The head of Electronic Arts flashed his gamer credentials to kick off the final day of the DICE gaming summit in Las Vegas on Friday, but quickly turned his attention to what he said is a business model in the industry that is leading to “creative failure.”
Yes, EA CEO John Riccitiello finished “BioShock,” used YouTube to finish “Portal” and can’t wait for “Grand Theft Auto IV.” But he was focused on business — and on the negatives he wanted the couple of hundred developers and executives in attendance could learn from.
The way the big business of games operates now is leading to “creative failure,” he said repeating the phrase several times throughout is talk. “All of you has every reason to expect what you create is going to be truly great,” Riccitiello said. He cited the rising cost of game development,, saying that EA now produces games on at least 12 platforms (not counting multiple mobile phone platforms), require 200 people to create a top-level “AAA” game and that these games often need to be stuffed with an immense amount of content.
Making things worse, he said, was the consolidation of the gaming industry, something he acknowledged EA has been a major player in. “There are going to be fewer major publishers in 2010 than they are today. And I think the second tier publishers are going to thin out considerably.” He showed slides that listed dozens of developers that have been absorbed by publishers and developers over the last few years, and he admitted that many of those purchases bore bad fruit. “We at EA blew it,” he said, referring to EA’s problems keeping former top-tier studios Origin, Bullfrog and Westwood vital or even simply in existence, once they were purchased. There was too much consolidation, too much group think. The problem, he said, was “the fundamental belief that we could be one big happy family.”
Riccitiello proposed a solution.
The answer for Riccitiello is a label system. Or, using another metaphor, he proposed a view of game development studios treated like football teams, each one with their own heritage striving to reach the Super Bowl.
Another way of looking at it, he said, was city states. He pointed to Rockstar Games, Valve and Blizzard as development studios who do their own thing regardless of who owns them.
“The Command and Conquer model doesn’t work,” Riccitiello said. He said it was a bad idea for companies to buy development studios, change the studios names to brand them all to the publisher and expect progress.
February 8th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
EA really does seem to be trying to show a friendlier face to developers and gamers, and that’s a really good thing I think. That makes me less apprehensive about their acquisition of BioWare. They’ve been doing some riskier ventures with their EA Partners program and Spore is something that, in my mind at least, isn’t a sure thing. Then again, neither was The Sims, and look at the cash cow it is now. If they start releasing Madden on a biannual basis, I think they will have officially transitioned from evil overlord to benevolent dictator.
Activision, on the other hand, seems to be transitioning to the evil overlord. They are milking Guitar Hero, and to a lesser extent, Call of Duty, for all they’re worth. I worry for Blizzard.
February 9th, 2008 at 2:19 am
[...] EA CEO John Riccitiello took the stage during the final day of DICE to preach a doctrine of, well, basically: the exact opposite of everything EA has been doing for the past 15 years. In late 1992, EA gobbled up Origin, and soon after it was Bullfrog in ‘95, followed by Westwood in ‘98, and so and so forth, leading right up to the acquisition of BioWare and Pandemic Studios last October. “We at EA blew it,” said Riccitiello, speaking to the woeful fates of those early, and once top-tier developers after they became part of the EA ‘family.’ Lesson learned, apparently. [...]
February 9th, 2008 at 2:58 am
It still hurts like a dagger in the heart when EA bought, and later dismantled Westwood. That was a real unique grouping of talent that they smothered to death, and then when they didn’t get results, hacked it to pieces.
I still believe that Tiberium Wars could have been better if Westwood had handled it. Granted, I’m actually really happy with Tiberium Wars, but there’s just lots of “little things”, minor discrepancies compared to the other games.
However, I’m glad that EA is really starting to take some steps back, and reasses their place, and practices in the Market. A real attempt to shake off the Evil Overlord mantle. Now if they could just move Madden over to a biannual basis, and let more “city state” developers flourish, they’ll really move up in my book, and I’ll start buying EA games again.
February 9th, 2008 at 11:32 am
It is so obvious but nobody til now bring this issue to light. The game media is not doing enough to analyse game industry but obsesses with rumors.
Developers make worst games after purchase by EA. C&C is going down. Battlefield is down. Why western developers spend so much time and resource merge with each other instead of create good games? The excuse - games are too expensive to make is a load of crap. Less competition equal less creativity. Do see any big Japanese Publishers like Konami and Capcom merger? Capcom make record profit last year despite released most of it games on Next Gen consoles. The worst part is western game publishers scare of taking risk, just don’t make new games that surprise us anymore. It is so predictable - fPS and graphic.
February 9th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
@smoothn00dle
Yes of course you see major Japanese publishers merging. It hasn’t been that long since Sega merged with Sammy, Squaresoft with Enix, and Namco with Bandai
February 10th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
[...] a great studio that could have still to this day been outputting AAA titles. At DICE 08, EA CEO John Riccitiello admitted to MTV that consolidating of all of the studios that they bough in the ear…. I’m sure a lot of the former of employees of Westwood Las Vegas, Bullfrog and Origin could [...]
February 10th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Honestly noodle, C&C isn’t going down. I thought the same way before Command & Conquer 3, but that game and all the things they have done with it (not to mention Command & Conquer TV) have really raised my hopes for the franchise; EA is obviously learning from its mistakes and trying to correct them, and in my opinion is doing a good job so far.
~F15
February 11th, 2008 at 6:15 am
EA have messed up big time thats all there is to it.
February 17th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Wow… funny they mention Rockstar and Blizzard as being creative… when all Blizzard is doing is peddling a game that’s only selling point over other MMO’s is it’s addictiveness, and is by all means bland… not to mention the story and gameplay were radically changed to conform to what Vivendi wanted from it.
Oh, and then Rockstar… who’s whole business plan is to sell new games based entirely upon their shock value and not their originality or fun, just how many hookers you kill with baseball bats to steal their money.