karambaitos wrote:that's how life is it only takes one crooked cop to sully the name of a precinct, as the saying goes (sort of).
you better be prepared for your interviews.
true, but if you botch up your interviews, and say stupid stuff, like EA usually does, then yes you deserve what coming to you, amd fans are known to be quite an vocal bunch.
whether its joe shmoe from DICE or the CEO of EA saying it doesnt matter, hes representing the company, his and other peoples work, a screw up at that level is a screw up indeed.
A complex mess of things all caused by EAs management, it has been going on for years, acquire a studio that is quite successful, impose demands on the developers, force them to release unfinished products, the people that are quite experienced in their field, they no longer have a reason to stay with the company, since they can easily find other jobs
Pandemic Studios - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Westwood Studios - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
both companies show a similar history, yet they are so many years apart.
anywhooo this has gone waaay off topic.
Westwood were faltering prior to EA's acquisition. They made phenomenal rts titles but seemed to want to try and cash in on other genres, the kids were enjoying third person shooters, they tried it with Renegade, flopped. The kids were enjoying MMOs, they tried it with Earth and Beyond, flopped. The kids were enjoying C&C multiplayer, they took it and crazily made TWO games that used RTS view to control ONE unit. Unsurprisingly it flopped.
Westwood diverted from what they were doing well in, they created a failed FPS - Renegade, a failed multiplayer 1 unit only C&C, wanted to create Renegade 2 which also would have inevitably failed - cancelled by EA, wanted to create an MMO - cancelled by EA, and wanted to create yet another FPS (Tiberium) - cancelled by EA.
EA took a studio that was diverting from what they were exceptional at into areas they were clearly failing in, with fingers in too many pots, with no clear direction, and what they did with them was refocus. We got command and conquer generals out of them under EA, which was excellent.
At the final time Westwood was shut down there was merely a third of the original Westwood staff. The studio had become a shell, it was no longer Westwood Studios.
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There is absolutely no way to spin Westwood's death as created by EA when they were trying to make those games at the time of acquisition, what happened under EA was us getting another high quality Westwood RTS from a studio that was going loopy.
This is what I'm talking about when it comes to the angry internet mob, people just listen to what the angsty teenage kids are saying, who are all doing nothing but repeating what the other angsty teenagers and immature twenty somethings are saying. The mob presents a really simple to digest and easy to repeat mantra "Fuck EA! They're evil!".
The evidence presented is never anything more than "They bought X studio and then X studio was later closed". This really isn't an in depth analysis of the causes of a studio closure, assuming the fault of something without looking into the details is ludicrous, and when you look at the details the picture becomes far far blurrier.
I have no doubt that there are, and have been, various business practices and corporate culture that is questionable. Anyone that has worked for any large company will attest to the fact that every large company has its fair share of incompetents and dodgy "old boys club" culture. The smart amongst them will also attest to the fact that office politics and corporate culture is very very complex, the motivations and decisions that occur between people are all that of individual personal circumstances and goals of many different people. Things are complicated, things are messy, things are not black and white.
Westwood is the least blurry of all of them though. The studio was doing dumb stuff when EA acquired them. They'd lost important chunks of the team, EA managed to get a couple good games out of them while certain members remained and then when they left they closed it and offered the rest jobs in the new teams restructured for the C&C franchise. This was the most fair closure, next to Bullfrog anyway, which closed because Molyneux left taking half the team with him to start Lionhead, because they left the other half left and started Muckyfoot, clear cut, there was no Bullfrog left because of Peter.
Pandemic's story is murky, former staff have talked of how it was totally necessary though, saying the studio was given free creative reign to do what they want but the management and production accountability was terrible. When former staff of a studio say things like that rather than in their own defence you have to wonder what was lurking underneath. Unfortunately there hasn't been any extensive investigative journalism into it yet, the significants in the creative team joined 343 and Microsoft keep a tight reign on who speaks about what.
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Like I said, there are extensive and more interesting stories lying underneath the mob mantras, if people aren't giving evidence or in depth detail about a topic to support their mindless pitchfork wielding they're not worth listening to. Always look underneath.
I don't know about it being too off topic really, their previous business history fits with whether or not they'll do something like this in their present.
If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that they WILL do something like this, but not until they bring modability back to Battlefield games. What they'll do is wait until they can announce a Battlefield game with modding in it, then they'll open source older titles for the publicity, and they'll use it to spin EA heading in the right direction now that it's under a new CEO. Give good PR to EA for once, create tonnes of happy people in all the communities, get tonnes of people working on mods on their older engine, build new communities all geared up to mod their new title.
That's what I'd do if I were in their marketing team anyway, I don't think Ian and the rest of his team think all that differently to myself.
