Rating the Conferences: EA

The second conference of Day 1.  This isn't quite as....light as it should be.

Rating: D+

(I apologize in advance for my ranting.  But I don't think I can get through this without losing my shit.  Ready?  3...2....)

What even was this?!  I joked when they started the show off with Mass Effect: Andromeda (which I'll get to in a moment), that it was all downhill from there.  I had no idea how wrong I was.  As much as Microsoft improved on an already good conference from 2014, EA found a way to make an already crap conference from last year worse.  They took shit mountain and decided to shovel it all over us.

I mean, make fun of 2014 EA all you want, but at least they were talking about games.   Sim City, Mass Effect (I'm still coming back to this), Dragon Age, some new Bioware IP, Criterion's stuff, etc. etc...   This year they just came out there with NOTHING and expected us to be entertained with it. 

For starters, Mass Effect was a disappointment.  How long has this game been in the works?  I've been hearing people tease about it forever--they mentioned it last year at E3, so I figured we'd get a blowout.   Gamers complain about CG teasers but those aren't that bad--they don't show off game play but they give an idea of the look and feel of the characters and universe.   This basically just traded on the fact that people love the Mass Effect series and just really wanted to go back to that universe.  If you're a newbie like me who's just thinking about giving it a chance, it didn't show or tell you anything.   Hell, THAT WASN'T EVEN THE MAIN CHARACTER.   I really want them to have more to show between now and the oh-so-important "N7", because this has been cooking a long time.

After getting our preface of nothing out of the way, they shifted to the Need 4 Speed remake.  It looked good, and I'll give them props for making an honest attempt to bring that franchise back to its former prominence.    But afterwards they started in with SPORTS and y'know what...

I honestly don't get it.   I mean, I know sports games sell well.  In fact, unless you're a dudebro who lives off Call of Duty, GTA, and little to NOTHING else--they outsell literally every game you like, possibly combined.   So I understand them putting money into these games.  But who are they advertising them to at these shows?  Madden, NBA Live, NHL, and certainly FIFA--are all going to sell amounts measured in "fucktons" every year, to people who already know roughly when the game is going to come out anyway.   I get commercials.  I get pre-order bonuses.  But when EA pops up with 30 minutes of SPORTS for a show that's only an hour, I'm totally lost as to exactly who it's for, save for allowing the developers to show off on the big stage alongside the others.

But even that wasn't the worst.   The worst was bringing soccer legend Pele on stage to sit down with for what felt like decades.  And the thing is: it's not that the guy isn't worth talking to.  This would've made a GREAT YouTube segment to put on EA's channel in order to promote FIFA.  But it had no place on the big stage.  Sony won't ever have to worry about people mocking them for "Powers" again, because this definitely topped that.

They capped the conference off with Mirror's Edge and Star Wars: Battlefront, which was decent enough in that it made a return, but essentially confirmed for me that neither were titles I wanted.   EA has so many other games in the works that it’s strange they came so unprepared, for a second year in a row.  The bar was set pretty low for Ubisoft after this.