We Can Do Better

"45 million registered users are proving them wrong."

Such a goofy and useless statistic. When you require registration for your products, that doesn't mean people are satisfied users of your service, it means you got a lot of people to sign up. It's not an accurate metric for how many people actually enjoy and use the service.

Continuing...

"Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games."

Again: just because you have a bunch of people willing to pay you money for your crap, doesn't mean it isn't crap and you couldn't be doing better.

This sort of defense mechanism doesn't even address the problems people are having. It's almost insulting to everyone who does, legitimately, have a gripe with EA as a company. Those folks angry with EA's principles, games, or for simply not getting the value of what they paid are being cast aside.

It's extremely obvious they're less concerned with addressing issues and more concerned with telling everyone about how many users they have or what their sales are:

"But here’s the truth: each year EA interacts with more than 350 million gamers; Origin is breaking records for revenue and users; The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Real Racing 3 are at the top of the mobile charts; Battlefield 3 and FIFA are stunning achievements with tens of millions of players; and SimCity is being enjoyed by millions of passionate fans all over the world."

It seems possible to paraphrase the entirety of this press release: "We recognize a lot of people hate us, but hey, we've got a lot of other people paying us who aren't you, so we can't be that wrong, can we?"

Oh yeah, and without you realizing it, he just lightly compared your complaints about SimCity always-on to gay bashing and not liking the choice of a cover athlete for a sports game. Apparently, EA considers all of them equally frivolous. How 'bout that, huh?

This is a pretty good example of how to tell your customers that they're wrong but not leave them feeling like you did so (he did get pretty direct on the DRM point, though, which is interesting). Just look at the love pouring in on the comments over there already, which shows you that it's working in the general case. Not to mention completely omitting what you're going to do about the problems, but cleverly disguising the omission itself.

A final thought, all of that aside: If I were Will Wright, I'd be genuinely sad about what happened to SimCity regardless of the circumstances of the Maxis sale. He left EA in 2009, which makes you wonder how long this SimCity has been in development; I'd wager about three years. That's a hallowed franchise in gaming, in my opinion, a unique IP that stood among the ranks of Civilization in its own way for many years and spawned really fun games like SimTower and SimAnt, and after this it will never be the same.

"Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period."

He's flat out lying. I have no interest whatsoever in what he is saying. SimCity can technically run offline, gamers want to run it offline, but EA won't let you run it offline because you could then pirate their software. They should just demonstrate some courage and admit it.

The IT function had the poorest scores across the entire bank, and the CIO took quite a bit of heat for it from the rest of the CxOs.

His approach to tackle the poor employee satisfaction scores was to call an IT-wide "town hall" and explain to each of us why we were wrong in being dissatisfied...

More than anything, I'm confused as to just who his intended audience is, here. Certainly none of the gamers who have had long-standing issues with EA for years would find this "mea culpa" convincing. The only people I can imagine would be convinced or swayed by this would be EA employees and management. Is it part of some internal political battle being played out in public?

Either we're not the intended audience for this message, or the C-levels at EA really are so delusional and detached from their customers that they think they can rub a little PR pixie dust on their reputation and make it all better.

Today on HN I see a link to a Gamasutra article where industry people are talking about just how incredible some of the LucasArts games were (20 years ago!) and another link where one of the heads of EA is making excuses for why people hate his company. Some of his points are valid, and people can be immature and ridiculous in their reasoning (or downright horrid). But he overlooks some of the valid complaints that people have with EA. And they are valid. He's throwing out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.

Thing is, customers don't have a love-affair with the products of those other companies. We do with EA's products at their best. A great game is a treasure, personal, forming great experiences and memories in almost the same way a child or puppy does.

So when a game maker fails so epically, betrays their customers so thoroughly and completely, it tends to spark a serious reaction. A reaction more akin to a friend betraying you and selling you out.

As for oil spills: I can envision how that might happen through mere incompetence and laziness. I have more trouble envisioning how EA can do what they've been doing through mere incompetence; it's far more baffling than that.

In case you really are kidding yourselves with this press release, you are likely being voted the worst company because your millions of customers are suffering your "innovations" -- not enjoying them -- in order to play series they've come to love: Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and SimCity. You are cashing in the stored value of these brands, not building on them.

But look, Microsoft was hated for a long time, too, and it didn't seem to hurt them any. Well, except maybe in the instances where they got into telling their users what they wanted instead of finding out what they wanted. It's not like you folks are going down that road, right?

I hated the article starting there.

It is cowardly, evasive and deceitful. It completely ignores the issues people have with EA.

The mea culpas are limited to basically fumbling implementation details: games falling short of expectations, server end-of-life schedules, the botched SimCity launch. But not the fact that SimCity is always-online (which we're told is not DRM), or the question whether games need to be set up in a way that EA has the ability to disable multiplayer functionality.

Those are strategic decisions, which like F2P games and micropayments and building their own online distribution platform, they are on the right path. Putting those issues along with different sorts of controversies such as LGBT content in games seems a bit odd.

All in all, the opposite of an apology, really.

So it's basically a bracket. Not the most well-thought-out approach. Who picks the companies that are even eligible? Why not just have one big poll at the start? Even if they took that approach, I think it's clear EA would still 'win' since there is definitely a votebomb-like effect (much like what happens with MetaCritic ratings occasionally). Clearly the type of people that were aware of this poll in the first place mainly reside on videogame forums (Neogaf, /r/gaming etc), so the mob mentality is natural. Who can honestly say they were aware of this poll?

If you knocked on the door of every household in America and asked them who they thought was the 'Worst Company' in the world, it certainly wouldn't be EA.

I am not defending EA as such, I don't agree with some of their business practices, but there are copious amounts of hyperbole and for people to be treating this like an accurate study is ridiculous.

There is certainly a first-world problems vibe when a videogame publisher wins a poll like this.

Well, what a brilliant piece of PR there.

There is no parallel universe in which EA is worse than half these companies. The result we have now brings discredit to the whole enterprise of worst-company contests.

If EA's COO had a soul, he'd write a long-form blog post about how bad United Airlines, Ticketmaster, Equifax and BofA are.

This was by far the most aggravating part in his entire "Defense"(as in reading this made go to the consumerist and vote for them as the worst company in America)

Ok maybe he's right, maybe it's not DRM. He provides no proof of it but maybe he's right. What doesn't address was the always on line requirment, for whatever reason they decided it was necessary to put in the game, was broken making the game broken. Essentially they sold a broken product.

Enjoy until you go bankrupt, dear Mr Moore.

At the beginning I thought it was good piece of humble thoughts: What did we do wrong ? How can we improve ? Then I realized it was exactly the contrary. Atrocious.

I don't think EA deserves to be voted the worst company in America by a long shot. But I do think they need to be publicly shamed to the point that they actually listen to why people don't like them (I don't know if public shaming helps people realize things, I'm not a parent, but it seems like a good idea). Their otherwise interesting products are made far less compelling in order to satisfy business requirements. It's just dumb business. Meet your business objectives in smarter ways while creating smarter products and people will like you more.

In the field of entertainment software, the user experience is paramount. There's also something to be said for letting customers feel like they "own" their games rather than simply leasing them until you close your servers. If you take this away, you'd damn well better provide some fantastic value in its place. To think that people resent you purely because of your choice of cover atheletes, micro-transactions or support of LGBT rights, polarizing as these can be, is evidence of the same sort of thinking which pervades your product development.

"An annual web poll shows that once again, Electronic Arts will be named the "Worst Company in America".

We at EA understand that we provide a lightning rod for many in an industry that has undergone massive change and experienced a great deal of consolidation. We've acquired beloved game developers, we've put storied franchises to rest, and we've sheparded evolutions in gameplay and game design that have been met with skepticism and rejection.

But please believe, we're on the player's side.

Tens of thousands of EA employees show up to work every day to create incredible new experiences and polish fantastic new things that the world has never seen.

You, your family, and your friends entrust us with time, attention, and money in return for fantastic experiences with characters you love and places that are realer than real. It's an honor to work in this industry.

We love these shared stories and adventures, and truly understand what makes videogaming special to hundreds of millions of people every day.

That said, we are a business, and all businessess will make mistakes, fail to meet expectations, and poorly communicate. We're no different.

XXX EXAMPLES XXX

Videogames are unique in that the business environment changes more in six months than most other industries change in decades, and we've struggled to adapt to the new realities just like hundreds of other videogame developers.

We feel it's essential that we have an online content distribution system of our own, called Origin. It's clear that we've fallen painfully short of industry standards in terms of technical execution and customer service, and we most certainly are not meeting our own expectations.

XXX INSERT HONEST FIXES HERE XXX

We also feel that we're failing to incorporate our customer's frustrations, concerns, and desires into the development of our franchises. When some player were disappointed with Mass Effect 3, they had nowhere to voice their opinions where they felt they would be heard.

Thus, as of this week we will be employing ombudsmen for each of our major franchises. They'll be superfans who know the games inside and out, and their sole responsibility will be to communicate with you about what's happening with the development and care of your favorite series and franchises.

FIFA - @Matthiew Mass Effect - @Jennifer SIMCITY - @Alyssa

XXX ETCETERA XXX

Feel free to vent, praise, be angry, you name it. They'll be listening. But always be respectful. We're here to have a good time together.

Finally, we understand that server shutdowns are a necessary part of the life of any game. No party goes on forever. But we don't want to shut off the lights too early, and we don't want customers to wonder how long the game they've just purchased will be fully functional and connected.

So today we're instituting a 3 year server guarantee on every network-aware and network-based videogame we sell. You can purchase an EA game and rest assured that you'll have friends to go on adventures with for a long long time.

For what we've failed in, we are truly sorry. We strive to delight one and all, but we can never be perfect. For those who feel we can never do right, you'll find dozens of other talented studios who you can have a more fruitful relationship with.

We don't feel there's any shame in being #1, but we do feel there's a great responsibility in it.

Let us bring you the best games on Earth, tell us plainly and clearly when we're not meeting that expectation, and let's all have fun together.

- EA CEO WHATEVER"

I wrote this in literally twelve fucking minutes. What a prick.

Have they not heard the phrase "the customer is always right"?

"The customer base as a whole is annoyed because you release buggy unfinished games with horrible DRM. Not because of your LGBT policy.

Your post doesn't sound sincere to me. It doesn't even sound apologetic. It sounds arrogant and like you're saying we shouldn't be complaining instead of admitting your mistakes. You don't address people's real complaints.

I want my wasted money back; not a free game. I don't want to have to use Origin. I want actual customer support and a longer character lim-"

I believe gaming would be in a much better place overall if EA did not exist, despite many early hit titles.

The overall effect on gaming as a whole has been negative.

BUT I am pirating EA games. Their policies are anything but customer friendly! So while have a 70 game library on Steam, I still have pirated Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle Earth 2 and Mass Effect series.

And I can play my games when I want, the way I want without that draconian policy of always on DRM in a single player game.

I am sure I am not alone doing this. With Sim City, they have pissed a lot of people. And with PR like this, they are making this worse.

https://www.ea.com/1/service-updates

Spare me your Johnny come lately mea culpa. Clean up your act, or don't. I don't give a fuck what you have to say.

http://consumerist.com/2013/04/05/worst-company-in-america-s...

EA is scared, and taking the threat seriously. They are not scared enough to actually address the issue (instead of doing fake PR speeches), but hopefully it will soon be too late for that.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

There was nothing, absolutely nothing of value that they said. Not a word about improving the customer experience in any concrete way.

And you lost me. Zero credibility.

good luck with that one EA

That said, the idea that EA would win a WCIA bracket with Time Warner Cable and fucking airlines? Makes a mockery of the whole concept.

Especially now. Yes, AAA games are pure dogshit. No question there. Just awful. It's easy to get nostalgic for 1995. Chrono Trigger was excellent, so was Final Fantasy VI. Terranigma-- also great if you could get it. Back then, we only had great games because someone made them for us. We had to get them from Japan, for the most part, because as bad as Japan's corporate conformity is, it's nothing like US-style executive meddling. (Japanese understand capitalism enough not to let incompetent execs ruin the show. The US has rich fatasses who see executive sinecures as a birthright and have the fertilizer-Midas touch: everything they touch turns to shit.) That meant we had to wait for Ted Woolsey to translate them, and he was not a bad translator (actually, his talent is neat and quirky) but he worked under insane deadlines. You spoony bard! Anyway...

But it's two-thousand-and-fucking-13 and if you don't like the games that exist, make one that is better instead of pointlessly voting in some poll. Show those fuckers up. (Actually, they're as smart as you are. Some, much smarter. They make crappy games because they have bills to pay and moron bosses. You'll understand when you're older.) Build a 2D RPG, a German-style board game, or a casual game, and get it out there. Or don't, and stop complaining that no one is making good games when there's nothing stopping you.

EA doesn't even belong on the top-75 list of worst companies. Where's Xe/Blackwater? Tear them down instead. They convinced the US government to fight an illegal war for their profits, and their CEO is a literal fucking fascist. That is WCIA material. Electronic Arts worse than fucking mercenaries in the 21st century? Seriously, the world needs to get a fucking clue.