At least that’s what John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts, claimed at DICE summit, according to Game/Life: “Riccitiello said that while big players like EA will be able to ride out the recession, others will not—which will help to keep ‘junk’ off shelves, he said. ‘A lot of the riff-raff is going to go bankrupt,‘ he said.“

Riccitiello’s statement about the “big players like EA” and the rest, the “riff-raff”, seems to imply that small indie-producers are the omnium-gatherum of crap. I give it to Mr. Riccitiello, that there is a lot mediocrity in the market and that the current financial meltdown is a time of survival of the fittest, more than ever. But I beg to differ on his somewhat high nosed implication: during the past few years most of the innovation in games notably came from small-scale production houses (Braid, Okami, Portal, you name it).

A lot of original ideas might be put on the back-burner until the recovery of the global markets, while big players will be sticking to the tried and true. It’s sad to see a company loosing touch with its very own roots. Riccitiello would be well suited to remember the early eighties, when EA was still a small start-up going by the name of Amazin’ Software.

Soure: Wired’s Game/Life

There has been an interesting meme recently on how to fix the broken parts of most contemporary MMOs (grinding, accessibility, unfinished and buggy features, you name it).

First, Fidgit’s renowned Tom Chick covered his top five reasons why MMOs are broken with a roundhouse kick ranging from subscriptions fees to too static worlds, to problems with grouping. Answering Chick, Scott Jennings rebutted at Broken Toys that Chick generalizes problems which are mostly specific to WoW: “Tom Chick’s core problem: MMO = World of Warcraft… And you know, when one of the most influential game writers in the industry makes this mistake, and essentially writes a piece on “Why is World of Warcraft Like World of Warcraft?”, I think we have a problem bigger then aggro management.“
Trembling Hand’s Tim Dean then in reply suggested his top ten on how to fix the given situation, which lead Scott Jennings weighing in again on Tim’s article.

Given the long industry experience of the three parties, it’s a conversation really worth reading, don’t miss it.