old John Riccitiello, EA CEO during its one creatively fertile period in the last two decades (2007-2013)
fired/resigned when ‘new projects’ was pushed aside in favor of ‘make Battlefield a poor Call of Duty competitor’
Interesting that games have been chasing the simulation of reality for so long and gotten so good at it that Unreal and Unity are now being adopted by anyone looking to create virtual spaces for any reason. And realtime simulations to so, so many shortcuts in so many ways that it’s almost hard to believe it’s useful outside fooling human senses
this is extremely interesting imo and I feel like most people just take it for granted, it’s funny how The Game Industry still seems crappily circumscribed in spite of it
not widely acknowledged enough imo (in part because these were mostly last-gen console-only releases that are unplayable on KBM?). I was gonna add that they were interesting in the very early aughts as well (SSX, NBA Street, Battlefield) but that was, in fact, two decades ago
Right, EA Sports Big was pretty great, huh. Plus in the end I don’t think the ‘risky’ games of that period were all that great. I love Mirror’s Edge but it was bleak even in the moment to realize it was the best game I played in 2008. Do we really need to care about Dead Space? And DICE was still riding high on being DICE at the height of their powers but that’s kind of limiting.
and they did after all put out Titanfall around the tail end of that period, though it was one of those Pillars of Eternity situations where the first game didn’t have very much compelling in it despite the groundwork being all there, and the sequel being an instant classic with a series of small tweaks but not enough people playing it
I’m still pretty excited about the new Battlefield
Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (the only rerelease on this list, but I think a worthy one)
Siren: Blood Curse
Bangai-O Spirits
Yakuza 2
Armored Core: For Answer
Guilty Gear 2: Overture
Saints Row 2
KORG DS-10
Gears of War 2
Animal Crossing: City Folk
Seems like a pretty good year to me (and there were other titles people liked like L4D that I left off because not my jam). I bet we could find worse in the last 30 years.
literally this just reads like a list of vividly recalled depression to me (after dragon quest and siren I start going yeah, ok) – maybe a “me” thing but I do remember just feeling bludgeoned over the head with lousy entries to stagnating franchises
2011 had only 3 great games released and only ~8 releases I would even call notable, it’s certainly much worse than 2008, even if one of 2011’s games is a major era-defining classic
Witcher 2, Rock of Ages, best FIFA overhaul probably still to date, Fight Night Champion, English Country Tune, Magicka, Dark Souls, AND my favourite weird Android exclusive game ever
2011 also saw the western release of Ghost Trick which is eminently awesome (but grnted, does not qualify going by japan release). I’d also say Deus Ex HR, MK9, MVC3/UMVC3, KOF13, Skyrim, Rayman Origins, To The Moon are certainly notable (although I don’t like Skyrim) and probably some others I don’t care about but that are certainly worthy of note.
2011 is also the year Minecraft officially released, and that one’s likely the most notable of them all.
it wasn’t just 2008, the entire generation of xbox360/PS3/wii was just a protracted wet fart. there were a lot of neat, interesting, off the radar stuff that happened in that era, but even among those very few rise above “interesting experiment” territory. and outside of that there was this deep, frustrating stagnation in the mainstream/AAA realm that I still blame on the sudden, premature focus on mega-budget HD production.
like there are plenty of good games on this page, but at a glance it’s profoundly depressing:
I can’t think of anything released this year that was genuinely exciting and new, at least outside of niche genres. siren was terrific, order of ecclesia was a surprisingly deep and fun castlevania game after how cringe the series had gotten on the DS, and persona 4 was revelatory. but none of these did much to offset the bleak pallor of the HD era. the biggest games that year were MGS4 (widely regarded to be the worst of the series), GTA4 (which I mean… idk, I like it better than most other GTA games I guess?), brawl (also widely regarded to be the worst of the series), and spore (lol). outside of that it’s mostly unremarkable sequels to established franchises. am I missing anything?
and this was on the heels of the last days of the PS2/GC era, as well as the heyday of the DS, which showed such wild innovation and promise, and then suddenly it was just all gray-hued HD-era slogs, predictable sequels to long running franchises, and trifling novelty games on the wii. I really checked out in this era, and when I started gaming again around 2015, it only took like a few months to catch up on stuff I’d missed.
Yeah, I’d put the tailspin from 2003-20011, from the cementing of PS2 3D until the cracking open of digital distribution and new mobile. Left to a single retail outlet it just inevitably trends towards consolidation, scale, and reduced risk.
What do you mean ‘no surprise’ about Riccitiello? He certainly didn’t do a great job but it’s at least a better outlet for what EA should use its muscle for.
this is just it for me. I definitely enjoyed and may even still love a lot of games from that era, and maybe 2008 specifically (Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, I think…) but the best games were not enough to shift the impression I have that it was an era of singing high praise for very mediocre things. Like the bleakest thing I feel about that era is how stupid it feels to have been pleasantly surprised by Deus Ex Human Revolution enough that almost everyone just ignored that it was still really mediocre in the same ways that basically every big budget game was back then. When I think of that I feel like my past self was inhabited by something, or like I was clouded to the fact the relationship I was in was actually very bad and unsatisfying.
All you need to know about that time is that Borderlands was considered “fun” and “funny” and sold in 4 packs on Steam and the only social lubricant worse than alcohol
oh, just that the creative peak of the publisher was in the midst of a culture-wide stagnation, and that it is unsurprising that someone who reigned over games at that low point would collude with the american empire now
After all, the fecundity of imagination that EA exhibited could best be summed up by Dante’s Inferno: the Video-Game, now only remembered as that time EA marketing encouraged dudes to sexually harass women at cons.
