Electronic Arts Leadership Are Out of Their Goddamned Minds

There is nothing wrong with setting high goals and trying to reach them. That they are failing is a different issue. This article is trying to farm outrage but there isn't any.

It’s important to set attainable goals. My guess is that this will put incredible, undue stress on the staff.

Business idiots, as Ed Zitron would say.

These goals, and their 'approach' to reaching them is a complete self-cannibalizing snake moment. Further, there can definitely be something _wrong_ with how someone might try to 'reach their high goals', like ethics violations, etc.

And saying the article is trying to 'farm outrage' is extreme- it's barely an article if anything, more of a blog-post, with a matching tone, there's not exactly any call-to-action.

It sounds like they tried to achieve their goals not by making a game that people wanted to play, but by resurrecting The Mythical Man Month and not only believing that this zombie anti-science idea works, but that it could produce a massively fun game.

The article also feels a little dishonest comparing total unit sales to cumulative player statistics over an extended time period. If you click through to the linked Ars Technica article, it says the cumulative player number for the previous entry is 22 million and 30 million for the best of the series. Is a 3-5x increase from going from presumably a $60 game to free to play really that crazy of a goal?

That isn't to say that EA doesn't suck. This 100m goal just wouldn't be among the top 100 reasons I would point to as evidence.

every video game is a financial gamble, it's not his money so who cares if they try to make a battle royale and it flops

The Ars writer said he spoke to a number of contributors to the game and it's a sweatshop. But hey, good on the MBAs not doing the development for setting ambitious goals!

This is how I read it too. EA has a reputation for breaking good teams and studios. Although, they are not the only ones with an unhealthy crunch culture.

We've had a considerable number of layoffs impact the video game industry over the past few years ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932025_video_game_i... ) and executive incompetence is a big factor in it.

Deciding to set a "success" target of 100 million players and then spending upwards of $400 million USD developing one title is a recipe for studio closures and/or layoffs when it inevitably "fails" because executive leadership didn't set reasonable targets or come up with a reasonable budget. It's a big house of cards.

A more diversified portfolio of titles with more reasonable budgets would be a much safer choice, and it's how things were done successfully in the past.

i'd rather see studios take creative and financial risks personally, not saying I care about yet another battle royale game, but in principle it should be about good games that are innovative and push boundaries, not milking a sequel from an established ip for the sake of stable employment.

Creative risks and financial risks are almost diametrically opposed. It's a lot harder to take a creative risk when a lot of money is on the line. It's also harder aligning a large team to execute on a novel vision.

>It's a lot harder to take a creative risk when a lot of money is on the line. It's also harder aligning a large team to execute on a novel vision.

well indie games are their own separate thing and large studios will never have the creative freedom and the ability to align a small team to a novel vision that they do. However studios with deeper pockets and larger teams can still innovate and push the boundaries of what gaming can be so long as the executive team isn't a bunch of spineless losers.