 1: a rough estimate of what the value of the company is. Well,
Speaker 1: when you lose your stock price, that means that your
Speaker 1: company is losing its value more or less oversimplifying, but
Speaker 1: that more or less is what it means. Well, two
Speaker 1: eight wasn't all bad. They did come out with a
Speaker 1: game that ended up getting a lot of critical acclaim
Speaker 1: and a lot of fans, which was Dead Space. I
Speaker 1: was never a big Dead Space player, but I know
Speaker 1: some people who can recite everything about that game, including
Speaker 1: all the little hidden stuff that you had to find
Speaker 1: to get the backstory. Also in the negative column that
Speaker 1: was two thousand eight was a year that they were
Speaker 1: hit with a class action lawsuit over the undisclosed edition
Speaker 1: of a secure ROM DRM software along with games like
Speaker 1: Spore for the Piece, E and M. And the lawsuit
Speaker 1: was about the fact that they had included this this
Speaker 1: this UH digital rights management software without telling anyone about it,
Speaker 1: that it was separate from the game software, and that
Speaker 1: it was basically impossible to uninstall even after you had
Speaker 1: uninstalled the video game. Ye so e A was falling
Speaker 1: under the same trap that Sony did, where, in an
Speaker 1: effort to try and keep its intellectual property safe, it
Speaker 1: had kind of over not kind of it overstepped. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. The point was to prevent people from from
Speaker 1: installing it more than I think it was eight times,
Speaker 1: three times, six times. It all depends number of times, right, right, Well,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you know, someone who
Speaker 1: buys the game, their argument is I should be able
Speaker 1: to install this as many times as I want, because
Speaker 1: you know, if I buy a new computer, I want
Speaker 1: to be able to transfer the stuff I own onto
Speaker 1: that computer. It's not that I'm you know, installing it
Speaker 1: on all my friends machines. I just want to be
Speaker 1: able to play my game. And the other argument against
Speaker 1: that is that we don't want you to install this
Speaker 1: somehow your friends machines. Right uh. In In other DRM
Speaker 1: news that year, that was the year that UM the
Speaker 1: e A announced plans to require PC owners of things
Speaker 1: like Mass Effect and Sport to authenticate their copies every
Speaker 1: ten days, even if they were playing the game offline. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um and this this is this becomes a common thread
Speaker 1: in e A as well. This idea of having either
Speaker 1: a persistent Internet connection or at least using the Internet
Speaker 1: every now and then to again verify that you have
Speaker 1: a legitimate copy of the game. So not only would
Speaker 1: you have to retain whatever the disc was, you would
Speaker 1: have to have that in your machine. You would have
Speaker 1: to then make a connection to the internet, and then
Speaker 1: the Internet would make sure that that, in fact was
Speaker 1: your registered copy so that you could play the game
Speaker 1: you wanted. Even if you were able to just move
Speaker 1: everything on the game into your computer and it's a
Speaker 1: single player game, you still had to do that. And
Speaker 1: a lot of players objected. Yeah, yeah, especially you know
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. You know, most people had had pretty
Speaker 1: good Internet connections at that point. It was getting better,
Speaker 1: but not everyone wanted to be connected to the Internet
Speaker 1: all the time. And you know, the people who bought
Speaker 1: the game pointed out that this was really a hassle
Speaker 1: for the legitimate game player, and people who were pirate
Speaker 1: into the game were breaking this encryption. They were using
Speaker 1: keys that would allow them to right so that they
Speaker 1: wouldn't they didn't have to offer a kid. They were
Speaker 1: playing pirated copies that they got for free that didn't
Speaker 1: have this drm in it. And so the players, the
Speaker 1: legitimate players who had bought the games say it said, look,
Speaker 1: you're only punishing us. You're not you're not stopping piracy,
Speaker 1: and you're making the game a miserable experience for the
Speaker 1: people who actually paid to play it. Yeah. This this
Speaker 1: never did go into effect, this particular bit of of
Speaker 1: d r M on the side. They relented pretty quickly
Speaker 1: after community feedback, which was highly highly negative as you
Speaker 1: can imagine. They however, did not learn their lesson from it,
Speaker 1: because they would they would incorporate it again in the future.
Speaker 1: H two thousand nine, e A acquires a play Fish,
Speaker 1: which was a developer of casual games. They had seen
Speaker 1: how Louis was doing and they thought let's get in
Speaker 1: on that as well. Um. They also went ahead and
Speaker 1: cut another fifteen hundred employees, which was about sevent of
Speaker 1: its workforce, and they shut down Pandemic Studios that year.
Speaker 1: So yet another example of them acquiring and then shutting
Speaker 1: down a company. Uh and next, I don't have anything
Speaker 1: for me neither, but inn In the summer they acquired
Speaker 1: PopCap Oh wow, yeah, another casual games developer, so lots
Speaker 1: of lots of mobile content all that. Yeah, who own
Speaker 1: like The Jeweled and stuff like that? Right, They also
Speaker 1: released Star Wars the Old Republic, which was a Star
Speaker 1: Wars based m m O RPG. Uh. Now, we had
Speaker 1: one person asked us if we could talk more about
Speaker 1: Star Wars the Old Republic and why did it move
Speaker 1: from a subscription based service too free to play with
Speaker 1: micro transactions, and and how you know, what's the story
Speaker 1: of its failure if you want to look at it
Speaker 1: in that way? All right? As so, I actually played
Speaker 1: Star Wars the Old Republic. I I subscribed. I was
Speaker 1: one of the subscribers. I was one of the people
Speaker 1: who got who rolled his eyes when I heard that
Speaker 1: was going to free to play because I had actually
Speaker 1: bought a I think it was like a twelve month
Speaker 1: subscription in advance. But so Star Wars the Old Republic
Speaker 1: takes place thousands of years before the events of the
Speaker 1: Star Wars movie series. Um. But it puts you in
Speaker 1: either a a Sith role or a Republic role, and
Speaker 1: you have different storylines that we play out based upon
Speaker 1: the type of character you were playing. I think part
Speaker 1: of the problem was that it, even though it was
Speaker 1: an m m O RPG, more frequently than not it
Speaker 1: felt to me like a single player game. It felt
Speaker 1: like another sequel to Cotur, which isn't a bad thing.
Speaker 1: The Coach board game were great. I very much enjoyed them,
Speaker 1: even though the second Cotur game obviously had an entire
Speaker 1: section that was left unfinished because you could see it
Speaker 1: on your map, but you couldn't get to it in
Speaker 1: uh in the actual game. Anyway, the Old Republic felt
Speaker 1: like another sequel to that. It didn't feel as much
Speaker 1: like an M M O RPG. You didn't have as
Speaker 1: many people partying up together and kind of interactions that
Speaker 1: you would normally expect from and not after the initial launched,
Speaker 1: Like there was a lot of interest in it very
Speaker 1: early on, but that kind of dropped off quickly. And
Speaker 1: part of the problem was that people were completing the
Speaker 1: storylines for the characters very very quickly, and once you
Speaker 1: did that, you didn't really have any incentive to keep playing.
Speaker 1: So it was just like if you had played a
Speaker 1: single player game all the way through and then you're thinking,
Speaker 1: all right, well, that was fun, but now I want
Speaker 1: to sell this game and get some money back, and
Speaker 1: then I'm going to buy another new game. That's kind
Speaker 1: of what people were thinking. Well, subscribers started to drop
Speaker 1: off from this game, and e A's response was that, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we could either pull the plug on it entirely,
Speaker 1: or we could try and switch our strategy and get
Speaker 1: more people interested in this game. But obviously the subscription
Speaker 1: models not really working. So what if we dropped the
Speaker 1: subscription and go to free to play and instead of
Speaker 1: making money through people subscribing, we make money by selling
Speaker 1: items in the game for real money, small amounts of
Speaker 1: money micro transactions, but um, and you could still play
Speaker 1: it for free without buying anything, but you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: access to the entire game. There'll be sections of the
Speaker 1: game you could not get to because you would have
Speaker 1: to purchase them in order to have access. And all
Speaker 1: of the micro transaction items were the super powerful cool
Speaker 1: things with rainbows and unicorns or whatever the you know
Speaker 1: Star Wars equivalent of rainbows and called lightsabers. So I
Speaker 1: realize you're not familiar with the venerable franchise known as
Speaker 1: Star Wars. Yeah no, never never seen any of those
Speaker 1: scruffy looking at um. So yeah, they that was the
Speaker 1: whole response there was to switch over to free to
Speaker 1: play and do micro transactions. Now, this is another thing
Speaker 1: that e a has received a lot of criticism for
Speaker 1: is the whole micro transaction approach. I can't say the
Speaker 1: word criticism either, obviously, but the micro transactions are that's
Speaker 1: another way to try and generate revenue, and if you
Speaker 1: make your game free to play, it may be the
Speaker 1: only way unless you incorporate lots of advertising, and either
Speaker 1: way most players kind of react in a negative way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that has also been something that e A has gotten
Speaker 1: a lot of flak for, is the the inclusion of
Speaker 1: kind of kind of annoying out there advertising in the
Speaker 1: middle of their games. Right. Well, the disappointing performance of
Speaker 1: Star Wars may have also contributed to another dip in
Speaker 1: e AS stock prices in although, but before we move on,
Speaker 1: just thank you Chaz our listener from Twitter for for
Speaker 1: writing in about that. Yes, thank you very much, and
Speaker 1: we have a few more questions we will address at
Speaker 1: the end of this episode as well. Also in twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: something else big happened to e A. E A had
Speaker 1: the honor is the wrong word for it, had had
Speaker 1: the unfortunate um role as Lull's SEC final target. LULLS
Speaker 1: SEC being laugh out Loud Security was kind of a
Speaker 1: an offshoot of Anonymous. It was not necessarily related directly
Speaker 1: to anonymous, but it was a group of of hackers
Speaker 1: who decided that they were going to cause as much
Speaker 1: trouble as possible really for the main reason they wanted
Speaker 1: to do it was to show that they could. And Uh, boy,
Speaker 1: I bet they're regretting that decision right now because as
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast, uh, four of them have
Speaker 1: been sentenced to between a year and two years in
Speaker 1: various uh jails or juvenile facilities. Well, so, yikes, I
Speaker 1: guess they weren't quite as anonymous as they thought. Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they hit e A as their final target for disbanding,
Speaker 1: and uh they ended up releasing the log in information
Speaker 1: of thousands of people who were playing Battlefield Heroes. So
Speaker 1: uh that was a big black I. E A had
Speaker 1: to reset all that and send emails out to everybody saying,
Speaker 1: you know, it was compromised and you need to change
Speaker 1: passwords and all that kind of stuff. Uh. In twelve
Speaker 1: e he wins another awful uh distinguishing feature here they
Speaker 1: were called they they they were named the worst company
Speaker 1: in America by the Consumerist And this is a this
Speaker 1: is a thing that that the consumers does every year.
Speaker 1: They've been doing it for a while. They gave a
Speaker 1: Golden Poo award. Yes they do. It's a very distinguished
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. The way it works is that they set
Speaker 1: it up like a tournament bracket and they let people
Speaker 1: vote on which company they think should progress in the bracket.
Speaker 1: And that year e A took home the Golden Pooh.
Speaker 1: It's final opponent was the Bank of America. Now keep
Speaker 1: in mind this is all from reader votes, it's not.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think the consumers is the
Speaker 1: one that ultimately decides which ones are in the brackets,
Speaker 1: but the readers are the ones who determine which companies progress, right,
Speaker 1: And this is the Internet, and there are some gamers
Speaker 1: on the internet, so so I'm sure that that is
Speaker 1: part of why e A made it that far. But
Speaker 1: but also, I mean was when Occupy was happening, so
Speaker 1: so think I mean there were thousands of people on
Speaker 1: the streets protesting the actions of corporations like Bank of America,
Speaker 1: and e A still still beat them out. Yeah, by
Speaker 1: I think it was like close to to you know,
Speaker 1: twenty six or something like that. It's really like that,
Speaker 1: So it was it wasn't even close. It's a runaway
Speaker 1: but again, you know the platforms the Internet. Gamers like
Speaker 1: the Internet, so you know, keep that all in mind.
Speaker 1: It's kind of it was kind of skewed to e A,
Speaker 1: is what we're saying. Probably, So why did it win
Speaker 1: Worst Company? Well, some of the the suggestions were because
Speaker 1: it had stripped the video game in the story of
Speaker 1: talent through all those acquisitions and then shutting down competitions.
Speaker 1: Are shutting down competing studios, I should say. So they
Speaker 1: not only bought up competing studios but then shut them down,
Speaker 1: which then meant that that talent and those games would
Speaker 1: often become inaccessible. There would never be another one because
Speaker 1: e A would own the intellectual property, but not have
Speaker 1: anyone to actually develop the games anymore. At least the
Speaker 1: people who had developed it were gone, so it would
Speaker 1: be a completely different experience. Uh. Then there was also
Speaker 1: citing of the use of micro transactions, just like I said,
Speaker 1: especially for any games where you already had to buy
Speaker 1: a game and then on top of it, have micro
Speaker 1: transactions within the games that were not free to begin with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the idea of buying like a sixty dollar game
Speaker 1: and then having to spend more money within the game
Speaker 1: in order for it to be a satisfying experience. That
Speaker 1: did not sit well with a lot of people who
Speaker 1: voted in this Also, the one of the things they
Speaker 1: cited were the exclusivity deals that e A had made
Speaker 1: with organizations like the NFL. Now that big deal. Now
Speaker 1: for e A, it made perfect sense. That meant that
Speaker 1: they had tied up the NFL license that they were
Speaker 1: the only company that could put out an official NFL
Speaker 1: affiliated football game. And the same thing is true for
Speaker 1: other sports as well. They made exclusivity agreements with other
Speaker 1: sports agencies, but NFL is an easy example. So e
Speaker 1: A then shuts down competition because no other game company
Speaker 1: can make an official NFL licensed game. They can't use
Speaker 1: the actual team player names or anything. And although you know,
Speaker 1: another football strategy game could certainly be enjoyable, when you
Speaker 1: don't have that brand recognition behind it, it becomes a
Speaker 1: lot harder to market, right. I mean, why if if
Speaker 1: you're a fan of football and you want to play
Speaker 1: as your favorite football team with with the actual players
Speaker 1: who are on that team as your as your players,
Speaker 1: then you had to go with the A because no
Speaker 1: one else had the licensing agreement that would allow them
Speaker 1: to do that and so that you know, people said, like,
Speaker 1: you're essentially saying we're the only game in town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're further further shutting down the opportunities of other studios. Right,
Speaker 1: So that was another reason why they got a lot
Speaker 1: of votes. Uh So the tournaments came out pretty badly
Speaker 1: for e A. Uh, it showed that that had a
Speaker 1: real problem with public perception of the company. Um and
Speaker 1: e A tried to kind of uh respond to that,
Speaker 1: and and a lot of people thought that their response
Speaker 1: was lackluster. This would happen again, but we'll get to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil it, but yeah. That year
Speaker 1: also was when e A released Mass Effect three, which
Speaker 1: may also have affected its standings as Worst Company in
Speaker 1: America because, as I recall, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were not happy with the way that game ended.
Speaker 1: Yeah didn't they didn't they wasn't that the one that
Speaker 1: they released a different ending too that you could you
Speaker 1: could download. There were, as I recall, there were there
Speaker 1: may have been. I think there might have been, but
Speaker 1: I know there were at least three different endings that
Speaker 1: were already in the game. But some people argued that
Speaker 1: the three different endings were not distinct enough that you know,
Speaker 1: you would have small details that were different, but that
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme it felt like what you had
Speaker 1: done in the series of games. Yeah, it defeats the
Speaker 1: entire purpose of the Mass Effect series exactly. It felt
Speaker 1: like like, while while the whole game makes it feel
Speaker 1: like you're going to have this huge impact, ultimately, if
Speaker 1: the differences aren't that great, then it means that you know,
Speaker 1: what you did didn't really matter in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things, which from an existential point of view is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. But from a gamer player, uh, you know, experience,
Speaker 1: maybe not so much fun. Right, It's not called nic
Speaker 1: the game so therefore so so people said that they
Speaker 1: felt that the game had what the end game in particular,
Speaker 1: had been rushed, and that it just wasn't a fitting
Speaker 1: capper to it. UH and Penny Arcades Ben Kuchera and
Speaker 1: I apologize if I'm miss uh mispronouncing his name. He
Speaker 1: criticized the company for concentrating on free to play games
Speaker 1: and micro transactions, and he also said that the company
Speaker 1: was failing to create compel in retail games. So you're
Speaker 1: saying that the games that you are selling for sixty
Speaker 1: dollars aren't really good good and the ones that are
Speaker 1: free to play with micro transactions are irritating. Right. So
Speaker 1: Penny Arcade, by the way, has nine hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: two comics that are tagged e A in their system,
Speaker 1: which as of the recording of this podcast, yes, as
Speaker 1: a well, yeah, as of as of Tuesday, I think
Speaker 1: actually Tuesday or Wednesday this week, so there there. There
Speaker 1: might have been more UH since then, but it just
Speaker 1: which just goes to show that the gaming community has
Speaker 1: had a lot to say and a lot of crisis
Speaker 1: criticism to lob against the company over the years. And
Speaker 1: UH and John Richard tell O stepped down as CEO
Speaker 1: and as a member of the board. UH. Here's a
Speaker 1: direct quote from one of the blog posts that was
Speaker 1: written that he wrote about this. He said, I am
Speaker 1: writing with some tough news. I have resigned my position
Speaker 1: as e A s CEO. I will be around for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks and I hope to have it
Speaker 1: the chance to say goodbye to many of you. Larry
Speaker 1: Probest will be stepping in as executive chairman to help
Speaker 1: smooth the transition. UH. E A also continued to layoff
Speaker 1: employees in part as a streamlining effort at this time,
Speaker 1: and so Probest comes back in. You know, he had
Speaker 1: stepped down and now he was interim CEO. Uh and
Speaker 1: uh that's as of the recording of this podcast, that's
Speaker 1: still the case. They hadn't found a permanent replacement yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they yeah, that was that was another ten percent
Speaker 1: of global staff that was laid off as of May
Speaker 1: of this year. So tough times over at e A.
Speaker 1: They also said that they planned to open a Dice
Speaker 1: l A office, uh, where they would be developing games,
Speaker 1: including Star Wars games because they made a deal with Disney,
Speaker 1: which of course acquired the rights to the Lucas Arts
Speaker 1: stuff earlier. And they won the Worst Company in America
Speaker 1: for the second year in a row. And most of
Speaker 1: the reasons is the first time that any company has
Speaker 1: ever done this, by the way, done a two for
Speaker 1: and they they the reasons are pretty much the same
Speaker 1: as twelve. But also there was another controversy that happened
Speaker 1: between those two times that ended up costing the company
Speaker 1: big time, which was the launch of sim City five,
Speaker 1: one of the most anticipated games in a long time.
Speaker 1: I mean, like there's certain titles that when you hear
Speaker 1: about them coming out, people old school gamers get really excited.
Speaker 1: Diablo three is a great example of a game that
Speaker 1: got a lot of people talking months before it came out.
Speaker 1: Sim City five is another one of those where people
Speaker 1: who are fans of the sim City franchise were really
Speaker 1: excited by this game. But the big issue was that
Speaker 1: sim City five was a game that requires you to
Speaker 1: have a persistent connection to the Internet in order to
Speaker 1: play it. Even if you're just playing single payer, single
Speaker 1: player offline, it's just you and your computer, but you
Speaker 1: still have to have a persistent Internet connection. And they
Speaker 1: had some server issues when the game launched, which meant
Speaker 1: that people couldn't play the game they had just bought.
Speaker 1: They had spent the money, the game was in their hands.
Speaker 1: They wanted to play a single player game, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't do it because the servers weren't working. Now, that
Speaker 1: tells you that this is a huge problem that that's
Speaker 1: another example of why the persistent Internet connection thing is
Speaker 1: an argument that people say makes for bad gaming experience,
Speaker 1: because when you have a technical issue on the the
Speaker 1: game providers end uh, then it's adding a completely unnecessary
Speaker 1: extra step that a lot of things can go wrong
Speaker 1: with right, And if it's an online game, then that's
Speaker 1: just the way that works, right. But but when it's
Speaker 1: a single player game, then people have a real hard
Speaker 1: time feeling. And uh, you know again, a lot of
Speaker 1: people say that the whole reason for this was just
Speaker 1: so that e A could have another kind of DRM
Speaker 1: there that you know, that's not e A has denied that.
Speaker 1: They said, that's not the reason, but that's the reason
Speaker 1: everyone says, says is a lot of people suggest that's
Speaker 1: the real Let me put it that way. Sure. They
Speaker 1: also made headlines in February and March when um, the
Speaker 1: CFO Blake Jorgensen announced that all future titles would involve
Speaker 1: micro transactions. Uh he back pedaled really hard a week later.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, let it. That did not get a great
Speaker 1: reaction now and again that's probably what contributed to it
Speaker 1: winning the Worst company in America again. Yeah. Despite all
Speaker 1: of this, their their stock has been rising dramatically over
Speaker 1: the course of of so far. Um and uh really
Speaker 1: really interestingly, as of as of this week, the a
Speaker 1: couple of the really high level people have been selling
Speaker 1: off a lot of their shares in their own company's stock,
Speaker 1: like fifties seven thousand of their shares. Wow, that is uh,
Speaker 1: I'm actually looking it up right now because it's actually
Speaker 1: a little lower than it was when I wrote it down.
Speaker 1: Because originally we were going to record this episode the
Speaker 1: day before. We're actually recording it right We're going to
Speaker 1: record it yesterday. But on May fifteenth, fifteenth, the stock
Speaker 1: price was at twenty two dollars and fifty cents when
Speaker 1: I looked at originally. Uh, right now on May sixteenth,
Speaker 1: at four forty four pm Eastern time, more information than
Speaker 1: you need to know, it's at two and two cents.
Speaker 1: So it's dropped almost fifty cents, right around fifty cents
Speaker 1: since I checked it yesterday. So it's still and it's
Speaker 1: obviously not at that pre August two eight high when
Speaker 1: it was in the high forties and lower fifties, but
Speaker 1: it's but it's dropped a great deal since then. Um,
Speaker 1: I think I think that that well as of as
Speaker 1: of wednesday, as of the May fifteenth, anyway, shares where
Speaker 1: your shares were up very nearly for the course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's I think volatile is a safe wordy use, Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: that that's there's a lot of very very important financial
Speaker 1: publications that are talking about e A right now, which
Speaker 1: I which I always find fascinating, and all of them
Speaker 1: are going like, be cautious, don't actually invest, we don't
Speaker 1: know about this thing. Yeah, there does seem to be
Speaker 1: a real problem with consumer confidence in an investor confidence
Speaker 1: in a e A. And again that can really affect that.
Speaker 1: You know, e A is a multibillion dollar industry company
Speaker 1: right now. It's you know, it's revenues can be over
Speaker 1: a billion dollars, can be over three billion dollars in
Speaker 1: a good year, and so when you're talking about that,
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird to think that it's it's value
Speaker 1: as a company is in question. That suggests that there's
Speaker 1: been some pretty serious missteps or that something's really funky
Speaker 1: with the industry in general, right right, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's I think it's just basically that thing where they're
Speaker 1: not really they're not really heating all of all of
Speaker 1: this this feedback that they're getting from from all of
Speaker 1: their their from their fans, and that's you know, like
Speaker 1: and they also just renew their license with with the
Speaker 1: Football Association with a FIFA, FIFA and the soccer soccer
Speaker 1: So yeah, sure, football whatever, go back to France. Um
Speaker 1: until two? Um so well, and and FIVA is one
Speaker 1: of those titles that consistently does really well for e A. Sure,
Speaker 1: And and you know again like it's it's understandable why
Speaker 1: would they would want that exclusivity? Now, we asked our
Speaker 1: listeners if they had any specific questions they would like
Speaker 1: us to address, and uh, we We've talked about some
Speaker 1: of them already, so I'm not going to go over
Speaker 1: all of them. But I've got two left that we
Speaker 1: can chat about really quickly. Peter from Facebook said, what
Speaker 1: was the most popular e A game? And if you
Speaker 1: go from the debut of e A till present day
Speaker 1: and you look at all the units sold, the SIMS
Speaker 1: comes out on top with a level eleven point twenty
Speaker 1: three million units sold globally according to VG charts. And
Speaker 1: second place would go to Need for Speed Underground. Now,
Speaker 1: UM that that doesn't surprise me because the SIMS is
Speaker 1: one of those games that had a very wide appeal.
Speaker 1: I mean I loved it when it came out. I
Speaker 1: thought this was such a cool, innovative game. Also, I
Speaker 1: thought it was funny to lock people out of the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I did. Some pretty cruel things. Good good,
Speaker 1: good thing to know about you, Jonathan, That's great. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then Ian he asked also on Facebook if I
Speaker 1: could give a rundown of some of the PR meltdowns
Speaker 1: the e A has had. I could, but that's a
Speaker 1: full episode. So I'm going to give you, Um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give you three examples of PR attempts that e
Speaker 1: A maybe did not handle very well. This isn't just
Speaker 1: like coming out and saying, uh, we didn't do this right,
Speaker 1: We're going to do better. This is this is this
Speaker 1: goes beyond this. This comes into marketing mistakes. Okay, three
Speaker 1: big marketing mistakes. Now, keep in mind that this might
Speaker 1: not be entirely e a's fault. They could have partnered
Speaker 1: with a marketing firm that came up with a terrible
Speaker 1: idea and just ran with it. Um. One of them
Speaker 1: was when e A was marketing the game Dante's Inferno,
Speaker 1: remember that, Yeah, which had all these different characters that
Speaker 1: were based off the Seven Deadly Sins. So the promotion
Speaker 1: for the Sin of Lust came around and right around
Speaker 1: the same time as Comic Con An e A had
Speaker 1: a booth at Comic Con where they had some young
Speaker 1: ladies dressed in costume models colloquially known as booth babes
Speaker 1: to promote their games, and they had their Sin to
Speaker 1: Win campaign, which was a contest that encouraged people to
Speaker 1: quote commit acts of lust unquote with costumed reps at
Speaker 1: e A's booth. Later on, the team clarified this as
Speaker 1: saying that they were just trying to tell people to
Speaker 1: take photos with these reps and then tweet and share
Speaker 1: them in various ways. But no, that doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: that thing. Yeah, I'm I I remember I had completely
Speaker 1: blocked that from my memory, but I remember exactly how
Speaker 1: offended I was by that because it was really offended.
Speaker 1: Actually yeah, yeah, not a great move. Okay, So here's
Speaker 1: another one. This one, This one really makes me scratch
Speaker 1: my head. So theyre for a promotional campaign for the
Speaker 1: game Mercenaries to e A converted a London gas station
Speaker 1: to make it look like a military depot, so it
Speaker 1: was like a depot that you would see in the
Speaker 1: game Mercenaries to which is kind of cool. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've seen promotions like that, like the Simpsons, Quickie mark
Speaker 1: type stuff. They had a bunch of a bunch of
Speaker 1: life size column dolls on London Underground for a while.
Speaker 1: That clever stuff. So what's the big deal about converting
Speaker 1: a gas station into a military depot. Well, they had
Speaker 1: this campaign where anyone stopping at the military depot slash
Speaker 1: gas station would get seventy dollars worth of gas for free.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind that the game doesn't cost that much,
Speaker 1: which meant that even if every single person who stopped
Speaker 1: at that gas station then went out and bought a
Speaker 1: copy of Mercenaries, to still at losing money. And they
Speaker 1: ended up screwing up traffic patterns so badly in London
Speaker 1: once people found out they could get free gas at
Speaker 1: this station that it caused a massive traffic snarl and
Speaker 1: even ended up with government censure of e A cost
Speaker 1: him about fifty to convert the gas station into a
Speaker 1: military depot. Seventy bucks of gas per person who stopped. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not the most effective use of your marketing dollars, you
Speaker 1: might argue. And here's the third one. So godfather to
Speaker 1: the game coming out and e A, like many companies,
Speaker 1: tries to court the gaming press by sending out publicity kits.
Speaker 1: They have various little gifts in them. Right horses head, No,
Speaker 1: no horses had no fish. Okay, no, knowly brass knuckles.
Speaker 1: They send out brass, actual brass knuckles, actual breast knuckles, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, not legal and also illegal to send
Speaker 1: by May. So then they had to send a message
Speaker 1: to everyone they had sent a package to saying could
Speaker 1: you please send back those breast knuckles and please don't
Speaker 1: sue us. Three examples of marketing failures on e A's part. Now,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of other examples of e A coming
Speaker 1: out and apologizing or not apologizing for something, like when
Speaker 1: they won the America's Worst Company the second time. There
Speaker 1: was a blog post that essentially said we can do better,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people viewed it as kind of
Speaker 1: a backhanded slap at gamers, and not not like so
Speaker 1: much as owning up to problems, but rather saying, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, people perceive it as this, so we can
Speaker 1: change their perception. So uh and I'm paraphrasing obviously, but
Speaker 1: but nonetheless it no, they've they've they've not always had
Speaker 1: the best attitude about that sort of thing, or at
Speaker 1: least that that seems to be the implication anyway, you know,
Speaker 1: because we're all reading this through our own lens and
Speaker 1: perhaps the way they intended it and the way that
Speaker 1: we're interpreting it are just wildly different. Oh. Absolutely, And
Speaker 1: you know, and it's an understanding, understandably upsetting situation to
Speaker 1: be in UM to to have to be the company's
Speaker 1: representative coming off of something like that. Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: ever you know, it's you know that that's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that if if I had to write that,
Speaker 1: I would draft it like nine and a half times
Speaker 1: and get everyone in the office to read it and
Speaker 1: make sure there was absolutely no way that it could
Speaker 1: be perceived as being negative to the fans that I
Speaker 1: had piste off so much to begin with. Yeah, that's fair. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's our rundown of Electronic Arts, the history of
Speaker 1: the company and what they have managed in the industry,
Speaker 1: how they've been influential, both in good and bad ways.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a really interesting story. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating. I'm curious to see where the company
Speaker 1: goes from here. I will be going to the Electronic
Speaker 1: Arts Keynote presentation at E three this year, so UM
Speaker 1: I will give a full report on what I saw
Speaker 1: when I come back. We're already we've already planned that episode.
Speaker 1: So when I come back the day I come back
Speaker 1: from E three, we'll be going into the studio and
Speaker 1: I will be sleep walking my way through talking about
Speaker 1: what I saw the three red Red Eye flight and
Speaker 1: then then podcasting. Yeah. I land at six am, come
Speaker 1: to the office, and I just rock star lifestyle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure does feel good to be a gangster. So guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for future episodes of text Stuff,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend you let us know because otherwise we won't.
Speaker 1: So write us our addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot
Speaker 1: com or get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: Our handle of both those locations is text Stuff H. S.
Speaker 1: W and Lauren and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon for more on this and thousands of other
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