EA Games And The Ethics of The Computer Games Industry

Been Gaming since pong. I have watched EA pretty much destroy my battlefield experience because of what they have done with the franchise.

The EU and Australia are considering banning loot boxes altogether as it is in essence gambling geared toward children. This is true even more so considering the Star Wars franchise is geared towards children and family friendly.

Like yourself I enjoy my single player experiences and have been saddened to see their decline.
One of my all time favorite single player games still is FreeSpace 1 and 2 and can play this game via the open source project. It is a space opera at its finest.

I do play MMOG's like Mechwarrior Online and Dreadnought but still miss find myself installing and playing Mechwarrior 4 mercenaries because of its single player experience.
PGI (The makers of Mechwarrior online) are making Mechwarrior 5 and it is entirely singleplayer. This gives me hope because i have been playing Mechwarrior pretty consistently for over 20 years now.

So I cannot feel sorry for EA. Greed pushed them to do this. They have taken a Free to play model and added it to their full priced games. But instead of cosmetic enhancements you get real in game advantages that tip the balance in your favor...if you pay for crystals that is. No i will not be buying this game and support this standard of customer abuse.

BF2 (classic) was amazing and should be a standard moving forward of how a company treats people's favorite IPs.
I think that in the end the negative reaction by a vast majority of its player base will show that we as the consumers will not tolerate this abuse and exploitation any longer.

EA. For the love of GOD quite trying to nickle and dime my gaming experience.

Played pretty much all systems, and on several high end PC's. Have a mid range gaming PC right now.

I've played several games by EA with their micro transaction bs. Same with Blizzard, they are another group of thieves. The only game i spend a significant amount of time on was world of warcraft when it first came out, but it was subscription based, and didn't have micro transactions available at the time which was much better for a sub fee game, as blizzard regularly updated content, and banned hackers etc. But, after the years went by, blizzard started becoming greedy, and I stopped playing just because I was tired of spending real money on a sub fee to play a game that felt like a job.

When I played EA's free to play games(pay 2 win) I had a lot of fun with them just playing them.. yeah I could've spent money on gear, or cars or upgrades.. whatever, but I decided to play it normally and earn it. Well, in games with micro transactions, if you choose to grind for loot, you'll never break even with your time vs money.. they rig the games to be impossible to beat without spending money.

EA shut down all of their free to play games, and that left a lot of people pissed off because they had sunk tons of real money into the games, and then EA just shuts them down.. no refunds, no thank, no f*ck you, nothing.. just gone. So I hate micro transactions, and I hope a change will come to the gaming landscape, because currently.. I refuse to buy incomplete games for $60, then have to spend another $60+ on expansions or upgrades.

So dumb.

originally posted by: PainGod

Like yourself I enjoy my single player experiences and have been saddened to see their decline.
One of my all time favorite single player games still is FreeSpace 1 and 2 and can play this game via the open source project. It is a space opera at its finest.

I do play MMOG's like Mechwarrior Online and Dreadnought but still miss find myself installing and playing Mechwarrior 4 mercenaries because of its single player experience.
PGI (The makers of Mechwarrior online) are making Mechwarrior 5 and it is entirely singleplayer. This gives me hope because i have been playing Mechwarrior pretty consistently for over 20 years now.

I agree with you 150% there PainGod. It seems that the single-player experience has become a sideline nowadays; something that is absolutely abhorrent in my opinion. Why CAN'T I just play a campaign on my ace without having to log in online, find friends to group up, and then only have access to small skirmishes with zero story whatsoever?

Give me meat on that bone, dammit!

Also, I really am holding thumbs for PGI to make a success of Mechwarrior 5. I hope that the take a page out of Harebrained Schemes' book and put in a procedural mission system, as HBS is designing for their BattleTech Strat game. I need a good single-player experience a-la Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries!

Lastly, as an aside, how often do you play Mechwarrior Online? I'm on there fairly often if you're keen to team up

Between having to pay extra money for lootboxes in games I buy and paying my ISP extra to access websites like Netflix because of the new FCC rules, I'm going to be broke! It is ridiculous!

a reply to: Havoc40k
I have been playing MWO since closed beta and play rather regularly. I am on most nights from 2:00 am till about 5 cst.
and on the weekends i am on in the afternoons and evenings.

My name there is S N A K E (with spaces between each letter.)
Look me up some time. My unit has TS and Discord and have alot of members that play on all timezones.

a reply to: TrueBrit

Excuse me Brit but I think I might have something in my eye *soft weeping*

I'm with you, i've been gaming for almost 30 years and it was never like what it is now, these micro transactions are the 'blue shells' of gaming. Back in the day you earned the unlockables like in F Zero X or Mortal Kombat (the latter changing it's tune)

I say this regularly when it comes to micro transactions, you don't buy a car and expect to pay extra for a steering wheel-and paying extra for a supercharger does not make you a better driver.

a reply to: TrueBrit

Im with you man been gaming since my parents let me play with their spectrum 48K
commodore 64
then my dad bought me the amiga 500 for xmas when I was 10
then I got a PC to play duke nukem, doom , and half life (specifically)
then PS one
so on so forth

Im on my 3rd PC since I left my parents and its a pretty decent rig
I still have all my old consoles and amiga they all work

yeh government have complained directly to EA as their microtransactions are encouraging under age gambling with the loot boxes etc
things are changing for the better

and finally we may able to return to normal game dev where we pay for a finished product and the DLC is an actual expansion and not a game patch which you have to pay for.

Brit I never knew you were into gaming

if you are on PC steam add me sapien82

I'll come back to this as at work right now but I have plenty to say on this subject

a reply to: eXia7

This brings up another troubling point.

Time was, you purchased a game, that game was yours to play as long as your machinery was running. An example would be my N64 collection. Its not the biggest collection of games, because I am a discerning chap, and know what I like. But every game I bought on that machine will still run. Mario 64 is 21 years old, give or take some months, and still runs like its on greased rails today. But there have been games made in the last ten years, the last five I would wager, which are no longer playable, because the developers shut down support for them.

Now, this would be bad enough if someone had gone out and purchased those games to play, for the single, listed box price of a game, but its absolutely awful when you think just how much money people have sunk into some of those titles, well in excess of the price of a modern game. People tell me that these days a game, if priced fairly, would have to cost close to one hundred pounds to purchase, in order that the company making it could be properly paid for their time and costs in making it. But some of the games you are talking about saw players sink many times that amount into them over their play period, and for that investment to be voided, that money to be lost... It just does not sit right with me on a fundamental level.

When I buy something, I expect to be able to use that something until either I die, or it does. I could, if I had a mind to, still boot up my Amiga 600, and play the titles I had on that machine. I expect the same to be true of games purchased in this decade, and I SHOULD expect that, we all should. But its not the case, and regardless of what it costs to make the game in the first place, developers should ensure that as long as the equipment used to run the game is in working order, the games people purchase or invest time and money in, continue to run for at least as long.

As time wears on, things are supposed to improve. But it seems to me that for all the prettiness of the output of the modern games development houses, the underpinnings of the games are not improving at all, rather the opposite. That which one used to expect to be able to get decades of enjoyment out of, is now expected to last less than one decade, is designed to only run for a limited period from the outset. This just is not acceptable, it is not an ethical way to do business, to deliberately limit the amount of time for which a given product will be capable of performing its function, and this built in obsolesence has been penetrating nearly every market one can imagine.

But the creation of computer games is not like unto the building of a car, or the manufacture of a piece of kitchen equipment, or a tool. The creation of computer games is an art form, not a merely technical achievement, and the purpose of art is not to generate wealth, but to communicate ideas, to bring the imagination of the creator, out of their minds and manifest it in a manner which allows others to interact with it on some level. The same can be said of paintings, of movies, of all forms of art. If the primary motivation of creating a piece of art is to earn money, then the result is not actually art, its only design. Art MUST be made, from the perspective of the creator, whether it is financially successful for them or not. The creation, the process and the resultant image, film or other structure, is the only important feature of a work of art, and consumers, although many of them may not think in these terms when making a purchase, can always tell once the puddings proof has been gained, whether the motivation for the creation of a game they play, was art or financial success. The normal proof for this, is that games which are made as art forms, nearly always turn out being better, more granular, more intense and incredible in scope, than those which are made for the purpose of earning money.

Look at the GTA series, for example. Grand Theft Auto, as a franchise, as an entity entire, has to be one of the most impressively consistent intellectual properties ever developed for the computer games world by that measure. Yes, the games themselves were lucrative for their creators, but beyond that, they were rich with detail, as carefully and lovingly rendered as they could be with the technology available at the time, and massive attention was paid in creating them, to the humour of the writing, the quality of the voice acting, the level of immersion in the narrative that a player experienced. Everything their creators did, seemed to be about incrementally improving the user experience, over the course of the numerous games in that series.

If the people who have made the GTA games over the years, could output such great work, such enjoyable work over the course of the franchises existence, then other teams and publishers have no excuse what so ever, for failing to do the same.

I bought star wars battlefront, which was an essentially empty game so there is no way I will buy battlefront 2.

Do you remember what EA did to Dungeon Keeper? Take a great game and make it unplayable.

In fact I will be bold enough to say I will never buy an EA game again.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: TrueBrit

...from casual gamers from the younger generations. I would ask that members responding here, indicate whether they are old school gamers from the 16 bit era or previous, or the thirty two bit era onwards, just so that we can figure out if opinions on this topic are affected much by age and experience or not. Thanks for your time folks, and I look forward to seeing what you all come back with!

8-Bit era here. Been playing PC games as my primary platform since 1993, played even the early Dos star wars games like Rebel Assault, and played Quake World and Quake 3 at a competitive level.

Rose tinted glasses man. Battlefront II Classic is a terrible game through and through and was when it came out. The classic games were star wars skinned battlefield 1942 clones and didn't do anything particularly better in any regard, and in fact were worse in almost everyway. Check the reviews of Battlefront II Classic and you'll see it got slammed hard for major imbalances.

I've played pretty much every Star Wars game ever put out, from Dark Forces to Battlefront II [2017] and Battlefront II 2017 is among the best of star wars games.

The list of good SW games is actually quite small;

X-Wing/Tie Fighter
Jedi Knight series
Rogue Squadron series
BattleFront II 2017
Episode 1: Racer
Republic Commando

Honorable mentions;
Empire at War
Shadow of the Empire


Now; don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for the huge grind [which was removed BEFORE launch], I'm also not advocating for loot boxes that contain statistical advantages that can be purchased with real money [also removed before launch as real money transactions are disabled] -- I too know the game isn't perfect and there are issues with mostly the Attack side of maps, but all of this is pretty common for a game on launch, you can't really go fine tuning things until people are actually playing it on a massive scale.

Outside of the way they tried to monetize it, the game is pretty excellent. You can sit there until you're blue in the face and tell me "the campaign is short" and I'll just say back to you -- well BattleFront II Classic didn't have a campaign. It had multiplayer maps played against bots with some voice overs explaining the map objectives.

The other side caveat of the new BFII, is that all of the DLC is free. All of it. They are already working on Ashoka, Padme, Anakin, Grevious, ObiWan, Finn, Phasma, Jyn Urso, Count Dukku, Jango Fett, Director Krennic. These will be released as "Seasons" with the first being "The Last Jedi Season" starting on Dec 5th, which comes with two new maps, 1 for Galactic, 1 for StarFighter and Finn and Phasma.

That amount of content would normally in the classic era of PC gaming, have been relegated to a $30 expansion set but it's all free here.

So did they mess up with the loot boxes? Yeah, a little bit but it's no where near as out of proportion as people make it sound especially since the negative feedback was heard. They removed Tier 3 and Tier 4 loot from boxes, so grey and green only, and they are also adding in an unlock system that will allow you to unlock basically every star card through gameplay, not through loot boxes or crafting.

The only way Classic battlefront II was better, was they had space battles and ground battles in the same map as different phases. Outside of that -- the game is worse in every single possible way. I have them both installed right now, and it's no question which one is superior.

P.S.
And for the "The campaign is short" crowd -- the campaign is also going to be extended during the seasons, as well as arcade mode -- AND, they are adding in an offline bot play for all of the game modes in the game. So yes -- you will eventually be able to play Galactic Assault by yourself offline vs Bots.

They said as much in the AMA.

originally posted by: Thecakeisalie
a reply to: TrueBrit

Excuse me Brit but I think I might have something in my eye *soft weeping*

I'm with you, i've been gaming for almost 30 years and it was never like what it is now, these micro transactions are the 'blue shells' of gaming. Back in the day you earned the unlockables like in F Zero X or Mortal Kombat (the latter changing it's tune)

I say this regularly when it comes to micro transactions, you don't buy a car and expect to pay extra for a steering wheel-and paying extra for a supercharger does not make you a better driver.

Um, yeah you do. You ever see the difference in "Trims" for a car? They sell you everything from a compass to heated seats, to turbos, to bigger engines, to different drive trains, to different wheels or braking systems, how about Traction Control, that's a big one they sell at a premium -- like what? Sure they don't try to sell you the steering wheel, the base level has to be usable, and all of these games that sell piece meal upgrades do the same thing. The base game is definitively playable.

Look at Tesla, who was selling people 10,000$ packages for a software unlock to uncap the battery for range increases.

A super charger will not make you a better driver, no -- but neither does have a Tier 4 star card kit. It does however give an advantage to the worse driver, or player, in any given test. A super charger is going to increase the marks of a poor driver in a straight drag, it may not however, help him beat better drivers on a touring course.

Same thing. There are people absolutely destroying with 0 star cards equipped just to prove this, even though star cards do grant players serious statistical advantages.

Tools do not replace or negate skill, they augment and offset it. I'm not arguing in favor of statistical advantages in competitive multiplayer PVP games by any means, because at it's core -- it's the antithesis of competition, but... your analogy is just not correct.

originally posted by: Dr X
I bought star wars battlefront, which was an essentially empty game so there is no way I will buy battlefront 2.

Do you remember what EA did to Dungeon Keeper? Take a great game and make it unplayable.

In fact I will be bold enough to say I will never buy an EA game again.

That's sad because Battlefront II is not an empty game, there is a wealth of content and all of the DLC content is free, and the DLC content is shaping up to be as big as the base game essentially doubling the games content.

It going back to the class system of the classic Battlefront games is also a total boon for the franchise. It's an excellent game, and while people say "talk with your wallet" I think that applies here too.

They almost did something horrible, but they pulled killswitch before release day and are actively working to basically replace the random loot box system with target unlocks that are completed with gameplay challenges. If talk with your wallet means anything, than if you're a fan of star wars -- you should probably buy BattleFront II or you do the total opposite of encourage them to listen to the negative feedback.

Also;

The DICE put out an interview before Battlefront 1 came out saying; "No campaign, No space battles, light on content. We're not happy about this, but we basically had no time to work on the game, but if we didn't take the contract, we would have lost the opportunity to make it."

So I mean, it was a fun game -- it wasn't a bad game, just not an excellent one. It was a little light on content, and it was definitely over priced. This how ever, was not concealed from the purchaser, in fact -- they felt terrible that they put out such a light package that they wanted everyone to know how light the package was, and why it was light. Battlefront II is basically the first entry in the modern battle front series -- the first one was essentially a tech demo and a test bed for some ideas, and without the first one, we wouldn't have the excellent game the second one is.

Be mad at Disney, not at Dice. Be mad at EA, not at Dice or Criterion.

BFII was made by dice and criterion. EA tried to take advantage of the common acceptance of microtransactions from the surge if successful Free to Play games -- which was following an example put down by Blizzard [having loot boxes and premium currency in a full retail priced game, Overwatch] and Dice/Criterion as well as the community have successfully won that tug of war.

a reply to: SRPrime

They almost did something horrible?

You do understand that the removal of the ability to purchase progression related upgrades is temporary, the broken part of the system is not gone for ever, that they intend to bring it back at some stage, probably after the release of the next Star Wars movie?

They have DONE something horrible, trying to get nonsense past the people who will be playing their games.

As for your take on SWBF2 classic...

You are welcome to your opinion, but I am not in the slightest bit certain that you could find a great mass of people who actually purchased and played the game, to agree with you, other than perhaps some reviewers at the time.

Its also worth pointing out at this stage, that the game as it stands, even ignoring the lootbox and micro transaction system, is full of holes, precisely because DICE and EA appear to have been a little too precious about taking queues from the classic era game, as to how to craft a decent game.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: SRPrime

They almost did something horrible?

You do understand that the removal of the ability to purchase progression related upgrades is temporary, the broken part of the system is not gone for ever, that they intend to bring it back at some stage, probably after the release of the next Star Wars movie?

They have DONE something horrible, trying to get nonsense past the people who will be playing their games.

As for your take on SWBF2 classic...

You are welcome to your opinion, but I am not in the slightest bit certain that you could find a great mass of people who actually purchased and played the game, to agree with you, other than perhaps some reviewers at the time.

Its also worth pointing out at this stage, that the game as it stands, even ignoring the lootbox and micro transaction system, is full of holes, precisely because DICE and EA appear to have been a little too precious about taking queues from the classic era game, as to how to craft a decent game.

Play 1 round of 2017, then play 1 round of classic. Everyone will agree. Classic is janky, the shooting is terrible, the engine is bad, the netcode is atrocious that it's even hard to play on 100mb lines. There is no balance in the game at all. Your opinion is that of nostalgia, it's not rooted in reality, but rooted in an era. There was a very tiny small cult following for a reason. The game was promising conceptually, but flawed in actual design. Getting 1 shot ON SPAWN from the otherside of the map is good design? Having Mace Windu go 88 and 0 is good design? Okay.....

And while purchases will come back online once the progression systems are overhauled, there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that. That's not horrible in and of itself, and you should recognize that since you have less time to play than you probably used to, ya know -- being an adult an all.

You could unlock everything in Mortal Kombat in a day, you could not unlock everything in GoldenEye in a day. As long as you can unlock what you want, by looking at what you need to do and then doing it -- and it's not an incredibly grindy system, then the grind is only as long as the content that's available to unlock. So as long as it's reasonable to obtain, then I couldn't care less if someone else wanted to buy it all.

That's not horrible friend, it's only horrible if the time sinks are so great that the only viable way to do it is to purchase, which is how it WAS before they pulled the kill switch. For instance, in 2 days I had all the locked heroes unlocked. The price reduction from 60k credits to 15k credits is not reverting, follow?

I've had a lot of game time availability changes in the last 5 years or so, and I can tell you, there were games I simply couldn't play because they were way too time consuming and there was no alternative. In an MMO or something, sure that's fine, but in a straight first person shooter, that's not fine, and there is a middle ground between the two. They've been doing this in every single Battlefield game since Battlefield 3 and not one person ever complained, most people don't even know you can just buy all the unlocks with cash money on day one, because the unlocks come in very steady and can be targeted.

Valve's GabeN has a very powerful statement about this, and he too believes in the middle ground. Having real money purchases isn't bad by nature, it's bad when the game incentives those purchases.

Take Deus Ex: Man Kind Divided as a perfect example. This game had microtransactions, but the game itself did nothing to force incentive to those purchases. I played it to the end and never spent a dime, nor even felt like the system was there, but for the people who wanted all the praxis out of the gate who didn't want to download a trainer and were totally okay with opening their wallet -- what's the harm? In other words, there is nothing ethically wrong giving the player a choice, design the game to incentivize purchases on the other hand IS ethically wrong because your forcing the purchase and it ceases to be a choice, and that's the part they cut out and are replacing.

I would love to hear about the "holes" because I guarantee it's bias because you've predetermined to not like it. Yes, objectives for attackers need to be tuned, yes there are some battlepoint exploits right now they need to be patched out, but uh -- from a game design point of view? Everything works, it just needs tuning. They took so many queues from the classic games, I'm not even sure what that statement means. You say the classic games are better, yet -- the game is bad because they took too many queues from the classic games?

Pretty much shows you don't care about the game itself, you're consumed by the SJW outrage over lootboxes.

Lootboxes suck unless they are supplementary. They are not right now. That is a problem. They will be after the progression update. Problem solved.

have any other PC game players checked their steam profile and wept at how many hours they have spent gaming
I dare not show my girlfriend

then I realise how much money i have spent on games on steam
and I weep

sapien82

check how much you have spent on steam

steam profile check

a reply to: sapien82

I'm on steam and dread looking!!
But at least places like CD Keys do steam keys a couple of quid cheaper than steam, but even steam prices are on the rise and are almost comparable to a boxed console game.

a reply to: sapien82

I only buy games on sales, and pretty much exclusively when they are under $10. So, no, no weeping. In fact, just got 10 or so new ones this sale for less than $50, including Mankind Divided, Metro: Last Light, 3dmark, etc.

Honestly though, if it bothers you, why not change?

Anywho, I feel that MMOs and phone games really started this model, but some have still done well enough by breaking the mold. I think Guild Wars 2 did a good job in a lot of ways, including modes like WvW.

I think what's annoying about all this is as an adult I don't get the time to play for days on end any more but I don't want to spend even more money just to keep me as competitive as the next person.
Gaming has changed, I'm a PC gamer (since doom3D) and do also own an Xbone, I bought Tom Clancy's Rainbow six and even though this is a fantastic multiplayer game with free maps and free new content, you have to grind to get new "operators" and I can see this becoming the norm' in future paid games to the point that the "basic" free player will be useless and unless you have weeks to grind or more money to spend, the basic gamer will be cannon fodder for the player who's willing to spend, spend, spend like a lot of these free to play games are now.

a reply to: sapien82

Thanks for the steam profile checker, that was fun to look up.


413 hours playtime...
I'm almost disappointed in myself...lol
I thought it would be more.

I buy and will keep all my systems untill the day I die. I hope when I do die, they find a nice home (that is not the dump) or I respawn with my old equipment. I have the NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis (Sega cd), Sega gamegear, PS1-3, Xbox (found on gabage day) Nintendo DS and a homebuilt PC. I will not buy a PS4 or a new Xbox because of the dirty tactic of making people pay to play online. It is sad how Mass Effect turned out.

The industry has become too corporate. They pump out games based on deadlines to line up with financial quarter earnings. One day however, a group of people may start up a giant free open source game dev site where every one can work on a game(s) and then release them into the wild when they mature past the legal age. Then at some point AI bots might be able to make and mix games suited to your taste.

I have never bought a loot box with real money and I rarely buy games at full price when they first come out. Also, retro stuff is making a comeback.