EA Just Changed Gaming for Better or Worse

Change is coming to the industry because it's overdue. Whether it's an increase to game prices or regulation of industry standards, we're going to see some changes next year. EA and other companies have been skirting this issue of rising development costs by trying different models that "tax the rich" while keeping costs low to the commonwealth. People only see corporate greed but the fact is these are companies that answer to shareholders, same as any business.

With the court decision that loot crates are gambling in Europe, precedent has been set and already we're seeing US politicians acting on the momentum as a platform for debate. The bad news is that if we want to continue gaming, we're going to have to start paying for the luxury. Nobody wants to be the first man through the wall, because they will take the hit. This last effort by EA to band-aid the situation stirred the pot too much and even put their Star Wars license in jeopardy.

Point being, something has to change and the industry has to take responsibility for the fact that we've been underpaying developers, both indie and triple-A. None of us here pay $60 for a game: none. Gaming is the cheapest form of entertainment that we pay for, between TV, movies, concerts, sports: nothing is cheaper than gaming. We will either need to start paying more or agree to allow micro-transactions to offset costs.

Question is where do we go from here?

The problem with the gaming business model is that there are not as many potential revenue streams as there are for movies. Movies can go first run theater, $1 theaters, pay per view, home video release and syndication, plus overseas markets offer additional monies. Games really have one shot at the beginning to make as much as they can. Nintendo has been the only company to successfully make multiple revenue streams off of the same title.

soonersfan60 said:

The problem with the gaming business model is that there are not as many potential revenue streams as there are for movies. Movies can go first run theater, $1 theaters, pay per view, home video release and syndication, plus overseas markets offer additional monies. Games really have one shot at the beginning to make as much as they can. Nintendo has been the only company to successfully make multiple revenue streams off of the same title.

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Paid expansions are a great way to extend shelf life of sales and the game, but there's no set standard for the quality of DLC anymore so some are worth more than others. Season passes just encouraged laziness and were a terrible idea, but I don't mind so much a GOTY or Gold edition that includes already released DLC. At least that way you're not gambling on the content and can make a conscious decision to vote with your wallet.

But the expansion packs, et. al., require extra work, time and money from the publisher. They extend the life of the title, but at a cost to the publisher. (Now obviously they can manage this to a certain extent by creating some of the "new" content at the same time.) Movies can just change packaging and get people to pay again, so more revenue from a very modest cash outlay.

I see your point. IDK that there really is a better solution than just upping the price of games or else keep dealing with MXT.

Jodou said:

I see your point. IDK that there really is a better solution than just upping the price of games or else keep dealing with MXT.

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Or alternatively, put the price lower and sell more copies at the onset. Not a crazy idea and it most certainly worked for 2K when it priced its NBA and NFL titles at $20 out of the gate. Caused EA to go out and buy the NFL license.

I've always wondered whether going higher was the answer. I think some publishers might find going lower and selling more copies would be the better angle.

Alternatively, perhaps you'll see some publishers separate their games - for example, sell you the single-player campaign for $X, and the multi-player game for $X to capture as many buyers as possible.

I do think all of this however means DLC and microtransactions are only going to grow in number and become the dominant trend. I can also see more and more games skirting retail releases and just going all-digital to cut out costs to the middlemen and distributors. That unfortunately fewer and fewer physical releases, and with asset sizes ballooning in this HD era, I wonder if that will actually start to put caps on developers and buyers who will find their harddrives fill up pretty fast.

All of these trends, unfortunately, lead me to think my time in partaking in this industry is coming to an end. May be not right away, but probably in 2-3 years. I can see an industry dominated by digital releases, and bit-by-bit gaming - or microtransactions or the arcade-like pay-to-play. The loss of physical releases mean we go from owning games to leasing them. I know most people seem fine with that, but I prefer to actually own what I buy.

The industry is definitely in a state of flux and the value of games is under threat, as Justin put it on Gamescoop. I have no idea how things will shake out, but if the industry does this wrong, I do think we could see soon what happened in the 80s -- the bubble could pop and the whole industry could very well go through a contraction.

soonersfan60 said:

But the expansion packs, et. al., require extra work, time and money from the publisher. They extend the life of the title, but at a cost to the publisher. (Now obviously they can manage this to a certain extent by creating some of the "new" content at the same time.) Movies can just change packaging and get people to pay again, so more revenue from a very modest cash outlay.

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Don't worry about what happens to the developer after DLC. The point of Expansion Pack DLC's is to get players to play the game more. So they can make money off them again.

(To the developer, your payment for Expansion Pack DLC's is actually a pre-order. So, every time you buy Expansion Pack DLC's, you're actually paying the developer - months in advance, I might add. So, like I said, don't worry about it.)

This is called user retention, you want to monetize as much as you can. Problem is, Loot Boxes in Battlefront 2 was stupid. Microtransactions are fine just as long as the item is in no way a Pay to Win transaction. I agree with those who think that this is gambling. Activision is guilty of this, with BO3, however - they do it better than EA in this aspect because it's actually a choice. You can either work for it by grinding the game, or buy it for a chance to get a legendary or epic. With Battlefront 2, you can either grind for the same currency or buy a chance to win legendaries or epics, but heroes are included in that transaction. Heroes, vehicles, anything that resembles a way to win.

Whoever said EA needs to raise prices; Screw you. And I'm not talking about anyone in this thread, I'm talking about the journalist or journalists that posted it, to give EA an idea.

The minute $60 goes higher to $80 or higher, I stop buying games for a bit. This will cause a crash. $60 is enough.

I haven't unlocked a single hero and haven't felt the pinch TBH. The only advantage to unlocking a hero really is that less players have access to them at any given time, so if the base ones are all claimed you still have an option. That hasn't truly happened to me just yet as waiting maybe 15-30s one normally frees up (cuz bad players lolol). The way heroes work there tends to be less competition anyway.

But the problem is the perception that it is pay to win and people can run on that platform all day. It has been grossly exaggerated but the fact it changed from a normal "play the game to unlock via ranking up" to a "grind for the upgrade you want, or don't and just pay" made it lose appeal as a game mechanic. They caught the most flak for this because the grind isn't appealing and doesn't add replay value. Like anyone is going to give a shit about victory poses, or emotes that I've seen absolutely nobody use. We just want a level playing field with the same tools at our disposal but they managed to screw it up.

At any rate, the bigger concern for me right now is this shit patch that has included server lag and constant crashes. I've lost easily 100k of ranking points thanks to games crashing right at the end. One game in particular I was close to 30k alone when the er crashed with 3 kills to go. This was after two back to back games crashing, so I rage quit for the night after that shit.

Seems the boycott worked; EA is in pain, terrible paaaaain.

EA is famous for sports games anyways.

Money is tight for the middle class, I don't think folks are going to go for $80 games.

Personally I think most games have become too bloated. Variety is great, but filler is lame. Most games want to pretend that they're the only game you're going to play for the next few months but we all know that's not true. I only have a little bit of leisure time and a few bucks in my wallet, don't waste them by developing game worlds that require forced grinding, loot boxes, hide-and-seek, and fetch quests. Save money by cutting that crap out.   

Jodou said:

Seems the boycott worked

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An argument can be made in favor of DLC. There are benefits to both the consumer, developer, and publisher when they are handled responsibly.

But the recent "loot-box" craze is NOT a responsible approach. It is purely exploitative with an eye for getting as much money as possible for as little actual effort as possible. And it actively exploits some of the more nefarious instincts of human psychology in order to do this. It is essentially gambling, but with no actual chance for winning anything that could increase your purchasing power, so technically even WORSE than gambling. At least with gambling there's a minute chance that you'll come out ahead, however unlikely. With modern game-related loot-boxes, you are absolutely guaranteed to lose money, and all the game producers have to risk is flipping a zero to a one on a server somewhere. They effectively invest as little as possible, and then sell a statistically onerous opportunity to access the miniscule effort that they put in.

I don't necessarily endorse government regulation of this sort of thing. But I do support companies like EA getting their teeth kicked in on the open market when they try to pull stunts like this. I know they're a publicly traded corporation. I know they are required to make money by the people pulling the strings, it's technically why they exist. But there are standards of common decency. And someone at EA should have put their foot down before we reached this point. Someone should have said "No, we're not going that far."

The first guy through the wall will always get hurt and they wanted to be just that. I don't think they anticipated just how strongly the market would react to the backlash however and they were careless with an incredibly important IP, so now they're having to answer for it. Investors were looking to capitalize on the sales of BF2 back in summer and now that it's time to collect, they're withdrawing their bid. That $3 billion stung and hit them where it counts, so EA is finally having to face consequences of their actions and it's about damn time.

I do think expansion packs are a great solution but then, yes, the game would have to be a hit so that it wouldn't cover the publisher's expenses. Other than that, I do hope they can offer more to resolve this issue. 

In my earlier days when I went and purchased a game I got an entire game from start to finish and glitches and bugs were usually minimal. Now however we are given a partial game at $60 with intent to push dlc out for over a year at another $50 dollars .The games are rushed out with huge problems, glitches and bugs some near unplayable only to need a massive 2-5gb patch on day one to fix some of the issues. Then we get to loot boxes which add even more to the game because items that may improve your overall experience in the game are tucked behind them at either a massive grind or real money. We also have to remember things are moving towards a digital age where more and more are ditching physical for digital which makes up for more than 50% of sales now. They  are on average more expensive than physical copies even after they have been out a year. So they are reaping much more profit with digital sales continuing to surpass physical. Take a look at indie games for example, they are proving you don't need massive budgets with high price tags and greedy practices to make a good game and turn a profit(however only a matter of time before big companies gobble them up and spit them out as their on) .

So would I pay more than $60 for a game just to be rid of loot boxes no I wouldn't. Now if you can offer me a complete experience and not try to peddle me season passes(which aren't going away) and lame dlc for quick profit and I knew I'd get good play time out of it and not get locked out of content 2 months after I buy a game *cough destiny* then I might consider it. Until then I'll continue to support companies like project red(bought witcher 3 on both ps4 and pc) while waiting for any EA game or Ubisoft game to be deeply discounted.

I can deal with a little DLC. There's nothing wrong with expanding a gaming experience after the fact. And a developer is entitled to some degree of compensation for extra work. You provide a service, you get paid for it. There's nothing wrong with that.

What is wrong is when a game's base experience is noticeably truncated or compromised in order to maximize DLC. When the publisher or developer compromise the design of the core game in order to shoehorn in DLC or unneeded monetization. Such decisions inherently lessen the overall experience. DLC is fine as an optional bonus. When you tie it into the core design, it spoils the basic structure. And there are a lot of publishers who are pushing hard for this type of game-breaking compromise. They are willing, and in some cases even eager, to sacrifice the quality of their games in favor maximizing short-term profit.

https://youtu.be/PTLFNlu2N_M