EA Retires Stick, Tries Carrot

Online functionality, not oppressive disc-based DRM is the way forward for EA.

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By John Gillooly on 24 June, 2009

Considering the massive outcry over the piracy rates of Spore, it seemed strange that little was made of The Sims 3 hitting torrent sites weeks before its launch. It now appears that this leak was almost expected, with the meat of the game designed to be delivered through downloadable content at launch.

Speaking to website IndustryGamers, EA CEO John Riccitiello dismissed the leak as a demo version. This doesn’t mean it was leaked by EA – rather, it refers to how the boxed game is a platform of sorts, with day one downloads including a second city and other additions to the game. He then goes on to mention that this tight integration with downloadable content will be increasingly common moving forward.

While the reality is that piracy will still damage sales of the game at retail, the real success of The Sims franchise has come through the loyal fans who buy expansion pack after expansion pack. By moving this online, EA keeps the audience that makes it money and doesn’t need to rely on boxed copy sales. This model also assumes that frustration with the limited scope of the version of Sims 3 found in file sharing circles will drive people to buy the game to get the extra content.

This model may well work with a game targeted at the non-hardcore (and that one mate of mine who bought the Collector’s Edition for the in-game BMW), but will it work with a more savvy audience? The downloadable content is already floating around pirate land – but for once, the pirated content is more inconvenient to access than it is through official channels.

In the interview, Riccitiello mentions the inclusion of this philosophy to games like Madden and Fifa. These both fall into a similar realm to The Sims, with an audience not only more mainstream, but also attuned to having to buy the same game every year to get stat updates. The only hardcore-targeted game is BioWare’s Dragon Age. EA expects big things from this dark and epic fantasy role-playing game, even though all the footage released to date looks incredibly generic. The constant focus on bonking and the Marilyn Manson soundtrack only add to the sense of dread.

The audience, however, is that core BioWare fan base – the ones who hold up Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights as icons of the role-playing game genre. These people are usually a lot more savvy, and single-player downloadable content is a much less reliable stream of revenue. There is definitely a core user base that already pay for Neverwinter Nights content, and there will likely be a focus on nurturing a mod community for Dragon Age. However, this comprises a relatively poor segment of the gaming audience, and unless the game is spectacular, the approach of adding value through online components will be less appealing than a game like The Sims.

While this all remains untested, it is interesting to watch EA adapt as a company to the issues of the past. It is great to see the company actually support the PC as a platform, and aggressively try new (for EA, at least) business models. Aside from this approach, there is also the free-to-play Battlefield Heroes coming ever closer to release – and EA is yet to talk about the revenue model for Star Wars: The Old Republic, although this is one of the few massively multiplayer games that could still get away with a subscription model.

It is nice to see solutions being designed to reward customers rather than punish them, as has been the case in the past.

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