Electronic Arts Message Board older than one year ago

Regions are the beating heart of Maxis Games' upcoming SimCity revival. The always-online game places a lot of emphasis on community, but it's less about the global fellowship and more about the ties that bind neighboring cities together.

Players face a choice when they're first starting out: break ground in a small region with only two or three city-sized plots of land to develop ,or jump into a more expansive location, one that supports as many as 16 cities. The cost/benefit for each choice is simple enough to break down; it's the difference between carving out your own, private space in the world versus leaving the door open for other players to join.

All of SimCity's regions are created in-house at Maxis - there's no plan to let players mold their own regions - and each plot of claimable land comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. A helpful status bar pop-up points out which resources are and aren't available when an unclaimed plot is highlighted, so you know what you're getting before you settle on a civilization site.

Maxis has been working to test against a whole galaxy of possibilities in the run-up to SimCity's March 5, 2013, release. It's to the point that sizable portions of the working day at the studio are now devoted purely to play, with staffers being assigned to a range of discrete city-builder roles.

"It's hard to go into every nook and cranny of the game because there's just so much. The breadth of the game is really large," lead designer Stone Librande told Joystiq. "We have different designers who are assigned to different tasks. Like, 'You're making university town, you're making casino town, you're making ore and coal mining town.'"

Everything is topsy-turvy. Up is left, down is blue. Ubisoft have just announced that they’re to start selling third-party games on their online store, Uplay. (Which could mark the first time anyone has ever looked at the online store, Uplay.) (Edit: Hilariously, Uplay is offline minutes after the announcement was made.) And even more peculiar, they’re also going to start selling their own games via EA’s Origin download service. Do words and numbers even have meaning any more?

(more…)

There's one thing even more terrifying than Necromorphs, and that's the high price of video games. Thankfully, a pair of deals have made purchasing Dead Space 3 a little less frightening. Groupon is offering either the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 version for $42.99. Meanwhile, if you want to save a little more scratch, you can nab the 360 version from Kmart for $40.49. The Groupon expires tomorrow, but Kmart's deal ends today.

We suggest you inspect all the air vents before approaching the checkout counter.

Bow hunting is the in thing with FPS games lately, and while Crysis 3 doesn't slack on that front, it also offers other, equally absurd weapons for exploding aliens in a hyper-stylized future environment. Why use a regular gun when you can use a 10-barreled gun infused with the power of dubstep?

Lawsuits are nasty business. Accusations fly like hot lead, and all that’s left afterwards are the coldest of feelings. Oh, and sometimes millions of dollars in legal fees. Those too. I suppose, however, that it helps slightly when both parties involved are regularly accused of being soulless behemoths bereft of all feelings except slobber-soaked money lust. So it was when EA and Zynga came to verbal blows over The Ville’s more-than-passing resemblance to The Sims Social, and oh my, did things ever get heated. EA claimed to be “taking a stand” against Zynga’s allegedly frequent copycatting, and the now-deflating social zeppelin fired back with barbs like this one: “The truth is that despite years of trying to compete, and spending more than a billion dollars on acquisitions, EA has not been able to successfully compete in the social gaming space and was losing talent, particularly to social gaming leader Zynga.”

Now, however, it’s all over. And the fireworks? They are sadly few.

(more…)

#deadspace I beat Dead Space 1. More »

#nextgen The next generation of consoles are unlikely to accommodate older games with backwards compatibility, Electronic Arts' chief financial officers told an audience of investors in San Francisco today. More »

EA’s officially dishonorably discharged the Medal of Honor franchise. That’s unfortunate for a number of reasons, but mainly because it made John sad. As he put it, “It needs new direction, not shelving until the next inevitable reboot in five years time, once Battlefield has run entirely aground.” So, now it’s time for another episode of Good News, Bad News, Picture of an Ostrich. First, the good: Medal of Honor’s definitely not dead. Heck, it might not even be out of action for all that long. But now, the bad: based on comments to RPS by EA chief creative director Rich Hilleman, John might have hit the nail on the head. For now, Battlefield‘s the focus, meaning that it inherits the full weight of EA’s Call-of-Duty-dethroning expectations. Here is a picture of an ostrich. More details (about Medal of Honor, not ostriches) after the break.

(more…)

EA has released the first official screens of Battlefield 3's next piece of DLC, End Game. The screens highlight the dirt bike, one of End Game's new vehicles, riding off in dirty, explosion-filled glory. You can also glimpse one of the four new maps, Operation Riverside. End Game arrives in March.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II was utterly masterful. Sure, it had more rough edges than a Sarlacc Pit who’s also a door-to-door woodchipper salesman, but the underlying tale mixed oppressive darkness, moral grays, and an eye for exactly what makes Star Wars tick to stirring effect. Personally, I think it far outstripped KOTOR 1, but to each their own. Naturally, though, I nearly grinned my face in half when Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart told me his Black-Isle-based collective is lobbying heavily to develop a new Star Wars RPG. “I would say it’s within the top three pitches we’ve ever come up with,” he told RPS during a recent interview. But wait, what about the EA-shaped Death Star hovering over The Old Republic? Well, Obsidian’s new tale is set in a very, very different time period.

(more…)

As SimCity nears release (March 5th), we sent natural born mayor Cara Ellison to sit down with the game for a day. She recreated inner-Scotland.

I dreamed of marching into EA HQ in a black pencil dress and high heels and Malcolm Tuckering all my consonants: “ALL RIGHT EA. RUIN MY CHILDHOOD. COME ON. RUIN IT.”

As it is, I stumbled into EA covered in doughnut crumbs wearing a bedraggled jumper dress and giant wooly socks and then squeaked “Hi I’m Cara hi can I see Simcity please.”

(more…)

#shortstories Once upon a time there was a video game publisher named Electronic Arts. Electronic Arts was a very big video game publisher with lots of money and friends. Every year, they would release lots and lots of video games, which they would sell for lots and lots more money and friends. More »

The Bieber-licious NBA 2K13 has sold-in (i.e. "shipped") 4.5 million units to date, publisher Take-Two announced today as part of its third quarter financials.

2K Sports previously noted NBA 2K13 sold 49 percent more worldwide during its first-week sales than previous record holder NBA 2K11. The franchise has now shipped over 15 million units since NBA 2K11.

Part of the series' success has been the lack of competition from Electronic Arts. Last year's NBA Live 13 was canceled, after already being downgraded to a digitally distributed product. It was the third consecutive year EA dropped the ball and didn't show up to compete with a basketball game.

Dead Space 3 is excellent, meaning I didn't enjoy very much of it. The torture is self-inflicted, and I only increased the severity by playing the game without company, without light and without those regular breaks they used to warn you about in the manual (ask your parents). The inclusion of co-op has made the solo stress no less potent.

I was consumed by caution, leered at every suspicious air vent (protip: they're all like that), loathed every single monster, and stomped their revolting corpses with wild catharsis and fanaticism. Isaac Clarke may be the respectable engineer-turned-hero now, but his childhood siblings probably cowered in the closet every time the brat lifted his boot and brought it down in the rhythm of temper tantrums.

All of these things, the concern over ammunition and health, the detestable creatures, the unnerving titter of what sounds like violin strings left in the rain, the creepy creaks and groans of a crappy space ship (protip: they're all like that) - all of these things make Dead Space 3 another extravagantly crafted concoction of horror, action and anxiety. So, no, it's not exactly "fun."

For those who no longer need to be sold on necromorph dismemberment: don't watch this trailer. There's some stuff in here that may activate your spoiler sensitivity.

Battlefield 3's downloadable content morphine drip is about to conclude with "End Game" sometime in March. This trailer for the final DLC pack shows off some exciting capture the flag gameplay, along with the all-new dirtbikes.

Near the end of the clip, there's also a quick glimpse at the air superiority mode. The all-airplane mode was a highlight of Battlefield 1943, now making its return in a modern context.

This morning’s news that EA has canned the revived Medal Of Honor strikes me as a pretty sad one. Not because the last two games earned any merit – they certainly didn’t. They were truly horrible games. Not just because of their gung-ho, one-dimensional, army-recruitment-writ-large approach to current conflicts, nor just because of the both underlying and overlying racism to be found within, but also simply because they were poorly made. Massive explosions and enormous set pieces fail to carry any gravitas, as you’re dragged by your nose through its shoulder-width corridors. I certainly don’t want another one of those. But I do want another Medal Of Honor.

(more…)

Oh Medal of Honor. You’ve traveled around the world, through time, and between the hands of countless developers. You’ve seen some things, man. But in recent outings, you’ve lost your way trying to play rigid railroad conductor to ours, and Warfighter clung so tightly to the straight-and-narrow that it ended up careening right into the bargain bin. Also, there was that whole Linkin Park thing. If you want sales, it’s not generally a good idea to turn every living creature with ears against you. So then, what’s next for EA’s creaky, slightly racist World War II vet? Retirement, says EA. And possibly a long one.

(more…)

EA CEO John Riccitiello said EA didn't see any impact on sales of shooters following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, nor during the following political maelstrom. Riccitiello said he has a unique vantage point on the issue of gun violence and the media, since he chairs the ESRB and ESA alongside his day job.

During a financial call, Riccitiello fielded a question about the potential impact of real-life gun violence on shooter sales and EA's internal approach to violent games.

"I was hoping we weren't going to do this question," he began.

"I want to underline the first point: The game industry is a very mature, responsible industry, more so than you might otherwise imagine. First off, we're very confident in the quality of our content, and the lack of an actual, factual linkage to any of the actual violence that takes place in America or markets around the world.

"There's no doubt that we, like you, were stunned and horrified by the violence in Conneticut or Colorado or many other places over the years, but there's been an enormous amount of research done in the entertainment field about looking for linkages between entertainment content and actual violence, and they haven't found any. I could give you long stories about how people in Denmark, or the UK, or Ireland or Canada consume as much or more violent games and violent media as they do in the United States, and yet they have an infinitely smaller incidence of gun violence, but that's not really the point. The point is that direct studies that have been done, hundreds of millions of dollars of research that has been done has been unable to find a linkage because there isn't one."

On January 16, President Obama proposed a $500 million plan with the goal of curtailing gun violence and researching its causes. He specified $10 million for the Centers for Disease Control and other scientific agencies to research the causes of gun violence, including those potentially related to video games.

EA had some good news today about upcoming games Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3, announcing pre-orders for both games are trending ahead of their previous installments.

"Dead Space 3 pre-sells are outpacing Dead Space 2, and Crysis 3 pre-orders are tracking 40 percent ahead of Crysis 2," the company stated in its third quarter financials.

In gauging the franchise's growth, EA CEO John Riccitiello has said Dead Space could reach the "5 million unit cadence" with its third primary installment.

Ah, deluxe editions. I do not, by any means, think they’re inherently bad, but they can certainly enter murky territory with a quickness. Maybe even two quicknesses. Three might be pushing it, though. Sometimes, that means we end up getting lost in a snowblind forest of different versions, ala Assassin’s Creed III, but others are a bit more cut-and-dry. Or at least, it seems that way on paper. And yet, even so, there’s always reason to approach these things with caution. Case in point: SimCity’s digital deluxe edition. It’s got a small country’s worth of bonuses themed after a few particularly large countries, but is it worth all the extra simoleons? Perhaps answers lie after the break.

(more…)

The latest SimCity trailer is intended to entice mayors to purchase the "Digital Deluxe" edition, which features three distinctive tile sets as a bonus, along with some well-known landmarks.

The Digital Deluxe version includes the Paris City Set with Eiffel Tower, German City Set with Brandenburg Gate and British City Set with Big Ben. The packs also include French police cars, German trains and British buses.

Developer Maxis also updated SimCity's release date on Mac with a "Spring 2013" window. The game is scheduled for March 8 on PC. The company notes that Mac and PC players will be able to play together on the same maps. Pre-orders are not currently available for SimCity on Mac and the company will have more information soon.

Greg Zeschuk has said that the company survived its acquisition by Electronic Arts thanks to being well-established.

Left hand, meet right hand. Yesterday, EA armed SimCity with a ticking time bomb of a perma-ban EULA, but today, it decided to vehemently disagree with, er, itself. In short, the not-so-fine print would’ve seen players agreeing to report any and all bugs they encountered in SimCity’s closed beta or risk being locked out of all EA products. Yes, all. That’s what it said. But oh, what a difference a day – and probably a few additional pairs of eyes – makes.

(more…)

#deadspace It's hard to get good at a video game. It can require a ton of practice and effort. You'll have to hone your skills over time, training your eyes and fingers to react with split-second precision and speed. More »

Dead Space 3 will scare up extra revenues through its microtransaction system. Eurogamer reports that crafting materials in the game can be picked up by the player, scavenged by bots or purchased through the in-game store. Apparently there are guards in place to prevent players from buying the best gun in the game right from the start.

Dead Space 3 associate producer Yara Khoury confirmed the feature, adding that purchases with real world money aren't required in the game. The in-game currency will be offered in different denominations, but there's currently no official details.

The game's demo is available now on Xbox 360 and later today for PS3, following the PSN udpate.

SimCity‘s upcoming three-day-long closed beta may have all the trappings of a glorified demo, but EA’s pumping at least one aspect of it with unnecessarily aggressive test-osterone. In short, if you stumble across a swarm of bugs (Sim Ants hopefully excluded) and fail to report it, you could be facing a ban. From all of your EA games. Yes, that’s what it says in the SimCity beta’s EULA. Nearly verbatim. I just changed the word “product” to “game,” because “product” sounds, well, about as out-of-touch as this incredibly iron-fisted move on EA’s part.

(more…)

American McGee, the man (and name) behind Alice: Madness Returns and its predecessor, has a lot to say about developing those games, working with EA, and Kickstarting his latest venture, Akaneiro: Demon Hunters. His recent Ask Me Anything thread on Reddit reveals a few gems, including some insight into how EA handled the Alice: Madness Returns trailers with animation company Shy the Sun. Spoiler: McGee isn't a fan of EA marketing.

"What was frustrating was how EA marketing interfered - telling STS from the start that all creative direction and final say would come from them, not from us (the developer/creator of the story/tone)," McGee writes. "That resulted in trailers that were much darker and gorier than the game, and that was a calculated disconnect created by EA. They wanted to 'trick' gamers into believing A:MR was a hardcore horror title, even though we refused to develop it in that tone.

"Their thinking is, even if the game isn't a hardcore horror title, you can market it as one and trick those customers into buying it (while driving away more casual customers, like female gamers, who might be turned off by really dark trailers). It's all a part of the race to the bottom EA, Activision and the other big pubs are engaged in. Expect to see it get worse before it gets better."

How's that for dark? McGee notes that his Spicy Horse studio is the largest Western, independent game development company in China, and he discusses how he ended up there and the stress of maintaining a successful indie studio.

"Working as an indie means having a terrifying amount of freedom," McGee writes. "We make decisions that we know might simply put us out of business 6 months from now."

For more insight into how Alice came about - The Crystal Method's "Trip Like I Do" had something to do with it - and all things McGee, check out the Reddit AMA.

Recently, I think we’ve seen a fairly wide shift back to treating beta tests like, well, tests. Admittedly, things still get a little dicey when games like MechWarrior Online or, most notoriously, The War Z charge for early admittance, sometimes barely disguising toothy bear traps of vague terminology. In short, “foundation release.” But I digress. Apparently, SimCity didn’t get the memo, because its closed beta will be three days long. Is it a glorified demo? Probably. But oh well. You still (maybe) get to strap into your snazzy mayoral suspenders for a weekend, and Maxis will come away with some form of valuable data, at least. Details on registration and content after the break.

(more…)

Dearest fellow city planners, the SimCity Beta is prepped to begin January 25 and run through the weekend until Monday, January 28. The SimCity Twitter account notes players will get the chance to try out a "one hour slice" of the game.

Interested participants should head on over to the SimCity site and sign up for the beta. The full game's final launch date is hopefully set in concrete and is expected to hand out building permits on March 5.