It sometimes scares me that politicians might look at absurd theories such as this one, and then they'd ban games. Then I remember the United States' fascist tendencies, and that videogames are a powerful industry. The American rule of law comes from Wall Street, not from the White House, and if banning something will…

Yeah, I can't disagree with you there.

Several of those poor decisions were not made by him. Relatively recently, EA's shareholder ''roster'' (for lack of a better word) changed, and they had much to do with the way EA now handles its business.

I can't really debate your choices without crossing over to the topic of subjectivity, and to me, none of those games sound too ''integral'' in the overall spectrum of gaming. NFS is a fun franchise, but hardly anything revolutionary. And Burnout wasn't always EA's (it began as an Acclaim game, if I remember…

EA isn't the only company with always-online DRM, so it's not as if they're alone on that charge. Dead Space's sequels are lamentable, true, but again; shareholders had a lot to do with the creative direction of the series.

Cool story, bro.

When you graduate from first grade you can reply again and maybe your message will then be coherent. Don't worry, little kid, I'll wait for you to learn how to write proper English.

Yeah, I started liking EA only after John Riccitiello spearheaded the company to new quality levels. Before that, I had never even bought a single EA game.

Yeah, but the action-oriented decisions weren't his, though. New shareholders decided that they wanted Dead Space, for example, to be more like Uncharted. So if there's someone to blame for irrational creative decisions, those would be the shareholders.

You mean console games? Like which ones, for example? Because most EA console games (pre 2007) were absolutely awful. There was nothing truly memorable on consoles that was published by EA. Need For Speed and Madden, maybe, but that's about as memorable as they got.

The new shareholders are mostly to blame for EA's recent underperformance.

Exactly. The problem with publicly traded companies (in this industry) is that stockholders take a huge toll on artistic freedom.

Some new shareholders joined EA around the time Dead Space 2 launched, which severely affected the artistic direction of their flagship titles. Look at the action-oriented DS3, for example. Those guys wanted it to be more like Uncharted, because they wanted such sales figures.

They released good games on PC, but their console line-up was mediocre at best. They upped the quality on console games until the PS3/360 generation.

Let's be friends, then!

Well, it's a megaconglomerate, not an independent art house. Sales will always be the priority, so milking successful new IPs is inevitable on large companies.

So Riccitiello is responsible for mediocre programming and not the programmers themselves? Also, have you ever heard of the influence that shareholders have on publicly traded companies, and how they affect product demographic targeting (i.e. artistic direction and so on and so forth)?

Yeah, but every company ever gets hatred from all directions for all sorts of reasons. Of course EA wouldn't ever be the exception but the criticism against the company lowered considerably after 2007.

Hmm, you got a point there, buddy. Still, the new direction DS3 took, to my understanding, was severely influenced by new shareholders who wanted the franchise to be more like Uncharted.

I understand David Jaffe designed the original game with such brutal violence because Greek mythology is, well, quite brutal itself (let alone aggressively sexual). But I feel like Sony Santa Monica has abused the shock-factor far too much now. The graphic action in subsequent God of War games became nothing more than…