Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 4:44 am Post subject:
EALA, C&C3, The First Decade and a rant: Good or Deception?
Subject description: A little personal rant about EALA with a community manager...
Hello everyone. Unlike the other news, the purpose of this news article is a rant that questions the interference of EA in the community. What I'm posting comes from my own point of view as a C&C site webmaster. Feel free to take your conclusions and to discuss this subject here:
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"I still remember the year of 2004. C&C community appeared to be doomed to death, since the EALA staff only worked on Battle For Middle Earth. C&C websites were slowly disappearing and they were completely in the dark regarding new C&C games and almost forgotten by Electronic Arts. Many community sites survived by their own work, which made things like mods become more valuable, since they were one of the main source of the news in the moment. We had a scenario where 90% or more of C&C related sites clearly bashed explicity or implicity the EALA work with C&C games, terrible support and other major problems with their studio.
Things changed when EALA hired Aaron "APOC" Kaufman as the community manager of their RTS series (C&C and Battle For Middle Earth). He became the main source of comunication between the fans and the studio and, since then, a lot of things happened. As a marketing man, with a clear and objective purpose to sell the games from their studio, he managed to approach EALA from the fans.
One of the main complaints were the lack of support from the released games. Zero Hour was infested with inumerous bugs, but they managed to come up with 2 patches (since the first had some new serious bugs) that reduced this problem. It's also interesting to note that Battle For Middle Earth 1.03 was released in this year with many ballance changes and bug fixes. However, The First Decade users are still full of new bugs generated by the package, where fans fixed them much faster than the developpers who had the source code of the games. But I'll come to this topic later.
Another interesting thing was the great marketing way to reduce costs, by getting rid of Westwood Online forever and paying the XWIS server for people who are willing to do the maintenance job free of charge. Fans took complete control of the online gaming from the old Westwood games. Is that good or bad? Chat is enabled again, it attracted players, cheaters are getting banned, but WOL was faster and had a more dedicated datacenter than this XWIS server. But look again at EA's point of view: they make fans happy, they reduce their costs and they remove all their responsability of keeping the server and releasing patches for old games for once and forever. But in the other side of the coin, it's better than a dead and silent WOL.
My major deception lies in The F*cking DVD or... The First Decade compilation. The great people from CNCNZ organized a major community event to celebrate the C&C 10th Anniversary. This event was used by EALA to actually make money of it by released a half assed pack with all games in the same garbage... oh... I mean... in the same package. I've organized OMC in the last year, not to sell C&C copies, but to make a fun an major community event. OMC was wrongly treated as another C&C 10th Anniversary event. Many webmasters got some "EA Gift Pack" to have prizes to give away in their events. The pack is really cool, but sending the prizes away requires a lot of cash. Anyway, it was weird to see EA sending so many prizes, until, of course, two months later with the announcement of TFD. They used this event to kill, after many attempts, the old remaining traces of Westwood Studios. They redirected their domains for the olddated and broken Generals site (that also disappeared later).
Treating all old C&C games as 'yet another game' was a terrible action for us, fans, since it lowered the value of their own classics. But at the same time, it's interesting for them, because people buy a package with all of C&C games, instead of buying them separatelly. Since the package includes games that many people wouldn't buy again and it costs much more than a simple old classic in the store, they get more money with it.
If this action wasn't enough, they have hired an independent studio, with about 6 people that had no C&C experience and knowledge at all, to make, in 6 months, all 12 games to work from a DVD. It is clearly not enough time to study, patch, do some changes and test each game in all conditions possible. Whatever studio that did that, wouldn't have done a good job. So, I personally don't blame the Barking Lizzards for the whole mess, a full of problems package with absolutelly nothing new for the old fans. They could have remastered the sounds, improved the resolution of the movies... but no... nothing, because it's cheaper for them to say that fans want the games as they originally were, which is clearly not true.
Another interesting thing was the way that marketing was done regarding interviews and podcasts. APOC only interviews his bosses (Louis Castle and Mike Verdu). His bosses have a completely marketing based point of view and marketing based objectives for their games. Why did they not interview those people who worked on the old C&C games (specially before Generals)? Because all of them left the studio. Are we fans really interested to know if they sold their games or not? Our purpose with games is to have fun, not to donate money to EA. At least, I want to have fun with games... Although if a C&C game sells well, it means that there will be more fans around to share our C&C ideas. But I still wonder if... wouldn't it be better to interview the people who are really involved with making the game, with a real passion for the game, than these marketing zombies? Look at the last podcast with Verdu! From every single word he said during almost 15 minutes, nothing was new! We all knew that the game would have mechs! Come on! It's a fact! The only attempt to bring something new was the link to the hazardous render.
Many of these interviews and podcasts were clearly and heavly manipulated by EALA marketing and PR team. Repetitive questions and answers, many ignoring or distorting the reality (with... OMG! Fans in love with C&C and EA's work on it) and many, many false advertisement. Look at the one below that I quoted in a news posted here in february:
>>> "That's fantastic because even though you may own your copy of these games, it's not necessarily true that you may run them on today's PCs" -- Louis Castle (February, 2006 on IGN Podcast interview from Aaron Kaufman, also featuring Mike Verdu) <<<
The fact is that the old games, with the patches provided by Westwood, runs as well .. or better than their First Decade versions on today's PC. They've said that TFD would have working IPX support on old C&C games, DVD with fan made movies and other things that never went into the game. They have promised FAQs and many features that were history. At the TFD site, the Hall Of Fame voting polls will open one day... or not... It might be another false promise. Are we that stupid or untrustworthy to be fooled like that? Or isn't it true that one community manager who is also community aliason, who does movies and other marketing jobs and even organize internal football leagues is not enough human resource to run two different game communities. Lack of human resources are usually the diagnosis of a lot of unfinished promises. And also, what happened to the Battle For Middle Earth 2 SDK for modders that would be released.... then, they decided that they would take a look at it on march... and nothing happened since then. And the Generals Ladder Kit? My guess is that they don't give enough value to their customers, only to their money. But I hope I'm wrong.
The First Decade received few patches, but none of them fixes the LAN issue and one of them generated extra 800mb on your hard disk with no need at all to do that. Maybe we have hard disks with unlimited space, isn't it?
But now, who cares for The Fuc...First Decade? They are working on Command and Conquer 3. It's a great way to make people forget the disaster that The Fu... DVD was and divert their attention from that.
But, with Command & Conquer 3, they have some positive changes. One of them is that they are taking fan feedback more seriously. The game is on very early development stages. They finally have some working tiberium and they really seem to have only GDI under production at the moment. Therefore, they won't reveal much more than that, since Nod and Third Faction are still under planning stages.
One of the inovations of this new game is their focus on the story, single player experience. Thank God they finally noticed the main atribute that made the first C&C sell a lot and become a major hit, which was a well made campaign with a great storyline. Of course, multiplayer is very attractive as well and help sales. Anyway, they've made a C&C bible and hired MIT scientists to explain the tiberium. But even with all these efforts, they seemed to have lost some consistence with the old C&C tiberium games. Their tiberium doesn't follow the behaviour from the old tiberium and the lack of blue tiberium is the best way to ignore Tiberian Sun. But as I said, they are on early development stage and they still have time to sort these problems, but I still predict a gameplay very similar to Generals. Afterall, all Battle For Middle Earth games are played similarly to Generals and they had completely different universes. But now, C&C 3 comes with MCV and sidebar. But there is a high possibility that the MCV is actually a dozer with a new name. For now, we don't know much about it yet.
Another thing that is being hard to swallow is this 'Tiberium Wars' name. It was originally a 'working title', but it suddenly got official status and the EA marketing team has been trying to sell this terrible idea for us like it was a natural thing. And what happened to Kucan? If they managed to hire him, why don't they reveal it? For me, it doesn't make much sense, since his return would be a great achievement to the game and certainly a reason for many sales.
Anyway, it's good to see EALA approaching their fans, but it's bad to see how this approach is too much based on marketing, sales and they are not reliable. Other studios like Blizzard, Petroglyph and Ensemble Studios have completely different approachs with their fans, that seems to be a lot more natural and with less lies. Of course you make games to sell them, but when you have passion for your games, the sales are just a consequence. Don't you agree?
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And I guess that's all for today. This article was not written to insult anyone, except to rant at the EALA marketing approach. APOC is doing a great job to sell their games. It's a fact. Feel free to discuss it. Guest posting allowed. Last edited by Banshee on Tue Jun 13, 2006 1:56 pm; edited 4 times in total QUICK_EDIT
banshee can i have the forums for C&C web address.. i have a few ideas
i think you'll like mine since C&C3 is based in the Ground control 2 engine i can see more thins that could be done
(ie : dogfighting aircraft and better base building AI
...i want it to be like AOEIII where the AI Try's to help you by protecting you as you build your base then leaving you when your strong enough to coupe)
i think C&C3 should be based on team work because in real life thats the diffence between life and death
-------a note form real life-------
if you have been in the milltary like me this is the most importiant thing
In a soldiers life no matter which service you chose the airforce allways says watch your team mates because they are you life savers
they are your olny allies though one battle to the next one day they may save your life _________________ Link to a document to see what mods i have and/or working on or working with
Click QUICK_EDIT
Is it me or that newsletter the new cnc3 one a load of shit because I haven't received one email at all not one. Has anybody else noticed that? _________________ -------------------------------------------------------
good rant you've made Banshee, long, but you're having a good point. The F*cking DVD correct, absolutely correct. They didn't even have the RA1 Videos! only the crappy starting ones... _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Location: In my ship with someone from planet earth
Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 8:03 am Post subject:
I didn't but the TFD pack for I have the C&C games already (except for generals and SS of course) but I still agree with this, I even wonder if EA will even b serious about staying true 2 the release and I wonder if we will see any original old C&C nostalgia in C&C 3 but with EA giving out fake promises as they did with wat the pple said about the TFD pack then u should really doubt that they'll just care about Westwood hmph! Damn Generals, it shouldn't even deserve the C&C title at all! For it plays JUST LIKE F**KING STARCRAFT U KNOW?! AND STARCRAFT IS NOT C&C AT ALL MY LOYAL C&C FANS, OH NO, GENERALS SHOULD NOT B C&C AT ALL! OMG! I wonder if EA will even look in the signing room on the the decision of Kucan to be in C&C 3 even u know, I feel absolutly sick just thinking about the so-called "full-promises" that EA promised! If u ask me then i'll say "It looks like EA is loosing it's Nostalgia tip of their &C sword if u ask me" How dare EA for doing this?! GRRRR!!! _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Sometimes I wonder why did I want to waste my money on TFD.... good thing I didn't do it.
Banshee, that one huge rant, but everything you said is really true.
The fact that all EA want's is the customers' money (I'm talking about all games) is something old in the gaming world. I mean they closed companies just to earn money and they're seaking to close companies that aren't doing so well (death to them if they close Eidos). Also they don't give a damn about they're games. They release a game, quickly make 2-3 patches and after that..... nothing. I am a fan of Need For Speed Series, but I hate what they are doing to these games. The last 3 games were crap. And they hardly care about these games too. It's a series that is going to hell.
The wallpaper from Renegade's link is true as hell. They want to make a new game because they didn't get all our money. That's all they want and I wish EA will have money problems and close forever.
Talking about companies like Blizzard, it's one of the coolest ever. They care of their older games (I mean they recently released a patch for ye olde Starcraft) and look at what they're doing to World of Warcraft: almost monthly patches and add-ons making the game better and better. And they care about their fans and don't wish to get all their money because they have luck selling the games (still, the monthly taxes for World of Warcraft might be theft for some).
So if everyone says that TFD is buggier than the original C&C games, all I can say is that EA is made of a bunch of ztypes. I'd rather buy the original games than buying a dvd with all the games broken and "improved".
I used to like EA before, their games rocked, but now they're a bunch of money hungry idiots. I mean they made really cool games in the past till let's say 2002 or 2003 when they started doing only bugged, not-so-high-rated and with weak graphics, gameplay, etc. games. And it continues..... death to EA. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Location: In ur BIOS, Steeln ur Megahurtz!
Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 4:34 pm Post subject:
"Cuz we still ain't got all your money" rofl
its pretty much the truth, even though they said its satire. BUT....! i will kill everyone who keeps on being pessimistic. if you guys think EA will ztype this up, they will. if you don't, they won't. Ppl who haven't seen it before: watch Kelly's Heroes and pey special attention to crazy tank drivers _________________ Please, read the signature rules of the forum. QUICK_EDIT
i like how you pointed out how EA only approach the community when trying to sell us something which is entierly true, they have recieved alot of negative feedback from long standing non-grenerals fanboy community members and yet they fail to do anything to attempt to dispel any of the negative stigma surrounding them.
the Tiberium wars thing is by far the worst, i bet after all arguments have been pledged Apoc himself would say "would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?" and the answer would be "yes, but nobody wants to sniff an Stenchblossom"
With Tiberium wars EA is not attempting to make a sequel to Tiberian sun in any way at all, nothing they have done so far looks to like Tiberian sun plus a few years, what EA is trying to do is to make a game that the current generation of "pro gamers" will want to play, and they are boring bastards, they want something modern and realistic with no sense of imagination or depth, hell i bet the entire game takes place in north america.
In my honest opinion EALA need to either think about what they are doing from a non entierly profit based perspective or at least TRY and make games with at least a shred of continuity. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
You can't really get a large company like EA to pruduce a game which doesn't make profit, can you? I don't think It's possible to change it. Modding can, yes. The sage engine has a lot of posibilities. And in the end, It all comes down to some modders who are making something good. We can't really change that, can we? Generals C&C style. QUICK_EDIT
Thing is it WOULD still make a significant proffit games that retain continuity, have good story and are true to their begginings get DAMN good reviews, good reviews get good sales. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
I'm just glad, there suppose be Live action movies back with campaign. Instead of boring Generals campaign. Of course it be on Generals engine(SAGE) which offers good graphics & near real time. But CnC always been about Fast Pace gameplay, but I'm just glad its finally came back to Tiberian Universe QUICK_EDIT
EA just plays with their own mind... did they listen C&C fans when they made Generals... eh, i think not...
They just made it to profit some money into their pockets and the game was catastrophical!
C&C "3"? if Tiberium Wars is 3 then what is the C&C with the 2? C&C Tiberian Dawn??
I am sure that I'll buy C&C3 even it going to be shit or not... I'm giving some money to their fat pockets...
"Tiberium Wars" name sucks ass (also Generals which is poison to C&C), can't they make any better names to their games?
Hail to APOC! He is doing a good job in EA and maybe C&C 3 is going to be good. QUICK_EDIT
i realy dont know what to think on anything anymore, CNC 3? will it preveil or be another generals.... too many false hopes. and all this EA stuff... well..... meh i dont care anymore. QUICK_EDIT
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:32 am Post subject:
Dubzac58 wrote:
banshee can i have the forums for C&C web address.. i have a few ideas
i think you'll like mine since C&C3 is based in the Ground control 2 engine i can see more thins that could be done
(ie : dogfighting aircraft and better base building AI
...i want it to be like AOEIII where the AI Try's to help you by protecting you as you build your base then leaving you when your strong enough to coupe)
i think C&C3 should be based on team work because in real life thats the diffence between life and death
-------a note form real life-------
if you have been in the milltary like me this is the most importiant thing
In a soldiers life no matter which service you chose the airforce allways says watch your team mates because they are you life savers
they are your olny allies though one battle to the next one day they may save your life
1) C&C3 is based on SAGE engine.
2) Webbies forum is linked in PPM frontpage, but if you can't see it, it's located at http://webbies.cnccommunity.net. Its access is restricted to webmasters and staff from sites. But you doesn't seem to be a webmaster of a staff of a C&C related site.
3) Even webmasters doesn't affect the decisions of the EA development team so much. Also, Generals has dogfighting and a better AI than older games.
Firestorma wrote:
Is it me or that newsletter the new cnc3 one a load of shit because I haven't received one email at all not one. Has anybody else noticed that?
Not your problem.
Renegade wrote:
@Banshee: Welcome...to the real world.
I'm not blind . I was already aware of these things for a long time...
Havoc wrote:
I used to like EA before, their games rocked, but now they're a bunch of money hungry idiots. I mean they made really cool games in the past till let's say 2002 or 2003 when they started doing only bugged, not-so-high-rated and with weak graphics, gameplay, etc. games. And it continues..... death to EA.
EA instance actually used to be worse than that. They've improved, believe it or not. And my article wasn't written to motivate blind voices of 'Die EA die!111'. I'm just questioning their bad attitude of putting their interest for money above the respect for their customers.
Ackron wrote:
In my honest opinion EALA need to either think about what they are doing from a non entierly profit based perspective or at least TRY and make games with at least a shred of continuity.
I agree. And that was my main implicit suggestion in the whole article. Profit is a consequence of a great hit. That's what happened with the first Command & Conquer game.
Usmc101 wrote:
I'm just glad, there suppose be Live action movies back with campaign. Instead of boring Generals campaign. Of course it be on Generals engine(SAGE) which offers good graphics & near real time. But CnC always been about Fast Pace gameplay, but I'm just glad its finally came back to Tiberian Universe
SAGE engine isn't my favourite in terms of graphics. If you play Age Of Empires III, you'll understand why. Also SAGE requires too much RAM, specially on high quality graphics. You'll notice that once you play BfME 2 on the highest quality possible (and it's much slower than AOE 3 in the same conditions). The FMV are a great thing and I'm glad that it's back. You are also right about C&C always be a fast paced games. Although the tiberium series are the slowest paced ones. QUICK_EDIT
u need more than 512MB of ram to escape the Virtual Memory messages (assuming u let windows pick the VM size) of windows saying it needs to increase it cos Generals is hungry to eat more. _________________ Free Map Editor - Game Requirements - Stucuk.Net QUICK_EDIT
I used to like EA before, their games rocked, but now they're a bunch of money hungry idiots. I mean they made really cool games in the past till let's say 2002 or 2003 when they started doing only bugged, not-so-high-rated and with weak graphics, gameplay, etc. games. And it continues..... death to EA.
EA instance actually used to be worse than that. They've improved, believe it or not. And my article wasn't written to motivate blind voices of 'Die EA die!111'. I'm just questioning their bad attitude of putting their interest for money above the respect for their customers.
Well, they're improving because they're closing other companies (or did, didn't heard about such a thing for some time now) and getting their staff. The death to EA part: if they continue to act like they do now, just caring about the money, people will soon get sick of them and their games and EA will slowly go down... Some might wan't that, some might not, I'm still unsure what I wan't... QUICK_EDIT
well i don't want to be a hater of ea ...ok theres bad suport bla bla bla...
but theres also been nice games too..so give EA a chance i say you all are being too selfish ...after all its only a game.
anyway any C&C game is better than none at all at least their thinking about us ..ok maybe not the right way but still thinking _________________ Link to a document to see what mods i have and/or working on or working with
Click QUICK_EDIT
but theres also been nice games too..so give EA a chance i say you all are being too selfish ...after all its only a game.
EA has had plenty of chances in the past and has always failed to do anything really good, look at TFD that was EA's last great chance to make it up, they failed horribly.
Quote:
anyway any C&C game is better than none at all
they cant permanently damage the Tiberian series continuity if they dont make a game, so i actually disagree.
Quote:
..after all its only a game.
unfortunatley this here community is sort of BASED ENTIERLY ON GAMES so its sort of important. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Location: In my ship with someone from planet earth
Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:40 am Post subject:
Absolutly correct Ackron, U r exactly on the right track and I applaud u for it, listen 2 wat the community thinks! it may b just a game but it's a game with a very nostalgic feelings u know so don't ever take it lightly Dub? _________________ QUICK_EDIT
"First rule of mass media. Give the people what they want."
Banshee wrote:
Profit is a consequence of a great hit. That's what happened with the first Command & Conquer game.
Banshee said it in one. It was in the days of TD when good games were made. Small games companies made games which rocked. They rocked, because the people who made them loved to play and make games. Games by gamers for gamers.
You won't ever truely understand a game until you play, and only then can you work on it. I doubt anyone really played Tiberian Sun in the current EA development team for CNC3, and that alone dooms the game.
If EA made a few simple changes, they could turn this game around.
1) Get the developers to play it. Play it themselves. Asking the fans about stuff is one thing, but unless they experience it themselves, they won't really understand.
Hell if they actually just read the TS/FS MANUALS! it'd make a difference. The story of Tiberium, or at least the direction they were heading in, its all there. In clear black and white.
2) To complement 1, listen to the fans. Whether they like it or not, the fan base for Command and Conquer are the majority of people who will potentially buy CNC3. Millions of copies were sold of TD,RA,TS,RA2 etc. And most of those will be CNC fans. If you like RTS, you like CNC. Therefore, people who buy CNC 3 will be RTS fans, and most likely CNC fans.
Piss them off, and you'll piss off most of your market.
And if they bothered to look at the larger picture, they'd see that if they can prove themselves with CNC 3, they'd get the attention of a lot of people else where who have already lost their faith in EA.
Its one thing to make a game which sells. Its another to make a game which sells, and doesn't get sent back to the games store on the same/next day for a full refund. _________________ If there is a problem on the forums, PM me. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Location: In ur BIOS, Steeln ur Megahurtz!
Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 6:02 pm Post subject:
WE should send them a list of suggestions and improvements, instead of letting them read everything. I already had the idea of a forum-section for EA to read, but quickly came to the conclusion they would probably be too lazy to do so. so instead "we" will send them the full list. _________________ Please, read the signature rules of the forum. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Location: In ur BIOS, Steeln ur Megahurtz!
Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 7:40 pm Post subject:
never, EVER post in this forum again! (nah)
Generals can only be compared to toilet paper; used for whiping your ass.
NOTHING modern-combat-BF2-style-realistic is fun to play, not even online. (especially not online) _________________ Please, read the signature rules of the forum. QUICK_EDIT
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 8:56 pm Post subject:
Chielscape, Zero Hour is fine in terms of multiplayer, specially when your computer runs it smoothly. Of course there are a lot of overpowered Generals powers, umballanced Aurora Alphas and other problems... but the game has a good multiplayer. The singleplayer part of the game can be throwed in the dustbin. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Location: In ur BIOS, Steeln ur Megahurtz!
Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 1:23 pm Post subject:
multiplayer too,
1. it is indeed unbalanced.
2. no tactics possible, just n00b-rushes.
3. all different generals suck. _________________ Please, read the signature rules of the forum. QUICK_EDIT
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EALA, C&C3, The First Decade and a rant: Good or Deception?
correct, absolutely correct. They didn't even have the RA1 Videos! only the crappy starting ones...
