Electronics Arts CEO Ousted In Wake of SimCity Launch Disaster 427
mozumder writes "The disastrous launch of SimCity took its first major toll, with EA CEO John Riccitiello being fired from his position and removed from the Board of Directors. It is unknown what effect this may have on the SimCity franchise or any future DRM of EA games, but clearly someone didn't think their cunning plan all the way through when they decided to implement always-on connections for single-player gaming."
Let me be the first (maybe) to say: (Score:4, Informative)
Yay!
Also more likely the first to say: its != it's. Yay for slashdot editors.
That was a fast ouster (Score:5, Funny)
When will the non-DRM version of sc5 be available? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not that asshole got sacked, or how he got sacked, isn't important
What's more important is if EA gonna let users enjoy SC5 without been unnecessarily burdened by the online DRM ?
Re:When will the non-DRM version of sc5 be availab (Score:5, Informative)
It's not the DRM (a real screw-up) but the fact that the entire underlying game is borked.
All that cool "model each sim, global structure emerges" rather than "model the global structure, visualize it with animations of sim" seems to be faked. All the fakery means the global structure of the game is just broken: you can't build a large functional city in any reasonable way.
For example, sims leave work, drive home, and pick the first random house they see. They they get wealthy/educated for the next day based on the house they are in. Sure, you get some emergent structure, but it's nothing like a real city or even previous simcity games.
Path-finding seems borked: shortest path is picked over fastest path. All your fire-trucks race to the single closest fire. Left-turns are a recipe for endless traffic jams. Forget using mass transit usefully.
The YouTube videos show all this. It seems beyond fixing, unless they can revert to the old statistical simulation model somehow: one PC doesn't have enough compute to run a large city - they could offload to the cloud (ha, they aren't going that,) or rope the GPU into doing clever sim work (that's a research project.)
Re:When will the non-DRM version of sc5 be availab (Score:4, Informative)
A PC could easily handle that level of simulation because you don't have to calculate everything every frame. The simulation is asynchronous to the GUI.
Re:When will the non-DRM version of sc5 be availab (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't disagree with anything you said, but just as much as its not DRM (borked), its not the game play (borked) but the marketing failure he is being ousted for.
From what I have seen there is simply no indication anyone writing official communications from EA recognizes the problems from our perspective. As far as they are concerned they think "he did not sell it right", and as far as the investors/sheep/dollars and cents all play together they might be correct.
Yea its pretty disappointing as product but I don't think that is what is driving the musical chairs game starting to play out at EA.
Re:When will the non-DRM version of sc5 be availab (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed, but what do you expect them to sample?
A global statistical model? They claim not to have one.
A Population of actors doing rational things? They didn't seem to implement one.
Re: (Score:3)
I keep reading this regurgitated as fact. I also read from some who apparently know what they are talking about that parts of the population is being modeled in independent simulations, while the rest is more emergent, and that the videos you mention capture only the anomalies.
Also,I understand that EA were forced to tone down the simulations because of the back-end availability problems.
You and others make it sound as if the game does nothing but 1980s Pac-Man AI.
Re:When will the non-DRM version of sc5 be availab (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you even played the game? I've clocked about 40 hours and the sims really do go into teh first available house. And the schoolbusses all go to the same stop. And all the moving vans spawn at the exact same time.
Freight does nothing.
Sims will not cross the road to go shopping even if they have money and the shop is of the right level.
If you have a single tourist in your city then the simulation builds hundred or perhaps thousands of hotel beds... then the hotels gets abandoned because they don't have costumers and you demolish it and start again hoping that it won't turn into a useless hotel.
If there is a hidden proper simulation then it is disabled or being ran on so few sims that it's virtually untracable.
Re:When will the non-DRM version of sc5 be availab (Score:5, Informative)
I have a hard time accepting that. Rollercoaster Tycoon, released 14 years ago, was able to simulate a theme park with 1,000s of actors without too much difficulty. I remember the game was able to run pretty well on my Pentium 2 at the time.
Comparing the processors, I see that today's i3s run about 100x more flops than p2. (i3 ~ 25 Gflops, p2 ~ 0.23 Gflops).
Given the resources that EA/Maxis has (compared with 1 developer programming the whole thing), I think they probably could have programmed it to simulate ~100,000 citizens at acceptable speed on midrange hardware. So I think it probably boiled down to more a question of priority than possibility.
Gorobei's point is that the simulation approach to SC5 is fundamentally different to the older "Sim" games - the older games, as you say, modelled the entire organism (theme park, in the case of Rollercoaster Tycoon) and generated the actors within that simulation based on a group of relatively simple statistical behaviours - a certain percentage will head for the next ride, a certain percentage will puke as they come off the rollercoaster (always a goal of mine when playing that game), some will go and eat, and so on. The graphics are then generated to put a visual representation on those statistical behaviours.
SC5, on the other hand, turns that model upside down - now, instead of having a single simulated organism (the theme park or city) with a small number of centres for behaviour collection (rides in the theme park, city zones/buildings/events in Sim City) for which to generate the statistical behaviours that your actors will show, now each individual actor is their own organism - the model is too complex to resort to "averaging" and modeling the overall system, but it is not complex enough to give each actor enough behaviours to be able to form creative solutions such as taking a detour around a road block.
In that sense, SC5 is going in the right direction, but until the models for the actors are complex enough that they can appear semi-intelligent, the gameplay result is going to feel inferior to what it has replaced.
Re:When will the non-DRM version of sc5 be availab (Score:5, Insightful)
One bloke intent on building a game so deep that it takes sixteen materials and four different crafts to create a metal bucket (then measures individual happiness on how pretty it is) is modelling individual actors right down to the loss of an arm, the saving that makes in gloves, the work that individual can now do and how upset his family are about it.
And EA with a budget in the tens of millions can't even work out basics such as 'works here, earns that, lives there, wants food/entertainment/job/sleep'..
Hell, the Tropico series manages it, and they depict all of the individuals. Crunching the numbers in the background without displaying each person is easier, and should scale up to SimCity levels. Certainly for the first few hundred thousand.
Re: (Score:3)
Loss of an arm? DF models it down to individual fingers and toes, and fingernails and toenails. It's quite possibly one of the most painfully accurate anatomy simulation available in an RPG.
And it's probably why I've never been able to play more than about 15 minutes minutes of it before giving up in frustration and going back to something less tedious, like Hydlide or Battletoads.
Re:When will the non-DRM version of sc5 be availab (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When will the non-DRM version of sc5 be availab (Score:5, Interesting)
The next CEO will be in exactly the same position, because everyone else responsible is still in their position of responsibility.
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Much of the industry had already expected Ricitello to get fired months ago after it became clear that he'd directed hundreds of millions of dollars into Old Republic, and produced poor-to-lukewarm revenues from the result.
Putting that much investment into Old Republic was definitely the CEO's choice of direction. I agree with others above that SC5 was only the straw that broke the camel's back. Old Republic is what cracked it.
(It's not even that Old Republic was a bad game, it just produced really poor ROI
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let me be the first (maybe) to say: (Score:5, Interesting)
It wasn't the "voting with dollars" that did this (or rather non-voting), and I would continue to argue that individual purchases don't do dick. What made a difference here was PUBLIC SPEECH, outrageously bad reviews, blog posts, and forum discussions. This is what forced EA spokespersons to take up the issue publicly and make detailed responses; the wildfire of public condemnation. And communities organizing to protest and boycott in the future.
Probably more difference was made by people who DID buy the game, and reported honestly how wretched it was, then someone like myself, who never had any prospect of even possibly buying this game.
Re: (Score:3)
And by "public" you mean online nerd-rage, right? I haven't heard a thing about it outside a few blog posts and Slashdot.
Most reviews were written before the release and were published after, so they turned out to be positive.
-dZ.
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It's mentioned in all the places that matter. Go on Amazon and read the reviews, go on YouTube and watch the popular videos, you can even go on BBC News and see coverage.
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Possessive apostrophe s?
Re:Let me be the first (maybe) to say: (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot is not the place for speculation.
You're new here, aren't you?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Lighten up, will you? This is no place for picking on newbies. Or, for treating old timers as newbies. Or for recycling lame jokes.
No, but it is THE place where sarcasm is interpreted literally, to the great amusement of those whose sense of humor hasn't been surgically removed. Also, every joke has been recycled. I mean, they've made entire TV series out of recycled jokes. Like The Big Bang Theory (vomits in mouth)...
Fired (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fired (Score:4, Funny)
Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone at a high level paying the price for DRM-incurred failure. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, asshole.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone at a high level paying the price
Golden parachute.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)
At least Blizzard had an excuse, if a flimsy one : D3 had a Real-Money auction house... so a lot of the code was kept on their servers, to hopefully prevent enterprising hackers from exploiting bugs to make millions of real dollars. I admittedly haven't tracked how successful that was
SimCity has no such excuse. What's the worst an enterprising hacker could accomplish here? Fixing the roadways? EA's always-on DRM was pure unexcused buttfuckery.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Informative)
Riccitiello's 10-point plan to Success
1. Buy Franchise
2. Water Down Experience for Casual Players
3. Add Online
4. Add Co-op
5. Add Gritty Camera Filters
6. Overwork Developers
7. Pretend Game is Finished
8. Add DLC / Make Old Features New by Converting Them to DLC
9. Pay for Good Reviews
10. Hype the Fuck Out of The Game
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
A one-time payout at departure...particularly departure for failure...is less than the cumulative pay over time. And it's something he was going to get sooner or later. It's not like departing under good conditions pays worse than departing under bad ones.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but he still gets the "pay over time", just from some other company, because he's a member of the endlessly rotating pool of CxO/Director/Board Members.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not like departing under good conditions pays worse than departing under bad ones.
His career just got derailed. Who's gonna hire a guy who presided over the biggest disaster ever at his previous company? Leaving on good terms, or quitting, or resigning, all have the potential for later career opportunities. Getting fired and told you're a complete and abject failure? Not so much.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like departing under good conditions pays worse than departing under bad ones.
His career just got derailed. Who's gonna hire a guy who presided over the biggest disaster ever at his previous company? Leaving on good terms, or quitting, or resigning, all have the potential for later career opportunities. Getting fired and told you're a complete and abject failure? Not so much.
In yours and my world, yes. For CEOs, not necessarily. They live by different rules and have far greater connections. Very easy for him to tell his cronies it was some underling and he just took the fall because that's what good CEOs do.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys do get hired. A failure means he's now got more experience. Companies never hire executives from outside the executive gene pool.
What are their jobs? To socialize with bankers and investors, occasionally give a speech to the workers, and not much else.
Besides when you get down to it, it wasn't his fault that things screwed up with the launch. Sure if it had gone great he would have taken 100% of the credit (another job of CEOs). But practically speaking the failures are just as much do to him as the successes are. He's probably not entirely clear was DRM stands for and has probably never even played the game. The fault lies with the designers and operations.
He just took one for the team is all. The team being the rest of the board of directors. He'll get a nice departure bonus, and end up on the board of some other company.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Interesting)
Scott Thompson, fired from Yahoo. Hired on by Shoprunner.
Léo Apotheker, fired from HP. Hired on as Chairman of the Board for DMK.
Dick Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, went on to work at Matrix Advisors and Legend Securities. He is the #1 ranked worst CEO in history by portfolio.com.
To say nothing of CEOs who have run their companies into the ground and have been rewarded by not getting fired at all and keeping their cushy jobs.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
Scott Thompson, fired from Yahoo. Hired on by Shoprunner.
Fired for lying on his resume [cinemablend.com], not because he ran the company into the ground. Despite this, he went from being the man in charge of a company on the Fortune 500 list (barely, at 483), to being in charge of a company that, uhh... doesn't even have a wikipedia page. I had to dig this [cnbc.com] up to find out what the company even did. It's a startup company nobody's ever heard of.
Léo Apotheker, fired from HP. Hired on as Chairman of the Board for DMK.
HP: Ranked the 10th largest company on the Fortune 500 list. Lost over $300 billion in market capitalization under Apotheker's leadership [cnet.com].
DMK: Doesn't exist.
KMD: Does exist... and is a Danish IT firm with 3,000 employees. Is not on the list. Also... Chairman of a board is not the same as CEO of a company, so it's a false analogue anyway! But let's say he was the CEO -- he went from one of the largest companies on Earth to some tiny po-dunk company in another country.
Dick Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, went on to work at Matrix Advisors and Legend Securities.
Lehman Brothers: Suffered a total existance failure under Dick's fearless leadership. Was only publicly traded for about a decade before folding. In other words, a nothing commanded by a nobody.
Matrix Advisors and Legend Securities: A hedge fund. It's not even a proper company. And it's primary source of income? The money that Dick was able to hide from creditors when he bankrupted both himself and his former company. Like, for example, the mansion he purchased just before it went under that he sold to his wife for $100 to evade creditors.
So as you can see, each of these people didn't get to "keep their cushy jobs"... every mistake led to a dramatic downward step in their cash flow. Far from proving me wrong, you've managed to brilliantly prove my point: CEOs get just as big of a black mark when they're fired as "the peons" do. All three of the examples you provided resulted in someone being a CEO on paper only -- they were never given a real company, with real money, to play with again.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Informative)
the biggest disaster ever
Not just one—he was CEO since 2007. That makes him responsible for Spore and everything in between. And a bit before that, probably.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
HP?
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
The departure pay may be more than many of his employees will see in their lifetimes.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
His one-time payout should be a game of his choice from EA's portfolio or five dollars off of his next purchase of an EA game.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
I offer my services as CEO. I might fail, but I'd be willing to do it at half the price.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
I offer my services as CEO. I might fail, but I'd be willing to do it at half the price.
I honestly have to wonder, at this point, why somebody hasn't caught on to the 'get random Indian H1Bs to fail at leadership for 40k/year and pocket the savings' strategy...
Re: (Score:3)
What makes you think they haven't? There's nothing about a Senior VP job or a CIO job that requires the executive to live full-time in the USA. If a board is serious about their outsourcing, even those jobs go to the lowest bidder.
Now, should it go to a contractor? Different question. They certainly could not do worse than most of the non-engineering MBAs I've seen in the corner offices.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because being a CEO is a lot more than what it appears on the outside. These guys don't "know" about all the stuff we attribute to them. Their job is to hire smart people, listen to reasoned arguments, and then make choices. When they listen to the wrong arguments, they get fired in spectacular fashion and the people they listen to simply get listened to a little less. This was a public relations disaster, that's why he got fired. If you think for a second anyone at EA thinks DRM is a bad idea, or even that THIS DRM was a bad idea you're living in a fantasy. He got fired because the DRM wasn't test well enough, and now the public wont trust EAs fancy new DRM system for their next game. The problem here was they didn't have anyone to blame this on but themselves. If they'd made the account provider a 3rd party they'd have had an easy scape goat. My prediction? Facebook login required to play our game comes next. This, of course, is so you can update your friends on your game progress... not to track everything you do and monetize it.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is much more a PR move than it is a financial move.
They want to show that they have "solved" the problem and that it will not happen again, by letting a manager walk. I'm pretty sure the full board of directors knew perfectly well what was going on with Sim City, and it is not likely that the CEO was the only one driving this through.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Informative)
A board of directors is generally responsible for things like regulatory issues. They may not even know what Sim City was until it became a PR disaster.
Paul Vivek -- from GE
Leonard Coleman -- from Heinz and baseball team owner (probably helps on sports licensing)
Jay Hoag -- finance guy
Jeffrey Huber -- adverting
Maffei -- media
Ubinas -- Ford
Simonsian -- mobile expert
3 ex EA guys
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
The buck has to stop somewhere. If the Chief Executive Officers can't take responsibilty, what are they being paid for?
Besides, DRM for a single game sounds way more like a CEO decision at best and not a board decision.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, DRM for a single game sounds way more like a CEO decision at best and not a board decision.
You mean a strategic decision to incorporate DRM into all of its products, and its long history of using always-on DRM, is a decision that was made without any input from people responsible for the financial success of the company?
I don't think so. No, the board was told. They may not have been told SimCity was traditionally single player. They may not have been given crucial details about this particular product... but they most definately knew DRM was being put into all of its products "to combat piracy", which they took to mean "increased revenues".
See, the problem here is that "combat piracy" didn't translate to "increased revenues" in this case, and that's why he's getting shitcanned. He's the fall guy so they can go to investors and say "Well, it worked all the other times, and he assured us it would be the same with this product!" Yeah. Right. CYA strategy 101: Either place the blame on one person, or blame an overly complex process that nobody was individually responsible for. Guess which one they went with?
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd imagine the bigger problem was when customers found out they'd been lied to by the rapid emergence of a hack enabling offline single-user play. Even if the CEO wasn't involved in the early stages you can bet he was closely involved after the initial Amazon cock-up.
Had they been upfront and honest with customers and pledged to make an offline version available in response to the overwhelming demand, things might not have gotten to be so bad. Instead, someone decided to further propagate a lie.
Even the lowest quality MBA factories teach the basic rule of 'when in a hole stop digging.' The better business schools will teach it frequently. Compounding the problem when the company's back was already against the wall was an elementary mistake and one which rightly cost the CEO his job.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
... and totally won't just go do the same kind of shit elsewhere.
Actually, I think you might underestimate how "big companies" look to other "big companies" to see what to do and what not to do. If this was some little dev house, no it wouldn't make a difference in the world. Given that it is such a large company, others might actually take some notice.
Also, there is a good chance that given such a negative dismissal, he is going to find it harder to get into the next position. Not to say that he won't, but it likely won't be as good as he had hoped for.
Is this a first? (Score:5, Interesting)
Serious question... is this the first time an exec was ousted for a mistake with DRM?
Re:Is this a first? (Score:5, Informative)
Serious question... is this the first time an exec was ousted for a mistake with DRM?
This isn't necessarily about DRM. EA is going to miss the financial projections they made at the end of Jan. He's leaving before the board and shareholders come after him with pitchforks.
Re:Is this a first? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who the hell modded this troll? This is exactly right. As much as I want this to be about SimCity, this is about a lot of things, including but primarily because of their financial position over the past few years. There is no direct correlation between always on DRM and his departure.
So no, this wasn't the amazing win for anti-DRM efforts we all want it to be. That doesn't mean this situation won't help, though.
Re: (Score:3)
There is no direct correlation between always on DRM and his departure.
Unless you consider poor reviews, disappointing sales, and an embarrassing telling-off by your biggest distributor (Amazon) to have a direct impact on financial results.
EA is a company which makes every penny of its money by selling games. The quality of the games it makes, how they review and sell, are more or less the only factor that goes into whether it's a financial success. If the CEO is being fired for crappy results (and there isn't some other cock-up attached to account for it, e.g. fraud), then es
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Try to be more cynical, will you? If anything it won't be due to the DRM, but from poor capacity planning to go with the launch. Actually, even that is too technical, the official reason will probably have something to do with "PR management".
Re:Is this a first? (Score:5, Insightful)
Serious question... is this the first time an exec was ousted for a mistake with DRM?
If memory serves, one of the more plausible reasons posited for SimCity's ill-conceived launch was that it was right before EA's financial year wrapped up. I don't think that anybody who mattered gave a damn about DRM; but mangling the DRM-induced server hooks so badly that total non-techie rags like Forbes were writing articles about it... That just doesn't look competent.
If anything, DRM(as a lock-in and market segmentation strategy) is something that team management would probably earn points for; but only if they can pull it off well enough to win more than it costs them. People like Apple and Valve, yes. EA, not so much.
Re:Is this a first? (Score:5, Insightful)
He wasn't ousted for DRM, but failing to execute the DRM properly.
If the servers had been even REMOTELY close to sufficient for a day 1 load, the manager would still be onboard and the DRM would be proven successful. As that was not the case, the problem is the manager failing to properly plan for launch day activities. The DRM is still successful and will be implemented in subsequent EA releases.
Re:Is this a first? (Score:5, Interesting)
Serious question... was he fired for Sim City or everything except for Sim City?
EA is celebrating the biggest SimCity launch of all time even as overall the video game maker missed operational targets for the year. Late Monday, CEO John Riccitiello resigned, taking responsibility for the overall poor performance.
I highly doubt EA's quarterly report includes Sim City already. More likely it was every game except for Sim City--and had nothing to do with DRM in the slightest.
Re:Is this a first? (Score:4, Insightful)
I highly doubt EA's quarterly report includes Sim City already. More likely it was every game except for Sim City--and had nothing to do with DRM in the slightest.
Maybe it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back? After coming in below target on multiple projects, they may have been considering it, but seeing how this latest one completely cratered to the point they're having to give away their product in an attempt to maintain credibility with their customers while warding off massive amounts of bad PR... the board may simply have said enough is enough. SimCity may not be on the ledger, but when your latest failure in a string of them is by far the worst, and most publicized, it's foolish to think it wasn't given serious weight in the decision.
Fired? What? (Score:4, Informative)
The guy tendered resignation. [polygon.com] The letter he wrote is in that link there. Besides of that EA has been all over the place in terms of performance for awhile. I picked up a few hundred shares at $12 ~6mo ago and sold them at $18.50, which while not a spectacular turn around was decent enough.
Re:Fired? What? (Score:5, Insightful)
When a board member calls up the CEO and says that it's unanimous, it's time for you to leave, the CEO can either save face and "resign", or let the board officially vote them out. Regardless of what they're calling it, "fired" is probably an accurate description.
Re:Fired? What? (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, at that level you're rarely publicly 'fired'... You just come back to the office after lunch and find on your desk the equivalent of a pistol with a single round in it. Everyone (involved) knows what that means.
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Because that's how these things are done up and down Big Corporate America. Being quietly offered the chance to "quit or be fired", most executives choose the resume-preserving path. They are then unctuously thanked for their many contributions, and wished well while they go on to pursue other interests or spend more time with their families.
It's a professional courtesy. Sure, the board could fire him, but once they start down the paths of firing executives, other executives find themselves uncomfortably
Re:Fired? What? (Score:4, Informative)
"EA is an outstanding company with creative and talented employees, and it has been an honor to serve as the Company's CEO," Riccitiello said in a statement. "I am proud of what we have accomplished together, and after six years I feel it is the right time for me pass the baton and let new leadership take the Company into its next phase of innovation and growth. I remain very optimistic about EA's future — there is a world class team driving the Company's transition to the next generation of game consoles."
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Something about "not burning bridges".
Schadenfreude (Score:5, Funny)
Well, hopefully his golden parachute will only be accessible if he maintains a continuous online connection to HR for the next three years.
Odd (Score:4, Insightful)
The press release doesn't mention anything about SimCity. Could it be other causes and you're just trying to bend the message to your own personal fantasies? In any case, I doubt it'll have any real effect on the user of DRM.
Re:Odd (Score:5, Interesting)
Like I said, I'd love if this was true - but there are many other reason for the CEO to step down outside of SC5. Not saying the whole mess didn't help him/the board finalize on the decision - but lets not turn into Kotaku levels of terrible summaries here.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously he just wants to spend more time with his family.
How about SWTOR? (Score:3, Interesting)
I still play that game and it was sooo fucking close to a Wow killer. They rushed it without dailies and raids to meet Christmas projection marks in some accountants spreadsheet and they killed the game cards and the expansion at the store and gave up too early.
I do not care what other say about SWTOR it is not failure and much better. Bioware did great things and they got rid of great people too quickly. Another 6 months when SWTOR had the dailies, raids, and fixes it would have 3x the amount of subscribers.
What a shame and I am irritated as I do not want to go back to Wow.
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You think they would have learned not to do that after so many people complained about KOTOR2's dropped content.
On the plus side... (Score:4, Funny)
Tipping point ... (Score:5, Insightful)
SimCity was the tipping point.
Remember, EA was recently ranked as the Worst Company in America [gamespot.com]. Gamers have been complaining about EA way before SimCity. Like when EA negotiated an exclusive rights deal on all NFL games and then churned out the worst NFL games for years and years to come. They have ruined many, many franchises.
Re:Tipping point ... (Score:5, Funny)
Since they had exclusive rights didn't they also thus turn out the best NFL games for years?
Also, we're nerds here. What's a good NFL game in the first place?
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Ultimately, EA's problem with SimCity was that they had too many paying customers.
Uh no. Their shares have been at sitting at all time lows since 2008 and John Riccitiello with whom they brought in to fix things has shit the bed. There is more bad news on the revenue front coming soon (as the press release indicates).
Riccitiello destroyed the NFL franchise, killed almost every other big name game (Command and Conquer, Mass Effect), bet the bank on Spore and lost, and oversaw the launch of a bug-plagued onl
... and nothing of value was lost. (Score:3, Insightful)
Poor guy will be living on the streets (Score:5, Informative)
He'll somehow have to scrape by on 24 months of full pay (and stock vesting):
http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/18/4120344/ea-ceo-john-riccitiello-quits [polygon.com]
As part of Riccitiello's separation agreement, he'll receive 24 months of salary continuation and continued vesting of unvested stock options until Nov. 30, 2013, with those options exercisable until Feb. 28, 2014.
Pure speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pure speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
In the real world, and even in the legal world, circumstantial evidence [wikipedia.org] is still evidence. You're welcome to offer direct evidence to the contrary... but direct evidence has never been a requirement for criminal convictions, much less individual opinion concening massive business failures followed closely by executives seeking more time with their families.
"No evidence" is usually a euphamism for "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALA." You're welcome to offer a better explanation, but there is certainly evidence that this is the case.
Re:Pure speculation (Score:4, Interesting)
Except there's not enough circumstantial evidence to really come to any conclusions here in that regard. What we have here is a story submitter who read far more between the lines of a story about a recent event than was actually published, most likely as a result of something that they wanted or already had expected to be true. Scientific skepticism demands that all the evidence be considered... not just that which might serve a particular desirable outcome, and that might mean waiting a little while to see what happens.
It stands to reason that if the submitter's proposed reasons for the "resignation" are accurate, then eventually the truth should come out about that matter. At the very least, if those reasons are accurate, then it seems that EA should start taking measures to prevent the situation from repeating. So... wait. And see.
Otherwise, it's just a conspiracy theory.
Re: (Score:3)
And where, other than in the rantings of outraged geeks who are find almost every capitalistic move that a large company might make offensive, and so cannot be trusted to be detached enough from these events to report upon them in an unbiased manner, do you find anyone who is reputable suggesting the two events are causally connected?
EA's already stated that they believe that the extreme outrage that was recently expressed about their practices was just a very "vocal minority" [escapistmagazine.com], and not a reflection of th
Re: (Score:3)
I know this is /. but still... (Score:3, Informative)
Good God.
I know this is /. and no one RTFA and all but seriously, at least try to search for key words like "Sim" or "City" before submitting an article with a moronic sensationalist headline like this.
His resignation has nothing to do with Sim City. Dream on.
Re: (Score:3)
The headline is strictly correct. He was ousted from his position (in his letter he cites accountability for missing financial targets, which probably means he didn't decide to quit on his own - which CEO would?), and this did in fact happen in the wake of SimCity's launch (which was, in fact, a disaster). The summary obviously tries to conflate his being fired with SimCity's DRM, but the headline seems fine to me.
My first experience with EA (Score:2, Interesting)
I doubt it was just over SimCity (Score:5, Insightful)
It may have more to do with the fact EA stock went from $40 to $20 since he took office and there are plenty within and without the company that want to move into mobile gaming more and he's in the way. The board may also believe fresh blood will bring in a new way of doing things in the gaming sphere. I hope they take this opportunity to actually do some worthwhile changes; first being getting rid of or at least finding a better DRM mechanism (since I'm sure there are some dinosaurs who think DRM is still a workable system) and branch out.
They should learn a lesson from Atari. Inheritence isn't how you hold on to the throne. If blood must be spilled, then so be it.
Can I dream... (Score:3)
Perhaps the next EA CEO might see about some of the IP they are sitting on and make something decent that isn't just the same junk over and over.
Wing Commander, Ultima (I know there is are games in the works, but it would be nice to see Ultima 8 stricken off the books, and a "real" 8 and 9 made. Heck, I'd love to see a modern rendition of "Cybermage" just for the surreal aspect that mixes magic and technology, and not being Shadowrun or steampunk.
Restoring Trust (Score:3, Interesting)
When the spokeswoman for Electronic Arts stated that they would try to restore trust with their users I never fathomed that they would actually follow that up with action. I cannot begin to overstate my congratulations to the board of Electronic Arts for doing the right thing and ousting a CEO that had declared his customers the defacto enemy.
When the lies came out that the online requirement was for server processing I took it as yet another BS statement from a company that held it's customers in contempt. When customers showed how easily you could play offline the lie was exposed and Maxis / EA was forced to admit the truth. I never expected that action would come out of this, and must say I am surprised by this as anything in technology in twenty years. Congratulations to EA for taking a step in trying to restore the trust of your customers.
Hold your applause till the end... (Score:3)
We have no idea this was the reason and I would bet EA does NOT blame DRM for the failure. Especially given the fact that the servers do little processing (as we now know). I am sure they blame server engineering for being unprepared, or the guy who didn't sign the big server check, or the team responsible for forecasting. I can almost guarantee they do not blame DRM, since your gamer brethren BOUGHT THE GAME knowing DRM was in there.
Only if DRM disappears from EA games in the future, can you declare vic
Its first major toll (Score:3, Informative)
Look, I'm getting sick of this. Just leave out the fucking unnecessary apostrophes OK? What are you, 7? How hard is it to learn the bloody rule and use it? Not hard at all - I've known it since I was seven!
I do not expect to see this happen ever again. Thankyou.
Re:Its first major toll (Score:5, Funny)
It's a shame you don't feel the same way about code tags....
cheers,
Not just DRM (Score:3)
Today I got the email telling me I'll get a free game due to the Sim City fuckup. It's not fine print this time but the email says that eventually we'll be able to choose our game (doesn't say when exactly) but we have to have it downloaded by March 30th. They want to limit their "losses" by making the instructions difficult to understand and leaving a very short window to "cash in".
EA are a bunch of dicks (I knew it already, just felt like reiterating).
It wasn't the DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
First, it wasn't necessarily the failure of SimCity that caused the job change. Second, the existence of the DRM wasn't the reason SimCity is a disaster.
SimCity is a disaster because of the implementation of the DRM, the PR surrounding the DRM, and then the fact that it's just a completely broken non-simulation.
Implementation failure.
Just having an account sign-on for DRM authentication is a thumbs-down, for sure, but it isn't a guaranteed game killer. Case in point, StarCraft 2. I do not like having to sign on to play the single player campaigns, but I've never had a problem logging in, even on day 1 of Wings of Liberty or day 1 of Heart of the Swarm.
With SimCity, however, I was unable to log on and play for 3 days after launch. After that I never had server problems, but there are many people who are still unable to stay connected or who are having their cities (which are saved on EA's computers) erased or rolled back.
The lesson is, if you're going to force people to sign on to play a single-player game, you better fucking make sure they can sign on to play their single-player game.
PR failure
I don't think Blizzard ever lied to people about why they had to sign on to battle.net for StarCraft. "It's 'cause DRMs." Lucy Bradshaw, the Maxis spokesweasal has stated that SimCity just had to be always connected because EA's servers are performing "significant computations" that just have to be done by their servers. Their terrible "sims go the nearest house to sleep" AI has gotta be run on their Beowulf cluster of HAL 9000s. The beast of a gaming rig under my desk clearly isn't up to the task.
Of course this is a monstrously stupid lie, and obvious to anyone who has any experience with video games or computers or breathing. This falls into the "pissing on me and telling me it's raining" category. If you're going to piss on me, at least be honest about it. And don't eat asparagus first.
Game failure
Despite all that, the real problem with SimCity is once you actually are able to get in and play, you find that they did not actually make a city simulation game, they just made a pretty city drawing program.
You lay out reasonable street designs, but they get snarled with traffic because the sims do not know where they're going to end up when they leave their homes for work in the morning or when they come home at night. They pick as their destination the nearest place that meets their need and go there first via the shortest path. If when they get there they find the place is already filled up, they go to the next closest place. So imagine if all 400 people who live in your neighborhood were coming home from work at the same time, but instead of going to their actual homes (or whatever place they're going to end up sleeping) they all came to your house first. And after 2 of them crash on your floor, the remaining 398 go next door and all knock there. And then the remaining 396 go to the next house after that, etc etc.
Next, the whole RCI balance mechanic has been the core of SimCity forever, and that's completely gone. Residential areas are supposed to need Commercial areas so people have a place to buy things (or work). Commercial needs shoppers, workers, and goods. Industry provides jobs for residents and goods for Commerce. They broke all of that, because sims, it seems, can live on love. All they need to not move out of their homes is "happiness," which can be obtained from shopping (commerce) but can also be obtained from city parks. So people have made 400k+ population cities that are absolutely nothing but residential high rises and parks. The people have no jobs and no money and no food, but they can still live in gleaming skyscrapers because I guess they're urban foraging in the parks.
So, yeah, you can "solve the puzzle" and make cities that don't collapse, but they're completely ridiculous, so it's not a city simulation game. It'd be like having a flight simulator where the rudder has no effect on y
Re: (Score:3)
If they'd had a DRM authentication requirement and it didn't stop people from playing the game, and the game were good, there wouldn't be a problem (for most users).
For most gamers, that's an acceptable compromise. Yes, there are some costs, but people are willing to pay that. Some gamers refuse to do DRM on principle, and there's a part of the gaming market that caters to them, but for the rest, all they care about is enjoying the game. If they get to enjoy their game, who is anyone else to deny them their enjoyment?
This failure is going to encourage companies to do DRM non-intrusively (more effort, more expensive), or avoid it altogether (cheaper). That's
Re: (Score:3)
Oh agreed. That's the other terrible decision by the EA management. I understand that EA had decided they wouldn't green light anymore single player games (citation googlable). "The future is social cloudified experiences! I read that in the inflight magazine, so you programmers best do it!" So in order to make a SimCity game, EA demanded it be multiplayer. But who the hell wants that? As a long-time SimCity player, I certainly do not. I do not want other players in my region that I have to wait on or rely
No mention of Sim City in TFA (Score:4, Informative)
We are all assuming that this is specifically because of the botched Sim City release. While it may be very compelling and possibly even obvious to think so, there is no mention of SimCity in the article. It's all speculation by the poster. It might be true, but it makes for a slanted summary. You can see from this thread that it had a definite affect on the discussion.
An article I read on Forbes today about this didn't mention Sim City as a reason either. The announcement came with the report that Q4 earnings at EA were lower than expected. The server issues, may have had something to do with this and maybe even a big part, but the summary jumps to conclusions. Pretty much this entire thread is following suit.
Hopefully, EA's Frank Gibeau gets the message (Score:4, Interesting)
As he refuses to greenlight single player games. [geek.com]
Which should not be construed as even a suggestion that the man should lose his job. I don't believe the appropriate response here would be to destroy a man's livelihood. I would like him to reconsider his policy, though.
Re: (Score:3)
would be to destroy a man's livelihood
Please. We are talking CEOs here. They can live comfortably on their savings for a decade, provided they didn't blow it all on whores and drugs.
I'm all for sympathy, but against handing it out indiscriminately. Doing so reduces the value of the times it really is meaningful.