Electronic Arts Message Board older than one year ago

Well now, here is something. If you go through every article we’ve ever written about EA’s Origin service (because what else do you have to do on a beautiful, possibility-packed, er, Tuesday), you’ll find that we’ve basically just written a series of pleas. “Come on, EA. Just do something – anything – worthwhile, interesting, or different with your proprietary ball-and-chain,” our posts may as well read. But now, finally, they kinda have. I guess. If you decide you’re not a fan of your purchase within 24 hours, you can simply toss it back into the sea of weird flame wheel logo things from whence it was birthed.

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Hello, and welcome to an irregular update on The Silence. The technique publishers use when they want a story to go away. Rather than responding to press enquiries, they instead pretend they haven’t happened, or send prevaricating nonsense which ultimately goes nowhere. So, RPS figures, let’s not let that work. Let’s keep bringing stuff back up, reminding people about it, and letting their silence be a thorn in the publishers’ sides. Today it’s EA, Ubisoft and Deep Silver.

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It helps that most of the games come with Steam keys too

Dragon Age: Inquisition won’t be out until Autumn 2014 at the earliest, but that doesn’t mean we can’t poke through the nuggets of information emerging from within the extended development cyclone. In the last week, two significant gobbets of information have emerged from Bioware’s lair. The first, as alluded to in the headline, is the news that Morrigan won’t be a party member, although that’s not to say her witchy ways won’t have a place in the game. The second piece of news wasn’t really news at all to me – Inquisition will contain multiple playable races. I didn’t realise that was a thing that might not be happening but confirmation came in a Game Informer interview.

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THE WORLD HAS GONE CRAZY. First Activision took some progressive (well, by Activision standards, anyway) steps with Call of Duty, and now EA’s teamed up with Humble Bundle to host a bonkers sale whose proceeds go entirely to charity. It consists of eight titans of electronic artistry (or whatever EA’s “A” actually represents these days) both past and present, which by the mega-publisher’s count comes out to a $215 value. The bundle is, as ever, pay-what-you-want, but this time around highlights include the likes of Mirror’s Edge, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Battlefield 3, and, er, Medal of Honor. Well, they can’t all be winners. Also, some require Origin. But still: ultra-cheap games for some really great causes! It might be EA, but today I must set aside my torchfork and don my giant rubber applauding hand.

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Electronic Arts and Victory Games send word of one of those explanatory videos, where serious people talk about how games are made. Specifically how the forthcoming Command & Conquer gets made. It all seems pretty exciting, and no one appears glum says “well, we go into this big glass building every day, and eventually a game happens.” In fact, this video makes the work of just building a single RTS unit seem a bit like putting a man into space, with lots of people and technology in which things spin and explode. (But just on a computer screen of course.)

Sign ups for the new C&C beta are taking place on the site, if that’s your cup of tiberium.(more…)

I haven’t played Battlefield 2′s Project Reality mod (or any Battlefield 2, really) in ages, but this is still a very exciting occasion. Eight years. That’s how long it’s taken one of the best-known mods out there to be deemed fit for 1.0 status. It’s been more than playable (DOUBLE PLAYABLE) for probably longer than I’ve been alive, though, and it’s proven succulent with delicious intrigues time and time again. In my experience, rigorous team play is the name of the game, and anything less is met with swift, pulpy, never timely (yet always right on time) death.

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The so-called ‘Electronic Arts’ company has reported very strong sales as it announced preliminary financial results for its first fiscal quarter. And “digital games and services” are outstripping “brick and mortar sales”, with Apple iOS titles like The Simpsons: Tapped Out making a crapload of money for EA. Well if you are a games company trying to sell bricks and mortar to people then obviously the Apple products are going to sell better, silly. Can we have more Bullfrog games you amateurs. (more…)

Far in the distance, a tiny speck appears on the grassy horizon. You can’t quite make it out – it could be anything, but it is moving. It is moving towards you, faster and faster now – you can make out a person’s features. It is a brunette with a bubblegum pink streak in her hair, and dark black square-rimmed glasses. She is wonderfully beautiful; just a dream. Like how you imagine Kristen Bell would be if she had brown hair and the build of an Amazon that had let herself go a bit and was about five years younger. So not that much like Kristen Bell but JUST ENOUGH. She is running, running, getting closer and closer – she is almost here, with an exhausted look on her face.

“RPS!” she says. “RPS! I bring NEWS! THERE ARE GOING TO BE SIMS 3 EXPANSION PACKS!” She coughs and splutters with the effort. “That’s right! The Sims 3 Into the Future and The Sims 3 Movie Stuff!” she says, stopping when she sees your frankly quite disappointed face. “I am not good at this news thing,” she sighs. (more…)

I was going to begin this post with a lament of “Oh, SimCity,” but then I discovered that Adam had already done that in our most recent piece on the fallen city-building empire. Describes the dismal set of circumstances surrounding the game rather perfectly, though, doesn’t it? Nearly everyone’s agreed that EA’s overly simplified, always-on catastrophe – which is said to be the subject of Syfy’s next disaster flick, SimCitynadovolcanoavodcado – botched its landing, and now it seems that a trio of its own developers agree. Fortunately, instead of leaving games altogether and becoming doctors/lawyers/mathletes like their mothers wanted, former creative director Ocean Quigley, lead architect Andrew Willmott, and lead gameplay engineer Dan Moskowitz have formed an indie studio called Jellygrade. Their first project is – what else? – a simulation.

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