EA Games President, Frank Gibeau recently spoke toCNETand revealed two essential “jobs” that he believes his label needs to do. The first is keeping quality “talent” like artists and developers at the helm of projects. The second job is for EA Games to “move to an online model as fast as [it] possibly can.” Gibeau elaborates his point by pointing out games likeSporeand new business models.
If you look at our customers’ behavior patterns, you’re seeing them engaging with fully connected experiences. And I think we have IPs and ideas and expertise that can really allow us to do that. I think Spore is a connected experience. I think Battlefield is, and Warhammer. These can be very lucrative for us, and they can be very exciting from a developer standpoint, because you’re moving from a fire-and-forget model to more of a service model, where you launch the game but you’re thinking 24-7 about when’s my first content pack, what’s happening with telemetry, how are people playing the game, and how do I make their experiences better?
Making experiences better has not traditionally been EA’s cup of tea. Until the recent acquisition of decent developers like BioWare and Pandemic, the company was notorious for it’s rapid-fire garbage assaulting our store shelves. Gibeau finishes the talk by saying that he is no longer interested in single-player games, and actively looks for a multiplayer component in any game he greenlights. Of course, he’s right. Who plays single-player games anymore?
[viaDevelop]
