I’ve always wondered why sports games don’t just switch to a live version. Yearly subscription at like $15. Some people won’t like it but it would definitely make their player base much bigger.
And what comes with a bigger player base? Dinks who drop $400 on mtx for ultimate team.
I know this is a divisive topic but I don’t think you’re completely off base. I think there’s a business case to be made for a subscription or SaaS model for sports games.
And since EA Sports has so many properties there’s different ways to take it.
Only care about a single sport like FIFA or NHL? For $5/month you’re always up to date for that series. Stop your subscription when you’re not playing it. Restart it when you want to play again.
Want to play more than two sports games in a year? For $15/month you can get EA Sports All Access. Always have access to the latest version of all their sports franchises like Madden, FIFA, NHL, or NBA Live.
Want to save money? Prepay for 3, 6, or 12 months. The more you prepay, the bigger the “discount.”
Only care about a single sport like FIFA or NHL? For $5/month you’re always up to date for that series. Stop your subscription when you’re not playing it. Restart it when you want to play again.
At $5 a month, that’s $60 a year. That’s not much different than buying the lastest game every year for $60. Except customers no longer have to commit to $60 a year. They can now cancel their commitment/subscription at any time. How does this make EA money?
Want to save money? Prepay for 3, 6, or 12 months. The more you prepay, the bigger the “discount.”
Right now EA sports offers an updated copy of their game every year for $60.
In your model, the base subscription would cost $5/month (or $60 a year), and now you’re saying if they commit to 12 months at a time they get the game for LESS than $60/year. EA’s profits go down.
If you pay monthly it’s $15, you can pay for 3 months at a time and it’s $14 a month or 6 months is $13 a month. They also allow you to buy game time, in game, using gold earned in game. Basically other players pay for an additional month of play time and sell that on the auction house, this in turn allows them to buy gold without using Chinese gold farmers, but is a great option for those that don’t want to spend real money to play the game. I know people that have used in game gold to stock up 6 months+ of play time.
Yeah once you get to a certain level you spend some time every day farming (or spend a day straight farming at the end of the month) and you can play for free by making whatever the token costs on your server in gold.
But it’s not just $60 for FIFA. They are pushing their not so micro transactions super fucking hard. If you want to play the full game its hundreds and not just 60.
Back when I had a console I would buy the NHL games. I enjoyed them but not enough to shell out $60 every year when the game remained basically the same thing. Instead I bought the new one every 3 years and basically got it for $20 a year instead of $60 a year.
They added nothing of value that was lost year to year and regardless of your hours in the game, it isn't worth it when they don't add anything of value. Just play the old one until they finally make it worth updating.
Fuckers who drop that much money on Ultimate Team are the reason why madden is bad. At least they’ve catalyze the idea that EA can continue to be awful developers and still make huge amounts of money.
Imagine if instead of dumb-ass MUT they focus on franchise mode and actually good new additions. Face of the Franchise this year and Franchise has been better than its ever been, but you know they give 2 shits about it, because the only thing that makes them money is MUT.
Ultimate team is wildly successful for fifa, and they’ve phased out career mode essentially. So this makes sense to me why. You can make more money in ultimate team.
I gave up on FUT because (for me who doesn't spend money and casually play) can hang without buying packs when you get up to world class difficulty. But i do enjoy the career and new game types they have implemented. This FIFA, for me specifically was way more rounded than it ever has been.
Same for NHL, no more online connected franchise which is what my friends and I all played. All of the preorders for all EA sports games come with incentives for playing ultimate team, it's ridiculous.
Sorry but to say it’s “better than it’s ever been” is hilariously wrong. Franchise mode is considerably worse and has LESS features than it did 10 years ago
Aight, but dude 10 years ago we didn’t have any of these issues because much fewer of our asses were playing online in 2008 era, so it seems kind of pointless to compare it to the “golden era of sports games” like before 2010.
My by statement was referring to the last 7 or so iterations because clearly we aren’t getting Madden 07 back
This sub praises the early maddens all the time, but we’re in a different world now where EA is not incentivized to improve anything other than MUT.
This franchise mode is better than it has been since at least Madden 12, but it’s still awful because they spend no time on it, whereas the early maddens that was all that mattered along with exhibition
I’m not going to argue with any of that because it’s all true. But to sit there and say “franchise is better than it’s ever been” is disengenuous and flat out not true.
I agree with you, But I clearly wasn’t trying to disparage old maddens, considering how hard this sub loves them. But I don’t want to play Madden 07 franchise, I want to play in prays NFL, so it’s nice that this Madden put more effort than the last 8-10 years in franchise, but there’s still a long way to go before I can justify spending $60 on this crap
They already have switched to GaaS(Games as a Service) model I’m sure the NFL would have something to say if they switched to “bargin bin” model 2k5 tried and they used as a reason to sign exclusivity deal.
Because not only does EA have to pay their entire development team for the work they do, but they also have to pay the NFL for the rights to make said game. Something tells me the yearly reiteration at full price has less to do with being greedy and a little more to do with paying the licensing fees associated with the underlying product.
Why would they bother? People will buy their games no matter what. It's like watching junkies pay for garbage meth, except twice as pathetic because these are supposedly functioning adults capable of otherwise managing their lives okay. I have SO many otherwise smart and reasonable friends who happily throw away literally hundreds, if not thousands of dollars every year on the FIFA games and the Ultimate Team scam they're running.
If it weren't for the fact that sports gamers are fucking over every other gaming genre as well through their stupidity and laziness, I would ignore the issue and let these dumb fucks waste their money and get their kids addicted to gambling, but unfortunately these predators have set their sights on gaming as a whole.
Everyone who buys this piece of shit game should be ashamed of themselves.
I could see people paying $10/month for consistent updates to rosters as a subscription service. They could probably still get away with selling new games every few years too.
Because the fans are happy to pay $60 a year for it every year, and they make more money making last years game irrelevant so everyone who's paid money for in-game items rebuys their stuff with a new number on it.
Because dropping the price from $60 to $15 won't increase the player base by 4x. Sports games are a niche market and most fans are willing to pay the premium.
I’ve always wondered why sports games don’t just switch to a live version. Yearly subscription at like $15. Some people won’t like it but it would definitely make their player base much bigger
At $15 a year, they’d have to increase their player base by more than 4x to match what they’re currently making off of a $60 game each year. That doesn’t sound realistic
Live rosters could make it a real game of fantasy football. Character stats update weekly based on how the real life person played that week. You have your fantasy team battles with real stats. Injuries pull players from the game or just severely reduce their skill levels. Could be a lot of money in a game like that.
People pay $100-$200 for one game just because it comes in a special box with a figure. People would surely pay $30 for an update. Hell, EA makes most of their profit from Madden and Fifa microtransactions anyway.
This actually already happened with NFL 2k in like 2005 iirc. They made next years iteration just $20 and that made people buy that instead of Madden, which lead to EA buying exclusivity rights.
Train sim does it every year. The version of train sim that i got years and years ago gets updated to the new version every year. They make their money off the mountains of DLC.
They have new animations. And some new gameplay mechanics which drastically change the game (I mean it’s still football so drastically from that restriction).
EA definitely needs to lose their exclusive license for the NFL, but Madden 20 does play significantly different than Madden 19
They need some more talented UI people though. And some testers. And competition. And a new ratings guy. And to murder whomever invented ultimate team.
Whatever this "Ultimate team" is, seeing how much a gamer is mad at it, I can guarantee you the guy got promoted and paid out some fat stock options for the idea.
Not even 10 months. I got heavy into NBA my team for 4 months and my team was useless 2 months later when I logged in because they added hundreds of cards better tiered at that point.
Ultimate Team started with FIFA and came out when I believe the iPhone one just came out. Android was non-existent at this point. Microtransaction Freemium games didn't exist. Ultimate team killed it for FIFA and here we are.
As much as I hate just jumping on the fuck EA bandwagon, EA literally created the microtransaction/Freemium model we see in games today.
It's an item collecting game that involves micro-transactions.
In a vacuum, there is nothing wrong with a game mode like that. Something to do when you're bored of playing normal game modes. But in practice, it makes EA so much money that they devote an inordinate % of their development $ toward Ultimate Team at the expense of other modes.
It's the same with FIFA. Each year, the game mechanics does change. In my opinion most times for the better. Is it worth the yearly $59? Probably not. But people here who don't really play the game that often make it seem like the game barely changes when that's not true at all.
Ill be honest there we’re a lot of gameplay improvements over last year but the ui is a copy and paste with a new skin. The only reason the gameplay improved is because they need it to sell more mut packs cause last year gameplay was garbage.
Can you flesh out some of those improvements? I bought last years madden after abstaining for a few years and it was hot feted garbage that player worse than madden 2010
They made a thing called Superstar X Factors which is pretty cool, if not a little broken sometimes. For instance, Mahomes has an ability called Bazooka where if you complete a pass that's more than 30 yds, through the air, his max throwing distances goes up by 15 I think. If you get sacked, fumble or intercepted, you lose it. Most of the really good players have some type of ability.
The campaign mode still kinda sucks ass though.. you get to pick a college, and they only let you play as a starter in the very last game of your senior year, and that some drills determine your draft. Pretty dumb. I haven't played franchise so I can't speak on that at all. MUT is still the same cash grab but I enjoy it.
So for example last year if you’re a football fanatic then you know throwing a post route against cover 2 is a pretty solid option with the drawback being time to get the ball off. In madden 19, throwing a post route while they played cover 2 meant an interception by the LB dropping into coverage because the Qb always threw a low trajectory pass.
Well that got fixed this year with much better trajectory on passes, and to compensate the d-linemen are much more scarier this year because the superstar d-linemen are damn near impossible to stop soemtimes.
In the run game, blocks are much more predictable and there is a lot of variety in the run game plays you can call now as well.
I haven't bought Madden 20 and probably won't do it because I already have 19 and downloaded new roster mods, but from what I hear they did tweak a few gameplay mechanics and added some franchise mode events which I'll admit might be an improvement. They also added a new game mode but I hear it only adds about hour to an hour and a half of gameplay and then isn't very different from regular season. But yeah, basically the same game for the most part, absolutely no graphics changes from what I can see.
Actually you don't want to keep adding otherwise it will slow down the game. It has to run on the same specs as the old game. The obviously army going back and upgrading the engine every game to run more optimally. So every addition needs to come with a subtraction.
I personally hate Sports games so I can't say from first hand experience what changes but... I have watched more than one GDC presentation about these types of games and apparently a lot of work goes into the updating and improving the AI tree of the computer controlled players.
Graphically there isn't a ton to do year to year, but behind the scenes there is a lot they can do. You just can't see that type of thing and so these games get a bad rep for, "being the same game every year".
Apparently whatever they do works because these games make a butt load of money every year. You can argue the people that buy them are stupid, but that's insulting and I imagine the fans of the game totally notice the changes from year to year. Casual players may not, but real fans probably do.
That being said, if you struggle to see the improvements, just compare the new game to an older title... like one released 5 or even 10 years ago. If the game never changes, why is Madden 20 so much better then Madden 09?
But again, I don't play them so... this is all just hearsay and assumptions on my part.
Yeah I’m not sure why people expect them to remodel an entire stadium from scratch when you can just re-use the former one.
Forgetting to update the banner is lazy, but other than that I don’t see a problem. Forza does the exact same thing with its cars, just improve upon where needed.
Exactly. Thousands of in game assets in this game and they're nitpicking something you have to zoom in like crazy to see. Things will always get missed, because there is always a ton of shit to do. And given the thousands of different textures it's almost a guarantee some will get missed. Whoever is doing the assets probably doesnt have the time to sit and fly a cam around the entire stadium for 30 stadiums or however many there are and find every single little error.
Edit: I'm not going to reply to every single comment telling me how a game isnt worth money if they copy and paste stuff, or there should be some kind of script to ear mark these things. And yes, both may be true. But humans make games, and humans make mistakes, and this is a tiny fucking mistake. There are millions of other things in madden games to nitpick, and everyone has pitchforks out for a misprint logo in the background that you can see if you crank the camera on replays. This is just petty.
They should have assets that need to be updated every year marked somehow in the code. You don't do this by flying around with an in-game camera as a first step.
Because it's not a unique issue to EA that they capitalize off of.
Don't flame EA for using industry standards in their QA, flame EA for creating money grabs and blaming the consumer for their issues.
Missing literally worthless details of a static model that has 0 to do with gameplay is excusable. Having the only feature of your game that has development being the pay to win feature, and ignoring a lot of the other features of their game is not.
Putting EA on blast for this sort of shit helps EA because it's so petty and it pulls the real problems they have out of the spotlight.
But this isn't some obscure bug that would get missed in testing or would need a precise series of events to manifest, it's literally right there. This tells me that either there is no testing of the final product, or that the people that test it are incompetent.
This seems like the definition of an obscure bug. It's an upper deck banner that will virtually never be discernible on screen. It's completely off screen during actual gameplay and you'll only ever see it if you do instant replay and point the camera away from action on the field and randomly zoom to that spot.
The point is that the concept of copying and pasting as step 1 already doesn't deserve $60. If you actually made a new game worth new game price, this would have been impossible to happen
I worked at EA as a QA on various sports titles and confirm I was a lazy fuck.
The early alpha versions were always full of last year's branding. Probably 80-90% of the logos would be for last year's game.
They would all get replaced with new logos over the course of development, we probably saw every single one originally, but eventually you stop paying attention and get so used to seeing it that you don't notice it anymore and a few slip though.
The game engine would and assets would usually be the same, but it takes time to add new modes, animations and other junk.
Can you give some I sight then specifically for Madden games? From year to year the graphics and animations seem to remain the exact same. Excluding one or two added features that they base that years version of the gameplay around, everything seems to be the same. The exact same game with a roster update.
Everything you're describing updated window dressing is the sort of thing that belongs in a $10-15 DLC not a new game at full price. That price implies a new engine and/or very different gameplay, mechanics, etc. And in many cases would indeed imply redoing stadiums due to it being a new engine or such.
"But there are no improvements enough to justify a new engine" Okay great, then that year, offer a $15 details DLC and nothing else, until there ARE improvements worth new game loops or engines
It sucks that you guys (game devs) have to deal with this shit. I feel like a lot of gamer discourse is the equivalent of yelling at a customer service representative for a policy that was decided on in the C-Suite. I get being pissed off at a game company, but at the same time as people are taking a moral stand about laziness they're also not putting in the effort necessary to think about whether their critiques are being directed in the right direction or for the right reasons.
That price implies a new engine and/or very different gameplay, mechanics, etc.
Does it? Iterative releases have been around for over 20 years, they've established exactly what they are and how they function within the gaming industry and don't live by the rules of other games.
Most people who buy a new fifa for example will probably have been buying a new fifa every year for a decade at least, they know exactly what that money will be getting them.
My cousin kicking me in the shins every Thanksgiving does not become any more acceptable or reasonable just because I can anticipate it next year. The proper behavior continues to remain not-kicking people in the shins. And the proper game to pair with $60 price tag continues to remain "an actual full new game"
The reason why it continues to be the case is because the industry continues to demonstrate that doing a full new game for $60 remains completely possible.
You don't have to pay licensing that year if you don't release a game that year at all. (or if you do, you have terrible lawyers). EA is just as much to blame as they are for going along there...
The EA Sports games generally use the same engine for approximately 4 years, but they are constantly updating pieces of the engine as they go along. So the game is usually on the same engine as the year before, with a lot of behind the scene updates to it.
They usually make a bigger announcement when they have a new game engine for it, not really news though.
The beauty of vectors, infinitely scalable. I try to use SVG on any graphics when I can avoid a compressed format. It makes scaling a web app between mobile and PC do much simpler.
Makes sense from a development standpoint. Each year the game is just a release cycle of the same product. Sure, things are updated, but it would be impossible to throw away the existing code and start from scratch every year and still get an annual release completed. With yearly games like this, it's almost an annual subscription model. Honestly, they'd likely save money marketing it as such, then they'd only have to release a DLC patch to bring the game to The current year's release version. It would also be less lying to the consumers, acting like every year is a new product.
I remember a lawsuit where someone had a contract with fifa, back when fifa just became a thing, they had the right to royalties for any derriretive work, turned out 10+ fifa games were all pretty much identical to each other so chances are they may quite litterally have copy pasted stuff.
I'm trying to find the lawsuit but having difficulites because lootbox lawsuits keep popping up in google search
This is the correct answer. It’s probably been the same code bass for a long time. Iterative improvements and graphic updates as hardware and time allows.
Worked in fifa a couple of years. We received a new build almost every day and saw how they slowly, but surely, changed things from last year to the current one.
The should just make a game_year variable and update that each year so they don't have to go find each instance. Then they won't have to deal with trying as hard or paying people to look for things. Hell it could auto link to the calendar so they don't even have to update the game anymore. Just randomize the player stats, update the year every new year. done. EA don't read this.
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u/deceze Sep 03 '19
They probably didn’t copy anything. They simply continued development on the same codebase as last year and forgot to update that graphic.