Topic: EA Games Supports New IPs, Not Licensed Games

[NWR_Neal]

"If you want to make a hit, you have to give a game time to get to quality," says company president. 

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/24499

EA Games is not keen on licensed games anymore, according to President Frank Gibeau in an interview with Develop.

"The days of licensed-based, 75-rated games copies are dead like the dinosaur," Gibeau said.

He specifically called out the James Bond franchise, which EA worked with last generation, citing creative limitations, high percentage royalties, and the decaying movie-game business as a few reasons why EA has little interest in licensed games.

"Considering the total amount of money we have to spend on those types of James Bond games, and the total amount of man-hours we had to put into them, we thought: hell, let’s work on our own IP," he said. "The guys who made James Bond games for us, well yeah, they went on and made Dead Space."

[Enner]

So I guess Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will be the last one we'll see for a while.

[TJ Spyke]

EA goes through cycles where they are for and against licensed games. I doubt this will stop them all those licensed sports games every year.

[Ian Sane]

I remember when EA were the bad guys and Activision were those cool Tony Hawk guys.  Times have changed.

Gibeau is not wrong and this is the correct attitude to have BUT we'll see if EA actually follows up on this.

He does realize that Madden is a licenced product, right?  I don't see EA dropping that any time soon.

[MaryJane]

The quote is pretty clear in saying that the problem is money; 'man hours spent' = wages. For new IP's they don't have to pay royalties or licensing fees.

This is just their way of telling investors they'll be spending even less money in the future because being a billionaire is no longer good enough in the world of CEO's you have to have tens of billions to be in the cool crowd.

[Enner]

He does realize that Madden is a licenced product, right?  I don't see EA dropping that any time soon.

If you push aside the technicality, most people wouldn't think of the sports leagues as a license and more like some thing that needs to be in a sports simulation in order to attract the intended audience.

I have to admit that I did not think of the sports leagues in the sports games as licensed material though they are. It just seems so obvious that a sports game to have the real sports league. In contrast, it usually feels lame to have movie, book, or TV characters shoehorned in to some action game.

[Morari]

It seems a lot more obvious to just make generic sports teams. What does it really matter? Who really cares whether or not some overpaid, steroid-pumped goon is in your game or not? EA should dump the lame-ass NFL and bring back Mutant League!

[Ian Sane]

It seems a lot more obvious to just make generic sports teams. What does it really matter? Who really cares whether or not some overpaid, steroid-pumped goon is in your game or not? EA should dump the lame-ass NFL and bring back Mutant League!

Mutant League is all kinds of cool but if you watch sports, odds are you would like to play as the "overpaid, steriod-pumped goons".  If you care about the sport it is fun to play as the real players for the real teams.  As a kid I loved NBA Jam because of the gameplay but being able to play as the real players just added to it.  In fact I was a little disappointed that Jordan and Shaq were not in the game.
 
Sports games have that appeal.  Racing games can have that too.  Being able to race on real tracks using real cars has a very obvious appeal that I understand, even though I personally don't care.  Videogames are a fantasy and people fantisize about real life things like winning the World Series and driving around in a Ferrari.
 
The problem stems from when a licenced game exists rather arbitrarily.  We'll see games for movies or TV shows where the basic concept does not lend itself to a videogame.  They make games based on Bratz.  Okay, it's a well known licence but where is the demand to play a videogame based on that?  What logical game is there even for that?  James Bond makes sense.  He's a spy, he kills bad guys, it's an obvious videogame.  As a kid I was really excited to see Duck Tales or Ninja Turtles videogames because those shows had a lot of action and adventure to them so to be able to play the show has obvious appeal.  But The Simpsons also had a million games and that didn't really make sense.  That's a comedy show.  What element of the show is there to truly recreate in a videogame?  It seems more like it's a popular brand so shoe-horning it into a game (even though the arcade game was good) was just a way to get some product out there.
 
One of the worst example of licencing run amok was Def Jam Vendetta.  It's a wrestling game starring rappers.  Why?  Rappers don't wrestle, they rap.  Something like Rock Band with rappers makes sense.  But this was illogical.  No one wanted to wrestle as their favourite rappers until EA told them they did.
 
I think licenced games would make tons of sense if you're using a licence where there is obvious appeal and demand for a videogame and the resulting game is good.  But most licenced games fail on both accounts.

[broodwars]

First off, for all the people bringing up the various EA SPORTS titles as a counterpart to this President's argument, remember that this is the President of the EA GAMES label not the EA SPORTS label.  Different divisions of the company.
 
While I'm all for new IPs coming out of EA, I'm troubled by something that this fellow says later in the article when talking about Mirror's Edge and Dead Space.  He strongly insinuates that one of the main reasons those games did not sell well was because they had no multiplayer modes, and that Dead Space 2 would sell much better because it had one.  Thus, he seems to also insinuate that EA is going to have the policy of shoving tacked-on multiplayer modes into all their games, something I do not like in the least.  I'm not buying Dead Space 2 because of its arbitrary multiplayer mode (just as I didn't buy Bioshock 2 for its arbitrary MP), but because I really liked Dead Space.  It concerns me how badly this is going to hurt the quality of EA titles with their resources split like this, especially if this becomes a standard policy.

[MaryJane]

@Ian

Rappers have beef, freestyle battles, and are constantly trying to 'one-up' each other in terms of ability, swagger, swag, and women, even if in a friendly manner. Def Jam Vendetta took all the violence/comeptition in rap and turned it into a videogame.

I wholly agree with your point on other sports games and to a degree the other games. But even for things like the Simpsons games and Bratz games, rabid fans of those things want more of it and videogames are a good medium to deliver a new experience of those things. I've never played a Bratz game, but I imagine they're fashion themed like the dolls, even if there is some butt-kicking thrown in.

I say again that if they didn't have to pay fees to make these games, EA would just keep churning them out. It is not at all about creativity or sensibility (in respect to Ian's argument).

[Mop it up]

Looks like we could see Boom Blox 3 after all... probably multi-platform this time too.

[Enner]

While I'm all for new IPs coming out of EA, I'm troubled by something that this fellow says later in the article when talking about Mirror's Edge and Dead Space.  He strongly insinuates that one of the main reasons those games did not sell well was because they had no multiplayer modes, and that Dead Space 2 would sell much better because it had one.  Thus, he seems to also insinuate that EA is going to have the policy of shoving tacked-on multiplayer modes into all their games, something I do not like in the least.  I'm not buying Dead Space 2 because of its arbitrary multiplayer mode (just as I didn't buy Bioshock 2 for its arbitrary MP), but because I really liked Dead Space.  It concerns me how badly this is going to hurt the quality of EA titles with their resources split like this, especially if this becomes a standard policy.

I think multiplayer for Mirror's Edge would be good for the series. It could work like Trackmania where there is no player collision or like Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit's Autolog where new time trial rankings and ghost data are always being presented to you.

[Morari]

Well, Splash Damage is supposed to release "Brink" this spring. It's going to be multiplayer... even in singleplayer. It looks to take a lot of cues from Mirror's Edge in terms of the functioning mobility. Unfortunately, while Mirror's Edge was interesting on a number of planes, it was extremely limited in how it allowed you to customize your controls. A good handful of keys were outright unavailable, even through the config file.