MESSAGES IN BOTTLES [Author: Lum the Mad]

The OSI one is on Fuckedcompany.com, in response to a recent EA.com rumor, from someone who was obviously pretty high up the OSI food chain at one point:

quote:


Originally posted by aimfire:

Good! The guys that work at EA.com are fucking ASSHOLES! I know a few of them there and they are backstabbing, ego-headed fucks. I hope they sink big time, how the hell can they fuck things up when they had the biggest online gaming deal of all time with AOL?? Asswipes.


Having worked with EA/OSI for 2 years (beginning right after UO’s release) I can offer the following observation in agreement of the above:

The ‘powers that be’ at OSI and EA literally stumbled into the online gaming biz with UO. Thus the eventual desire by EA to cash in on the phenomena. Ergo, EA.com

Problem was, there was/is a serious NIH (not invented here) syndrome present at EA/OSI. Senior OSI/EA mgrs/execs felt that (due to the accidental success of UO) they must therefore know everything about the online gaming biz. Thus despite years of previous online gaming experience (in a professional capacity, which is why I was hired) my ability to help steer EA/OSI online gaming efforts continually fell on deaf ears.

Granted, there were some good ideas here and there but generally time after time EA/OSI would try to institute/impliment some of the most dumbass things I’ve ever encountered in my entire professional online gaming career.

As the above suggests, this is/was exacerbated by the political ‘backstabbing’ environment within EA. If you weren’t political you simply didn’t survive (my fate). And however diplomatic & professional, god forbid anyone raising an issue, questioning the validity of any ideas by a Director or above.

Thus EA.com’s future looking rocky doesn’t surprise me one whit. As they say, the ‘proof is in the pudding’. Look at previous attempts to expand their online gaming presence (AOL, Janes World War). Heck, they can’t even get a peer to peer lobby service working/running.

EA (et al) has not had ONE online gaming success since UO… and even THAT was purely by accident!

Moving on from OSI’s past to Dawn’s future, we have this bit of soul-searching from the now seemingly forgotten members of the Collective of True Believers:

As much as I hope that you are wrong in your opinion Qwerty, I do agree that Glitchless’ strict refusal to offer any kind of reasurrance that they are actually making a game, even to those of us who have been registered in the forums and been supporting their efforts and arguing for Dawn and its validity, it is slowly becoming frustrating that they do not provide any more info or screenshots or for that matter anything else…

That said I still think you’re wrong, I think the game and company is legit, although wheather they succeed in creating the game they have promised still remains to be seen…

Believe me, I would love to be wrong. I have tried to appraoch Glitchless in a professional manner, treat them just like I would any other game designer.

They have repeatedly acted in an unprofessional manner, however. The idea of censoring threads and banning users is childish.

Yes maybe it is wishfull thinking on the part of me and many others. But this game failing or turning out to be a hoax or whatever will not be a waste for me at least, I am involved in a clan that has many great ppl in it and I have become good friends with many of them.

We have also discussed on the subject of this turning out to be fake and we have decided simply to move the clan to a different game. We havent really decided which one as that would be most likely a clan vote and only our leaders have chatted about moving the clan but nonetheless I know that most of the clan will go with us to a new game.

So i am not really worried about the possibility of this being a hoax or not working out, I check the boards regularly and interact with my clansmates and I take Dawn in strides. It is just a game.