/vr/ - Retro Games

EA was an evil corporation right from the start. Trip Hawkins was the devil incarnate.

>>5755452
They raped and killed westwood in 2003, so probably around that time.

>>5755452
Archon and M.U.L.E. were good by the standards of their time.

>>5755480
1992: Origin
1995: Bullfrog
1997: Maxis
Westwood was bought in 1998.

>>5755452
EA made Starflight and Budokan.

>>5755502
>Starflight
Star Control II: slow motion edition. A good concept ruined by Intolerable tedium. Just play SC2 instead.

>>5755502
They didn't make Starflight.

>>5755452
Only good EA game was Starflight. Everything else is trash.

>>5755452
They put out some good'uns in the 80s and 90s.
But the beast had already begun growing and consuming... by the end of the 90s it had past the point of no return and would publish the odd good thing in the following decade (not /vr/ related titles) and become a studio murderer with a big ol pit of developer corpses out the back.

Ever since they've been shit.

>>5755452
>Was EA ever good?
I like a lot of their games. Ultima, Legend of Kyrandia, SimCitry 2000, Soukyugurentai, Syndicate, Wing Commander, Command & Conquer, Rabbit, Theme Park, etc.

>Where did it go wrong?
I don't know, I guess shady business practices like reverse engineering Sega's system protections to not pay for any licensing fees. They do like to swing around their money and engineering expertise to strongarm their way around has some bad optics. I think it is mostly that there are a lot of contrarians that they release the most popular games.

>humble computer game publisher gets the first taste of console money and goes on a warpath of greed

Why is this so common?

>>5755717
You are completely ignoring the fact that EA killed all those series you mention.
Half of those games in your picture were published by Origin when they were still independent.

>>5755726
Because of how we are as a species.

>>5755717
>Soukyugurentai
They had nothing to do with that. All they did was publish the Saturn port in japan.

ladp more like LARP

EA have had the same business strategy for as long as they've existed:

1. Find a promising dev studio with proven talent
2. Offer a fat stack of cash for their next game in exchange for the company and the IP
3. Watch them produce maybe one or two excellent titles with their new big budget.
4. Keep demanding more from people who you've been working to the bone.
5. Watch their creativity fall apart as a result of the constant pressure and deadlines
6. Shutter the studio, lay everyone off and sit on the IP forever with zero intention of ever doing anything with it ever again.

>>5755758
No, I mean why is it specifically computer game publishers that become the worst once exposed to console money? Do consoles awaken their inner greed? Ubisoft is the same.

>>5755452
Should have stayed with sports and left everything else alone.

>>5755452
They were great in the 80's and 90's. With some really awesome games or even niche titles like a parody on their own sports titles "Caveman Ughlympics".

But now? Cancer pure cancer waiting for a chemo therapy or a straight up radical excision from the gaming market.

>>5755452
EA was always evil.

>>5755480
Nah, they outright stole code from Bethesda in the 90s and used it for their sports games, which EA of course profited quite a lot from.
They're a bunch of shysters and frauds, has always been, will always be.

>>5755536
They're an evil company that sometimes publishes a good game. Usually they will buy and kill the dev studio afterwards.

>>5755452
Man, this game is kicking my ass on the PC

>>5755717
>Syndicate
They cancelled that series after rushing out its sequel.

>Ultima
Of all their franchise murders, this was one of their most ugly, Ultima 9 was an atrocity.

>>5755452
Did they publish good games?
Yes.
Did they destroy the game studios that made them big?
Yes.
Did they steal code to make the first Madden game?
Yes.
Was it worth it in the long run?
probably not
Check the EA wife testimonials, pretty long but interesting read

>>5755508
They gave credit to the devs. Back in the day when devs were just faceless neckbeards employed mostly by ATARI or some nippon corp salarymen.

>>5755726
>>5755758
>>5756076
Yes. Console fags who wanted endless FIFA fartball games enabled the terrorist EA.

EA was great all the way through till the mid 00s. Then they started absorbing talented studios, leading the way with jewish DLC tricks and stopped making good games.

>>5756587
>Look mom! I can blame le jews for everything!
>>>/pol/

>>5756587
They were already doing that shit in the 90s you fucking underage.

>>5756590
>le
You have to go back.

>>5756606
You and him can both go.

>>5755717
wtf are you still pushing the Soukyugurentai was made by EA meme. for once and for all this game was made by Raizing/8ing

truth is you're a dumb sick grabber and completely oblivious about the game you post.

>>5756605
They made a few very good games in the 00s. They're not like Titus where it's just different levels of turd, their sports for example were always very high standard.

>>5756614
You and those two queers need to leave.

During the 80's Apple][ era EA was godlike. They were putting creators and programmers on the game jackets and very liberal with finding creative "little guy" devs.

After trip hawkins left in the early 90's and larry probst took over the focus really shifted to EA Sports and it was still pretty amazing. The quality was still there and they were still doing alot for small devs, but it shifted a bit around the PSX launch in 1995.

They had more and more UK board members and that's when the small studio rape fest really started Probst came off the rails trying to appease the board room vampires. By about 2005 they whored themselves out to anybody that would slap EA on any junk food product, they were buying flash based gambling services like Pogo it was a total mess. It has been more downhill from there.

The lesson is to never let money change you. Google's slogan was "don't be evil", now they make military weapons and robots. It happens to them all.

>>5755452
Not retro, but EA Sports Big titles like SSX Tricky and SSX 3 were great, Sims 1 and SimCity series are classics. Early Battlefields were pretty fun. Their best run was probably 6th gen/early 2000s before they implemented some of their worst business practices

>>5755738
Ultima still had MMOs, Kyrandia ran its course = (I only played the first two), SimCity is still being made to my knowledge, Soukyu was standalone (but I wouldn't mind a sequel), Syndicate+Wing Commander+C&C has recent games, Rabbit+Theme park did have their devs shut down.


>>5755859
>>5756648
They are just a few EA games I like.


>>5756321
I remember there were trailers that was like Cyberpunk for a new Syndicate. I have only played the 7 line of Ultima games (got me hooked) in their day and went on to play the Underworld games (primarily 2 for U7 relation) and 8 but I did find the games pretty good, co-workers and friends enjoy the Elder Scroll games and I equate it similar to the fun I had playing 7. Good times.


>>5756327
I knew about the cube, sphere, and tetrahedron as the 3D shapes of the old EA logo, but I didn't even equate Elizabeth and Abraham as "EA" ... insightful.

>>5757962
Ultima was still good by 7, 8 could have been a lot worse, and 9 was an absolute fucking disaster of a game that shat all over the established canon.
9 was kind of mindblowing just for how incredibly bad it was, and then EA gives the devs the axe for the game underperforming, when that was their own fault.

Syndicate as a series was an isometric/topdown realtime strategy/tactical action game about being the ultimate evil megacorp.
You outfit four agents with weapons and cybernetics, then go out and carry out acts of violence, theft, and kidnapping, involving killing and brainwashing enemy corporate agents, kidnapping and brainwashing executives and scientists, robbing banks, and generally stealing and destroying property, as well as violently quelling civil uprisings objecting to your fucking bullshit.
Ammorality was a strong theme in these games, in the second game you could also play as a cult called The Church Of The New Epoch, ostensibly presenting themselves as salvation from this ultra corporatist hell, they were really only seeking to establish themselves as the new rule instead, engaging in basically all of the heinous shit that the corporate syndicates were doing already, with a strong preference for the Indoctrinator tool.
A third faction was planned as playable for Syndicate Wars, the rebel punks who are fighting the syndicates, church, and the government, but as EA put the thumbscrews on Bullfrog, this was scrapped and left out of the game, and it was released with two factions and some pretty serious bugs, which prevented you from actually beating one of the last missions as you couldn't prevent yourself (well, your agents/zealots) from being killed as you were supposed to.

Even by this point, EA had seriously damaged a game which still managed to be really cool, but could have been just a lot more (and beatable without cheats). Then, many years after Bullfrog's demise (at EA's hands), EA releases a generic as can be first person shooter with the Syndicate brand name on it. It doesn't sell enough, and EA puts the franchise back in its giant walk-in freezer full of developer team corpses.

>>5757996
>>5757998
Yeah, Syndicate was the shit! I remember persuadetroning everyone. Don't remember finishing the game, but it was a fun sandbox kind of chaos in a Crusader No Remorse sort of way. All of my friends are hyped for the new Cyberpunk game (even I am too but I have no means to play it) so I wonder how that is succeeding while that new Syndicate seemed to have failed (I remember trailers for it looked neat.

>>5758035
Satellite Reign is supposed to be a spiritual successor to it, but I haven't played it and don't know what it's really like. I don't know if it features anything like the punks or zealots.

Cyberpunk looks interesting, but I don't really know what to expect from it.

I'd bet if it weren't for the sports games (FIFA in particular) they'd sure be dead by now.