Spector's games (Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, Ultima Underworld, System Shock and many more) consistently brought returns a small studio would think quite respectable. But the economics of a billion-dollar corporation are different. For EA it makes more sense to reach for the sky with every single project. The games that die or get cancelled become tax writeoffs, and the rare hit pays for all the rest. The worst case is the mere modest success, a mediocre return on equity without corresponding tax advantages.
Spector says, "Mattrick told me I needed to make games more like Richard and Chris - swing for the fences, go for the megahit, spend a ton to make a ton - instead of consistently turning out smaller games, making some money every year. I thought he was nuts at the time. Took me several more years to admit that, like it or not, he was right and I was wrong."
The forces that propelled Electronic Arts to success and gave it the funds to purchase Origin - the incessant marketing, the quest for blockbusters, even the ferocious executive infighting - also made it difficult to exploit Origin effectively. EA could have preserved Origin as a small design house gestating new ideas. Rather than alienating staffers and discarding the valuable Ultima and Wing Commander brands, EA could have kept Origin alive in body and spirit, just as it could have preserved the other studios it bought: Westwood and Bullfrog and Maxis and...
But though this was technically possible, it was not imaginable. Like any huge company, EA is risk-averse. The company has every incentive to play it safe and do a competent job on Madden 2009 or Tiger Woods 2017.
A New York Times article on EA (August 8, 2005), "Relying on Video Game Sequels," observes, "Electronic Arts plans to release 26 new games [in 2005], all but one of them a sequel, including the 16th version of NHL Hockey, the 11th of the racing game Need for Speed and the 13th of the PGA Tour golf game." In the article CEO Probst said sequels appeal to Wall Street investors because they have a steady following among consumers. "He added that the company had a goal of putting out at least one entirely new game every year, and had several major original games in its pipeline." Blogger Bill Harris observed, "A 'goal' of one new game a year? Damn, Larry, don't be so crazy ambitious. Remember Icarus."
Beeman says, "You'd like to think a marriage of EA and Origin would result in a merger of their strengths. But instead of combining EA's execution with Origin's creativity, the end result was more like Origin's execution with EA's creativity. EA limited Origin's selection of projects to sequels or other 'proven' ideas, then let Origin run wild. I think this was pretty much the introduction of that meme into the industry, but clearly we still see it today."
"I still think it was possible to make it work," Garriott says now, "except no one made time to make it work, and there were evil elements in the company."
Red Dots
In 1992 Steve Powers found in a Marketing department trashcan a group photo of the entire company. "It was taken on the steps of the Wild Basin building during the Ultima VII ship party," Powers recalls. "I scanned it and used it as my Windows wallpaper for years. One by one, as people left or were fired, I Photoshopped a red dot over them, blotting them out of the scene. Most of the dots tended to come in clusters around Christmas. Just before Christmas 1997, I dotted my own face and left. For years I kept the image updated while working for other game studios, and it wasn't until fairly recently that the last face got erased."
