Electronic Arts Message Board older than one year ago

Shocking, isn’t it? Here’s how this earth-shattering story went down. Imagine your best friends have just told you that they are expecting a child but don’t want the news to spread because they were planning to tell their families in person. Then imagine that your Twitter account immediately shared any information you had learned, thus ruining everything. What I’m trying to say is, Game have just told everyone who was watching: “EA presentation was great. Had mentions of a new Medal of Honour and Need for Speed 13! EA have an exciting year ahead.” Only problem is, the presentation was confidential and the tweet is now gone. I guess if we return to the pregnant couple, their families wouldn’t care all that much in this case because they already have 714 children, following each birth with immediate conception.

It’s yet another Kingdoms of Amalur video. There have been so many that I almost skipped straight past this one, continuing on my way through the internets in search of something more succulent. An unfathomable urge caused me to linger, however, and to watch. I’m glad I did because it’s the first time any footage of the game has managed to convince me there’ll be more to do than stabbing, skewering and spellocide. Sneaking, robbing, persuading, charming and exploring. Those are the kinds of things heroes get up to when they’re not committing murders. Take a look-see and then stick around for news of an imminent demo.

(more…)

Electronic Arts is seeking First Amendment protections in an upcoming legal dispute with the maker of military helicopters featured in Battlefield 3. Kotaku reports that Textron, the parent company of Bell Helicopters, asked EA on December 21 to cease the depictions of three of its aircraft found in Battlefield 3. Last Friday, EA did a pre-emptive tactical suit against Textron, saying the helicopters are "protected by the First Amendment and the doctrine of nominative fair use."

EA states that the Bell helicopters aren't highlighted or given any great distinction in the game. The publisher also claims the aircraft are just "a few of countless creative visual, audio, plot and programming elements that make up EA's expressive work, a first-person military combat simulation."

The publisher won a similar suit last year against Ex-Rutgers University quarterback Ryan Hart, who believed his likeness was used in NCAA Football without consent. The judge felt EA's First Amendment rights to free expression outweighed Hart's right to protect his likeness, despite the character in the game having "Hart's physical attributes, sports statistics, and biographical information in mind."

Speaking of First Amendment protections, Electronic Arts claims it has no individual position on SOPA, but wants the law to bail it out here ... mmm, chewy irony.

Being the first non-totally made up dude in an SSX game is an honor, we imagine, and Wyoming native Travis Rice is the first gentleman to do just that. Above, he describes how he mentally prepares for taking to the real life slopes, all set to a delightful dubstep wubwub.

For all the grumbles you may have read, Star Wars: The Old Republic is undoubtedly one of the most remarkably complete and solid MMO releases we’ve seen so far. It’s where most MMOs get in about six months. And this patch adds more content. But there are still things to fix, and the first major patch (ie. one that doesn’t just remove an exploit) is due very soon. In fact, as Eurogamer point out it’s been released on the test servers, which means we know what’s in it.

(more…)

#battlefield Electronic Arts is asking a federal judge to rule that it has a First Amendment right to depict real-life military helicopters in video games such as Battlefield 3 without the permission of the aircraft's maker. More »

#ssx Electronic Arts has lost its bid to win the domain "ssx.com" from a holdings firm that bought it up in October. While the holdings firm parked the domain and briefly served ads leading to the game—an action that EA used as the basis for its complaint-an arbitration panel didn't see that as enough evidence of bad faith to justify turning over the domain. More »

You’ve probably heard of SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, by now. It’s the bill that is currently being considered in the US, that on the surface appears to be an attempt to control piracy, but with only the tiniest scrapes reveals a genuinely terrifying, draconian attempt to introduce government censorship of the internet at the behest of unelected corporations. While it initially had the support of a number of big internet players, that has rapidly ceased to be the case, with massive online corps pulling support or having refused it in the first place. From Facebook to Google, AOL to Yahoo, and so many other big players, the bill is being condemned as a threat to free speech, online business, any “safe harbor” protections that the DMCA had left behind, and being so poorly worded that it pretty much outlaws using the internet at all. So why is it the Entertainment Software Association is in support?

(more…)

For most Battlefield 3 players, the huge number of weapon-mounted accessories are little more than filler between the obvious handful of choices that offer the best, effective results. The game's core gameplay designer, Alan Kertz, has picked up on that state and taken to Reddit to solicit advice for tweaking BF3's various gun augmentations.

"I'm not promising this will go live, and I'm not promising there will be an update, I'm looking for feedback and a discussion," Kurtz writes, carefully requesting feedback while trying not to overpromise. He says that the goal in said request is to "focus on improving the under performing and under used attachments," but also to identify how to nerf the most powerful attachments. Interested in sounding off? Head over to the Reddit thread and get passionate.

Hello there. The characters in the new Syndicate co-op trailer seem to be having a competition to see who can have the worst made-up soldier-person name on the team! Ooh, they’re all contenders, but sadly none have as terrible a name as the single player protagonist, Miles Kilo (pictured with his tool). Still, it’s not worth being too snide around these agents of corporate malevolence, because any one of them can break a man’s neck as if it were made from cheese-string, as this video (below) quite relevantly demonstrates. Ooh, that’s nasty. I bet Syndicate agents have a poor sense of humour, too. Look at them frown!(more…)

Anyone who’s not looking forward to the conclusion of the Mass Effect trilogy is an idiot. That’s the official word given via the parliamentary press secretary for David Cameron, speaking to a field of bees this morning. And if you needed any more proof, there are five new screenshots of the game out today, each emblazoned by BioWare’s ludicrously pointless logos, and one of them showing a big fat alien monster. Like you can resist clicking onward.

(more…)

Well this is all jolly interesting. Remember the story about Star Wars: The Old Republic banning a player because he’d been to Ilum at too low a level, and been looting the containers? And remember how it looked pretty dodgy, and was probably a fake? Well here’s the thing: it wasn’t. It was real. But, as you might imagine, there were a few details missed out.

(more…)

"We did that iOS Mass Effect Galaxy thing really early. We said, 'We should just try this and see what happens.' And we learned something from it," BioWare group creative lead Greg Zeschuk told me in a recent interview, when asked about the company's unknown mobile plans. It seems that Zeschuk, and in turn, BioWare, is more interested in using mobile and other burgeoning platforms as testing grounds rather than a focus.

"What we do a lot is we'll actually explore a platform and kinda play around with it," Zeschuk added. While he said that mobile, comprising both Android and iOS, is "definitely something we're looking at," he also noted that just one person of BioWare's hundreds of employees has been assigned to focus primarily on mobile development. That person is said to be in charge of identifying "logical extensions to what we do," but Zeschuk is quick to point out his company "haven't announced too much" in that space.

He also pointed out that another branch of BioWare's parent company, EA Interactive/Mobile, could be of particular use in the case of BioWare properties on mobile devices. "That's one of the biggest benefits of being at EA. We have EA Interactive, who does tons and tons of mobile stuff," Zeschuk said. "We're always looking around. We're always sort of sharing ideas and figuring out what we're gonna do."

Presumably we'll hear more whenever BioWare figures out what exactly that is, or at least whenever the company decides to announce as much. For now, we'll be wantonly hoping for a PopCap crossover, post-acquisition. We can dream, right?

Oh goodness me, can this really be true? A pic of an email is circulating this morning purporting to be a communication from EA, informing a player that their account has been banned from playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, because their character visited, and looted within, a high level area. Because, they say, this violates their terms of service. If this proves to be the case, and that’s purely the reason, it may be the most ridiculous EA ban yet. However, there are a lot of reasons to assume it’s either a fake, or things are a lot more complicated. Take a look.

(more…)

In addition to Amazon's EA sale going on now through its PC digital distribution network, there are a couple noteworthy additions to the roster today and tomorrow. Today, Crysis 2 is available for $10, a 75 percent discount off the regular price.

Starting 2012 with a flashbang, Amazon will have Battlefield 3 for $30 on the first of the year. Also relevant here is customers who have purchased anything from Amazon's "best-selling games of 2011" should have a $5 coupon that can be applied in the new year, bringing it down to $25. That's a great price for a game that's been beta-tested since launch to the point of playability.

Understandably, BioWare heads Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk seem tired of beating the drum for Star Wars: The Old Republic's subscription-based business model. I didn't actually bother asking them about their thoughts on subscription vs free-to-play gaming during an interview early last week, but Zeschuk launched into a spirited defense nonetheless, perhaps conditioned by being asked over and over in the run up to SW: TOR's launch last Monday.

"You look at the online space in general and it's fragmenting into all these different areas, but the core still works. The subscription model still works," Zeschuk said. "We know a lot of people say, 'Oh, everything's just going free-to-play.' But that's just one slice. There's one slice that's free-to-play, there's one slice that's social, there's traditional subscription still going." He was also quick to point out that, "it's obviously been the free-to-play guys trumpeting this," though his own company certainly isn't above working in the free-to-play space, as evidenced by Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes.

"I'm not saying it's better or worse. It just doesn't supplant the other things. 'Cause we can do some things no one else can," Zeschuk added. In his eyes, a free-to-play dev isn't able to throw the same amount of resources and time at an MMO project, and that marks a big differentiation between the two business models. "The free-to-play people can't invest to the level we can invest, and can't create something of the size and scale of something we can create," he said. The idea that free-to-play will take over all other MMO business models, he said is, "from a business perspective, ridiculous."

We're told that it's ... somewhat difficult to put together a rhyme that's within a reasonable frame of time. What's even harder? Pulling off the humanly impossible moves featured in the latest trailer for next year's SSX reboot.

What I presume will be the final 2011 “insider” video for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning focuses on its action-RPGness, which means talking about the combat and the stuff that articulates the combat, the art and animation. It’s quite an interesting angle to take, actually, looking at how the animators have to try and portray the fight ‘em up mechanics that the designers are trying to put into it. And it looks good. There’s no doubt that Kingdoms will be quite a light Swords & Conversation sort of a game, and I’m certainly interested to see exactly where they take it, particular in terms of how open their open world actually is.(more…)

#legalwarfare Denying request for summary judgment, the Los Angeles Superior Court gave Activision the green light to go to trial with its $400 million contract interference lawsuit against Electronic Arts over Call of Duty creators Jason West and Vince Zampella. More »

Ever since I became the Bastard Of The Old Republic, I’ve found it an awful lot easier to delve into the crueller side of gaming choices. So it is that I’ve chosen to spend my time with Star Wars: The Old Republic as a Sith. And not some stupid do-gooding Sith who just happened to be born on the wrong side of the galaxy. I mean a Sith, cruel for the sake of being cruel, delighting in mindlessly murdering innocents and needlessly upsetting everyone I meet. And in the game. And in doing so, I’m discovering that making an entire race of baddies is a pretty tricky challenge.

(more…)

Aaaand now my patience has run out. As if the extensive hours-long queues to get in to play Star Wars: The Old Republic weren’t frustrating enough (that’s if the game’s online to let you play, of course), now BioWare/EA’s infrastructure can’t cope with people trying to visit their website. I have never, in my life, ever seen a queue to visit a website before. Yet that’s the position I’m in, trying to enter a code so I can carry on playing the bloody game. A queue I can’t seem to win at.

(more…)

Fancy a game of Star Wars: The Old Republic? Well tough, because the servers are all down this morning until 12pm, for scheduled maintenance work. And this isn’t the first time. In what appears to be a very strange decision for such a high profile game, European servers are all being taken offline for hours during the daytime, for a game that’s only just launched. And even more strange – doing this takes down the entire www.swtor.com website too, meaning anyone wanting to say, learn about the game, can’t. And then you notice this is an international thing, and Europe starts to look a little unloved.

(more…)

EA broke our hearts today, as SSX, most recently intended as a Valentine's Day gift, has been delayed a couple extra weeks. SSX Creative Director Todd Batty notes the team decided to take the time to give the game a "final bit of polish." It will cruise in on February 28 and March 2 in North America and "the rest of the world," respectively.

"Over the course of more than 10 years of making games I have not worked on a single project where our team did not wish, coming down the home stretch, that we could have just a bit more time," wrote Batty on the game's official site. "There is a reason why Tricky and SSX3 are still among the highest rated games of all time, and it is because even playing them today they still stand the test of time. Our goal from Day 1 was to re-launch this amazing franchise with a new SSX game that could live up to that legacy."

This would be the second delay for the game, adding an extra month of time on the ride up the mountain. On the sunny side, now we can all focus our attention on our significant others on V-Day.

Most of Electronic Arts' massive iOS catalog is currently $.99 on the App Store. It's a smorgasbord of gaming, with Dead Space, FIFA 12, Trenches 2 and too many other titles to mention at the irresistible one dollar asking price. Just type "EA" in your App Store search and bathe in the deluge.

EA's sale is actually quite the clever business move. The publisher had a "record-breaking quarter on iOS" with a similar sale last year, which basically involves the company dropping the prices on its games right before Apple "freezes" the charts from Christmas to New Year's. This helped EA hold 14 of the top 25 paid apps for the iPhone and 15 of the top 25 paid apps for the iPad last year.

In short, when everyone opens up their new iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads on Christmas Day, they will have a plethora of deeply discounted titles greeting them in the Top 25 from the mega publisher. Cause, if it's popular, it must mean these are the best games, right?

We at RPS know what it’s like to be too popular. Unable to walk from our Limousines to the exclusive clubs and restaurants we frequent without being assaulted by mobs of screaming, frantic fans, we completely understand the challenge it offers. And BioWare/EA are discovering the same with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The queues: they are long.

Which is a bit of a shame in your first week. With queues for servers sometimes stretching to over two hours, it is a bit offputting. And BioWare are warning it’s not going to get better soon.

(more…)

Bonjour! Je suis le happy de vous bring les nouvelles il ya un nouveaux Royaumes de Amular: Reckoning vidéo, et pour some raisons, il est en français. Eh bien, il a subtitles français. C’est sous!

(more…)

NFSW! I just noticed what that abbreviation looks like. Need For Speed World. NFSW. Do you see? Anyway, it probably says something about my lack of familiarity with modern web cleverness that I am more impressed with EA having a YouTube video in which you can choose the track and car by click on the video itself (and therefore dictating which trailer you actually get shown) than I am by Need For Speed World itself. You can choose your own trailer below. NFS World isn’t a bad racing game, of course, but it’s still far from being the racing MMO we’re all waiting for, which is a game that might never actually come along. One day, eh?(more…)

Last time out, Syndicate was showing off its guns and I don’t remember seeing a single flamethrower, which made me grumble in a manner befitting a madman denied the ability to burn the flesh off his enemies. The latest piece of video advertainment is all about the power of technology, which allows agents to persuade their opponents to commit suicide and attack their allies, among other ethically questionable activities. It’s certainly far more interesting than the guns. The removal of chips from peoples’ skulls to gain experience is described as a “critical mission objective”, which is something the same mad part of me that wants a flamethrower approves of heartily. Watch between the tiny gaps in your cybernetically augmented HUD below.

(more…)

#syndicate I love the idea of the new Syndicate game and I love the original Syndicate, but I'm still too hard-headed to accept the fact that the two will coexist as one, very new sort of game. More »

EA continues the expansion of its "play4free" portfolio with the announcement of Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliances, developed by Phenomic. The browser- and mobile-based strategy MMO will begin a closed beta on December 15. Interested generals can sign up at the game's official site.

The mobile Command and Conquer comes hot on the heels of last weekend's announcement of Command and Conquer: Generals 2, currently in production at BioWare Victory for launch on PC in 2013.