Electronic Arts plans a "fundamental shift" in how it makes games, says CEO

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~Mike~

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There was a time when Electronic Arts was literally the worst company in America. That time was last year, actually, and even though it managed to avoid the three-peat in 2014, there's no question that EA has a long way to go to shed its less-than-sterling reputation. Fortunately for those concerned about such things, CEO Andrew Wilson has a plan.

Simplistically put, Wilson said the new mandate at EA is to ensure its games are functional and fun at a much earlier stage in the process than it has in the past, to be more rigorous about ensuring quality control through the process and to be willing to delay a game's launch when it's necessary. That may sound like simple common sense, but Wilson told Kotaku that it represents a "fundamental shift" in its processes.

"We always believed you need a playable build. We've been building games a long time," he said. "But in the heat of battle you kind of do what you can. We have now said there is no alternative. If the build is not playable, you have to push the schedule until it's playable again. You can't eat up that time."

Earlier betas, like the one for Battlefield Hardline that went live this month, are also a big part of EA's new way of doing things. Hardline is already in a "very polished state," he said, but opening the beta now—the game doesn't launch until October—gives the company a "longer ramp and a much longer phase to bring far more people into the game."

He also promised to be more forthcoming with information about what EA is getting up to. "The world is changing. This Hollywood blockbuster mentality of, 'Keep all of the information to yourself' is not something that makes sense in today's world," he said. Again referencing Hardline, news of which leaked ahead of the official announcement, he added, "We can't keep a secret anyway, so we may as well just start talking about it."

The first bit of the interview game me the impression that Wilson was just spouting conventional corporate platitudes, but as he went on (and it's a fairly meaty talk), he started to convince me that maybe he's serious about changing things up. Electronic Arts is never going to be a nimble indie operation tightly connected with its fan base, but I have no doubt that it can do better, and Wilson comes across, to me at least, as someone who might be the guy to make it happen.

"I really want us to change as a company and start making more new stuff, and in order to do that, you have to get feedback, and in order to get feedback, you have to be willing to open the curtain and have a conversation about it early," he said. "And those fears you would have had in years gone by of competitive advantage and what if someone else sees what you're doing and will they build it quicker? At the end of the day if we build a great game, it doesn't matter."

Dare to dream, right?
Click to expand...

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/18/e...amental-shift-in-how-it-makes-games-says-ceo/
 
I'll believe it when i see it, but they've said similar in the past and still nothing.
 
Stop charging bio annually for DLCs and expansions and give players more time to enjoy the titles they have bought.. oh and fix your bugs too before attempting your next project.
 
Yeah, yeah, let's see them do it, instead of just talking about it.

The problem with EA is that they are a marketing led company. They think they can put out any old crap in any old state, and marketing will sell it. We've seen grand statements like this before because it's part of EA's "marketing first" mentality.

Unfortunately (for EA), people talk to each other about this kind of stuff. The internet forms special interest groups where EA's customer base gets to echange info on what the company and it's products are really like.

In order to change this perception, customers need to see real change, not just more empty promises.
 
Oh dear so instead of Bach we have this clown spreading lies now. Hardline and note im not calling it Battlefield because it bloody isn't will be like every other EA game on release - broken.

Years of deceit isnt forgotten after a PR statement. If you believe him more the fool you.
 
They should go back and re-do the games they have ruined such as C&C with no extra charge to the people who already own them. While they are at it they can get rid of Origin too!!
 
Earlier betas, like the one for Battlefield Hardline that went live this month, are also a big part of EA's new way of doing things. Hardline is already in a "very polished state," he said, but opening the beta now—the game doesn't launch until October—gives the company a "longer ramp and a much longer phase to bring far more people into the game."
Click to expand...

so basically saying stick a nice beta out which works well and then a gap between the beta and release to fill the fans with hopes and promises and to make sure everyone has preordered...then **** on everyone again like they did with the BF4 release :p

how is this new? :p haha!!!


bf4 was a very nicely polished alpha and beta..... then look what happened... why should we believe it will be any different in future :p
 
Actions are louder than words. I'll trust them again when they release a game that works on release and leaves it alone for 2 years at least before releasing a clone.
 
Andrew Wilson - CEO - June 2014

Electronic Arts plans a "fundamental shift" in how it makes games, says CEO"

There was a time when Electronic Arts was literally the worst company in America. That time was last year, actually, and even though it managed to avoid the three-peat in 2014, there's no question that EA has a long way to go to shed its less-than-sterling reputation. Fortunately for those concerned about such things, CEO Andrew Wilson has a plan.

Simplistically put, Wilson said the new mandate at EA is to ensure its games are functional and fun at a much earlier stage in the process than it has in the past, to be more rigorous about ensuring quality control through the process and to be willing to delay a game's launch when it's necessary. That may sound like simple common sense, but Wilson told Kotaku that it represents a "fundamental shift" in its processes.

"We always believed you need a playable build. We've been building games a long time," he said. "But in the heat of battle you kind of do what you can. We have now said there is no alternative. If the build is not playable, you have to push the schedule until it's playable again. You can't eat up that time."

Earlier betas, like the one for Battlefield Hardline that went live this month, are also a big part of EA's new way of doing things. Hardline is already in a "very polished state," he said, but opening the beta now—the game doesn't launch until October—gives the company a "longer ramp and a much longer phase to bring far more people into the game."

He also promised to be more forthcoming with information about what EA is getting up to. "The world is changing. This Hollywood blockbuster mentality of, 'Keep all of the information to yourself' is not something that makes sense in today's world," he said. Again referencing Hardline, news of which leaked ahead of the official announcement, he added, "We can't keep a secret anyway, so we may as well just start talking about it."

The first bit of the interview game me the impression that Wilson was just spouting conventional corporate platitudes, but as he went on (and it's a fairly meaty talk), he started to convince me that maybe he's serious about changing things up. Electronic Arts is never going to be a nimble indie operation tightly connected with its fan base, but I have no doubt that it can do better, and Wilson comes across, to me at least, as someone who might be the guy to make it happen.

"I really want us to change as a company and start making more new stuff, and in order to do that, you have to get feedback, and in order to get feedback, you have to be willing to open the curtain and have a conversation about it early," he said. "And those fears you would have had in years gone by of competitive advantage and what if someone else sees what you're doing and will they build it quicker? At the end of the day if we build a great game, it doesn't matter."

Dare to dream, right?
Click to expand...

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/18/e...amental-shift-in-how-it-makes-games-says-ceo/
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18606497

Andrew Wilson - EVP - July 2013

EA acknowledges gamer distaste for Origin "We get it."

Electronic Arts executive vice president Andrew Wilson agrees that the company’s Origin distribution platform is perceived as “just one more thing [PC gamers] have to install, another roadblock in the way of getting and playing a game.”

Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Wilson said, “I think when I look at the journey that service has taken, I think the transaction component of that service has taken a disproportionate amount of the communication and mind share of what we really try and provide, and the barrier that puts in between you and the game that you want to play.”

Wilson said that the solution was to emphasise the platform’s benefits as a service. “If you take away the transaction part of that, which for us in all honesty is a very small part of the service, and you think about consistent downloads, consistent access, and understanding of friends' presence, you think about game enhancements like chat and one-click join and in-game overlay, and all of a sudden you start to get to what Origin is – which is a service that makes your EA games better.”

“Some people really do like Origin, for all of those reasons; other people don't because of some less than optimal experience they've had. Initial experiences are hard to overcome, and that's going to take time,” conceded Wilson. “What we would say is ‘We get it. We understand it. We have heard, we have made some changes already in terms of how we do things, and we're looking at more changes that we'll talk about over the coming months that really are gamer-focused.’
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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...n-is-not-about-transactions-its-about-service
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18524310

Peter Moore - COO - April 2013

The tallest trees catch the most wind

The tallest trees catch the most wind.

That’s an expression I frequently use when asked to defend EA’s place in the gaming industry. And it comes to mind again this week as we get deeper into the brackets of an annual Web poll to name the “Worst Company in America.”

This is the same poll that last year judged us as worse than companies responsible for the biggest oil spill in history, the mortgage crisis, and bank bailouts that cost millions of taxpayer dollars. The complaints against us last year were our support of SOPA (not true), and that they didn’t like the ending to Mass Effect 3.

This year’s contest started in March with EA outpolling a company which organizers contend is conspiring to corner the world market on mid-priced beer, and (gulp) allegedly waters down its product. That debate takes place in bars – our audience lives on the Internet. So no surprise that we drew more votes there.

Let me cut to the chase: it appears EA is going to “win.” Like the Yankees, Lakers and Manchester United, EA is one of those organizations that is defined by both a legacy of success, and a legion of critics (especially me regarding all three of those teams).

Are we really the “Worst Company in America?” I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity. We owe gamers better performance than this.

Some of these complaints are 100 percent legitimate – like all large companies we are not perfect. But others just don’t hold water:
Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.
Some claim there’s no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. 45 million registered users are proving that wrong.
Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games.
We’ve seen mailing lists that direct people to vote for EA because they disagree with the choice of the cover athlete on Madden NFL. Yes, really…
In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games. This week, we’re seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America.

That last one is particularly telling. If that’s what makes us the worst company, bring it on. Because we're not caving on that.

We are committed to fixing our mistakes. Over the last three weeks, 900,000 SimCity players took us up on a free game offer for their troubles. We owed them that. We’re constantly listening to feedback from our players, through our Customer Experience group, Twitter, this blog, or other sites. The feedback is vital, and impacts the decisions we make.

I expect the debate will include a lot of comments under this post. But here’s the truth: each year EA interacts with more than 350 million gamers; Origin is breaking records for revenue and users; The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Real Racing 3 are at the top of the mobile charts; Battlefield 3 and FIFA are stunning achievements with tens of millions of players; and SimCity is being enjoyed by millions of passionate fans all over the world.

Every day, millions of people across globe play and love our games – literally, hundreds of millions more than will vote in this contest.

So here’s my response to this poll: We can do better. We will do better. But I am damn proud of this company, the people around the globe who work at EA, the games we create and the people that play them.

The tallest trees catch the most wind. At EA we remain proud and unbowed.
Click to expand...

http://www.ea.com/news/we-can-do-better
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18503022

David DeMartini - SVP Global Ecommerce - June 2012

Steam sales "cheapen intellectual property" says EA Origin boss

David DeMartini, head of EA's Origin, talks about a rocky first year and how EA wants Origin to be the hub for gamers
David DeMartini is Senior Vice President of Global Ecommerce for Electronic Arts, and that means that EA's much-maligned Origin digital distribution service is his baby. The service has had some difficult patches in its first year, and GamesIndustry International sat down with DeMartini at E3 to find out if things are getting better.

Q: What's the state of Origin now?

David DeMartini: Origin is in a constant state of improvement, at our official one year birthday. When you see it at the month-to-month level sometimes it's hard for our customers to see what we're doing, to see the bigger picture unfold. When you look at the year in totality, we did a tremendous amount of foundational work. We made sure we had a highly reliable commerce capability, buttoned down our merchandising, added features like friends and chat and in-game overlay, cloud saves, being able to purchase things in-game reliably. All of these are foundational pieces.

At the same time, as Gabe [Newell, of Valve] quickly pointed out, "Yeah, but what's so great about any of those features?" You might say they're all well done; in many cases they're what somebody else did, and they're kind of the minimum price of admission of having a high-quality service like we're trying to have. Now what we're emerging into is differentiating ourselves in this second year of existence into the kinds of things that EA differentiates itself on. The service should be a reflection of that.

We were kind of building the aircraft carrier while at the same time lining up planes to land. We were at 1 million downloads, and we're now at almost 13 million downloads. We've got over 50 publishing partners from the industry, and we generated over $150 million in revenue, which was almost a 400 percent increase over last year's total. From a numbers standpoint, we landed all those planes. But again, EA is a very challenging place. When we go up on the boards, and we go to the forums, and to Reddit, we keep track of what our customers are saying - they want more, and they expect more. I expect more, and everybody on my team expects more. We want to have a 90+ Metacritic service just like every game team that works on a game at EA wants to have a 90+ Metacritic game. No one ever sets out to release a 75!

Q: It's hard to work on the quality while also expanding the number of services, and the number of users, and the number of games...

David DeMartini: Yeah, but as the comedian says, "Nobody cares!" Nobody cares that it's hard, because it is really hard. We don't make any excuses and EA doesn't believe in having any excuses. We've got to continue to make the service better, dramatically better, and stickier, on a quarter by quarter basis throughout this entire fiscal year and that's what we intend to do.

That's what we've lined up, and now it's really a matter of execution against our plans, to give people the kind of differentiated service that will make Origin unique in the industry. That's not a value judgment on "It'll make it better than Steam, it'll make it better than Impulse." It will be its own thing and it will be really good, and the customers get to choose.
"We've got to continue to make the service better, dramatically better, and stickier, on a quarter by quarter basis throughout this entire fiscal year".

Q: It's hard to get people to come back if they have been dissatisfied, though.

David DeMartini: Yes, you have to be smart about how you re-engage. Maybe it's twice as hard to re-acquire them the next time.

Q: How is your program going to provide free distribution for indies?

David DeMartini: We've had a ton of phone calls, because anybody who's looking to be crowd-funded has called and said "This seems to good to be true!" And we say it's too good to be true, but it is true. If you have a successfully crowd-funded venture, the first 90 days of sales on Origin is free of any fee for Electronic Arts. This was the first thing Origin did that no one could complain about. The hardcore loves crowd-funding, and that hardcore has been a little tough on Origin the last twelve months, so we figured this is something we could do that is going to please the hardcore; it's going to please the independent development community, and it just seemed like a great idea all the way around.

Q: One of the problems with Steam for independent developers has been the uncertainty of whether or not Steam would distribute your title once it's done, because you have to go through an approval process.


David DeMartini: By removing that, a lot of the uncertainty goes away. That doesn't mean they're all going to be million sellers, but I'm hoping that by the time we release our first one we could have 15 to 20 million who are regularly launching the Origin application. That gives a small title an opportunity to be exposed to a huge audience. If you've got an idea, and you're able to take it soup to nuts and put it out there, the ultimate judge now becomes not the twelve hurdles I need to jump through; the ultimate judge becomes the consumer, the game player. I think that's what every game developer wants - they just want to be judged by the target audience they're trying to satisfy.

Q: At least if they've gone through that crowd-funding filter they have convinced thousands of people that it's a good thing.

David DeMartini: If it's finished, if it's credible, if it's testable, we're going to post it.

Q: Strategically, what's important for you over the next year? Any specifics?
"If it's finished, if it's credible, if it's testable, we're going to post it."

David DeMartini: The basic price of admission over the next twelve months is to continue to make everything better. Smaller memory footprint, easier to install, easier experience, all that kind of stuff. But nobody cares about that kind of stuff; they expect that you're going to be doing that. What we're going to lean into is the same kind of things EA is leaning into. You want to game, and you're going to brag and challenge amongst your circle of friends. So we're going to be leaning into seeing your achievements, posting your achievements to your friends, to be able to challenge your friends to take on achievements that you might have already achieved, even creating a meta-layer of achievements saying "I've achieved this in these four EA games, can you do that?"

Most importantly, cross-platform. You probably don't just game on a PC or just on an Xbox; we're playing on PS3, we're on Xbox, we're on PC, we're on social, we're on mobile, and we want to be the centerpiece, the hub, where all those achievements on all of those platforms come together. Because that's how you challenge amongst your friends. You may challenge them in Scrabble on an iPad, and you may challenge them on the number of head shots in Battlefield or what you've been able to do with Batman. That's where we're going to go. Origin will be a closer reflection of the diversity that EA has with its platform configurations.

Origin has the opportunity, being platform-agnostic, to be that centerpiece, to be that hub. We can surface all of the information about EA games you play to your friends, if you want, because we can keep track of that. And if you buy Batman through Origin, we can surface that information too, if you authorize it.

Q: One of the things that Steam does is this random deep-discounting of software, and it works well for them. Do you see that as something you want to do?

David DeMartini: We won't be doing that. Obviously they think it's the right thing to do after a certain amount of time. I just think it cheapens your intellectual property. I know both sides of it, I understand it. If you want to sell a whole bunch of units, that is certainly a way to do that, to sell a whole bunch of stuff at a low price. The gamemakers work incredibly hard to make this intellectual property, and we're not trying to be Target. We're trying to be Nordstrom. When I say that, I mean good value - we're trying to give you a fair price point, and occasionally there will be things that are on sale you could look for a discount, just don't look for 75 percent off going-out-of-business sales.

Q: Isn't that in some sense an old-school way of looking at it based on cost of goods? When your cost of goods is basically your transaction costs and your server costs. Even when they discount a game by 75 percent, they're still making money on it. It's not the margin that's important, but the total amount of revenue that's coming in. If by discounting it that much on a weekend they then kill the sales going forward, or they kill the sales in retail stores for the packaged versions, that could be a concern. But Gabe has said that as far as they can tell when they've done that it hasn't affected sales in other channels.

David DeMartini: Actually, Gabe will usually say it improves sales in other channels because if the game is good there are some water-cooler moments and it has a spring-up effect. Without revealing too much, what I'll say is one way to deal with ageing inventory is you do deep discounts like that. There are other ways, which I can't really talk about, of dealing with product as it ages over a period of time, where you present a value to the customer and you engage them in your service on a going-forward basis. We don't believe in the drop-it-down, spring-it-up, 75 percent off approach, but we've got something else that we do believe in that we'll be rolling out.

But I absolutely understand your point, and I'm not not-hearing what you're saying. We don't have the old-school approach that you're describing; we're all about building as big a universe as we can, and there are multiple ways to build the universe. One way is to discount the price, the other is to form a longer-term relationship with them and draw them in that way.

Q: I do think the downside of what Steam does might be damage to the brand.

David DeMartini: Also what Steam does might be teaching the customer that "I might not want it in the first month, but if I look at it in four or five months, I'll get one of those weekend sales and I'll buy it at that time at 75 percent off." It's an approach, and I'm not going to say it's not working for Valve. It certainly works for Valve; I don't know if it works as well for the publishing partners who take on the majority of that haircut.
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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-06-06-david-demartini-origin-wants-to-be-the-hub
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18412932

Andrew Wilson sucked his way upto CEO.

Electronic Arts, your ******** does indeed STINK and anyone with a single nostril can smell it miles away.

Please go away and leave the industry alone to thrive and prosper and STOP with the stupid meaningless garbage you tell people every year. You treat your customers (Not that I am one) like children. Yes, I am sure a certain number will fall for your **** but year on year, people will wake up to your pathetic company for what it really is.

Electronic Arts, Go **** yourselves.
 
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:D so basically what they doing now is let you become tester in essence earlier than normal. this doesnt mean the games will launch unbroken.

i actually rate their bs stories higher than any others they are skilled trolls.
 
Is this one of those "we're listening to our customers, but we're right and they're wrong" type of articles that EA push out every 6 months or so?
 
The people in charge at EA are exactly like bad politicians.

They say we will change this and that for the good, but when it comes to the crunch they never change this and that for the good.
 
Gimpymoo said:
You treat your customers (Not that I am one) like children. Yes, I am sure a certain number will fall for your **** but year on year, people will wake up to your pathetic company for what it really is.

Electronic Arts, Go **** yourselves.
Click to expand...

But only children buy their games :p, have you seen the Battlefield thread? Most don't even know what a Battlefield game is and like dumbed down mechanics.
 
I don't have issues with EA, probably because I rarely buy games at release and I don't think they are worse than any other big publisher. A lot of the hate they get seems to be related to the herd mentality of some gamers, rather than actual problems. They release good games or they release not so good games, just like everyone else, including indie developers.
 
pastymuncher said:
They should go back and re-do the games they have ruined such as C&C with no extra charge to the people who already own them. While they are at it they can get rid of Origin too!!
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yes ! C&C after the closed alpha fail they allowed me to experience its a wonder that they make any good games anymore, which I haven't seen a decent EA game in yesrs. :D
 
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