EA not interested in SP-only games

EA's President: “I have not green lit one game to be developed as a single player experience."

Speaking in a Q&A as part of the Cloud Gaming USA conference (via Superannuation), which takes place later this month, Gibeau said the strides EA has mace in “creating a platform that connects consumers across multiple devices,” allows the firm to provide a better experience for players as the firm pushes for a connected experience with all of its titles.

“We are very proud of the way EA evolved with consumers,” said Gibeau. “I have not green lit one game to be developed as a single player experience. Today, all of our games include online applications and digital services that make them live 24/7/365.

“For all the investments we’ve made in mobile and social, we never abandoned consoles. We are working closely with the console manufacturers and we are very excited about the Gen4 consoles that will be launched in the months and years ahead.”

You can read Gibeau’s entire thoughts on Cloud Gaming and more through the online PDF brochure here.

The 2nd Annual Cloud Gaming USA Conference & Expo takes place in San Francisco, next week, September 11-12..

Speakers include Gibeau, as well as Chris Early, Ubisoft – VP of Digital Publishing, Jason Holtman, Valve – Director of Business Development, and Carsten van Husen, GameForge 4D – CEO.

Well, that's it then. Pack it up guys. No more Mirror's Edge 2 :(

Faith, you're going to have to some other publisher that isn't a massive dick. Maybe try Square Enix?

I mean, this sounds like a joke. It's insane. What happened to that John Riccitiello guy who funded Dead Space and Mirror's Edge? If this is actually true, going forward?

Fuck EA.

I don't have fast Internet at my house, so most games I play are ssp. ThIs sucks.

And the servers for the games will be shut down 6 months later rendering them useless. Way to go EA!

That sounds familiar... http://kotaku.com/5795355/valve-probably-done-with-single+player-games (April 25th, 2011)

And this is why EA was voted worst company in the US

Mirrors Edge multiplayer sounds cool

I always felt Mirror's Edge would be a fantastic multiplayer game. Races, chases, and I wish I had more words that rhymed. Maybe I'm missing something, but adding multiplayer and dropping the shooting mechanics seems like it would make a potential sequel infinitely better. That said, I probably wouldn't buy it anyway considering it'd definitely require Origin on PC and not having to deal with Origin means more to me than any game.

I think this just means that there's going to be more tacked on multiplayer modes. I'm sure there will be some sort of deathmatch in Mirror's Edge 2...

Fantastic... that means I can expect some awful tacked on multiplayer feature for Dragon Age III? Fuuuuck that.

I mean, maybe I'm over-reacting, this just means they'll still green-light SP games that'll have some online leaderboards, right? Mirror's Edge had them, that's all that's needed to be green-lit?

Right?

Can someone calm me down?

Mirror's Edge 2 is still a dead dream, y'all.

That said, expect the developers there to still keep making great single player experiences because that is what most of them do well. EA has an army of quality single player devs, and one or two quality multiplayer devs.

I'm going to assume they just mean what they said last time. More modes that have you constantly competing with your friends Like NFS, SSX etc... That kind of stuff would be perfect for Mirrors Edge.

EA has been going this way for years. It's nothing new. 
 
I have always thought it was ridiculous. It's fine to make multiplayer and single player focused games, but to just focus on multiplayer feels narrow minded. There are still people who cant play online and people who dont want to (with good reason). It's always been incredibly weird to me they want to force it on players. I mean ya i like the occasional multiplayer game, but sometime I want a more focused game then that. 
 
Doesn't matter, we'll still get good games. They'll just come from other places.  The world is changing, doesn't bother me. It's not like video games are disappearing altogether.
 
@TeflonBilly: Um... no. It didn't have anything to do with this. That was solely due to the reaction to ME3's ending.

@TeflonBilly said:

And this is why EA was voted worst company in the US

The "worst company in the US" thing is obviously hyperbolic and crazy, but every time I play an EA game from the past couple of years, it becomes obvious why people seem to hate them more than they have ever hated them before.

Fuck Valve too then since they said the exact same thing. Mirror's Edge kinda sucks so I'm not sad that their probably won't be a sequel so yeah. Let's try not to rag on EA so much.

@Demoskinos said:

Fantastic... that means I can expect some awful tacked on multiplayer feature for Dragon Age III? Fuuuuck that.

Exactly what came to my mind. It's probably the only game left that I am interesting in published by EA.

Oh, I didn't know a Mirror's Edge clone was on Steam Greenlight?!

You guys might be interested to know that Mirror's Edge originally had multiplayer. One team played the runners while the other team played runner-cops. The runners scored/won by getting their packages to the destination given, and each level would essentially be a big urban sandbox for jumping around and circling back on yourself and whatnot. It was mentioned in the first Edge cover feature of the game, but I guess it got canned for whatever reason. It sounded kind of fun.

Gen4? Aren't we heading into Gen 8?

@EuanDewar said:

Mirrors Edge multiplayer sounds cool

I was going to say this. Mirrors Edge was amazing, but that was because of its mechanics mostly. The story was garbage. Adding in multi would be one of my big suggestions. I'm very tired of multiplayer shooters but this would be something that I could get into.

Rather than say, one side is runners and the other are guys with guns trying to take them down though, I would love to see straight up races (a no brainer) but also a competitive mode with say, 6 players, where AI were playing the role of the guys trying to hunt you down, like in the campaign, and there would be objectives each team of 3 had to achieve while both being hunted by the AI. That way no one is just playing a shooter, because that's not the point of Mirrors Edge.

I don't think this is that big of a deal.

...what? Sue me. Aside from Dragon Age (which the guy saying that seems to have forgotten about), EA has produced a whole lot of good games that have multiplayer. Even Dead Space 2's multiplayer wasn't that bad and its single player campaign was fucking great.

Most games have multiplayer these days and, really, most games in the past have had multiplayer.

@PenguinDust: Numbering generations is dumb in the first place. Some people start from PS1/N64/Saturn I think, whereas other start at Coleco Telstar/Magnavox Odyssey

Most of my time has revolved around SP gaming for the past recent years. Before I graduated college, I was either in the dorms, or for a good while in the house I loved in, the wireless signal was not as good in my bedroom, and instead of trying to get up some access points, I didn't care a ton, and played just about all single-player games most of the time. And now still going into the real world, I got rid of Xbox Live! awhile ago, and now sparsely play PC and PS3 games online due to time constraints, and ease. It is way easier to jump into a single-player game save at a give time in the week for an hour than and master some online mode in that same hour or two.

@Rapid said:

@Demoskinos said:

Fantastic... that means I can expect some awful tacked on multiplayer feature for Dragon Age III? Fuuuuck that.

Exactly what came to my mind. It's probably the only game left that I am interesting in published by EA.

An online co-op mode from an old school style RPG from Bioware? You realize they have done it before EA right?

@Mr_Skeleton Yes but after DA2 I want them to focus on improving the single player content. better quest content and a well put together ending to end the trilogy. I rather have that than a multi player mode I won't play after 2.months =/

@Rapid: Me and my friends will play the hell out of a co-op DA, I guess it comes down to taste but what I'm saying adding multyplayer doesn't mean it will be bad and anyway usually different teams work on SP and MP.

wow sounds stupid. all games don't need multiplayer.

EA isn't the only one who publishes or develops games. Furthermore, they have to make a return on the investment in making a game. They don't have Faith that Mirror's Edge 2 would sell well so why bother? Though a Mirror's Edge game with Mulitplayer would be sweet. Races and deathmatch with the jumping and crappy hand to hand fighting would be entertaining.

@GenocidalKitten said:

The idea that the masses want strictly multiplayer games is just stupid. Look at Skyrim that sold really well and was single player .

I don't think EA's president should be proud of anything, Mass Effect 3's multiplayer isn't what made it successful.

Yeah but It extended the life of the game. Multiplayer gives people a reason (less so if it's poor multiplayer) for people to keep playing after they beat the game. If anything this is just another way to combat both pirated games and used games. If you want to play MP, you have to buy the game, and if it has MP, people are less likely to trade it in, which means more new copies sold.

I wouldnt mind this if EA wasnt always shutting down servers.

Guys, I don't mean to blow your mind with something revolutionary but you can play the single player without playing the multiplayer. I just did it with Spec Ops: The Line, it's possible.

Guys, I don't mean to blow your mind with something revolutionary but you can play the single player without playing the multiplayer. I just did it with Spec Ops: The Line, it's possible.

Why does Mirror's Edge 2 have to be single player only?

@Demoskinos said:

Fantastic... that means I can expect some awful tacked on multiplayer feature for Dragon Age III? Fuuuuck that.

Yeah, because if there was ever a problem that hurt Dragon Age II, it was the lack of multiplayer.

@Willin said:

Guys, I don't mean to blow your mind with something revolutionary but you can play the single player without playing the multiplayer. I just did it with Spec Ops: The Line, it's possible.

And yet even the lead developer hated that shit and thought it reflected badly on the game's tone and opinion of the game.

@Mr_Skeleton said:

@Rapid said:

@Demoskinos said:

Fantastic... that means I can expect some awful tacked on multiplayer feature for Dragon Age III? Fuuuuck that.

Exactly what came to my mind. It's probably the only game left that I am interesting in published by EA.

An online co-op mode from an old school style RPG from Bioware? You realize they have done it before EA right?

Baldur's Gate? Man, the multiplayer in that game was a pain in the ass.

I wish Bioware made a RPG based on a popular D&D realm. Where one player could be a DM and the other players played PCs. The campaign creator would have to be highly flexible and easy to use. Tile based maps that would load instantly... highly scriptable language... easy to create dialogue trees. Hell, it could even run off Gamespy, I'm sure there'd be people playing it for over a decade!

The icon you have for your avatar? That'd make an -awesome- logo for it.

@PenguinDust said:

Gen4? Aren't we heading into Gen 8?

They reboot every franchise they have every 2 years, you're really surprised they're rebooting THE ENTIRE MEDIUM?

As long as they completely get rid of the SP from Battlefield and focus entirely on the multiplayer, that's something I could get behind.

@Hailinel said:

@Demoskinos said:

Fantastic... that means I can expect some awful tacked on multiplayer feature for Dragon Age III? Fuuuuck that.

Yeah, because if there was ever a problem that hurt Dragon Age II, it was the lack of multiplayer.

Hey, Dragon Age 2 wasn't by far up to what Origins was but I still loved my time with the game. Seeing as they've been polling fans for weeks on the Bioware forums for months about different issues I think Dragon Age 2 was a good learning experience for them and I think they are assuredly taking Dragon Age III seriously.

@Demoskinos said:

@Hailinel said:

@Demoskinos said:

Fantastic... that means I can expect some awful tacked on multiplayer feature for Dragon Age III? Fuuuuck that.

Yeah, because if there was ever a problem that hurt Dragon Age II, it was the lack of multiplayer.

Hey, Dragon Age 2 wasn't by far up to what Origins was but I still loved my time with the game. Seeing as they've been polling fans for weeks on the Bioware forums for months about different issues I think Dragon Age 2 was a good learning experience for them and I think they are assuredly taking Dragon Age III seriously.

Yeah, that'll turn out well for them.

Every person who liked their good games left after Dragon Age 2. The odd few stragglers who deluded themselves into thinking "everybody just gets one bad one!" abandoned them after Mass Effect 3. The only people left are furries and shippers.

I think people are twisting what he means. To me it looks like he's trying to say that they're tying games into an online service where you can constantly be online competing be it in multiplayer or Autolog style leaderboards and he's touting the fact that all the games he's signed off for release have featured one of these ideas so far and he's backing it as a value proposition.

But don't let me stop your knee's jerking.

All this means is that most of EA's games will have an online component, which is not even a change from what they've been doing.

I'm pretty sure EA has stated this already in the past but this one sounds like it almost seals the deal.

@Freshbandito said:

I think people are twisting what he means. To me it looks like he's trying to say that they're tying games into an online service where you can constantly be online competing be it in multiplayer or Autolog style leaderboards and he's touting the fact that all the games he's signed off for release have featured one of these ideas so far and he's backing it as a value proposition.

But don't let me stop your knee's jerking.

This. The thread title clearly caught a few peoples attention.

I think people are twisting what he means. To me it looks like he's trying to say that they're tying games into an online service where you can constantly be online competing be it in multiplayer or Autolog style leaderboards and he's touting the fact that all the games he's signed off for release have featured one of these ideas so far and he's backing it as a value proposition.

But don't let me stop your knee's jerking.

@AssInAss: The first Mirror's Edge had significant social ties in the way that leaderboards work. Plus, there are interesting things they could do with multiplayer in that game. Hell, I'd be happy with a head to head race mode.

Well I hope they don't give up on SP altogether, Alice Madness Returns was pretty decent. I suppose it helps having the original designer onboard for that one.

Oh well.

@ZeForgotten: Good point, let's get up on that wagon :D