Looks like EA is planning to fund indie games through EA Originals

Your claims are transparently false.

 

To the best of my knowledge, we don't consider any unsolicited games/pitches/ideas (at least not from the outside). There is certainly no channel to pitch/submit a game.

But, I agree. I think some of the other initiatives like the one by Epic where they do accept submissions, produces few actual results and a lot of bad feelings by people who think their idea was more deserving than one that got a grant.

 

Nah.

I actually think that good and evil don't exist in real world and are oversimplifications invented by humans, because thinking in black and white is easier.

However, I do not think it is an interesting topic to discuss. Also it is not game-dev related.

 

cool...

 

How can you oversimplify 0 or 1 and good or evil and existence or non-existence? When it comes down to it everything we know of really is that simple.

Lack of mental or computing capacity to store and remember extremely complex layers of existence or non-existence of a property to create a universe of things that we live in does not mean the universe is made up of magic or that humans are stupid and so oversimplify. That means there are limits. And everything has limits except time. To call something oversimplified because it is limited is an oversimplification. If oversimplification means choosing good over evil and health over pain and freedom over slavery every time than a philosopher would call that oversimplification intelligence. In that case, oversimplification is what humans lives are all about and the direction human culture is headed in. So no one of us is capable of much but in extended social cooperation we've achieved most of those things for increasingly more people and all through choosing good a lot more than evil for a very long time. So in that case you'd be right, humans are oversimplifying but not as you think but because they think.

Now to call the utter lack of a clue as to why there is existence to begin, living or non-living, with the non-living existence that later spawned living existence having to had to have occurred 1st, is pointless, lol, fine, call that magic. Magic is fun. Pretending there is not a difference between good and evil is not fun.

 

My take on EA being evil, and I think it will resonate to the topic, is much like what they did to the Syndicate IP:

Syndicate was an amazing isometric strategy-RPG with futuristic special agents. People talk about it to this day. Then EA bought the IP, and made a generic shooter with futuristic special agents. Some previews, some reviews, and the shooter went to limbo. I don't doubt the IP is going to be dead for years after this.

Also, Origin's clauses stating that they could scan every single thing on your PC, send it to EA servers, and process them the way they wanted.

Also, them buying entire studios, then dismantling them.

Yes, this is the business world, but the business world is not about good or evil, it's about profit. And they will kill an IP if it means profit. And that is why, in the views of the consumer, EA is evil.

And that is why I don't look with good eyes at their program. Clauses could be very EA-sided, and they certainly have the power to keep it that way.

 

Shopkeepers sell cigarettes. They also might stop selling things you like because it wasn't profitable. This world is full of irrational people who get excited because the nature of good and evil enters an argument. Hitler was evil, not sure about my local shopkeeper though.

 

That's silly. Cigarettes are not profitable anymore for nearly 100% of the world's population. I worked as a child in the tobacco fields and got $1 an hour. Now they import their workers from 3rd world countries and get subsidies from the US Federal government to even be able to sustain growing tobacco because selling tobacco is not profitable for the farmers or for the smokers themselves or for the health and society that must pay for all that. And by the way, most of the tobacco fields that I worked in as a child and others in the area are no longer in business even with those subsidies.

The shops that sell tobacco earn a nickel if they are lucky, selling tobacco to addicts is how they lure people to their shops to buy soda and candy and chips. Those are the real money makers.

All the profit from tobacco is to 2 or 3 mega-corporations and those individuals that profit from those mega-corporations tobacco sales. The US government and the almost 100% of the world's population receive no benefit from tobacco.

 

I guess my local shopkeeper must be truly insane for having such a wide selection then.

 

No, but you can't lure in addicts to buy the high mark up items without their preferred brand and those brands all come from the same 2 or 3 companies. It's not like the shopkeeper has performed a supply & demand miracle. It's the same stuff from the same companies with different labels. And the biggest profit still come from soda & candy & chips although it is convenient to have a cigarette addict not be able to distinguish hunger and thirst and nicotine cravings. They just assume it's nicotine cravings for as many cigarettes as their body can handle per day.

It amounts to paying twice as much for Marlboro from the same company that gives you the same tobacco but call the brand KostKutters. A tough rugged outdoorsy good looking Marlboro cowboy is a much better lifestyle advertising then myself after 27 years as an frumpy addict buying KostKutters to save money. When people that are addicted want expensive Marlboros, that is what they will buy as long as they can afford them and when they are penniless they will fish smoked cigarette butts out of the ashtray and smoke those and then proceed and fail to quiet their addiction with paper and common yard weeds as I watched my cousins do as 16 year olds. If you are an addict and are still buying Marlboros or expensive lifestyle cigarettes you need to head out to Testco and buy their version of KostKutters really.

 

They might, and probably will, if it stops being profitable. And that's fine. I also wanted EA to stop selling (or at least promoting) Syndicate because it was a terrible game.

But think of EA now as a local cigarette factory. Then your uncle starts planting oranges in his backyard, and sells it to the community. People love his oranges, as he plants them with so much care, they are juicy and sweet.

Then the cigarette factory buys your uncle's orange plantation, because it is so good and he is so competent. Then it tells him to start planting tobacco in it's place. Then he gets sad, either planting tobacco anyway because that's the contract, or leaving the backyard to the factory, pursuing another place to plant his oranges. The community will lose your uncle's oranges, the uncle will lose his satisfaction, but the factory maybe will get some more profit.

That's how I see EA.

 

Cigarettes and gas are simply lures. People who stop for those may purchase the much more profitable items too.

 

The uncle also gets a substantial amount of cash from the sale. That makes him happy.

 

Yes, after all, he sold it for good money.

But does the uncle care only for money? Do game devs care only for money? Do consumers like when Orange Uncle sells his plantation, buys a mansion and live happily ever after (Notch style)? Or do they like when Orange Uncle sells delicious oranges?

Yes, he got the money, it was a fair deal. Business-wise, that's fine. But the product, which was made by someone with passion, is now being made by someone with profits in mind. And then the consumer loses, obviously, but if the uncle liked to plant oranges and now he has to plant tobacco, he lost too. Yes, he can get the money, buy another land and plant there, but isn't that what old Diablo devs did when they created Torchlight, for example? To create the product they wanted without greedy business-men pulling the leashes?

 

It's actually not that uncommon in many industries, including game dev, to be a serial entrepreneur. Some people just like starting new businesses and building new IP. So often these people start a business with the intention of selling out five years later. Repeatedly.

If control is important to you, don't deal with EA. But if you are in this as a business, EA could make a pretty good partner.

 

I can confirm that the profit margins for shopkeepers for cigarettes are very very low. And the whole point of a store having them is so that people will come in and buy something else.

The profit on lighters is awesome though (since shopkeepers generally get them for free with large orders of cigarettes, so it's pure profit for them).

 

Game development isn't necessarily like oranges though. You don't have to repeatedly purchase the game in order to enjoy it unless it's one of those games. Once uncle has sold copies to all of his fans he can safely sell the IP and be done with it. It'll be up to EA at that point to actually make the sequel(s) worth buying to the fans.

Minecraft is a great example of this. I bought it for $5. Years later Microsoft bought it. Yet that hasn't diminished my enjoyment.

 

The devil will be in the detail. Traditionally in publishing agreements there are two key gotchas:

a) If by 'keep the profits' the contract specifies 100% of net profits, that's a problem. The publisher would be able to deduct uncapped marketing, advertising, localization and distribution costs over which the dev has little control.

b) Funding may be classed as an 'advance' which needs to be paid back before payments begin.

Let's see if there's some transparency on those points, or whether the agreement is locked behind an NDA. Beware Greeks bearing gifts.

 

Why would there be any transparency? This isn't an open program, just a publishing label. Of course financial/contractual agreements between two parties is going be undisclosed. The details will vary from deal to deal.

Pretty sure the funding will be part of costs, as I am sure platform distribution costs (if you publish on the App Store/Google Play, you get to keep 100% of the profits as well) and marketing/development costs. EA isn't doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, it is a business. That said, a lot of publishing deals not only include all the above, but also a profit split/percentage. And all those costs for the games they are publishing are tiny.

As someone mentioned above, I think this move is a bit more about branding/pr. While I am sure EA will make some revenue, (or at least not lose much), these games won't be bringing home the bacon for EA by any stretch, even if they were taking a massive cut of the profits. It feels more like building goodwill and reputation. It reminds a bit of when MS was paying developers to port their games to windows. For a company on that scale, throwing a few million a year at some indies like that is nothing. If that is the case, I'll bet cash money that EA will run this thing in way will make the studios they partner with very happy. Because if not, you can be sure that those partners will speak out loud.

 

Told you, I'm not in the mood for discussing it.

 

I doubt you could build up a good IP in five years unless its five nights at freddies

 

???

Almost every decent IP was originally created in much less time. Sure more years means you can add more to the IP. But I think you will struggle to find an IP that originally took more then five years to create.

 

This. Most of the concepts found in modern Elder Scrolls games, for example, came from Daggerfall which was in development for only about two years (March 1994 to August 1996).

 

It doesn't have to good, just attractive to a larger company with capital to burn/risk. It's very common with startups here in the valley. The craziest apps will be scooped up by Facebook,Google etc.

Back in the early days of social/mobile small game companies got bought up quickly. Not so much for creative/game IP, but for underlying tech IP and for talent. When we were acquired by Disney, clearly they had zero interest in our existing game/fictional IP.

 

Cave story

 

The guy who made Five night at freddy (fnaf), made 52 failures prior to succeed. And fnaf was born from a reviewer (jim sterling) mocking his last game by saying they looked like scary creepy animatronic, in a game that where supposed to be cute animal. The creator was destroyed, then said to himself it could make it scarier, so was fnaf created!

Good IP aren't forged, they are lightning in a bottle that happen with accident.

 

I don't get it. Is it just EA being a publisher and publishing games by taking a percentage of the profits like they always have, but they made a little logo for when they want to market something as "indie"? Because some articles seem to be stating that the developer keeps "all the profits" which makes it seem like this is some other sort of deal. It seems a little far fetched to think EA would just hand out money without getting a percentage back, but maybe they're really desperate for some goodwill from the fans and hope that funding a handful of new indie games for free will help?

 

Profits != revenue.

 

Any links? I'd be dubious of any such claim. I mean, it's not completely beyond the realms of possibility that they could have reasons to do such a thing, but I'd still be mighty surprised because I can't see why they couldn't raise goodwill or whatever and also take a slice of the cake (as would be fair).

Personally, I think that they could probably make "EA Originals" a decent franchise in itself. In the same way that they crank out franchises of the same game year after year they could also crank out a new "Original" or three year after year. If they build a reputation as being high quality alternative games then that'd be cool. One thing about buying indie games is that the quality can be very hit and miss, but with an EA label on it that really wouldn't be a concern. They make loads of stuff I'm not even remotely into, but all of it seems to be pretty well made.

 

The one linked earlier in the thread: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/1...riginals-to-support-indie-game-developers.htm

says "The third pillar is offering security to indie game developers by allowing them to receive all the profits for the game that they created, which is, needless to say, a valuable thing for small studios that are just starting out in the industry." (emphasis mine)

I agree though it sounds doubtful and it's more likely that the journalists just don't really know what it's about either. But big companies have given grants to small companies occasionally in the past as PR moves. I do think having a super popular indie game made by a developer who gushes about how great EA is and has their logo splashed all over could indeed help them clean up their "worst game company in the world" reputation. I don't really know if they care that much about that reputation though, since it certainly doesn't seem to be hurting them that much financially.