3. They Rarely Lie To Us
What? No, Im totally not running out of points! How dare you suggest such a thing?! Anyway, heres my point about why EA are great because they only lie to us a little bit. While the recent DRM scandal with Sim City prompted a few comments from the publisher that mightve been considered slightly economical with the truth, they rarely try to convince us of things that are complete fabrications, instead opting for colourful language that hides the truth rather than warping it. Now that may not seem like much of an achievement at first glance, but in a world where gearboxing is an official term we should be grateful for what we can get. Aliens: Colonial Marines, published by Sega and developed by Gearbox (along with a load of other companies work was delegated to), was shown in trailers to be a high quality game with superb graphics and intelligent enemies that would react to the environment around them. It took seven years to develop and was promised to be the best Aliens game every produced, provoking waves of excitement from the press and public alike. For those of you who arent aware or dont remember how that turned out, let me enlighten you. The game was released to a chorus of negative reviews, it had the graphics of an early PS2 game, more glitches than The Matrix, and its AI were some of the stupidest of the generation. The game was abysmal, yet thanks to the fake footage shown by Sega enough people were tricked into thinking the game would be great that it made number one in the UK game charts. That, dear reader, is disgusting. This wasnt like Killzone 2, which put out a fake trailer and quickly apologised before releasing a real version well before release; Sega continued to show the phony gameplay footage well after the game hit shelves, unashamedly conning consumers into thinking the game was better than it was in order to trick them out of their cash. How they werent sued under false advertising is frankly amazing, though tragic for the image of the industry. The point is, despite all the crap EA has pulled over the years, theyve yet to do anything as immoral as this. By no means does that prove theyre a company worthy of respect, but it certainly suggests they arent the worst publisher around, given Sagas strategy with A:CM was the equivalent of a mugger taking all your money and then stabbing you anyway.