Peter Moore Says EA 'Can Do Better'

[Shawn Zipay]

In a bit of a state of the company update, Peter Moore took to the EA blog explaining how EA "can do better." He addresses how the company is once again in the running to be the Consumerist's Worst Company in America for the second year running and how things aren't as bad as the critics would like to have you believe.

Some of these complaints are 100 percent legitimate – like all large companies we are not perfect. But others just don’t hold water:

- Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.
- Some claim there’s no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. 45 million registered users are proving that wrong.
- Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games.
- We’ve seen mailing lists that direct people to vote for EA because they disagree with the choice of the cover athlete on Madden NFL. Yes, really…
- In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games. This week, we’re seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America.

That last one is particularly telling. If that’s what makes us the worst company, bring it on. Because we're not caving on that.

We are committed to fixing our mistakes. Over the last three weeks, 900,000 SimCity players took us up on a free game offer for their troubles. We owed them that. We’re constantly listening to feedback from our players, through our Customer Experience group, Twitter, this blog, or other sites. The feedback is vital, and impacts the decisions we make.

For more from Moore, head on over to read We Can Do Better.

[CptainCrunch]

It doesnt matter if EA can do better, its "What is EA doing to do better?"

EA gave Sim City people a choice of a FEW games to select from and then two days later put them on sale at great discount on Origin. (I dont own Sim City btw, but I feel that is harsh)

Also, it wasnt just Sim City that has done that. Every major title game has had issues the first few weeks of release. The DRM breaks even more stuff on top of that.

We dont care about your LGBT policy, we care about your GAMES and how you handle them. If you focused on your games as much as LGBT then you wouldnt have much to worry about.

The fact that every gaming thread you go into is a customer saying they are not being listened to tells you that maybe you are not listening to your customers. I know there is a fine line on doing that and you have to go the artistic route, but when you promise a house and provide a shack (in some cases a cardboard box) people are going to be upset about it.

I just mention all this because DICE has already started about how they are interested in adding features for competitive play, which is the same thing they said in BF3 and it was a joke match system with no tools. So it's starting again.

[Anarchy1]

Wait, what is the always-on thing for then if not for DRM?

[K-16]

At no point in time did anybody say 'you must make this online'. It was the creative people on the team that thought it was best to create a multiplayer collaborative experience and when you're building entertainment... You have to innovate and try new things and surprise people and in this particular case that's what we sought to achieve... SimCity started out and felt like an MMO more than anything else and it plays like an MMO.

7th paragraph from the top.

Always-Connected is a big change from SimCities of the past. It didn’t come down as an order from corporate and it isn’t a clandestine strategy to control players. It’s fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity. From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.

Second paragraph from the top.

If it were up to me, I would simply design two games. A multiplayer plus mode that is on one disc, and a singleplayer offline mode on another disc. One that is a premium game that is always online, and one that is akin to previous SimCity games with more restrictive features, but capable of being played in places where you don't have internet. Forcing SimCity to be an MMO causes you to re-teach your customers that they need to play your way or don't play at all. And since SimCity 2013 is considered to be a reboot... Um... Nice way to re-introduce players to the franchise by showing how inaccessible the game can be. That's why I would've suggested two seperate games in one release. One premium and requires online and one nerfed, but more flexible. And given how the game got modified to play offline minus a few key features... It's not difficult nor expensive to pull off. It's not like gamers have never heard of single-player and multiplayer modes as seperated games. It's win-win.

I do have to laugh at how they underestimated how many people would be playing at launch. I mean, we're not all industry professionals with years of experience like the veterans at EA/Maxis, but... We DID warn them. Numerous times. Long before its release... And yet they managed to mess up worse than Diablo 3. Really I just feel like chanting "We told you so!" in an incredibly annoying and immature tone.

[Porkfist]

Blah blah, registered users on Origin. That's because you make your AAA titles exclusive to Origin. Origin could not win a fair fight against Steam in it's current state. Don't force me to use your service, make it better so I want to use it instead of Steam. I'm tired of that BS bullet point they keep shoving down everyone's throat.

[azalea]

http://consumerist.com/2013/04/05/ea-admits-it-can-do-better-but-blames-worst-company-success-on-homophobes-and-whiny-madden-fans/

Well written response to this load of bull as usual. EA has created a lot of straw man arguments instead of focusing on why people actually dislike their practices.

[Shawn Zipay]

http://consumerist.com/2013/04/05/ea...y-madden-fans/

Well written response to this load of bull as usual. EA has created a lot of straw man arguments instead of focusing on why people actually dislike their practices.

That is an absolutely beautiful reply from the Consumerist. Spot on for a lot of it.