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EA Strikes Again - Bolty - 02-24-2004
Game company Electronic Arts is expected to tell its Austin employees this week that the company will be shutting down Origin Systems, its Austin operations, according to sources. Employees will be offered an opportunity to relocate to California or accept a severance package. Company officials could not be reached for comment. Austin is the #3 location in the U.S. for game development with more than 50 companies making major contributions to the game industry, including game development, publishing, tools and middleware and chips and hardware.
This is the company that was developing Ultima X: Odyssey. Stratics has some more info on this.
Is anyone surprised? I'm so tired of watching EA destroy my favorite gaming companies. Let's see here, Westwood, Bullfrog, Maxis, Origin, Shiny...
-Bolty
EA Strikes Again - Occhidiangela - 02-24-2004
. . . the Microsloth of the Game industry.
Boooooooo! Hissssssssss! Losing jobs in Texas, particularly high tech jobs, is baaaad. (OK, I am biased, a live in Texas.)
EA Strikes Again - Little Faith - 02-24-2004
Electronic Arts appears to me more like a sort of a "knackery" for old gaming companies. Buying them up when in economic distress and then "disposing" of them.
Quite unlike Microsoft or major record labels who have an interest in absorbing talent and technological knowhow from their victims.
EA Strikes Again - [wcip]Angel - 02-24-2004
I've tried two games from EA the last couple of months. Fifa2004 and Need for speed underground, both of which were utter, utter cack.
It amazes me how this company still manages to get by..
EA Strikes Again - Bun-Bun - 02-24-2004
I'm not surprised in the slightest. All the folks I knew are long gone anyways, off to Destination, Tornado Alley, Ion Storm, etc. Even to Dell. :(
It's a sad thing, but they lost their soul when Richard Garriott left.
EA Strikes Again - Sir_Die_alot - 02-24-2004
Quote:It amazes me how this company still manages to get by..After enron nothing amazes me. :P
EA Strikes Again - Quark - 02-24-2004
Origin has been long dead in my eyes. I never was into the Ultima series much, and unfortunately for me the first one I tried was Ascension (ouch!). The beuty of Origin to me was the Wing Commander series. Wing Commander was my first computer game and I followed that series the way through (minus Prophecy, I never seem to get around to that). Chris Roberts left and I haven't played a decent game from that company since. Not that Roberts has done that well by himself ...
EA Strikes Again - [wcip]Angel - 02-24-2004
Ooo.. My first throat-slitting experience, next to Die hard 2, was Wing Commander 4 when that guy from LA Law had got his throat slit by some villain. Perhaps it was Tolwyn? John Spencer was the name of the actor who got his throat slit.
Prophecy was quite cool, but I didn't like the main character. (You're not Blair.)
EA Strikes Again - Quark - 02-24-2004
IIRC, it was Tolwyn's lapdog, Seether. And it wasn't a big loss, he only killed an incompetent version of the bad guys. The worst damage Tolwyn ever did directly was to himself ;)
EA Strikes Again - pakman - 02-24-2004
E..........A..........Business: It's in the shutdown.
EA Strikes Again - Cryptic - 02-25-2004
Electronic Arts is a horrible, horrible company these days.
It makes me genuinely sad, because when I first got into computer games (1983), they were the paragons of artistic excellence. They pioneered creator/programmer co-ops, treating them as artists and superstars; the ads and the game materials featured the creators as if they were avant garde philosophers or famous authors.
Some of the notable games of that era:
MULE introduced economic symbiosis into multi-player gaming, and is still an excellent basic-economy simulator and one of the best party games of all time.
Archon turned chess into a mixture of strategy and arcade experience with a high fantasy spin. Its AI was quite vicious.
Seven Cities of Gold invoked questions of morality, racism, and the meaning of power - if you *can* slaughter people, and make more gold than if you befriend them, then *should* you? This game had a huge effect on my psyche as a teenager.
Adventure Construction Set, despite being a sloppy kludge, gave you the power to create your own immense graphic RPGs. You could even compile them to load on computers for your friends that didn't have ACS.
And now ... ?
:(
EA Strikes Again - JustAGuy - 02-25-2004
EA is not only producing mediocre titles, but since they have a big swolen head about trying to be the "Microsoft of the Gaming Industry" they refuse to play nice with Microsoft.
I used to love the NHL/NBA/NFL games of EA. They were #1 when it came to sports games. Now, they refuse to support Xbox Live, which looks like it would go hand-in-hand with EA Sports, making their games "passable" instead of "fantastic". I played ESPN NHL Hockey and NHL 2004 one after another -- ESPN is so much more fun and easier to pick up and play. Add on the Xbox live component, and you have a sweet game experience that you can enjoy online and offline. NHL2004? Nope. Gameplay wasn't as good, and no online play = not up to snuff. It's like that with most of their stuff now; good, but not great.
Now, don't get me started on Activision... The Tony Hawk series, starting from #3, really cheeses me off. Xbox Live would have made that series the best thing since sliced bread ("fantastic"), but instead, they're just "great".