Origin Sells Out | Hacker News Reader

Origin Sells Out

filfre.net

116 pointsdoppp46 comments

Origin made a ton of great games. "We make worlds" was their motto and I feel they lived up to that lofty ambition.

One game I remember fondly that would appeal to this crowd was called Omega. There was some light but well-done chrome that you were an employee of some gigantic defense contractor writing AI for drone tanks. You'd design the chassis of your tank with parts that you unlocked by playing the game. Then you'd write the AI for your tank using a simple BASIC-like language. The game shipped with a hefty programming reference book.

Finally once you'd designed your tank you'd put it into an arena to test against other tanks. Early matches were 1:1 but you could build tanks that operated as a team (there were ways for the tanks to send messages to each other).

The game was a blast. My best tanks were stupid simple (back into a corner and rapidly scan the quarter of the arena where the enemy might appear). I feel like the game taught me a lot and was really fun to play. The only downside was all the loading times, swapping disks on my C64. But that was how games were back then

https://www.mobygames.com/game/omega_

I played this game as a kid and usually ended up writing key bindings so I could directly control the tank. But, it was so fun to experiment with different strategies.

Thanks for reminding me of the name of the game because I loved it and could never remember what it was called.

When I was a kid my friend and I played a lot. We'd bring our favorite AI programs over to each other's house to compete with the other's favorite AI.

One day I stumbled across how to set up keybindings, neither of us knew that it was a thing. I kept it to myself and invited him over, challenging him to try extra hard on his AI. He loaded it up, and I proceeded to annihilate his tank with my human controlled version. The look on his face was priceless and sticks with me to this day.

There was an earlier version of this game known as "RobotWar", originally on the PLATO mainframe system in the 1970s and ported to the Apple ][ in 1981. Not that Omega wasn't a nice update of the idea, but it wasn't entirely original.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobotWar

I would recommend checking out EXAPUNKS for a similar type of game that's available on modern systems: https://store.steampowered.com/app/716490/EXAPUNKS/

> One game I remember fondly that would appeal to this crowd was called Omega.

I believe I still have that game, in it's box with it's instruction manual, somewhere in a closet. It was fantastic.

Yes! Omega! I had it for the Amiga 500 and also remember it fondly.

I worked at Origin in Austin as a summer intern shortly after EA took over. They were hard at work on Ultima Online 2, which they cancelled a about a year later. It was a bummer, as I had just interviewed to work on the Star Wars MMO, and when UO2 got shut down, suddenly a ton of experienced MMO devs were on the market and in town, and they passed on me, a college grad :(

On the bright side I probably make more money now than I would have had I gotten my foot into AAA gamedev!

I really really wanted Ultima Online 2 to happen, and looking back, it could have changed how future MMOs like Everquest or WoW had been developed. The failure of UO2 made a lot of studios wary of sandbox open world games, and they decided to go the more moderate route of theme-park design (limited, predictable design) for both world design and character abilities.

Eh Star Wars Galaxies was still developed in the “sandbox” mold and released to tepid reception. There have been successful sandbox MMOs - EVE Online and Second Life - but the audience for that experience is a lot smaller than for games like WoW (or the MMO-lites that are de jure now like Destiny, The Division, Anthem).

The writing was already on the wall the moment EQ came out. I loved the sandbox style but it was clear that the majority did not, and the majority of the untapped market definitely would not

I've always been curious of what EA's side of things was here. Are they really just money-hungry executives who like buying brands to suck the money out of them and kill anything good there? Or do they have other motivations and reasons?

It seems EA truly does not care about gaming, or the people working under them. But I'd like to hear differently about how they all saw this go down instead.

How does Trip Hawkins view all of this? He seems to be someone who got lucky (started at Apple early), and then proceeded to be manage companies that kept sinking good opportunities under his leadership.

EA might not care about making the best games possible, but they sure as hell did care about their employees when i worked there. When i worked there i think i was on crunch maybe 2 weeks out of the 5 years i was there. I worked with people who had been there for 10+ years and they sang praise for how people were handled internally.

I do however know there were a lot of people there who would basically force themselves into crunch mode for no reason, other than to perfect or try to add a specific feature. Even when they were heavily dissuaded by both management. I have a very specific memory of someone crunching for ~6 months to finish their little pet project only to completely burn out.

Also as far as i know when crunch was required, it required a bunch of approval, and we were paid extra during crunch time, and we were allowed to refuse to do crunch.

> I worked with people who had been there for 10+ years and they sang praise for how people were handled internally.

EA developed a reputation for abusing their employees first and only after facing tons of bad press and lawsuits did they promise to try to turn that around.

I mean, props to them if they really have improved things, but in order to get there they had to be dragged kicking and screaming

This has been my experience as well as an employee.

Can't speak to EA's motivations then, though I worked with a couple of Origin engineers who worked at Origin post-acquisition and have been at EA in Austin most of my career. The impression I got from the ex-Origin folks is that Origin was a ripe acquisition target: large portfolio of games and franchises; good body of talent in a major game development hub; and a failing business that they could get on the cheap.

I've never understood the cynical way certain people view EA from the outside. EA is a large business (~30B market cap) and subject to the same sorts of challenges of any business at that scale. From my perspective EA is a federation of mostly autonomous studios trying to "find the fun" in an increasingly competitive entertainment landscape. Even if you manage to create a compelling core experience, bringing that to market is a challenge even at EA's scale.

>I've never understood the cynical way certain people view EA from the outside. EA is a large business (~30B market cap) and subject to the same sorts of challenges of any business at that scale. From my perspective EA is a federation of mostly autonomous studios trying to "find the fun" in an increasingly competitive entertainment landscape.

Maybe you should listen to what those outsiders are saying. EA ships half baked games for full price and loads them with the most scummy and deplorable monetization models in existence (looking at you too Activision.) I haven't heard wonderful things about the working conditions come crunch time either. It's not difficult to understand.

And let's not forget the now (in)famous "surprise mechanics" debacle. EA deserves every bit of their current public image.

EA certainly deserves their reputation, perhaps several times over.

That said, I also suspect they don't care. They make money off their properties, and as long as that is working for them, they can continue to have their jobs.

>That said, I also suspect they don't care

Oh yeah, that much is obvious.

> I've never understood the cynical way certain people view EA from the outside

They're a publicly traded company that needs to continually meet analyst targets or the stock tanks. It's a lot harder to align yourself to customer expectations when the market is constantly pressuring you for more short term revenue, even at the cost of long term goals and motivations.

> They're a publicly traded company.

Period.

Few - if any - at the 'C' level are a game developer or likely even a gamer. Their job is to make a profit selling potatoes or car parts - it doesn't matter.

Depends on the company. I could be wrong but both Sony and Nintendo have a decent number of former developers or engineers as high level execs. Even then, it's just really hard to not be reactive to the markets. There are very few CEOs with that superpower

Yet even then, you can turn a profit without pushing gambling on children.

Them being a gamer or developer doesn't actually add a great deal of value to their leadership abilities. Many are the examples of management justifying bad decisions as a "one of us" move.

What EA and any company of that scale needs most at the top is people who are interested in large-scale workflows, IP management, and labor issues. Some aspects of these things are tied to the creative and intellectual parts of the work, others aren't. But the point of being that big should be to capitalize on unique opportunities to do R&D or push larger-scope experiences. It's not the nickel and diming that makes for lasting success.

The current CEO of the company started as a designer at EA Australia. Many of the people at the (S)VP level had development experience and play games.

Too bad their greed outweighs their good will toward the rest of us. Plenty of dev studios turn a profit without exploiting the weaknesses of their customers. EA's actions aren't really defensible.

> I've never understood the cynical way certain people view EA from the outside.

Then you haven't been paying attention. I'm a gamer, so I see the criticisms all over the place.

> EA is a large business (~30B market cap) and subject to the same sorts of challenges of any business at that scale.

There are plenty of entertainment companies with much larger market caps that have succeeded without relying on getting children to gamble.

> From my perspective EA is a federation of mostly autonomous studios trying to "find the fun" in an increasingly competitive entertainment landscape.

Replace "find the fun" with "find the money", and completely scratch out anything to do with autonomy, and you'd be correct.

> Even if you manage to create a compelling core experience, bringing that to market is a challenge even at EA's scale.

The vast number of successful indie developers would like a word with you.

Honestly, your comment just reeks of being out-dated. Everything you said may have been true 20 years ago. In the 90's, I would have considered EA to be a respectable studio. But today? They're the most anti-consumer company out there, even worse than Comcast.

> Are they really just money-hungry executives who like buying brands to suck the money out of them and kill anything good there?

EA is to gaming as Oracle is to enterprise software products.

I wish someone did a writeup on how it is that practically every cool studio of the 90s has dissolved in a big publisher. The only exceptions I really can name are Id and the Obsidian/BioWare duo. Even Blizzard, industry's sacred cow around 2000, were apparently put through the blender in the later years, despite keeping the name and franchises.

My hypothesis, of course, is that very few people can keep delivering for twenty years. But still I can't help thinking―what it'd be like if Psygnosis taught a generation of rookies their way and did something other than F1 and Wipeout after 2000.

The basic economic angle of it is that video games are a hit-driven business. Large publishers especially during the 1990s have a diverse product portfolio that can cushion moderate failures with the income from hits (more so during the 90s than today). When a small studio is growing its games and budgets to keep up with player expectations, the relative safety of a publisher can be tempting compared to sticking it out independently and betting the company on each game.

Yeah, but you'd think that studios that made plenty of hits in the 90s and early 2000s would be kept as they are in hopes that they make more hits—even as subsidiaries. The publisher financed the games before, after all. But no, afaict it's the same story every time: after several years, the publisher revs up the old blender, reassigns the studio's sub-outlets to its existing regional divisions, moves people around, and either renames the studio to ‘BigPublisher RegionName’, or shuts it down.

Also iirc there's a running theme of ‘we solemnly promise that the studio keeps the creative control after the acquisition,’ from both companies.

Didn't Id get absorbed into the ZeniMax/Bethesda giant?

I'm not following the industry too well now, but it seemed to me that Id kept its autonomy even as a subsidiary. Pretty sure they are doing just FPSes anyway.

BioWare is an EA studio since the release of Mass Effect 2.

Held out through the whole of 2000s, not so bad.

One of my favourite Origin games was the Crusader: No Remorse|Regret series. Young me never managed to complete either of those two.

It was interesting to learn that Remorse was made using Ultima VI's game engine that was considered too action-y for a turn based RPG.

Wasn't that Ultima VIII (Pagan) game engine?

It was.

Wow, that was such an amazing game. I wish there were more games like it. Anyone know if there is a modern port?

Both are available on GOG.com:

  * https://www.gog.com/game/crusader_no_remorse
  * https://www.gog.com/game/crusader_no_regret

Thanks for posting, that was a good read!

Related tidbits for Chris Roberts' current project, the long in development and hopefully finished some day Star Citizen. They've referenced both Origin and EA as companies in the Star Citizen universe, it's a cute little easter egg of industry history.

"Origin Jumpworks" as one of the ship manufacturers, and "Electronic Access" as makers of the Star Marine (first person shooter) and Arena Commander (ship combat arena) modes which are positioned as in-universe video games.

I missed out on a lot of the older spaceship games, I ought to pick those up on GoG and give them a try sometime.

Same here. The only Chris Roberts game I've played was his last, Freelancer. I liked it enough to give him $60 for Star Citizen.

The only other space games I've tried are in the X series, but they focus heavily on economics instead of flight and combat.

If you're interested in checking out more recent space games, Everspace and No Man's Sky are the two I've played in the last few years. Everspace is more on the dogfighting and equipment progression side of things, while NMS is exploration, survival, and base building with a heavy dose of retro sci-fi visuals.

Got my start on Mac games, so Escape Velocity: Nova was my jam. Loving the variety of space games these days.

I heard about No Man's Sky. The launch disappointed lots of people, but I heard the updates have made it into what it was supposed to be.

I have some broad gaming tastes, and about 500 unplayed Steam games, so I'm not exactly looking into acquiring more right now.

I didn't play it until the recent Beyond update. Definitely a rough start but they've more than made up for it. Cherry-picking some screenshots from reddit:

https://i.redd.it/bdbu308b61h31.jpg https://i.redd.it/or8x426qq0j31.jpg https://i.redd.it/3gq1x76165h31.jpg https://i.redd.it/ufdqd5digij31.jpg https://i.redd.it/7meco1wufzj31.jpg https://i.redd.it/7120n20i00h31.jpg https://i.redd.it/jowjsxd9qfi31.jpg https://i.redd.it/4aimsghw5mj31.jpg

Remember, not only Ultima and the other big stuff, but also an early computer version of the wargame Ogre and the Car Wars inspired AutoDuel. Really brought together a bunch different play aspects from multiple sources and made some amazing experiences.

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