“It’s cool to rag on EA,” says EA’s Peter Moore.
The industry’s surprisingly quick transition from viewing games as discrete products to seeing them as ongoing services has left an army of dissatisfied gamers in its wake. Talking to Eurogamer, EA’s chief operating officer, Peter Moore, argued that, rather than having rational grievances, some gamers just fear change.
“I think people are worried gaming is going in a different direction than they were used to with N64, Sega Mega Drive, PlayStation and PlayStation 2,” he said. “Everything was dominated by consoles. Pretty much everything was offline. You bought the game. You sat down. And you played the game until you got tired of the game. It was all on the disc.”
“Games are turning into 365 days a year live operation experiences,” he continued. “And rightly or wrongly we think it’s our job to provide reasons every day to go play that game and enjoy that game. Technology is enabling that. Hardware is enabling that. Different game experiences like open world experiences are enabling that, and we’re trying to react to what we believe is what gamers want.”
Moore may have a point. As numerous and insistent as DLC/online-requirements detractors may be in our tiny little corner of the gaming world, the money generated by those development practices proves there’s a sizable market. And like most companies, EA is going to go where the money is.
“I can filter out hate, vitriol, rants, it’s cool to rag on EA, it’s cool to rag on Zynga, it’s cool to rag on Bobby Kotick, it’s cool to rag on Peter Moore,” he added.
Moore’s comments were general, but it’s easy to see how they apply to EA titles like Mass Effect 3 or Dead Space 2, both of which introduced multiplayer modes to their respective franchises.
“There are still plenty of great games, we’re making them, everyone else is making them, where you buy it for £40 day one, you can play hundreds of hours and you don’t have to go online and play,” Moore continued. “But the vast majority of people do, and are certainly connected. And then if you go multiplayer, I like to think most games that enhances the experience. But there are some guys who just want things never to change.”
Source: Eurogamer
