For number 3… Well let's just say this is not Electronic Arts only
appearance on my list. I wish I could think of more positive stories for the year, but it's the negative ones that
stand out, sadly. Still, everyone else seems to be going with the good stuff, so only fair I'm a negative nelly.
Here is my pick for number 3 on my list. I promise it's not as long as number 4.
When massively multiplayer games started taking off, you knew it was only a matter of time. When people showed they
were willing to shell out hard earned money to play a game online, you could almost hear the suits at other game
companies stroking their beards and saying ?Interesting??
Sadly, this year, it came to pass. EA Sports, surprise surprise, with Madden 2005, introduced a
premium subscription.
While you could still play for free, you got certain ?benefits? for coughing up the theoretical dough. Your reputation
would be boosted. (The way I read it, if you were a complete cheating crapweasel, you could pay the money, and nobody
would know, due to the boost in your reputation.) Your name would appear in ?lights? to make sure you stand out from
the common scum, and a whole bunch of other crap, including buying your way into the Madden Challenge.
This years ploy to test how gullible football fans are was bought to you by DODGE! So by signing up for this ?premium?
experience, you were whoring your retinas to a car company. However, the exercise is leading to you
paying down the line. So in the
future, it appears your choices will either be to pay up to get the full experience, after already paying full price
for the game. Or have a stripped down version of the online experience, and be stuck playing with the griefers, and all
the ?fun? that entails. So rather than just trying to improve the experience for their customers, EA figured out how to
make money off of doing it.
Lame business practice, rather like Bioware with Neverwinter Nights (of which I?m a fan I might add). First they milk
the franchise with not one, but two expansion packs? Then they decide to make more money by offering ?premium modules?
for download, for a game that already has a ton of quality FREE modules on the net.
Apparently, premium modules make a great
gift, because nothing says Christmas quite like a crappy Internet download? I feel sorry for dialup users who got
this ?present?. Just what you want, a christmas present that takes most of Christmas Day to download.
