Someone do me a favor and explain to this here idiot "Gorefiend" how a blog works! (please)

And, as far as EA taking over the market, well.... If they take the NBL (baseball, in case I screwed up the letters) they'll also take softball, probably.

And, i hope that EA gets creamed. I own one (1) game from them, The Return of the King, and it rather sucked. Not bad action, but WAY too short.

And, the very idea that they are trying to monopolize the market sucks! Truth is, taking the licenses WILL make everyone else suffer, for the exact reasons AerodynamicHair stated above. People would rather play as, say, the 49-ers than as the "San Andino 23-ers" even if they have the same exact stats, colors, ect.

Truly, this is facinating. EA is terrible at their business, yet they are awesome at business in general. They have taken every step to insure that they continue to rake in profits, regardless of the quality of their games. And, they know that, while we real gamers (I live in Ecuador. I know the difference. If you've never heard of "Final Fantasy," or don't enjoy anything but shallow shooters and sports games, you aren't a gamer here... I would guess in the states the bar would be a bit higher, but same difference.... ahem, anyways....) while we real gamers would try to boycott them, the "mainstream" "gamer" would gladly go out and buy the licensec game, merely because of the license. That is monopoly. According to the Microsoft anti-trust case, it is. And, according to me, it is.

And, yeah, give Gorefiend a hand, will ye? He's jus' a young laddy, but e'll be an ard' workin' lad for ye. A fine prentice' e'll make.

Nope, 'fraid not. Us 'hardcore' gamers still get left out in the cold by the dumb jock who likes Halo, unappreciated for everything we do for them.

And yes, I noticed a looooong time ago. EA isn't run by gamers. Its run by guys in suits who wouldn't touch a video game with a ten foot pole. Its run by businessmen who understand one thing: Supply and demand. Its that simple. People demand video games. So they supply them. "Uh oh. A competitor is providing an item that satisfies demand better than ours. We have two options. We can improve the quality of our item, though there is the risk that we will alienate some of our customers. Also we run the risk of being unable to do so. On the other hand, we can lower the quality of our competitor's product by taking away its appeal." They chose the second. Anti-Monopoly laws are intended to prevent that kind of thing from being possible. You can't do the second unless you have plenty of money to throw around. The problem is that it tends to shaft consumers. It wouldn't matter if Sega came out with the greatest football game ever if the mainstream gamer wanted the NFL lisence, they would buy it, Sega would be unable to continue to make the game, and consumers would suffer because of a lack of innovation. If the trend continues, we rewind to 1983 and the Video Game Crash.

What I meant by "the bar is a bit higher" was that they've heard of Final Fantasy. Perhaps even played one or two of them (*cough*VII*cough*) but they don't play them anymore, and don't associate themselves with the series as much as we do.

And, the only way to make a boycott successful is if we actually actively go out and picket on the streets, or something. Or, we could try to get a bunch of people to do some sort of comparison. Problem is, the first is easily misinterpreted for violence, and the second requires money. Money I'm sure none of us have. And, even if we all got together and pitched in, there would be trouble getting enough people in the same place to make it meaningful.

And, the only way to get this to work is to bring in the dumb jock who likes Halo. (hey! I like Halo!!!!!) Only "us," and the amount of sales lost would be meaningless. But, take out half their sales in the states (or possibly more!) and then we're talking. Unfortunately, I doubt we'd ever be able to reach that kind of impact....

Oh trust me...an entire generation of gamer, or at least the entire about 3-5 year span of the early to mid PSX lifespan, nearly all identify still with FFVII. Many of them (can't exactly say a percent) still claiming its their favorite game (because for many it was both their first RPG and first game). Although, thankfully, people are starting to admit they liked FFVIII (dispite it 'not being FFVII').

But anyway...that's not so much the topic. A boycott in modern America doesn't work unless 1) its for a REALLY obvious item 2) do malicious things to those who use it and 3) is backed by non-stop media coverage. Dispite many games, some of which are from EA I think, selling well dispite obvious and redicuous craptastic quality, they aren't going to not sell because there's just too many numbers of people who like the games. Even if suddenly half the people who usually buy 'Madden 99X 2 Version 348.9' didn't buy its sequel, they'd still be making more Madden games, just of an even less quality until the game hit that one game where it made little money. Because seriously, Madden could lose half its sales and still make a large impact on the market for number of software sales sold (just my opinion but yeah).

So, that's why we can't simply boycott EA and they are able to do the things they do. This ain't 1800s Pittsburg where one guy could pool a main newspaper and half a city (about 1 mil people) to boycott eating a type of bread or taking over a corrupt police system. This game is wagered over a world scale with literally multiple countires and close to a billion people who you have to consider will eventually have a passing glance at just 1 version of any Madden or the like EA game. The only way your going to get them to boycott....is to literally smear campaign EA itself. EA isn't going for quality or record sales, they're going with 'if we make the MOST amount of games, we have the most amount of chance a random person will buy one of our games off the shelf, like the series, and come buy the next version we release in 6 months'. Hence the buying more and more companies....less competition means more shelf space and production crews for games made with EAs logo (and more importantly cash going to them). So, in my opinion, dispite my still not buying EA games, boycotting EA games isn't gonna work.

Although if someday they come out with nothing buy crap games within a couple year span, people might get the picture and give up. We can only hope....

Actually, at least here in Latin America, Madden doesn't sell very well. It's FIFA and skating games that everyone wants. So, that brings the figure down by, maybe a million.... Boycotting Madden (relatively) is easy, boycotting EA is where your problems come in. And, yes, it would be impossible for us to do that. For several reasons which you stated quite clearly.

And, trust me, I know of those fanboys.... It's the ones who have actually gone back and played FF4, 5, or 6 (which really DOES beat the hell out of 7) that count as identifying themselves with the series. Bonus points for those who have played the NES ones. (I'm plowing through FF3j, for example.)

And, thats where my other post comes in. EA could have been IP (Insurance Policies) and succeeded. They are filled with smart businessmen, who might know a little about gaming. (by a little, I mean enough to know that there are casual gamers and hardcore gamers, and that there are more casual than hardcore). They are smart at laws (how do they get away with monopoly?) and at business, but not at games or at ethics. Look at their crap games. The difference between FIFA 2002 and FIFA 2003 is a slight tweak in the controls (maybe, as yet to be confirmed) and the graphics. And, different little prize thingys. And, look at their ethics. They mistreat their employees, and give them no compensation. Sure, it's "legal", but is it right? It's obvious these guys either cheated through, or failed Ethics.

And, a I'll repeat the plea... Look at this poor kid, Gorefiend. He doesn't even know what a blog IS! Someone pity him and (quiclky) teach him a thing or two. Please? At least the "extremely short and almost horribly useless" version?

Blog - Online journal of sorts where you can rant to people about your problems. If Foamy put one of his "Foamy's Rants" into a worded format it'd count as a blog.

I was more on the question "Ok, so I'm at this Blog.... what do I do now? Where do I click? How does this work?" But, thanks to those who have PM'd me (thanks, you two) and to you, Mirai.

And, I will attempt (pathetically) to stay on topic with a small statement:

I hope EA doesn't get the License to FIFA.... Then, we'll be really screwed. (I think that game sells more than Madden, worldwide, that is) Has it? Oh God, I hope not.

( Note: this is not intended as a bump, I'm merely replying to this since it's less than 2 weeks old and I was directed here through a link )

There's only 2 games that EA has made that I thoroughly enjoy. SSX3 and The Battle for Middle Earth, the new LoTR RPG. Aside from that, EA can take their NFL Blitz games and shove it up their asses. Halo 2 is -not- an EA product, but a Bungie and Microsoft game and really Microsoft's only big release in the past year when you look at the grand scheme of gaming.

I wouldn't worry about EA too much, though. When they actually get to the point where they're ranking in the top 5 or 10 they'll begin to realize that they aren't dealing with tiny companies that they can easily own. NO ONE dares to mess with Nintendo or Square Enix. Why? Because they'll crush you and make it look like the entire ordeal was your fault. Why can they do this? Because we all love Zelda, Final Fantasy, and nearly everyone with a game system the world over could name off 10 games that are a result of Nintendo or Square Enix. EA will begin to see that they can't pull this shit when they actually are up to ranking in games and, if they do, they'll be eaten alive. I know companies like Sony and Microsoft are monopolizing and squeak by quite a few laws, but look at the bright side... if either of them would eat EA alive, better for us! Mwahahahahaha!!!!

There are still high-quality Soccer/Football (Whichever you'd like to call it) games that don't use the FIFA license. The Winning Eleven/Pro Evolution series is widely regarded as the superior title for it's genre, and doesn't use any licenses or player likenesses at all.

Granted, I'm sure FIFA is still the better seller by a wide margin due to better marketing and brand recognition But the point remains that even if EA does secure an exclusive for that, there is still a better alternative. Just hope that Konami can bring in a consistent profit on the title to justify localizing the game every year, and you'll be OK.

Unfortunately, in the case of the NFL I think the genre as a game is too deeply established for a dev/publisher to try and compete and hope to at least break even if they were to go the 'reasonable facsimile' route.

On the up-side, Take-Two (I think) scored an exclusive third-party license to the MLB, which will be somewhat of a blow to EA. Of course, it's not going to sink their collective ship by a longshot, but it does take away from them. Of course, I thought EA's MVP Baseball was fantastic and didn't particularly care for ESPN's, but it does eliminate All-Star from the shelves after next season, and the less Jeter there is out there, the better.

But once again, that doesn't guarantee anything for them; Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are still free to release officially licensed MLB games if they choose. Though this is unlikely considering Sony/989 isn't actively developing due to the fact that since PS2 came out, they haven't made a single good sports title, Nintendo has never internally released a licensed sports game, and MS is basically in the same boat as Sony (Though they do have the High Heat license to bank on... which also sucked when it still existed).

NFL Blitz is not a series by EA. The Blitz series is made by Midway. EA makes the Madden football games. Just a little clarification.