Hacker News Reader

Comment by m_mueller | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty much how a deadly virus works, right? Infect a particular game brand (cell) by buying (infecting) it, generate enough new copies of the virus (selling the game), then destroy it and release the virus onto the next cells. If the analogy is correct, the game market will either die, find a cure and eject EA or EA adapts and finds a way to coexist such as not to kill the host cells anymore.

View on HN

Not really: in this case the games sold by an infected game studio aren't copies of the original entity that go on to infect other game studios. They're more of a waste product. EA consumes game studios for sustenance and excretes a steady stream of sub-par sequels as it slowly digests its prey.

Apparently I haven't been clear enough, so let me rephrase: What DNA is to a virus, money is to EA. Selling games is how they get their money, which is then used to infect more games and destroying them all in the process. Well that's at least how my analogy was supposed to work.

I understood you, but your analogy doesn't work. Viruses are replicators, they infect cells to spawn new generations. EA is a monolithic entity that consumes studios to sustain itself, all without creating a single copy of itself. Money is food, not DNA.

So cancer, then.

I like how it all just went worse and worse for EA - from virus to a predator shitting out bad games to a cancer of gaming.

To be honest, the virus might actually be more apt, if you change the kind of virus.

Take HIV for example: it attacks the immune system of the host, but is fairly difficult to transmit and relies on insufficient protection for that.

A studio that accepts a buyout from EA is like a person mainlining heroin using a needle that's been passed around a hundred different HIV+ heroin addicts. It gets the bug.

Sometimes it takes years for symptoms of illness to show. Some studios last decades before they waste away - and they last longer if they have proper treatment (in the case of Maxis, this was having Will Wright stay on board). But in the end it's incurable and terminal once treatment ceases, and the studio becomes weaker and skeletal before finally passing.

Except when a company dies, no people actually die. They can go on and create new games and new companies.

>Except when a company dies, no people actually die.

except that isn't always true. [0]

Suicide Rates Rising for Older U.S. Adults - Rates for 40-64 year-olds may be increasing due to financial circumstances, according to American Journal of Preventive Medicine

[0] : http://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-jo...

Are we really talking about suicide in a discussion about a company unsurprisingly shutting down? It is not because it is EA, which have a really bad reputation (which they partly deserve), than we should have a discussion of such a low quality.

this is nonsense

Excellent rebuttal. I like how you clearly outlined and explained your counterpoints.

There isn't much to outline or explain, because the original comment (creating an analogy between EA and a virus?) simply doesn't make any sense...

Care to elaborate?

Yeah, you nailed it.

Hahah excellent analogy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com