3 ms·

It's amazing what happens when money starts being involved, isn't it?

JohnBooty 5y ago
Haha whoa. It's not like EA was a non-profit org. They were there to make money. Think about the industry they were openly aping, with their "rock star" programmer-artists and their boxes that resembled the wonderful gatefold LP album covers of yore. The popular music industry is not exactly uh, averse to capitalism. Also, their advertising was, well, hmm. I think it's no accident that their image perfectly calibrated to appeal the sort of person who could actually afford a home computer in the early 1980s. The kind of guy who fancied himself a bit of an intellectual in one way or another. They weren't the first with this approach; Infocom had a lot of success with a similar corporate image and advertising campaign previously. I do think there was quite a bit of genuine sincerity at the core of "early EA", but they were definitely chasing $$$ from the start as well.
- rob74 5y ago
  But still... then: "software is an art form"; now: cookie-cutter yearly versions of FIFA, Madden NFL, NHL etc. etc. etc.
  - jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
    Why do people get so passionate about $60 games that maybe would be fairly priced at $30, but then will blow tens of thousands on a car or house that doesn't provide much additional value compared to a normal price one?
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      The car and house are status symbols, and the house might appreciate.
    - rob74 5y ago
      I didn't complain about the price, I was complaining about the lack of originality. Ok, I'm not a huge sports fan, so the games I mentioned never really interested me, maybe that's why I fail to see the difference between FIFA 21 and FIFA 22...
      - JohnBooty 5y ago
        The value is there if you play with friends. So, definitely not for everybody, but then again nothing is. As a teenager, we definitely got $50 of enjoyment per year out of the 16-bit editions. Even back in the 90s it was actually a pretty affordable form of entertainment if you got a few dozen fun gaming sessions out of it with your buddies. There weren't a lot of other ways to spend $50 and be entertained for months. Same with Capcom's hilariously incremental updates to Street Fighter II. We honestly did get full value from them. If you're putting dozens of hours into a game those incremental updates are super valueable. These days, of course, I have nobody to play with. So these games wouldn't be worth $6 to me today, let alone $60. =(
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    Even the sports franchises started out nobly. =) The first few years of NHL and Madden titles for the Sega Genesis were revolutionary. They were the first games in their genres to somewhat accurately simulate their sports in a fast and fluid way. Madden in particular was something like a tour-de-force of software engineering: a full 22 independent dudes characters on the field, actually playing their positions, following a realistic and deep playbook, nearly all of American football's arcane rules represented, and a nifty pseudo-3D playfield. All written in assembly, on a 7mhz CPU. Mindblowing. The first 3-4 years of annual updates were incredible. They were iterative, in the best possible software engineering sense of the word. Core ideas refined and polished, a few new key ideas added onto a strong base design. Madden '93 (the third installment) is where it peaked for me; some say Madden '94. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm9fXnBF67g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm9fXnBF67g

Haha whoa. It's not like EA was a non-profit org. They were there to make money. Think about the industry they were openly aping, with their "rock star" programmer-artists and their boxes that resembled the wonderful gatefold LP album covers of yore. The popular music industry is not exactly uh, averse to capitalism. Also, their advertising was, well, hmm. I think it's no accident that their image perfectly calibrated to appeal the sort of person who could actually afford a home computer in the early 1980s. The kind of guy who fancied himself a bit of an intellectual in one way or another. They weren't the first with this approach; Infocom had a lot of success with a similar corporate image and advertising campaign previously. I do think there was quite a bit of genuine sincerity at the core of "early EA", but they were definitely chasing $$$ from the start as well.

rob74 5y ago
But still... then: "software is an art form"; now: cookie-cutter yearly versions of FIFA, Madden NFL, NHL etc. etc. etc.
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
  Why do people get so passionate about $60 games that maybe would be fairly priced at $30, but then will blow tens of thousands on a car or house that doesn't provide much additional value compared to a normal price one?
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    The car and house are status symbols, and the house might appreciate.
  - rob74 5y ago
    I didn't complain about the price, I was complaining about the lack of originality. Ok, I'm not a huge sports fan, so the games I mentioned never really interested me, maybe that's why I fail to see the difference between FIFA 21 and FIFA 22...
    - JohnBooty 5y ago
      The value is there if you play with friends. So, definitely not for everybody, but then again nothing is. As a teenager, we definitely got $50 of enjoyment per year out of the 16-bit editions. Even back in the 90s it was actually a pretty affordable form of entertainment if you got a few dozen fun gaming sessions out of it with your buddies. There weren't a lot of other ways to spend $50 and be entertained for months. Same with Capcom's hilariously incremental updates to Street Fighter II. We honestly did get full value from them. If you're putting dozens of hours into a game those incremental updates are super valueable. These days, of course, I have nobody to play with. So these games wouldn't be worth $6 to me today, let alone $60. =(
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  Even the sports franchises started out nobly. =) The first few years of NHL and Madden titles for the Sega Genesis were revolutionary. They were the first games in their genres to somewhat accurately simulate their sports in a fast and fluid way. Madden in particular was something like a tour-de-force of software engineering: a full 22 independent dudes characters on the field, actually playing their positions, following a realistic and deep playbook, nearly all of American football's arcane rules represented, and a nifty pseudo-3D playfield. All written in assembly, on a 7mhz CPU. Mindblowing. The first 3-4 years of annual updates were incredible. They were iterative, in the best possible software engineering sense of the word. Core ideas refined and polished, a few new key ideas added onto a strong base design. Madden '93 (the third installment) is where it peaked for me; some say Madden '94. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm9fXnBF67g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm9fXnBF67g