Opinion piece on Electronic Arts
Jason Montgomery
I know it's old news now that Electronic Arts has reorganized itself
into three units. EA Sports will be pretty much the same as it is now,
EA.com will do multiplayer games with AOL, and the new EA Games unit is
the result of the merging of Origin, Westwood, Maxis, and Bullfrog into
one monolithic entity.
In other words, in the fall all those brand names will be essentially
killed off when the first titles from EA Games are
released. Here are how two current games are likely
promoted:
The Sims, from Maxis (An Electronic Arts Company)
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, from Westwood (An Electronic Arts
Company)
But in the fall:
SimsVille, from EA Games
Command & Conquer: Renegade, from EA Games
To prove my point, it was announced that the official name for Ultima
Online 2 will be "Ultima Worlds Online: Origin". Here's a quote from
the UO2 FAQ: (http://www.uo2.com/faq.html)
"By the time this game ships, we won't be putting the Origin (company)
logo on the box. It will be our first title going out under the new EA
Games logo. Keeping this new branding strategy in mind, naming the
game ‘Origin’ is a good way to keep our name out in the community."
So essentially, Origin named the game after themselves to keep the
brand name alive. Maybe the other developers should do the same.
Westwood might release an expansion pack to C&C Renegade called "The
Westwood Missions" detailing the covert ops undertaken by the elite GDI
Westwood Corps. And when SimMars comes out, maybe Maxis should call
your main ship the Maxis and call the game "SimMars: The Maxis".
Brand names have power in any industry, and sometimes "Maxis game"
and "Westwood game" are whole genres in themselves. And no doubt this
weighs heavily on the people who started the respective studios.
Maxis' Will Wright, Westwood's Brett Sperry, and Origin's Richard "Lord
British" Garriott (if he still worked there) must be feeling pretty
awful knowing that although their companies will still exist, their
names will be no more.
And to top it off, it was shown at E3 that the EA Games logo will be
the same as the EA Sports logo, but in *blue*! And it was announced
that all the EA Games will have common interfaces, startup screens, and
tutorials, thus further mushing them all together into a big, digital
lump.
So it is in this gamer's opinion that Electronic Arts is making a big
mistake killing off their brands. The new games will hit, sales will
fall, and EA will have a lot of egg on it's face.
First they kill off Wing Commander, now this.
--
<{[---Jason Montgomery---]}>
http://www.bigfoot.com/~journ
Yahoo! Messenger: journ
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Before you buy.
steven_hugg
Jason Montgomery <mont...@cadvision.com> wrote:
> I know it's old news now that Electronic Arts has reorganized itself
> into three units. EA Sports will be pretty much the same as it is
now,
> EA.com will do multiplayer games with AOL, and the new EA Games unit
is
> the result of the merging of Origin, Westwood, Maxis, and Bullfrog
into
> one monolithic entity.
Sad to think that one of the first companies to feature their game
authors prominently in the packaging and call them "artists" have
decided that independent thought is inefficient. Now we have
a company seemingly interested only in sports titles and sequels.
> And when SimMars comes out, maybe Maxis should call
> your main ship the Maxis and call the game "SimMars: The Maxis".
I hear a rumor that SimMars is cancelled ... this rumor substantiated
by the redirection of simmars.com to simsville.com. Maybe they'll
just add a Mars add-on pack for Simsville. Hey, I can have tea
parties and open a hat boutique on Olympus Mons! What a great
testament to the human condition.