EA - Favours Open World Games - Pushing Microtransactions

An ex Bioware developer, Manveir Heir, has, according to Gamerant, talked to Waypoint' s podcast about this - one of the things discussed was why EA is pushing more open world games, since it brings EA more money:

Talking in an new interview with Waypoint's podcast, Heir discussed the issues with EA's development strategies and why they didn't work with Mass Effect: Andromeda. According to Heir, EA's push towards a more open-world experience in the company's games has to do with how easy those types of games can be monetized. Having a reason for players to keep returning to the world will mean that play-times will increase, and spending can increase with it .

Link to the Waypoint's podcast can be found here. In the podcast, they also discuss this:

We also dig into issues of representation, toxic work cultures, harassment, and talk about how to make the games industry a better place.

More information.

Burn in hell.

Good thing pretty much all games they publish are mediocre at best so I won't lose anything of value.

This just in: EA sucks.

Shocking.

At least this guy is open about it. The last dumbass article about this was all "the players have spoken, they don't want linear, we serve the players first profit second." Surrrreee EA… you are not fooling anyone.

If people typically do play open world games longer, they have demonstrated they prefer it haven't they? I imagine EA and the rest wants to mirror stupidly popular Bethesda, GTA , Destiny, etc. Gotta keep the >= $100 million budget rat race viable somehow. Heh

Sadly the big companies are moving in a direction I can't go. They wouldn't make open world micro transaction games if it didn't work for them. I'm glad I can enjoy indie games.

One day they'll put it all together and create an open world taxi simulator.

EA want be able appeal the most players than possible, that allow bigger budget and concurrence suffer comparison.

That you aren't in the target, this is your problem not EA problem. The indies game are here to target niche market. Expect that EA, Ubi, and many other big do the same is dreaming.

No way open world, multiplayer, main targets of EA and co is a big surprise for me. I saw it coming since some years and if you didn't you are blind. I'm quite more surprise for micro transaction, I believed that currently micro transaction works only for games with a medium player base, no way the biggies are used to manage plenty medium size budgets, I'd be curious see the bigs mainly do that lol. If they really do it they'll end with product with medium range production level, so will suffer a lot with comparison with big budgets.

If really micro transaction work for games that sold a lot, which one?

Anyone that has a single EA game or the Origin platform on their system cannot even pretend to disdain this company. With that said, EA, you may now go kindly die a huge, napalm-like fire. And take Origin with you into that fiery inferno.

Originally Posted by rjshae
One day they'll put it all together and create an open world taxi simulator.

They aren't far from that, most racing games are already open world games.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Anyone that has a single EA game or the Origin platform on their system cannot even pretend to disdain this company. With that said, EA, you may now go kindly die a huge, napalm-like fire. And take Origin with you into that fiery inferno.

EA was the last in my focus, Bethesda lost me with Doom and FO4. From one to none it's not that much different and it won't change my playing time even less my life.

I liked Doom myself. Not sure why you lumped Doom/FO4 in the same category relevant to this article.

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The only way EA will change their direction is if their wallet tells them to change. What I find odd is companies like cdprojek and larian can do very well with what we want - perhaps I do not understnad the scale of revenue/profit that EA sees from their open world loot box games ?

I won't be buying any games filled to the brim with micro transactions, or loot boxes. The reason for my stance is because these things impact the overall game design in a horrible way, especially loot boxes.

If the micro transactions are small, trivial things like, different looks on the character and so on, then I can stomach it. But if they are huge and game impacting things, then no way. In that case, if a game edition that includes all the DLC in it for free, and offered at a deep discount years after the game was released, only then will I consider buying it.

I'm so glad that there are so many choices now for rpg games and games in general, from Indie developers and old school rpg developers, who don't do crap like that. This old school rpg renaissance was so needed and well timed.

Originally Posted by you
I liked Doom myself. Not sure why you lumped Doom/FO4 in the same category relevant to this article.

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The only way EA will change their direction is if their wallet tells them to change. What I find odd is companies like cdprojek and larian can do very well with what we want - perhaps I do not understnad the scale of revenue/profit that EA sees from their open world loot box games ?

Cdprojekt is not run buy suits (yet). Larian does not make AAA games. They are a midsized company like Obsidian and don't work with close to the budget AAA type studios do. They also relied a lot on Kickstarter for marketing and additional funds for their last two games.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Anyone that has a single EA game or the Origin platform on their system cannot even pretend to disdain this company.

Why? I run Windows so I can play PC games. That doesn't prevent me for having disdain for how Microsoft treats its customers.

Originally Posted by you
I liked Doom myself. Not sure why you lumped Doom/FO4 in the same category relevant to this article.

It's impossible to understand but by myself or some genius half reading in my mind. Clearly you aren't this one.

I have exactly one Origin game on my PC: Dragon Age Inquisition. I enjoyed it for what it was. I don't see anything else in EA's current or upcoming catalog that I'm likely to buy, though. Apparently they've decided they can make more money going after a market that I'm not in. Fine, I can spend my money (and time) on other things instead.

Originally Posted by khaight
I have exactly one Origin game on my PC: Dragon Age Inquisition. I enjoyed it for what it was. I don't see anything else in EA's current or upcoming catalog that I'm likely to buy, though. Apparently they've decided they can make more money going after a market that I'm not in. Fine, I can spend my money (and time) on other things instead.

I also bought DAI. It was fun while I played, but I ended up underwhelmed thinking about the game after the hype passed. I don't think I'll ever buy an EA game again.

I'm not sure the classification of aaa matters as much as revenue and profit. I will note that D:OS was not the same scale of revenue (1.5 million vs 4 to 8 million unit sold) but it would be interesting to see the profit value. For the record funds from kickstarter were not relevant to D:OS-2; it was a fan service.

Originally Posted by forgottenlor
Cdprojekt is not run buy suits (yet). Larian does not make AAA games. They are a midsized company like Obsidian and don't work with close to the budget AAA type studios do. They also relied a lot on Kickstarter for marketing and additional funds for their last two games.