I think his analysis of not just his company but the industry is pretty spot-on: game production is even more risk-averse at the moment than other cultural industries. It's pretty rare that a behemoth corporation learns to be nimble again, but it does happen (the Miramax/Saturn gambit being one common way to do it). Occasionally a CEO comes along who looks at the market and at his company and sees a dangerous trap or cul-de-sac looming ahead.
It's also possible that he frankly means what he says. It's on the point, although I don't expect it to turn any tankers around soon. IGDA head Jason Della Rocca had some interesting thoughts just before this EA statement: And so long as JK Rowling keeps writing source material (uh oh!) and the NFL keeps performing, they have little incentive to change their approach. And that's only going to happen with some serious change from the top or a revolt from the board (or shareholders), which is only spurred on by a drop in share price. The only likely method is an independent subsidiary that is freed to develop its own corporate culture and to take some risks. Getting them to embrace some level of risk is like getting a tanker ship to make a 180 degree turn. There is far too much inertia in a company that big. Well, they surely ought to spin off a boutique division and pull a "Saturn". What's a massive, mega-conglomerated 800 lb. The alternative is the Miramax approach, which involved mixing more risk in and shooting for medium and smaller niches. This has meant looking for the big, mass, mainstream hit every time the studio is at bat (cue Michael Bay). The traditonal answer is that it's about managing risk within a larger portfolio, right? As in most studios go for the hits business model where one big hit pays off for all of the other duds. Can they keep the profitability while increasing freshness and supporting creativity? Time will tell. Personally, I see this as something of a challenge: it's terrific to see EA's CEO owning up to the derivative, boring, if also often profitable games they've been churning out. So what do you think? Is Riccitiello's statement a new standard planted firmly in the fertile soil, a rallying point for all those starving in the desert of game creativity, or is it just another PR statement by a BigGameCo CEO that will be blown away by the dessicating winds of corporate reality? EA signaled its interest in this sector when it acquired Mythic a year ago (and put at least some effort into finally, finally revitalizing the old war horse Ultima Online). Maybe, just maybe, we'll even see virtual game worlds coming out of EA and other companies that dare to move beyond the "rinse and repeat" of the past decade. I'd hope to see new, creative games popping up even from big game houses like EA, and not just in the casual space that Riccitiello mentions (though there too - does anyone really need another Zuma clone?).
But even if this game is all it's been built up to be, one dramatically new creative game every 5-10 years makes them a bit too rare, IMO. And I hope the terrific team that's been working on it for years hasn't been creatively corralled into a tiny uninteresting space (or doomed by griefing-by-Internet as players release a deluge "inappropriate" content into the wild). Not that I'd expect to see cash cows like Madden football go away, but maybe, just maybe, a few more original games will be allowed to grow without being simply tossed aside to feed the current (and nearly all long-in-the-tooth) franchises. well, years of rinse-and-repeat games that bore people to death (and lead talented developers to go elsewhere or leave the industry in frustration).Ī far more hopeful way to look at this is to see this as a strong opening salvo by EA's new CEO in his first in-depth comments to the press (as the WSJ said), indicating a foundational change of direction at the world's largest developer of computer and video games. Of course, what this risk- averse mindset breeds is. After all, EA is a huge publicly traded company that has a responsibility to its shareholders not to take wild risks with the company valuation. "I'm shocked, shocked to see all these derivative sequels!"Īnd, having worked at EA, having both participated in and heard the tales from others of the Sisyphean task of getting original - or even slightly non-derivative non-sequel - games developed, I admit to a bit of skepticism here. Now a cynical way to look at this quote from an EA CEO is through this always fun lens:
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