According to EA’s COO Peter Moore there is a core section of gamers that ”doesn’t quite feel comfortable” with the rapid growth of the games industry. We think he might be annoyed that people hate free-to-play Dungeon Keeper Mobile crap.
Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz, Moore said “I think we’re going into almost a golden age of gaming,where it doesn’t matter where you are, at any time, any place, any price point, any amount of time, there’s a game available to you. And our job as a company is to provide those game experiences. And then on our big franchises, tie them all together.”
Part of his vision is clearly tying gaming together with readily available downloadable content, new transaction models and free-to-play options. Not all consumers want gaming to move in that direction, however.
“I think the challenge sometimes is that the growth of gaming… there’s a core that doesn’t quite feel comfortable with that,” he continued. “Your readers, the industry in particular. I don’t get frustrated, but I scratch my head at times and say, ‘Look. These are different times.’ And different times usually evoke different business models. Different consumers come in. They’ve got different expectations. And we can either ignore them or embrace them, and at EA, we’ve chosen to embrace them.”
In changing practices to embrace new consumers, however, you’re always going to run the risk of alienating your current ones. The widely hated Dungeon Keeper Mobile would be an excellent example of this; a beloved title warped beyond recognition in a relentless search for profit.
”I don’t think anybody has to like it,” Moore concluded. ”I think that’s where it goes. It’s like me; I get grumpy about some things, but if the river of progress is flowing and I’m trying to paddle my canoe in the opposite direction, then eventually I’m just going to lose out. From the perspective of what needs to happen in this industry, we need to embrace the fact that billions of people are playing games now.”
I’d agree that change is inevitable, but that doesn’t excuse anti-consumer policies or running roughshod over beloved properties in order to make a quick buck. There’s got to be a happy medium between placating your established audience and creating new content and methods of distribution for a fresh crop of mainstream fans. What do you guys think?
