Over the past several months, EA has seen some major gains as it moves its business away from traditional packaged goods and into the digital market, but the company's recently-promoted EVP of digital, Kristian Segerstrale, thinks EA still has a ways to go.
Segerstrale, who also co-founded the EA-owned social studio Playfish, told Gamasutra in a recent interview that in order to maintain success in the digital market, EA and other major companies will need to rethink their approach to production and view every game as part of a larger network rather than as a standalone product.
Unlike traditional boxed retail games, Segerstrale believes digital games work best when they offer some sort of a connection to another game or platform. Whether these games link to other titles or exist across multiple devices, he says online-enabled games should connect with each other to form an "ecosystem" that better engages its audience.
"What we aren't doing very well at all as a company and as an industry is to link together these games and ecosystems across different platforms in such a way that you create something that's greater than the sum of its parts," Segerstrale said.
"Otherwise, we have these islands, where a consumer does lots of things in one ecosystem, when they could be rewarded for that in another."
Some of EA's existing mobile and social apps, like Mass Effect Infiltrator on iOS or Dragon Age Legends on Facebook, already connect to their big brothers on consoles and allow players to earn in-game rewards. Segerstrale hopes that by offering even more of this "connective tissue between games," EA will make sure that players can interact with their favorite franchises regardless of the device sitting in front of them.
"Increasingly, it's about figuring out a means of online interaction rather than having your game be a standalone piece of software," Segerstrale said. Rather than giving players a satisfying one-time experience, he wants to solve one major question: "How do you weave our games into the fabric of a player's everyday life?"
A major part of Segerstrale's plan is to bring EA's biggest brands to as many platforms as possible, but it isn't enough just to port an existing game to a new device, he said. Rather, developers need to do what they can to create games that suit each individual platform.
"While things like HTML5, which make UI layers more standardized, will be helpful in getting games on other platforms, you will always want to inter-develop in a custom fashion for a specific platform in order to deliver the best user experience," he said.
If everything goes to plan, Segerstrale believes that EA's numerous connected games will capture players' attention whether they're using their console, their mobile device, or their favorite social network. As long as players remain engaged with these cross-platform brands and titles, he says EA will be able to retain, and hopefully earn money from its audience for some time to come.
This is a valid idea only if the game universe is designed to be interacted with from different entry points. For example, what CCP is doing with EVE Online and Dust 514 where both games interact with the same universe and can affect each other in real time. When you talk about Facebook games unlocking or increasing an arbitrary number in another game though, it's just cashing in and doesn't really add anything to your experience of the universe.
Now, if you are talking about the tale I weave in one game being reflected in the lore or history books of another, or affecting the state of the land, then that sounds like the kind of thing that I would like to see games do more of. Not everything though. Just because a game is digital, it doesn't mean that it has to be connected to other games.
"Some of EA's existing mobile and social apps, like Mass Effect Infiltrator on iOS or Dragon Age Legends on Facebook, already connect to their big brothers on consoles and allow players to earn in-game rewards. Segerstrale hopes that by offering even more of this "connective tissue between games,"
This "connective tissue between games" sounds like something they are going to use against consumers eventually---
for example, you must buy this app/mobile game in order to complete "x" missions or objectives in the big brother game. Don't have the platform...too bad... you need to buy it...by the way we can sell it to you!
The fragmentation of games in such a fashion is actually one of the many reasons I quit playing the ME and Dragon Age 'brands'. I don't bother with the "Tales" games for a similar reason - they are all on different platforms and I don't want to hunt down the brand to 'interact' with it. Put it on my system of choice, all of it, or I feel like I'm missing out and move on to something else instead. DLC is a similar problem. I've started NOT playing games based on their expected 'money bleeding' post release plans.
On a positive note though, EA does have the kindness to inform me of their plans so I don't bother spending money on them. Which has helped me considerably in my purchase decisions so I don't feel burned all the time.
I'm pretty much in complete accord with the rest of the commenters on this one. Very little in recent memory has made me quite as angry as discovering the tie in between ME3's single player game and the multiplayer and iOS app. I think it's completely reasonable to make some games that are interconnected to a larger ecosystem of experiences including that kind of direct connection to other games, but the idea that this is something that should happen to all titles is just fundamentally wrong headed.
I actually like the idea of transmedia. But I don't like EA. It just feels so disingenuous when ever they do anything. It doesn't feel like they're trying to explore what can be done in these new spaces. It feels like they're trying to find new ways of suckering their consumers out of more money. The fact they are shutting down Dragon Age Legends does support this theory.
Now, if you are talking about the tale I weave in one game being reflected in the lore or history books of another, or affecting the state of the land, then that sounds like the kind of thing that I would like to see games do more of. Not everything though. Just because a game is digital, it doesn't mean that it has to be connected to other games.
This "connective tissue between games" sounds like something they are going to use against consumers eventually---
for example, you must buy this app/mobile game in order to complete "x" missions or objectives in the big brother game. Don't have the platform...too bad... you need to buy it...by the way we can sell it to you!
On a positive note though, EA does have the kindness to inform me of their plans so I don't bother spending money on them. Which has helped me considerably in my purchase decisions so I don't feel burned all the time.