Electronic Arts, or EA, has been the perfect example of how a once-great company can turn into a cash vacuum for players in just a matter of years. After being the founder of some of the worst consumer exploiting practices in the gaming industry, Electronic Arts’ empire is finally crumbling down before our very eyes.
Over the past decade, the company’s over-monetization, exploitative microtransaction practices, and the degrading quality of their games have made a lot of players aware of how they and their studios are gradually deteriorating from the inside. One such studio wanted to take over the company and effectively improve it from the inside but failed to do so. Let’s delve deeper and find out who it is.
Co-founder of BioWare speaks on why he wanted to take over EA
Most video game studios under EA have gradually degraded through time and BioWare is one of them. It is one of the companies that became a subsidiary of Electronic Arts back in 2007 when the latter acquired VG Holding.
BioWare’s initial months were pretty successful with some of the best releases like Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 but only after two years of the company being owned Greg Zeschuk, the co-founder of BioWare found that the parent company was not for him.
In a recent interview with Time Extension, Greg Zeschuk, co-founder of BioWare disclosed why Electronic Arts was not the perfect place for him. In the interview, he stated how being acquired by a big company corresponds to being exploited. He mentioned that if Star Wars: The Old Republic had been more successful, he’d have stayed around longer in the company to try and take over Electronic Arts.
I lived in Austin for two-and-a-half years making Star Wars the Old Republic I knew that was kind of a one-way trip. If it was super successful, super duper successful, Ray and I would have probably launched a bid to try and take over EA from the inside, being the corporate pirates that we are. But it needed to be like $2 billion a year successful. But it didn’t work out so I was like, ‘Ah, I’m fine.’
In the same interview, Zeschuk also elaborated on how big companies like EA just want to squeeze the most money out of the franchises they make and how he does not want to indulge in any of that and rather just stick to making games.
Big companies exist to exploit properties. They exist to exploit games. Most of the big North American guys, they’re just good at ‘Hey, let’s just squeeze the most money out of this franchise.’ They don’t kind of create a lot of them, and I kind of realized early on that I like making games. I don’t like just operating.
The co-founder later retired from BioWare, making Star Wars: The Old Republic his final opus.
Electronic Arts focused more on monetization than creating good games
Zeschuk’s interview indicates how the studios under EA wanted to have the freedom to make their own game and implement their own ingenuity rather than making a Gacha game on steroids. If BioWare had taken over EA from the inside then who knows, they might just have given the players a better gaming experience.
Regardless, EA’s contribution to the gaming industry has been massive and its foundation was built upon some of the best games in the market like FIFA, The Sims, etc. Their condition today does not represent what they were almost two decades back. Although the company claims that it will turn its course by 2026 by rebuilding the trust they have lost, both gamers and their audience are skeptical of that notion.
Whether Electronic Arts will change their entire business plan or not is still unknown, but one thing is for sure — restoring the trust they had gained from gamers will not be an easy task at all.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
