EA's Software Artists

I am suddenly painfully nostalgic for M.U.L.E. I wasted way too many afternoons one summer trying to crush my friends during marathon M.U.L.E. sessions on my Atari 800.

And it never occurred to me how much these game covers so resembled rock album covers. I think I got a contact high just looking at them.

EA’s mid-80’s games were unique in so many ways.

When EA did a game in a familiar genre, they always added something extra. One-on-One was very responsive. I was shocked the first time the backboard shattered.

EA’s flight simulator of the mid 80’s was Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer. How boring did Sublogic’s Flight Simulator seem compared to zipping upside-down through buildings in an experimental aircraft or trying to see how high the SR-71 would fly?

EA also created some revolutionary new games during that time, too. I can’t imagine how many hours I spent playing Mail Order Monsters.

Even their copy protection was innovative:
Bard’s Tale III with that tri-ring decoder disk. I believe that EA also came up with “Fat Tracks” to make copying their disks difficult.

And the LP-like packaging with the instruction booklet that slid into the cover and the pocket that held the 5 1/4 in place!

EA was very innovative and artistic in the early 80s!

What happened to EA: They became a big successful company and the artistic people who used to run it were replaced with people who were better at making money. There’s nothing wrong with that though. Money is good. Money can solve a lot of problems and make your life easier. It is also good for buying food and paying your rent and saving for your retirement.

However, you need art to feed your soul and to remind you that you are human, and not a machine. So there are indie game studios startups where people make art. They might not get paid much, and they’ll probably not make any money and they’ll probably have to work a lot. So they are full of young idealistic recent college grads (or drop-outs). Eventually, those young people will get older and married and they’ll need to pay for a mortgage and their kids’ tuition. So they’ll go work for a company that pays them more and is better managed and has a better health care plan and 401K.

But people still need art, so some of the indie game studios will be successful. They may get bought up by a company like EA, or they may continue to be independent and make lots of money and become a large company. At that time, the amount of money involved will necessitate new management by people who are better at managing money. And the circle of life continues.

Funny … wherever EA is a topic, people either say that:

  • EA was cool way back when (“Those were the times” syndrome)
  • I’ll never ever buy a game from EA (again) (“EA is a monopoly” syndrome)

I say: yes, those were the times. The games were cool back then, not only those from EA. In the meantime, I grew up. I play some of the games that are released today, i don’t really care who makes them if it’s good and i don’t go around bashing a whole company because i didn’t like or had problems with one of their games.

Second, EA is big. It’s huge. They make lots of money. And for that very reason alone people dislike it. Just as they dislike Microsoft. Or Warner Brothers. Or Amazon. I know people who don’t buy from Amazon because they don’t trust them because they are so big. Stupid? Yes. You buy the product, or the service, or make purchase after purchase and each one deserves to be viewed seperately.

Third: read the reviews or play a demo. That really helps choosing.

Fourth: return what you don’t like.

Disclaimer: i work for EA as programmer. I happen to know that one studio works this way, another works that way. Each studio has their own share of success and failure stories, their own areas of expertise and unique teams.

I know this is sometimes hard for the end-user to differentiate if there’s only (or most prominently) a big EA logo on the box. But users should be able to make this one differentiation: if you didn’t like Battlefield, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t still buy CC. Or if you don’t like that either, maybe you do like Madden? EA is big but it also provides a versatility that is unbelievable and IMHO one of the biggest achievements of EA.

To say “I’ll never buy from EA again” is just as limiting and thoughtless as insisting that “I’ll never watch any Warner Brothers movie again”. Or more to the point: “I’ll never watch any stupid movie/play any buggy game anymore.” - we will still be going to make bad choices or be disappointed because we didn’t get what we expected (see: 300 on Wikipedia for instance g).

Diversity is a good thing,but Its not quantity but quality is what sells games.
You create as many mediocre games as you want but only hi quality will be picked over them.
Here is simple CC to Generals comparison:
-compare sounds tracks from original CC and CC Generals(people still listening to CC original tracks not sure if anyone listening to Generals military orchestra tracks with American, Chinese or Arabic themes)
-compare interface that is not great in CC generals.
-compare storyline that was seamlessly integrated into CC to one in CC Generals.
-compare AI that is bogus in Generals

  • fun element is gone from Generals.
    ========================
    I guess all I am saying is, even box has similar picture to CC and priced the same etc. its not the same game after EA become owner of it.
    Check ipetitions.com to see reasons why people dislike EA to me just degrade
    of quality in CC, RedAlert and shoutdown Earth and beyond and Ultima was enoght to
    stop buying from them.

We have an actual EA programmer.

  1. He blames the users for flaming EA.
  2. He blames the users for returning to EA, and buying more games.
  3. He blames the users for not reading game reviews.
  4. He blames the users for not returning a game to the store.

I’m glad we have a consistent argument here.
And I agree with him, anytime I buy a EA game I become a proven idiot.

“it was a simpler time, probably the height of the “one man band” where a guy who could everything - graphics, sound, game play. The end of Have Laptop will Travel. I miss those days…now everything is done in a team and everyone is a specialist.”

I would argue that this is no more true now than it was then. If you have the skill to create music, art, code, and fun, you can get that into a game by yourself more easily now than in the 80’s, with modern tools. I’ve played and bought games from quite a few who’ve done it over the years, like Eric Chahi, Sean O’Conner, Mike Bryant, Wendell Hicken, Chris Crawford, and David Gray. (Just from what I found in my currently installed games folder.)

Having more people just makes it easier to concentrate on what you do best, contributing in other areas as you can, instead of being forced to waste a lot of time on what you aren’t particularly good at. And of course, splitting the labor around.

Most people who lament the good ol’ days just aren’t looking hard enough anymore. :wink:

Jeff, I’d be interested in knowing where the original EA developers went after leaving EA, if you found any information on that.

I think the 80’s, for videogames, served as the equivalent of an unexplored ecotone; a place between hobby and business where diversity was very high.

In a Darwinian sense it was the place where a lot of different strategies (i.e. game types) were being tried to establish their viability. This is especially true of the video games created before 1984 or so when the Video Game Crash occurred. Too many early competitors and variations may have depleted the resources of consumer dollars that were available. Essentially, this starved the industry (see G. Evelyn Hutchinson for discussions on population dynamics). Afterwards, businesses were not willing to take risks.

Prior to the Crash, as the niche became more populated with game variants it became evident that certain categories of games (i.e gaming genres - text adventure, maze, vertical scrollers aka shmups, sports, and platformers, flight simulators) held a competitive advantage over other categories. This competitive advantage was defined by revenue both in the arcades, and on personal computers (I am lumping Apple and Atari in here, as well). Even in the pre-Crash era we see that early franchises were being established, witness Pac-Man.

In the post-Crash era, these competitive advantages were exploited by companies that had learned the lessons of the diversity explosion. In other words, they had learned what sells. Perhaps, it was, and still is, believed that there exists a ‘winning formula’ for video games. This winning formula is epitomized by the video game franchises like Pac-Man, Madden, Street Fighter, Resident Evil.

However, as video game genres became further refined and more heavily exploited they invariably became more alike. More titles with less variation, do little to increase interest and thus sales. The ‘formula’ begins to break down.

New genres arise as thoughtful evolutions of already existing genres. For example, we can imagine that the Double Dragon, a side-scrolling fighting platformer, may have helped to pave the way for the ungainly mess that was Street Fighter, which (in my opinion, unbelievably) met enough success that it was further refined as Street Fighter II. One might also argue that fighting genre in video games always existed, but was not exploited. There is clear precedence in some pre-Crash video games.

Have all the stories already been written?

Just curious, has anyone written the definitive book on the history of the computer game industry yet? It is a truly fascinating story of joy and tragedy with complex interwoven storylines; worthy of no less than 500 pages.

Anyhow, EA’s journey is just one of many similar evolutions the great game companies of the 80’s underwent in an attempt to survive the cut on store shelves.

My favorite story is that of Sierra On-Line. Their 3D Adventure games (King’s Quest, Space Quest, Quest for Glory, etc) with text command interfaces were the holy grail of computer game interactivity and technological innovation. It is the story of how a family-owned mom and pop startup went from a happy little game development company to a megalithic game publisher and in the process lost its original spirit, line of games, fanbase, and special breed of storyteller-developers.

I find it interesting how many of the observations made here could parallel the movie industry. Large studios with many crew and no risk taking vs. small independant productions that have to money and a handful of cast and crew (often the same people) that can make something very original.

And if you think back to the beginning of the movie industry, there were many small studios that eventually got squeezed out by the bigger fish.

Sorry, “productions that have no money”

By the way, One on One on the Amiga was amazing with actual sampled sounds of the basketball bouncing and shoes squeeking.

wow, did get my point across, didn’t i? :slight_smile:

I’m just saying, there’s things in this world that happen to be great but are not anymore either from today’s perspective or because someone tried to redo the same experience and failed. Or maybe that someone actually succeeded, but people were expecting the same thing from years ago while others enjoy the new experience (hey, after all, it’s a different one).

We have the same thing with everything in this world. Consider amusement parks. Disney world rocked as a kid. As an adult, you see commercialism and plastic all over. Consider bands. They put out a great album, you like it. They put out another, and you think they’ve gone popular, just going for the money, and you hate it. Maybe so, maybe not. Be disappointed, you have the right to be, but then move on. Don’t limit yourself by blaming it on, say, the record company and refusing to buy from them anymore. If you want to go all indie, go for it. Make a stand. I’m the first to be happy with that.

I’m saying, if you don’t like what you get, don’t bother. If you do happen to like it, or something else, be happy with that. If you happen to like the “good old times” like i do, please put them in perspective. The industry has grown, there’s no escaping that, and it can be disappointing in many ways because what you used to is no more. We all need to look for those things we happen to like NOW and there’s no guarantee that it’s to be found in the same places as before. Companies change, teams change, people change, production values change, target audience changes, … there’s just too many variables and only one thing is for sure: change.

EA has gone through the same process. Personally, i don’t blindly like all EA games and i’m not happy with some releases either, be it quality or fun or just not being the same old game i loved. But there are also EA games that rock my world, and I’m glad they exist and am really happy that i can try out so many games and pretty sad that less than 10% of all games seem actually worth spending my time with. But that’s just how it is. I probably like less than 10% of all albums out there, 10% of all cars seem reasonable, 10% of all magazines are worth taking a peek, and so on … but by looking, i do find pearls here and there i would have never found if i didn’t keep looking or would have limited my field of view.

Ok, no more on this topic. :wink:

all i could find was “EA please make an NHL street game” and “boycott Madden 06” …

Never really forgiven EA for closing down Earth Beyond. Maybe the reverse engineering way of creating an Emulator for it will bring back the game we so like so so much.

[See forum link]

Wow that collage of game covers sent my mind reeling through of rush of Broderick-esque nostalgia! I spent hours with Murder on the Zinderneuf, Archon, Adventure Construction Set, etc… The amount of creativity that went into lighting up the imagination with nothing more than 64k and a 5.25" floppy drive! I wasn’t aware they had a ‘sweatshop’ rep(?)
Hey whatever happened to Infocom? The Zork series was amazing! It’d be great to see those revamped for xbox360.

Funny how some literature in the mid 80’s shaped my career and inspired me to get into the business. I remember reading Programmers At Work by Susan Lammers and then I remember seeing this ad and thinking those are everyday people. It inspired me to move from playing games to writing games…

it was a simpler time, probably the height of the “one man band” where a guy who could everything - graphics, sound, game play. The end of Have Laptop will Travel. I miss those days…now everything is done in a team and everyone is a specialist. Sound team, level team, rendering team…The sadness is that will all these contributors the joy of the craft never comes through like in the old games. Maybe its why for all the great visuals and sound the modern platforms provide, the “soul” of most modern games is pretty vacant.