EA seems to be incapable of delivery quality games – Need for Speed and Battlefront 2 raise concerns for Anthem’s future.
EA, a company that gave us so many great games that turned into billion-dollar franchises, is suffering from greed, shady practices, poor development choices, who it to blame here? And how can the company improve?
I remember the time I used to be in love with EA thanks to games like the original Need for Speed Most Wanted, Mass Effect 1,2, even 3 was a decent game.
No matter how you feel about the company right now it wasn’t bad at all a decade ago. Still, they do release decent games even now (occasionally) but their AAA stream is mediocre at best right now, isn’t it? In fact, come to think of it, it has been mediocre for a long time.
The first franchise that started showing signs of mediocrity was Need for Speed. Carbon, Run, Need for Speed 2015 reboot, Need for Speed Payback; all of them have tuned our brains in a way that we do not expect much from this franchise anymore.
“EA, it’s not in the game anymore”
Do we really feel excited about a new Need for Speed, Mass Effect, or any other EA game? There is more skepticism than excitement in me for a new AAA EA game.
It started with the downfall of Need for Speed, repetitive FIFA experiences, but a glimmer of hope came in the form of Star Wars Battlefront back in 2015. I truly believed that Battlefront is going to be the one that brings the original EA back for us, the one who focused on quality games and less on milking everything. Even the annual IPs had a quality back then which is not something easy to pull off.
Star Wars Battlefront, from what I see, kicked off shady practices and poor development choices into high gear. Here are few things worth pointing out about Battlefront 2015.
Now let’s move on to our favorite game that broke the camel’s back, Star Wars Battlefront 2. The marketing was a disaster and how they handled the backlash was the worst in history.
It is clear EA went from bad to worse with Star Wars franchise. Going as far as closing down the singleplayer Star Wars game to turn it into a more multiplayer-focused experience.
Not only Star Wars, but Need for Speed Payback had similar issues.
Due to how EA is treating its games, we do expect much from EA anymore which is not a good sign for future games like Anthem. We hearing that EA is planning loot boxes for Anthem so red flags are there already. However, according to industry analyst Micheal Patcher, loot boxes for Anthem are going to be cosmetics only.
The first thing EA needs to realize is that quality Singleplayer stories are still made or break for a game, especially, in the case of Star Wars and Need for Speed franchises. I personally do not mind cosmetic items inside loot boxes but aggressive and unfair models like the one we saw in Battlefront 2 aren’t acceptable at all.
A $60 game must have enough content to justify its base price. Monetization aspects should be designed around the games, not the other way around.
EA ‘s reputation will take a while to be back to where it once was. Still, we hope they start repairing their relationship with the community with Anthem. But right now, we do not expect a quality product from EA which should be concerning for the company.
Is EA incapable of delivering quality products? As it stands now, yes! But things can change and we hope they do, especially, when this company has an exclusive license to Star Wars.
