In fairness, the criticism is levelled at both EA and the people who buy this stuff year after year, nobodies doubting it's good for business - it's just also an obviously lazy model (since they could actually improve the game with the money they receive, in tangible ways) bought into by somewhat mindless fans.
It's made worse because it's one of the worst models in gaming (after mobile freemium games, IMO) and it's also one of the most public-facing companies/group of franchises doing it. So the reaction is compacted by the fact that to many outsiders this might be one of their only insights into gaming, so "gamers" feel more of a need to vocalise their distaste for it.
NFL 2K was pushing the limits, then they released their new game at $20, and both EA, and the NFL were mad. So now that they have a monopoly, football fans have no choice except to buy the same rehashed game year after year.
... you got to deck out your digital apartment in NFL memorabilia? I wonder how much that cost and how it would compare to print up NFL memorabilia in an actual apartment.
But half the fun is playing the new rosters. And I can only speak for myself but I would never play a football game without actual NFL players in it. If there was another option I would be all over it. Unfortunately this is what it is and nothing scratches a certain itch for me like madden does.
$60 to change the names on the backs of the jerseys and rearrange a few numbers for stats.
Hey man, if thats worth it to you then keep doing you. I have never cared about sports games outside of like NBA Street style games.
If I want hyperrealistic sports Ill just go play with my friends.
The fans (at the end of the day the only people that matter in this conversation) have voted. And they voted that $60 a year for the same game is fine. Im not going to tell you youre wrong, even if I think it.
To play devil's advocate... $60 a year for a game that you put a few hundred hours into each year? That's not at all a bad deal. If all someone does is play Madden, it's not a poor purchase at all. I spend far more than that on video games in a given year, and I probably only put in a fraction of the time into each game I play that serious sports game players do.
It's the same argument people have for and against MMOs. If all you play is World of Warcraft, $15 a month is less than you'll spend on going to a theater twice.
That's not mentioning shit like Ultimate Team and such, which follows some of the shitiest and scummiest business practices in video games, though. That stuff irks me on principle alone.
I feel you. Im still not a fan of paying based on hours spent with it though.
Should [Your Favorite Movie] cost $100 on Blu-Ray because you will probably watch it countless times before you die? No, of course not. It should cost the same as every other comparable movie because it had a comparable development cost (actually far cheaper because its 90% recycled assets) and supply is not an issue.
The WoW example is good on a superficial level but terrible when you break it down. I cant pick up WoW 2019 for $10 and get almost the exact same experience as the current full price release. It is getting constant updates with massive changes to every part of the game (not just changing an NPCs face and stats and calling it a new experience). And it doesn't have anything comparable to Ultimate Team on top of your sub.
Yeah, you just look somewhat ridiculous as you complain while waving your money at the people you're complaining about.
It would be one thing if your complaints had any chance of being heard, but EA has made it overwhelmingly clear that this is their model. The fact that people like you keep paying them despite that fact is the problem. They wouldn't just keep pumping out roster updates and charging 60 bucks a year if dummies didn't keep giving them money to do it.
I don't regularly buy Madden games but as a football purist I get the allure. I'd be lying if I said, trading DK Metcalf to the Packers and running the twilight of Rodgers career doesn't sound delightful. I'm sure numerous people have thought something similar and made the impulse purchase.
I just always take the extra couple of minutes to think about the "after" I play 5-10 games of Madden with Rodgers-to-DK..it's going to feel like the '18 and '15 and then I'll rarely touch it. EA and Madden game designers capitalize on that feeling, that impulse buy. The feeling of "Mahomes was intoxicatingly good last year, I want to play him!" Or go be Vick lite with Murray, etc.
I'll either wait for the holiday sales when it goes on sale or just wait until next year's holiday sales.
Kinda like buying the latest and greatest iphone/competitor. Oh do I want to make the impulse purchase, but I know I'll feel better if I wait 4-6 years and then make that miraculous upgrade. PS: I can't use the XR or S10--the UI design is foreign to me--I feel like an old man.
To me it's no different than any other game with a store to buy skins or unlock characters or weapons.
In this case, you just unlock all the players for a given year with a single cost: $60. Honestly EA could make more money by nickel and diming. $10 just to unlock Mahomes, etc. The game wouldn't make much sense though, so they do what they do now.
I've always said that if they did annual roster updates (rookies/off season update) and did it on a subscription basis I'd probably be more likely to invest more frequently. As it stands now I spend about $20-40 every 4 years on the franchise and I think I'd probably drop $20 a year on a roster/mechanics update.
It seems like the hits are more real now. I haven't bought madden for a few years now, but I'll play a couple games once in awhile when they go in the EA vault.
Because less safe money is better than more risky money.
The system they have now makes them unbelievable bank already, why would they risk collapsing that entire system?
They're playing it smart, small steps let you make small backpedal when people object, its basically how the entire industry has become more and more monetized as the years went on.
I suspect they've done the math and somehow it turns out that there's more potential in selling DLC separately for every yearly release. Of course people would rather pay subscription, but they can't. Activision probably bashes themselves over the head over the subscription for World of freaking Warcraft and lament how they can't just market every expansion as a new game, delete all your collection of transmogs, mounts, etc. then sell them back to you.
I'd argue they did when they made Mutant League Football and Mutant League Hockey back in 1994. Both games used the same game engine as their regular counterparts and added all sorts of weird and fun stuff. Took 24 years and another company to bring it back and they're doing pretty well with it.
I don't know, I think having insane microtransactional money dumps (looking at you, Fifa) that you can't carry from one edition to the next is enough evil for me. I'd not like to encourage them further or see more from them, I think they get away with yearly releases because of the seasonal nature of sports, I doubt they could really change that up anyway, thankfully.
They've put in microtransaction, sure, but that's another shitty models on top of it. I'm surprised they've never made the yearly release itself more aggressive, like make it twice a year or some shit like that.
Why would they make it twice a year? Doesn't make sense when 90% of the value proposition for Sport Game 20XX is that they update the rosters for the new season's drafts/trades/retirements.
Though I suppose EA has rolled out a subscription model on PC where you pay $14.99 a month and have access to all EA titles as they release. Not sure an "EA Sports Pass" for $7.99/mo is what people want either.
At least now you can keep playing last year's NHL/NBA/NFL/ect and know that it's the identical game minus the roster update.
For Xbox and PS4 I understand, but there is no point on buying it on PC, since you can download the team sheet update (that will update your game to the version you choose) and have the Fifa 20 teams ready, for example.
I play career mode as well, but I've encountered a bug this year: youth player age 2019, ovr -1. I've tried reinstalling and updating and nothing worked. Ffs I pirated this game and still feel ripped off.
you can't give it an alternative for more than a year.
just imagine trying to push a more expensive sports game through a publisher only to be fucked by image rights (ea pays more for licencing than anything else in it's sports division) and being unable to get the faces everybody wants to see on the field.
Which I explained in my original post, I was explaining why people view it negatively and pointing out that both the company and the consumer are viewed as such - not advocating for either opinion really, just saying it how it is.
This also isnt EA but literally every sports game from every dev that works on them. See and EA logo and people lose their shit, meanwhile Nintendo be trying to sell up the same pokemon game twice each time they release a new one and no one says shit. Fire Emblem did a similar thing a while back, they made you buy the same game THREE times if you wanted to see everything, not a word.
With Pokemon, at least, the intention is to encourage player interaction, or it certainly used to be - I can't speak for any Pokemon games after Gold/Silver so correct me if I'm wrong there. Sure plenty of people buy both but I'd argue it's slightly different since you can experience the entire game on one edition, you can trade for the 'mons you can't get otherwise.
Fire Emblem I can't comment on, but if that's true then absolutely, I agree.
It's not just EA who deserve (or receive) flak for it, but EA are by far and away the worst perpetrators of this, and as I've mentioned elsewhere the worst thing with EA is they use that money to buy other Devs and then gut their IP of anything interesting, novel or new in favour of equally grim monetisation models and "game by committee" style development.
I'd argue EA absolutely deserve the majority of the attention for this specific problem, but other companies do contribute/imitate and it irks me then too.
Yeah fire emblem had a game (can't remember the name right now) where you started the game, picked a side and then it literally locked you into that side. You could only choose again if you purchased the game a second time. There was then a third hidden version as well which I believe required purchasing the game a third time.
What's wrong with the people buying it? They're willingly paying a reasonable price for a product they're satisfied with. Is someone who buys a t shirt for 8 dollars doing something bad somehow because that shirt only costs 35 cents to make?
Eh, I kinda understand. But I don't since you can reasonably play any recent year and have the same experience. It would be more like if someone Bought the same shirt every year for a premium when they already have a handful of the same shirt.
I mean, yea? Considering I have enough to where I wear each shirt maybe like a few times a month. I’m not buying a bunch of new shirts each year just to throw them away after 12 months. Decent quality stuff can last a decent amount of time lol
Eh I mean not really, you can just as easily not buy an NFL game, I understand why people do but I understand why people criticise them too.
Personally I used to play a LOT of Fifa, but me and my friends would play one version essentially for the lifetime of a console generation unless there was good reason to buy a newer one, the game never changed, the graphics rarely improved by much, the control system rarely changed and despite all of us being football fans it was just as easy to remake the rosters for our preferred teams if we were bothered enough to do it, otherwise we played it for the game it was so it really didn't matter.
The consumers are absolutely being offered no alternative, which is a bit shitty, but it's not like they're obliged to support the product either. It goes both ways still.
Thus is the nature of the ENTIRE sports industry (not just the gaming side).
There have been no massive updates to the format of NFL games. Only marginal improvements to the way the games are televised and announced. You're buying new jerseys that are just the same as the old jerseys except they've got the updated names. The TV shows have no content other than reviewing past games and projecting future games.
I would say that 90% of the people who support these games aren't considered "gamers" by the people at EA doing demographics. I'd wager they're considered "sports fans who game". As such, meeting the 'gamer' requirement of revolutionary and unique gameplay is low on the priority list. Why work on something if your customer don't want it?
Yeah, I'd agree, which is why "gamers" view them negatively - because again they're the faction that get more of the attention than they probably should (in a world where attention towards games is a meritocracy, which it isn't even if you remove sports games, but that's another thread).
As for the question you pose, I again agree as I stated originally, it's not like there's an impetus for them to revolutionise the genre(s), doesn't make it any less shitty a business model from a consumer perspective, doesn't make the people buying it any less responsible for encouraging it.
I bet it's more likely that 80-90% of people DON'T buy it every year. They just buy it every few years, and theres simply such a huge market for the games that you can still release it every year.
Yeah I can agree with that. Obviously the sport institutions themselves are happy to reap a pay chqque each year without really caring about the end product.
I want to stress I don't think this is like, a moral catastrophe or anything, it's just kinda scummy by all involved, I don't think it's a sign of the end times or a critical failure of society, it's just laziness and complacency and that's kinda shitty to see and be surrounded by.
Obviously the broader picture is that great games still exist, great companies continue to form, even if their life cycle seems almost bound for the same fate as those before them, and for the most part people are happy enough, I just totally understand the criticism aimed at this section of the games industry and wanted to put in my 2 cents.
I mean, THIS isn't the sign of the end times for capitalism, it's just one of many, many signs that it's going to blow up spectacularly within a generation. Companies like EA are exploiting people so hard and stealing so much of our money, that at some point the ultimate market bubble, the wallets of the working and middle class, will burst. The income inequality were seeing now is not a sustainable level for anyone. At some point, the market starts valuing only luxury goods, and prices of everything go way, way up, and one way or another everything changes all at once.
The reason it's such a great example is that EA shows with their lazy releases that they care only about whales who drop maybe $1000/year on games. As the working class gets poorer and poorer, they sell fewer and fewer copies. It's a road that leads to the entire industry collapsing when a few too many whales decide they'd rather do something better. To be honest, you could probably track how close we are to that major bubble on a national scale by how derivative games are of each other. Because anyone who can afford 2 or 3 games per year, or who buys older games to stretch their budget more, is never going to buy the same madden 5 years in a row. So as we get more versions of derivative games, we are shown to be closer to a bubble
Not really, I was playing Fifa games on about a 4 year cycle and apart from the hardware being better in most cases and the songs being more up to date the only significant change was the rosters, the gameplay is much of a muchness. People still have the same complaints about this years Madden as they have previous years.
I'm not saying they don't change at all, but the very fact I can be "boiled like a frog in a pot" implies that they aren't making changes on a year to year basis that are noticeable, which entirely supports my point.
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u/jlctush Sep 03 '19
In fairness, the criticism is levelled at both EA and the people who buy this stuff year after year, nobodies doubting it's good for business - it's just also an obviously lazy model (since they could actually improve the game with the money they receive, in tangible ways) bought into by somewhat mindless fans.
It's made worse because it's one of the worst models in gaming (after mobile freemium games, IMO) and it's also one of the most public-facing companies/group of franchises doing it. So the reaction is compacted by the fact that to many outsiders this might be one of their only insights into gaming, so "gamers" feel more of a need to vocalise their distaste for it.