EA shouldn't be able to continue to exist after so many horrible mistakes, and flat out abuses of gamers. Normally, such a shoddily run business doesn't survive long before being replaced by the competition
But EA has a monopoly in place, in the form of virtually every pro sports license. This alone props up a company that often seems antagonistic towards it's customers with wasting those licenses on crappy games like the entire Madden series now, endless micro-transactions, and almost punishing players for NOT buying their add ons.
They can pretend the backlash towards EA is largely over the LGBT issue, but that is a cop out to the very real complaints lodged against EA. They claim to be concerned about their image and customer service- but nothing ever changes, does it? We still get half-finished games, DRM, crashed servers, bland yearly roster updates on broken sports games....
EA utterly defines the term 'phoning it in' for their product quality, including their biggest AAA money-makers. If they don't care about their best products, why would anyone expect their 2nd tier efforts to work at all?
Some good points. I would add that Aliens movies weren't even about the aliens. They were about that last, lone human survivor as those around you get picked off. It was the Walking Dead of it's time. The movies only had squads of gun blasting marines at the beginning, but always revolved around a single, relate-able character that ends up alone. These games just make you another faceless marine among many. It's simply the wrong genre entirely for the license. The mass combat of the games is only implied in the films. There are space marines and they have these guns- but the movies never show a larger 'war' in the way that (the terrible) Starship Troopers did. I think that's where the games fall down. They are really trying to be Starship Troopers and not at all like the Aliens movies. I'm one of the few that hated Dead Space- generic, dull, backtracking so much it was like half a map- but that game is much closer to the Aliens movies I think.
Good article. I think there is plenty of room for brainless, silly fun as well as mature epics. Just like there is Weird Al AND there is Mozart. We can have Masterpiece Theater AND Family Guy. They aren't mutually exclusive, and the existence of one isn't an indictment of the other.
@bottaboomstick @TheLamaKnows Oh for the most part I agree. At it's core, the NHL series is awesome. The problem is that it's utterly stagnant so buying the latest NHL is essentially buying updated rosters and stupid trading card games. EA could simply offer new rosters yearly as DLC, but why bother when people line up to buy the same game as last year at full price? Madden in particular is crap. Even the core gameplay in that series has dropped to a level not much better than the original Sega versions. The voice commentary in every Madden for the past decade has become nothing less than pathetic and getting worse. Lastly, EA is perhaps the worst offender of them all for money grubbing micro-transactions. That's pretty much the only new element added to any EA title for years- the ability to pay even more money to EA. I just personally won't give EA anymore money for an identical game any more. I did that since the Sega days for sports franchise and in the past few years, it's all been wasted money.
@Rachit1 @TheLamaKnows Not at all. I certainly don't want to see yet another Far East setting. We've only had a million ninja games. The west likewise dominates settings, which is why the first AC, with a Middle Eastern hero and setting was so fresh. The Indian setting would perfectly tie together the west and east during the time of the British rule there. That also coincides with the American Revolution, leaving devs all manner of storyline tie ins. That particular culture is famed for inventing several unique weapons that would make for excellent tools in a game, such as the ring blades I mentioned. Eastern mysticism would also blend well with the overall story of 'enlightened' beings, past lives, etc.
What makes that video both funny and sad, is that WoW has that children's game mechanic of never actually losing. You just reappear elsewhere with all your stuff intact. A group wipe in WoW is at most a minor inconvenience, yet the players other than Leeroy do their best to live up to the stereotype of loser gamer that take the loss of...nothing....so seriously. What you are hearing on that video is a heaping helping of 20 year old virgins. Jenkins would do well in Eve. I'd fly with that dude anytime because it would be FUN. And Eve is a game where loss is real, and not just a jog back to the dungeon (invulnerable no less) to try again. It's only fun if you can actually lose.
Given the work already done on American settings in ACIII, I expect to see a US Civil War era game. To keep the assassin from taking sides (you really couldn't have the hero be a southern sympathizer without stirring up a hornet's nest of controversy over the issue of slavery) I can see the time period being just post-Civil War during Reconstruction and the political and social instability of the time. I'm sure Ubi could weave in Lincoln's assassination to the story. It would also allow a time frame that extends to the westward expansion after the war, and tie into the later gold rushes and pre-Industrial Revolution. Ala Red Dead Redemption, this time frame could showcase a transition from the up close and personal style of melee or short ranged weapons, to the mechanization of warfare. The point at which Assassins went from bad asses like Ezio to whiny unemployed 20-somethings in baggy clothes like Desmond.
That being said, both the west and the orient have frankly been done to death. How about late medieval India? Razor sharp metal rings rather than throwing knives?
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