IT BEGINS.
Aww, shit. Haven't seen it yet.
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Jimquisition (March 9th) - Unicronic Arts
- Thread starter L~A
- Start date
Aww, shit. Haven't seen it yet.
Shadow Hog
Member
That's okay, for some reason I keep reading it as "Unicorn-ic Arts".
IT BEGINS.
This is weird. Why would you even be allowed to make a content ID claim on something that isn't being monetized?
If you watch Jimquisition episodes take note that commercials are never played.
Yet if you watch any other Jim Sterling content they will have ads.
The reason that is happening is that all Jimquisition episodes are funded through Patreon and that allows Sterling to not have ads playing on those episodes.
I find it weird that youtube allows their content creators to flag videos as something to not be monetized yet even those videos can still be flagged by their contentID system.
This feels pretty sloppy.
That's why it's bizarre. There isn't any money being made on it directly.
Because you prove the point I was making.Why do I get the impression you work for EA or another big publisher?
But that isn't always the reason- hence why I mentioned a studio closing in one year while another lasting over 20. To think this is what always happens is very limited and narrow- which indicates lack of understanding/awareness of the issue or even the workings of the industry as a whole.
Let me put it this way; EA isn't the biggest publisher because they are dumb or because they 'keep killing talent'. In addition, this isn't a one sided subject. Sometimes the studio at hand is at fault. And we aren't kids, so nothing is either or. Although deals are not publicized, we can see that when a studio is closed, it isn't always the 'big bad stupid publisher not knowing what to do'.
This person's video is so off putting and appears to be addressing child-like audiences with his phrasing and delivery. His opinion on EA-studios behavior just drives that home.
GlamFM
Banned
Disgusting
Suzushiiro
Banned
Yeah, pretty much. If it felt like the shutdowns were the studios being punished for their own mistakes, it would be fine, but the mistakes are usually EA's. Dungeon Keeper Mobile being a prime example here- do you really think any of the people who were let go as a result of the Mythic shutdown had anything to do with the decisions that made that game an irredeemable pile of garbage?
Going to watch the video now, but seeing the title of this weeks Jimquisition made me think of this;
The future, after another battle of the console wars; in space, we see the lifeless body of Bioware drifting around...
Bioware... Bioware...
Who calls my name?
It is I, Unicronic Arts. I summon thee
NOBODY SUMMONS BIOWARE
Man now I want to watch TF the Movie again. Thanks Jim!
The future, after another battle of the console wars; in space, we see the lifeless body of Bioware drifting around...
Bioware... Bioware...
Who calls my name?
It is I, Unicronic Arts. I summon thee
NOBODY SUMMONS BIOWARE
Man now I want to watch TF the Movie again. Thanks Jim!
D
Deleted member 126221
Unconfirmed Member
What point were you making and how did I prove it? I sincerely don't get it.
While I've never been directly under the employ of EA, I've worked for a third party developer who worked on a game for EA (The 'old-gen' (PS2,Wii,PSP) versions of The Simpsons Game), and I do have to admit that their support network was excellent; the best I'd worked with. I can absolutely understand the appeal.
Zombie James
Banned
IT BEGINS.
Unbelievable.
IT BEGINS.
Also great video jim our messiah thank god for you but this is pathetic what there doing.
Lady Siara
Member
That...explains a lot. This info really puts Pandemic's short shelf life into perspective.
Trogdor1123
Member
SO they must have been watching for this or something right to ID it so fast?
Or does some computer do it some how?
Or does some computer do it some how?
OminoMichelin
Member
Most content ID matches ARE automated, but in this case, I'm not so sure.
Coffee Dog
Banned
Great video, Jim! Sorry about the content ID, though. awful. 
It was an incredibly shady and depressing situation. Quoted from this thread about EA's studio closing practices:
It was an incredibly shady and depressing situation. Quoted from this thread about EA's studio closing practices:
This. The design disparity between PvZ1 and PvZ2 (mobile) is staggering.
They let go of the guy who brainchilded PvZ right around the time they announced PvZ2. They dont care about Popcap, just milking its creations.
I'm pretty sure Jim's video's are not monetized
That's an obscure one Jim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZvIMcwA6sE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZvIMcwA6sE
Shining Sunshine
Banned
It's the team's job to do good work, and if the plan is to have online, it's their job to make sure it works.
There was literally zero stress testing/load testing, and that's not the fault of the decision of having online. They just failed to test it properly.
Really? So I guess Visceral has a chance of staying on the island a little longer.
Only Jimquisition videos aren't being monetized. The rest are being monetized.
Jim's position seems unfairly cynical at times. At least a few of those studios died as a result of their own dumb decisions, miscalculations, or shifts in the market.
If the Medal of Honor games had turned out to be good, EA would be receiving none of the credit but since they sucked and tanked the studio apparently that's their fault. If Medal of Honor fails it's because EA was relentlessly attacking Activision with a Call of Duty "hate boner" in hand. But at the same time, chasing that CoD money has made Battlefield a perennial commercial success.
Blaming Dungeon Keeper for the failure of Mythic seems almost intentionally disingenuous. That game was not going to keep the studio afloat even if it had been fantastic, and Mythic's financial woes are far more the result of the failures of Warhammer Online (which shut down less than 6 months prior to Mythic's closure).
PopCap will likely be the next studio to go, but I'm not really even sure who to blame there. PopCap was on top of the world for a long while, but started sputtering even before EA bought them. It's insane to think that it took 4 years for a Plants Versus Zombies sequel....and even then they only made it for mobile. Huh?
If the Medal of Honor games had turned out to be good, EA would be receiving none of the credit but since they sucked and tanked the studio apparently that's their fault. If Medal of Honor fails it's because EA was relentlessly attacking Activision with a Call of Duty "hate boner" in hand. But at the same time, chasing that CoD money has made Battlefield a perennial commercial success.
Blaming Dungeon Keeper for the failure of Mythic seems almost intentionally disingenuous. That game was not going to keep the studio afloat even if it had been fantastic, and Mythic's financial woes are far more the result of the failures of Warhammer Online (which shut down less than 6 months prior to Mythic's closure).
PopCap will likely be the next studio to go, but I'm not really even sure who to blame there. PopCap was on top of the world for a long while, but started sputtering even before EA bought them. It's insane to think that it took 4 years for a Plants Versus Zombies sequel....and even then they only made it for mobile. Huh?
gioGAF
Member
Unicronic Arts is a fantastic title, lol. Sadly, while I was watching the video, my first thought was "Visceral is next" and then Jim predicted the same :-(
I really doubt Maxis came up with the always online idea or that Visceral wanted Dead Space 3 to include one of the most heinous save systems in history just so the microtransaction system would work properly.
I think Jim makes a far better argument than all of your inane "because" reasons and "we aren't kids" nonsense.
Or maybe there is some truth to what Jim is discussing in the video. Yes, EA knows how to make money, but their plan is clearly not to keep and foster studios. They take whatever it is that is successful, suck it dry and in the process destroy the studio's name and reputation. When they are finally spent, they are closed and then EA moves on.
I really doubt Maxis came up with the always online idea or that Visceral wanted Dead Space 3 to include one of the most heinous save systems in history just so the microtransaction system would work properly.
I think Jim makes a far better argument than all of your inane "because" reasons and "we aren't kids" nonsense.
I strongly disagree on that front, Battlefield is a success because it does it's own things that COD doesn't do and it hopefully stays that way, with things like player count and vehicular combat, Battlefield chasing COD bucks gave us the absolutely dreadful Battlefield 4 online launch with reports that it was rushed to launch chasing those very same COD bucks, which is a good recipe for EA sabotaging their own IP because they're following that COD boner.
levyjl1988
Banned
Point being that if Battlefield 3 had failed, the perspective would be "Stupid EA they killed DICE chasing that COD money" and not "Oh well I guess people just didn't want 64 player matches with jets and helicopters".
Medal of Honor was crappy and suffered the consequences, but it wasn't an inherently bad business idea to make a modern-day military shooter.
BibiMaghoo
Member
This thread reminds me of a time when Transformers movies were fucking awesome, and every child in the cinema watching it cried.
Thank god for Jim.
Thank god for Jim.
BrassDragon
Member
Stay safe, BioWare.
IT BEGINS.
What, they don't like it when people talk about how they keep closing studios?
Empyrean Heaven
Member
Props to using "Unicron" rather than "Galactus", the more popular nerd allusion.
Somebody please photoshop the EA Logo into Unicron, please.
Nintendo's will never be dethroned, sorry.
Somebody please photoshop the EA Logo into Unicron, please.
Nintendo's will never be dethroned, sorry.
reptilescorpio
Member
There are some interesting tactics out there to force a devs hand. Offering loans for milestones and moving the goalposts is a big one, Bethesda has used that successfully (and not so successfully with Human Head).
Sometimes it's the promise of more focus on the game side of things and less on the business, Indie devs hit this problem all the time as well.
because game makers are content producers, not business men, and not lawyers.
Ask Lorne Lanning how he escaped EA's aquisition.
What, they don't like it when people talk about how they keep closing studios?
It's an automatic process.
It's hard for me to feel any sadness when EA shutters these formerly-great studios, since by the time it happens, they have sucked all the life out of them and left them as a husk of what they once were. They're mercy killings by the time they finally happen.
The moment of sadness has instead been moved upstream to the point where EA acquires a studio and begins to ruin them.
The moment of sadness has instead been moved upstream to the point where EA acquires a studio and begins to ruin them.
Duxxy3
Member
EA has been setting up Visceral to fail for years now. Everybody saw the backlash and sales for Dead Space 3. Hardline should never have been a Battlefield game. Tacking on Battlefield multiplayer only served to raise sales expectations. Hardline would have been better served as an expansion pack to BF4 and the single player campaign spun off as a completely new franchise.
Visceral will almost certainly be closed in a year. Sales expectations won't even be close to met and Visceral will take the blame.
Visceral will almost certainly be closed in a year. Sales expectations won't even be close to met and Visceral will take the blame.
EmptySpace
Banned
boom.
what exactly did you expect?
there are a lot more going for ea than aaa studios, in this day and age. sustainability, market conditions, alternate streams, etc. i mean the work itself is project-to-project and there are a lot of factors that affect how and why pubs decide to close studios and retain others. but who cares about being a public company trying to be more marketable when you're evil and bad. no one cares about terms of agreements, just clickbait headlines trying to serve an ongoing narrative. big bad wolf is evil, period.
I dont think Mythic was doing well either. Sucks...
Millsington
Member
I understand where he's coming from given the history but one thing I just don't understand is that EA is the publisher -- this means they are funding the game, so it is their money on the line. If a game fails it is EA who loses the money, the people working at the studio are still paid for their time, although I'm sure without the performance bonuses and who knows what percentage of their expected income that is.
There is no world in which a game failing is ever good for EA as a company... So what gives? Is it possibly worth the risk of sacrificing studios with a good reputation to attempt to capitalize on intrusive and exploitative game design decisions? Does gambling on a potential mega-hit make business sense over making something with 'old style' design?
It kinds of puts me in mind of his older video saying that publisher execs only know about Call of Duty and Clash of Clans (I think it was Clash of Clans), and that every game should attempt to be one of those two games. Maybe it really is worth sacrificing the studios given the insane dollars that CoD and Clash of Clans seem to make.
A sad state of affairs.
There is no world in which a game failing is ever good for EA as a company... So what gives? Is it possibly worth the risk of sacrificing studios with a good reputation to attempt to capitalize on intrusive and exploitative game design decisions? Does gambling on a potential mega-hit make business sense over making something with 'old style' design?
It kinds of puts me in mind of his older video saying that publisher execs only know about Call of Duty and Clash of Clans (I think it was Clash of Clans), and that every game should attempt to be one of those two games. Maybe it really is worth sacrificing the studios given the insane dollars that CoD and Clash of Clans seem to make.
A sad state of affairs.
SneakyStephan
Banned
The closing of the studios? (xD)
I think I must be missing something here. Simcity Maxis screws the pooch utterly with the latest Sim City. Tons of bad press, refunds demanded, EA having to offer free games to Origin customers all must have led to EA losing a LOT of money. Honestly, why WOULD they keep it open? I just don't get it.
Please don't close Visceral.
No, but really, I don't even like Battlefield but I'm thinking about buying Hardline just to support Visceral.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
I'm buying Hardline to support Visceral, and because it feels better than BF4.
I don't think they'll be going anywhere soon, they're making a Star Wars title.
My bet is contributing to Battlefront and doing 1313.
What you arent getting, is all that stuff you said that Maxis did bad to screw the pooch, Maxis was FORCED to do, at the behest of the corporate publisher.
Thats what EA DOES.
They snatch up small talented studios whos ip's are about to, or just hit it big, with snake oil deals and promises, and then they begin forcing their own corparate design ideas, typically bs skinner box money schemes, ie 'EA'-ifying their games in an attempt to squeeze out as many pennies out of the consumer they possibly can, and the games get crappier, and crappier, and crappier, and when people have finally had enough, when its finally become so crappy that the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own, rancid, fetid feces... which it always does, they shutdown the studio and find another and do it again.
Maxis was forced to make a crappy game? Okay.