{"id":23719,"date":"2014-07-15T20:10:22","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T01:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=23719"},"modified":"2014-07-15T20:10:22","modified_gmt":"2014-07-16T01:10:22","slug":"experienced-points-how-electronic-arts-made-dungeon-keeper-a-huge-fiasco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=23719","title":{"rendered":"Experienced Points: How Electronic Arts Made Dungeon Keeper A Huge Fiasco"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/articles\/view\/video-games\/columns\/experienced-points\/11914-How-Electronic-Arts-Made-Dungeon-Keeper-A-Huge-Fiasco\">This is your last chance, Electronic Arts<\/a>. I swear if you don&#8217;t completely transform your entire corporate culture THIS INSTANT then my next column will be <em>even longer<\/em> and <em>more detailed<\/em>. I will list so many specific problems and cite so many shortcomings you&#8217;ll beg me to stop. I will bury you in passive-aggressive bellyaching and whining about missed opportunities. Your move, giant corporation. Your. Move.<\/p>\n<p>So, yeah. This column is mostly me shouting into the hurricane and wondering why it still hasn&#8217;t responded to my grievances vis-&agrave;\u00a0-vis the pile of rubble that used to be the school and the entire waterfront district. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not actually surprised that EA hasn&#8217;t changed, of course. Even if I magically appeared in the EA boardroom as a pillar of shimmering light and delivered my analysis on a pair of stone tablets, and even if everyone in the room was instantly and seamlessly converted to my way of thinking, I predict it would take a very long time for people on the outside to notice. Corporate culture and company inertia are powerful forces, and you can&#8217;t change the thinking of tens of thousands of people with a couple of memos. EA will continue to burn the bridges that they&#8217;re standing on for the foreseeable future, and they will continue to stay in business because their cash cows<span class='snote' title='1'>Madden, FIFA, Sims, Battlefield.<\/span> are still giving milk and the ambient industry growth is insulating them from the brunt of their own mistakes. <\/p>\n<p>It will probably take a major shift in the industry to even make them think about reform. And even if that happens, the chances are low the current leadership will have the slightest clue how to adapt. And anything large enough to rouse them to action (say, a major economic retraction or industry-wide shift) is also large enough to be the scapegoat for their failures. (Hey, you can&#8217;t blame us! The company was just fine until that recession.) <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a shame. They could be doing better, and we could be getting better products. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is your last chance, Electronic Arts. I swear if you don&#8217;t completely transform your entire corporate culture THIS INSTANT then my next column will be even longer and more detailed. I will list so many specific problems and cite so many shortcomings you&#8217;ll beg me to stop. I will bury you in passive-aggressive bellyaching [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}