“Optimism need not suffer – only naïveté”

The news today is that Pandemic Studios is being forced to close up shop, with its founders, Josh Resnick, Andrew Goldman and Greg Borrud already let go some days before. This comes mere days after 40% of Mythic staff gets cut.

With shaking hands, I bust out my very special Devil’s Advocate crystal ball, and take a hesitant look into the future. In five years’ time, I can see it now, gamers will exhibit the exact same feeling of dismay as we did, just there and then, combing over archives of video game history. Putting the ball aside, I come to realize that we should not focus so squarely on the now – it is a global recession we have here on our hands, after all, and the ends should justify the means.

Perhaps we shall revisit the past, then, to take a look – say, at five years ago? I have here a copy of Andy Robinson’s comprehensible list of every company EA has bought and shut down from 1998 to 2008. It’s true; some five years before, Electronic Arts had just contributed the three most disappointing, debilitating game studio liquidations of the past decade:

• In March of 2003, Westwood Studios (along with EA Pacific) was liquidated, with all of its willing staff assimilated.
• 2004 meant the end to Bullfrog when EA combined their side studios into EA UK.
• In February 2004, Origin Systems, Inc., too, was was disbanded.

I can’t truly say that I remember how bad it felt to see these three colourful entities disappear only to fade away into the canon of our collective nostalgia – all I have left now is a faint recollection of my increasing disbelief over any and all praise heaped onto EA for having successfully introduced a slew of original IPs etcetera etcetera.

Disbelief, too, is the word I would use of EA CEO John Riccitiello coming out and nearly apologizing for the company’s past mistakes in handling their acquisitions. If I was ever offended, I forgave; at the very least I forgot. Maybe, just maybe Electronic Arts had finally discovered the error of their ways.

But after a critically successful string of new original titles over the past two years – Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space – the commercial realities suddenly set in and overnight, Riccitiello’s tune underwent a perfect 180:

“…anything that doesn’t measure up to looking like it can pencil out to be in very high profit contributor and high unit seller got cut from our title slate from this point going forward.”

Here be a quote from March 18, 2008, from Pandemic Studios President Josh Resnick (Courtesy of MrWasteland):

“…we’re absolutely part of a greater family now within EA and I definitely get it now, thinking about the other studios within EA and helping them and taking advantage of the synergies in terms of what they’re doing and what we’re working on…”

Optimism need not suffer – only naïveté? Perhaps the only thing irrevocably lost here, once again, in this ever-widening gyre, this bipolar-circular motion, is our shared understanding and appreciation of Electronic Arts and its legacy? Kai Steinmann, an ex-EA developer, sheds some much-needed positive light on the situation:

The upswing of all this is that, if EA follows pattern, they will be staffing back up in a few months. The more conspiracy theory minded among us might even wager a whisper that it’s a shell game for the accountants’ benefit.

Beyond the hyperventilative and the hyperbolical, I am nevertheless genuinely surprised at the magnitude of the negative reaction; Even several favourite blogs and bloggers of mine – that I thought were above and beyond this sort of moral mongering – have engaged in the beatdown. Obviously, I’d rather not single any particular example out (sorry Nabs!), but I do hope you’ve seen and read posts discussing the trailers so as not to think I’m stark raving mad!

Finally, because this post is essentially complaining about complaining – or torpedoing, as this activity is called – we’ve dedicated an all-new category, the Devil’s Advocate, to it. I do detest this type of thing out of principle, harping in on someone’s cause in an attempt to prevent any potential success in its very infancy. If you really are that worried about what BioWare or EA are doing, by all means, continue to try to get your voices heard.

That being said, no smoke without fire: It’s not that the critique unleashed is altogether unwarranted or without merit, but collective lynching in this scale feels ultimately just as adolescent as the actual content of the trailers is – or is there a particular challenge to be found in conjuring up witty puns while “This Is the New Shit” booms in the tab of your favourite browser? In case you don’t yet know what I’m referring to, here are the two trailers that have primarily caused the whole shebang. First, the Dragon Age “Sex & Violence” trailer:

And here be the all-new Mass Effect 2 “Subject Zero” trailer:

So the verdict is out: Do be less edgy. But what is the deadly sin here, the primary offence, exactly – being a little late to the party? Certainly, the musical bombast, the fast cuts, the choreographies, the narration – these are all part of the feature set of the trailer as we have come to know it. The video game trailer, with its increasing audience, should be fully expected to grow more structured, more institutionalized, much in the vein of its filmic counterpart. In this manner, I’d like to ask, is the backlash focusing on the correct target? While I remain very much annoyed and even exasperated by the narrow register and scope of the Hollywood trailer, pointing out its futility with every subsequent trailer seems a waste of everybody’s time.

We have all learned to take movie trailers for what they are, right? Misconstrued representations of events, clichéd cuts and cursory collages, ham-fisted sloganisms… what about the criticisms pointed towards the actual games, then, rather than their trailers? Richard tells me his biggest fear with “Subject Zero” is the potentiality of having to spend lots of time with a character that is profoundly unlikeable (I shall come back to this in a later post); Nabeel, on the other hand, tells me he’s simply come to expect different things not present in these two trailers, based on BioWare’s track record.

Me? I found the juvenile delights of the “Subject Zero” trailer honestly quite amusing – far more amusing than anything else that I’d seen from the game so far. The potential for a fan backlash was there, of course, but never did I expect such full-blown critical assault on just one foul-mouthed character; in any case, at this juncture, BioWare/EA extending the register of their marketing discourse – be it successfully or unsuccessfully – is not at all surprising to me. In cinematic terms, then, the “Sex & Violence” trailer is the best out of the Dragon Age crop so far. The awkward, plodding dialogue, MMO-quality animation and the shining plasticity of the modelwork worries me far more than one ultra-popular, functionalist trailer song selection (Surely its abundance, its presence in countless trailers has to speak something of its merits?).

What about those that still enjoy this very rhetoric? After twenty years of marketing pushed entirely towards the adolescent white male, some gamers have surely grown to expect their gaming packaged this way. Beyond these expectations, they might even enjoy it. Is this wrong? Are we allowed to so freely rain on their parade – their tastes and interests – simply because the message of these particular trailers was not aimed towards you or me?