Tag Archives: EA Sports

Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E15.

A later than usual post. Hadn’t gotten around to actually watching CheckPoint until my lunch break, today. Another post coming this evening regarding some esports business news.

  • Of course all we’ll be talking about is GTA V. This is expected.
  • That opening is excellent, Graham. Kathleen’s troll is effective, though.
  • Wii U game? PASS.
  • Man, the Ouya news is something I could just care less about. Sure, they’re pretty new at the whole Android-based console world thing, but at least they’ve fixed the mistake and it only took three bad eggs to spoil what could’ve been a massively abused loophole in indie-game funding. Even so, I still can’t bring myself to spend any more time on an Android console than I already do. It’s called my Nexus 4. It also doubles as a phone. It’s pretty damn impressive, if I’m honest.
  • I’ve used the iFruit app on my iPad at home and I have to say, it’s definitely a fun little toy. It’s also nice to have cars ordered for you that are already upgraded and appear without the whole difficulty of finding a decent car to steal and spending time and money liberating it and upgrading it in the game. Once you’ve done it for each character, however, that part of the functionality ceases to be useful. Chop makes up for this shortfall, even though the minigames you play with the dog to increase his skill are a bit hectic and not very smooth.
  • Atlas is bailed out by Sega. I’m with Kathleen on this one: Sega’s history points towards destroying most franchises it absorbs by mashing them up with each other. I hope they let Atlas keep making RPGs.
  • “Madden games: I may not play you, but I respect you.” It’s too bad all of that attention to detail couldn’t be put towards other EA titles.
  • Kathleen and knives? It’s Paul’s fault. I can accept that.
  • SimCity is still trying rip players off? Oh Maxis. How far you have fallen.

Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E6.

  • Steam sale joke warranted. That sale is bananas.
  • ComicCon jokes!
  • Ditching the stretch goal trend is probably a good move. With the indie gaming scene being stung by the recent Double FIne failures and promise-going-back-ons (LOL, I know that’s not a real word) it’s a breath of fresh air that at least some developers are not simply trying to illicit more money by dangling the carrot of more potential awesomeness for their games. The pause on the end of this clip after realizing that ‘raising too much money’ sounded silly to say is appropriate at the same time.
  • Sony’s steps taken to appease the indie gaming scene is landing them some positive support going into the upcoming Console Holiday Season of Hyperbole 2013. So much so that they’ve decided to take what Apple has learned from their successful App Store and package it in a way that makes sense for the upcoming PS4 audience. The phrase “objective quality” shouldn’t be something that scares away any developers of games that are unique creations or mechanically sound recreations–just the developers of the countless copycats that have ruined what made the XBLA the prime deployment for console-based indie games. Apple and XBLA both have their own share of Minecraft ripoffs as well as anything that you could imagine, so I hope that Sony’s threat to the ripoff-genre style of games is something that they come through on. It’d be nice to see a PS4 store devoid of developers riffing on each other for the sake of making money.
  • NHL 2014’s nod to its predecessor NHL ’94 for the SNES is a welcome sign that supports the claim that EA Sports isn’t a completely terrible studio and that they still have some developers that aren’t completely sold out to the new style of corporate whoring that has taken over the rest of EA’s publishing houses. Now, if only NHL 2014’s ’94 Mode could overtake the amount of people playing Wii Sports in the same splitscreen / turn-taking scenario of multiplayer gaming, there’d actually be something to notice, here.
  • Steam’s Summer Sale is basically one huge psychological trick to get customers to buy more games. This is obvious. Moving on…
  • The Power Glove documentary. PASS.
  • All of those puns are awful. I laughed. A little.
  • More Street Pass games? Isn’t the problem with the entire idea of Street Pass is that the console needs to be ubiquitous for it to actually have enough users that perhaps two might cross paths at some point in their lives?

Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E2.

  • Graham is totally Canadian. That’s not the worst thing ever, but it’s apparent in the opening splash.
  • Kathleen’s takedown of EA Sports’ Ignite engine missing the PC market is pretty well summed up. EA, of course, is oblivious to the sports titles that fall under the genre of simulations rather than sports titles such as Football Manager. Also, the FIFA franchise was a PC title as well, right?
  • DayZ ripoff couldn’t secure a trademark for its horrible, horrible game so they’ve renamed it? Why not just throw in the towel at the same time? Graham realizes the truth: that this was the whole point of the game and they should really give up at the same time. JUST STOP.
  • An iPad game that skirts past the censor as a ‘spiritual’ orgasm simulator. Seriously. I felt bad hearing that sentence Kathleen.
  • Prey 2 absent from E3. Bethesda has barred it from releasing any news because it’s just not ‘up to snuff’ according to Graham. I wish it were. There are a lot of folks that I know of who would be purchasing a Prey 2 day-one sight-unseen because of the experience they had with the first title.
  • Vlambeer is sick of getting their games ripped off in a medium where games are ripped off on a normal basis, so they’re livestreaming development of the title. You can watch over a guy code over his shoulder so you can have the satisfaction that the mobile development company thought of a game first before it was ripped off. But when they make higher quality games than their competitors, aren’t they going to win anyway? Kathleen seems about as excited about it as I am.
  • Don Mattrick is a moron, but he did announce the Xbox 180, where the Xbox One’s ‘groundbreaking’ DRM and feature set were being removed in favor of retaining the current model of disc-based games. Graham points out that MSFT’s lack of communication is what started the whole mess and that going back on its word hasn’t changed the fact that MSFT’s communication, led by Don Morontrick, is still not as clear as it should be.
  • Kathleen brings up Sony’s ruined, pending and probably already shot viral video campaign that basically demeans the Xbox One’s DRM restrictions as a reason to consider a PlayStation 4. But with a required bundled Kinect, there’s still the sticking point that will drive some consumers to the PS4 over the Xbox One. And the price, too.
  • Free-to-play fighting game with premium character selection sounds like the worst thing ever. I wish the Killer Instinct reboot wouldn’t exist if I had to pay multiples of dollars for a character like Riptor. (Seriously, though: Fulgore it where it’s at.)