EA As The Microsoft Of The Gaming Industry
...at least until Microsoft themselves started taking a run at the market. Alright, so now we have two Microsoft's in the market, that is two companies who buy up the little guys, who buy the popular developers, and buy their current day success.
I'm not arguing Microsoft or EA have always been evil, or that their owners see them today as evil, rather today they are hurting the people that matter. It is captialism at it's best boys and girls. First Microsoft took over the computer industry and now the gaming market, funny how they tend to screw over my interests. Anyways, back to EA.
KISS stands for keep it simple stupid, and it's important for making quality games. Creating a video game takes a great amount of time and care, espescially when it feels done, that's when you know it's time to test it hard. Nobody wants to ride a bicycle into a bus and get stuck to the bus, being forced to reset the game and having to start over. Polish makes or breaks a game. A game can be made about anything, as long as it's polished and well put together it can be fun. Shooting hookers and running over cops aren't the fun part (or rather, they don't have lasting appeal that an empire could be built from).
So how can the market thrive if larger and larger companies are putting more people on games and less focus is involved? It can't. It might be able to survive, but for only so long.
The good news comes in the form of another creation from Maxis (now owned by EA), with a tiny little game called [url=http://www.spore.com/]Spore[/url]. It's incredible. It's about fresh ideas, it's about taking chances, it's about what makes gaming fun. EA already knows they've got a hit on their hands, and they know it's the innovation that's going to give them a record quarter. They've realized they need to encourage more of their developers to rethink gaming and the ideas powering it.
The industry has been heading towards a wall given the lack of exciting new titles on the latest systems from developers and publishers such as EA. It has been heading toward a wall even though gaming isn't yet consider mainstream. Come on EA, show us what you're made of.