If you really want the “Heather isn’t fucking around version,” here it is:

Loot boxes are, ignoring the hair splitting of insufferable pedants like yourself, gambling. They are crafted, from probabilities to visual to their contents, to condition individuals and encourage repeated purchase and use. People with…

Worker and consumer rights are absolutely moral issues, largely because compensation for labor and the cost of goods (at least under capitalism) is fundamentally exploitative in execution. Usually, we roll with it and that’s fine. For instance, I don’t have a problem giving my guy at the bodega a buck for a soda even…

“The three levels we made for the 3.5 gate, every single one of those levels you could hold up a video of Uncharted beside it,” said one former Visceral employee, “and you could literally say, ‘OK, this part is like this part from Uncharted. This level is like this level from Uncharted.’”

Well this sounds like hell. It also reminds me a ton of the post-mortem on Mass Effect Andromeda. Probably not a coincidence.

I would place the blame directly at the feet of EA execs. These execs are so disconnected from reality that they couldn’t see the obvious. You have a studio that makes a certain type of game then you want them to make a totally different type of game, while expecting it to be able to compete with a game made by a…

Once again a wonderful piece of writing from mr Schreier (best in the business is a monniker easily conveyed).

Absolutely not.

Much smaller project, presumably less studio headaches and creative clashes, and more autonomy without a LucasArts to report to.

It was EA though, at least in part. EA committed to a plan that would have sufficiently staffed the game through 2016. Instead, they pivoted when Battlefront was released and gave half of Ragtag’s team to Battlefront II:

When people give me shit because I read Kotaku (because they’re still clutching their fedoras over Gamergate) I just point them at stuff like this. It’s the only place I get this kind of inside in depth reporting other than Edge, and being a print mag they can’t match your timeliness.

Fuck EA executives. Mismanagement of finances in allowing the studio to continue unchanged when it was operating way over budget. Assigning a studio historically driven by creativity onto Hardline, a project none of them will be happy on. Forcing them to use a not-fit-for-purpose engine. Denial of resources. Fostering…

At EA, however, things were different. “She was giving these massive presentations on the story, themes,” said one person who worked on Ragtag. “EA executives are like, ‘FIFA Ultimate Team makes a billion dollars a year.’ Where’s your version of that?”

Right but in this lengthy article my take away is the opposite and they kept forcing ideas and gimmicks and the general attitude forced the game to lose identity in order to constantly impress. That and the general bureaucracy of dealing with both ea  and disney constantly slowed progress.

This honestly sounds like EA was way too involved and determined to create a product they could easily market.

It’s been made clear, here and elsewhere, that Frostbite is costing studios months of valuable development time. It’s not solely responsible, but the mandate to use it is clearly causing major issues

Man, there’s a lot of pretty depressing stuff in here. Frostbite seems to be a recurring problem in many of these games, and the attitude of EA’s upper management is disheartening on multiple levels, if not surprising. But what’s even more concerning is how increasingly common it is for single-player games to be to…

TL;DR: Fuck EA with a rusty rake.

That is some Stockholm syndrome shit right there.

Can’t wait to see how they fuck up Anthem.

Fixed the title there.