Agreeing with EA?

Ok, so I was just at AoIR (Association of Internet Researchers) in Vancouver and ended up in a great conversation with Greg Lastowka who also blogs over at Terra Nova as Greg L. We chatted about the talk I gave, "The Wii-volution will not be Televised: The XNA-cution of a Business Model."

During this conversation, I mentioned one possible step towards a more sustainable game industry. A step which not moments later was being covered by the BBC, Gamasutra, and Spong.

BBC: EA Wants 'Open Gaming Platform'

"We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible," said EA's head of international publishing.

He said the web and set-top boxes would grow in importance to the industry.

"We're platform agnostic and we definitely don't want to have one platform which is a walled garden," said Mr Florin.

EA currently produces games for more than 14 different gaming systems, including consoles, portable devices and PCs.

"I am not sure how long we will have dedicated consoles - but we could be talking up to 15 years," Mr Florin added.

In some ways this taps into the "death of the console" concept. I don't really buy the idea that a generic "set-top box" is going to be the answer. I also understand that in many ways this is just EA understanding that they spend a lot trying to be platform agnostic. They support PC/OSX/Wii/DS/PS2/PS3/PSP/Xbox360. It makese sense for them to have a common foudnation for those games.

But I think the real potention of this ideal is instead to have a common core foundation of game code. I'm not saying that we need one console to rule them all. Instead, what we need are more special consoles (like the Wii's Wii-mote) that we need not re-write massive chuncks of code for.

Much like Microsoft's XNA Express, it would be great if there was an open and freely available version of an "Open Gaming Platform." This would be the basic set of libraries/SDK's/API's which developers and open source work could use as a foundation. Game companies (indy/professional/educational/hobbyist/etc) could all use this as a starting point for making games. Why re-write all the time? Math libraries, physics libraries, file I/O, networking, data-formats, Max exporters. Many things could be designed to support this base level. From that point developers could spend more time actually making the games, rather than simply working their tails off to port from one system to another.

It makes sense. But I also don't hear in EA's request a call for openness or standards. Simply they want the ability to cheaply make their games for all consoles. I want more. I want the foundations for some stability in the worlds of game developers.

Punishing Wikipedia Violators?

Based on this recent news, combined with the numerous others listed on Wired. I think a nice little collected volume (yes, a real print book) widely publicized and distributed about what these companies are doing and why would be a fitting punishment.

Personally I'd be happy to look closely at what EA was attempting to remove, and expand and go into greater depth about why they're making those changes, and precisely what historical events they're attempting to distance themselves from.

I'd like to see my advisor Kim Fortun do an entry for Dow Chemical and their removal of the Bhopal incident.

Let's make it worse for companies doing this kind of thing. Publicize the hell out of it. Make it a new negative experience. Burn your fingers once and learn a lesson. Burn them a second time on the very same coil, prove your stupidity.

C-out.

Dark Zero - EA Change Sections Of Their Own Wiki Page

Who is Trip Hawkins?

Thanks to a recent news item on Wired it has come to light that companies have made several changes to their own Wikipedia pages. However, the one that most interests us is the changes that EA have been made to thier own page late last year. Also, what interests us even more is that all those changes can be directly tracked back to their headquarters in Redwood City, California thanks to the ip address provided in the edit.

The changes to the article were numerous, but initially it seems one of the most notable was to remove the name of the company's Founder, Trip Hawkins from the article completely. In fact, his name was scrubbed from two separate sections, and all links to Trips new company, Digital Chocolate, were also no longer to be seen in the new edit. Following on from there the next big change was the removal of a whole section of text which was critical of the company which cited “The company has also been the subject of criticism, most notably for its business tactics and its employment policy.”

That's not all, even more changes were on show in the employment policy section, where it is highly noticeable that the whole paragraph was edited to paint the company in a better light. In fact, the phrase “Electronic Arts has from time to time been criticized for its employment policy of requiring employees to work extraordinarily long hours” was changed to the much better sounding “Electronic Arts has led the industry in reforming work/life balance issues that are endemic to the software industry.” Also in reference to the criticism brought upon the company by due to alleged unpaid overtime issues EA edited a brand new sentence into the section which read, “Since that time, many other game companies have been struck with similar lawsuits.”

You can check out all the changes yourself by heading over the difference between revisions page of the EA entry. That page shows the original entry on the left and the EA inspired revision on the right. The changes made are highlighted in a bold red font. Also, if you want to check the IP address you can copy and paste it into the Arin Whois Database Search and check it out for yourself. Interestingly, thanks to the moderating staff on Wikipeida it seems the changes made lasted only five minutes and were quickly changed back.

Growth of the Global Video Game Market

It is impressive that 50% of EA's revenue came from outside of the US. I would be interested in similar numbers from Blizzard, unfortunately because they are sitting inside of Vivendi (who seems to be coasting on the success of World of Warcraft) we can't actually see these numbers. The fact that EA is opening pursuing new markets is a strategic move that will have long lasting effects. Their operations in China are surely a long term strategy.

"50% of '06 revenue outside North America" - EA // GamesIndustry.biz

"This year, more than 50 per cent of our revenue is coming from outside North America," said Tascan. "Exporting to 'outside' is very, very important, and a big part of your business."

He illustrated the point by pointing towards explosive network technology usage in China, where more than 260 million internet users now exist, and claimed Scandinavia will be among one of the global development hotspots in the next 10 years.

"We're very actively looking for partners in Scandinavia," he said. "We believe the quality of the entertainment here is incredible."