Brotherhood. Unity. EA?

[Renegade]

As I am away from monday to friday, I have made it a habit over the last few months to at least browse Planet CnC and PPM once at weekends, to stay more or less up to date with what happens in the community.

Half an hour ago, through PPM's news, I was directed to several EA-related articles and Aaron Kaufman's consecutive reply to them. To cut it short, the crap I had to read of him installed an undefeatable urge to voice my opinion in me, and since I have the right tools at hand, why not do it? (The issue I am relating to is pretty well summed up in the first two posts here.)



Basically, what ticked me off was Aaron's hypocritical attitude along the lines of "Don't you see how much we do for the community. You're really not helping here!"

Hey Kaufman. FUCK YOU.

Let's take a look at one of the paragraphs:

I've spent the past year working relentlessly on both communities. I got this community two Zero Hour patches, an exclusive portal thru XWIS to have a community safe haven to play the old Westwood games online, community leader support to celebrate the 10th anniversay, and overall, as much interaction with the C&C community leaders as possible. It is not an easy task and managing my e-mail box is an even bigger challenge.

Hey, newsflash: The community is a little older than one year!
Let's see what your great gifts are:
-Two Zero Hour patches: So, you were the ones to fuck up the game in the first place, making patches necessary, and you actually made sure this sorry excuse for a mis-branded RTS lasts a little longer. And you want us to be happy about it?
-XWIS: Yeah! Right! You got us XWIS! MY ASS. EA were ones leaving WOL as a dead pile of shit, and all you did was the same you did to get a map editor: Wait until the community solves the problem and then take over. All you and EA did was point servserv.westwood.com to a different IP, and add serial number recognition to the server. Oh what great effort you put into us.
-"community leader support to celebrate the 10th anniversay": In other words: You abused the larger sites as a marketing vehicle for the greatest hits album. Yeah, I can see your community support in that.

Oh, and last but not least, my favorite statement: "as much interaction with the C&C community leaders as possible". Uh-huh. Would you kindly tell me what exactly a person qualifies as a "community leader"? I sure as hell don't remember an election around here, and I sure as hell don't see a C&C embassy in EALAnd, either. Truth is: You bought the webmasters with enough following to help your cause. Nothing else.

You also mention how "C&C:TFD is something many many fans are looking forward to."
Interesting. I have yet to meet one of them. What, again, was The First Decade? All the games I have already in a new box, with the C&C's mercilessly thrown together with the retarded eye candy?
You boasted about how you got "us" (really: The Fellowship of the Fakes) two Zero Hour patches, and how it shows your dedication. If that's you serving the community, then explain why I have to buy a bunch of useless games, just to get XP-patched versions of the masterpieces.
And explain why you love the community enough to get those ZH patches, and enough to patch the old stuff for XP, but hate us, the dedicated following of the real line of C&C RTSs that much, that you ignore our desperate tries to patch this game ourselves with our limited possibilities, and just put in plain, old RA2/YR again? Where is your love there?

[Insert several unfinished lines of thought here]


Now, let's look at the object of interest.
What we have:
INI Guide / ModEnc
XCC Tools
RA2StrEdit
SHP Editors
Voxel Editors
3dsmax plugins
Final Alert /2
XWIS
Rock Patch
Terrain Expansion
UMP
Modding Tutorials
Community Forums
Community News Sites
etc., etc.

Now, tell me, Aaron Kaufman: Where is EA's hand in that picture? There is nothing in it created by EA. Nothing. As mentioned, you took up FA and XWIS after you saw that you could "give" the community what it wanted for cheap by getting involved, but fact is, your contribution is close to nothing. Fact is, Final Alert's developement has grinded to a halt ever since "you" released FA2. One act of defiance with the unofficial patch, and that's it. Thanks a lot, EA. You really helped us there.

And now, after this entire community rose and fell without EA's help, now you come. Send packages. Suck up to the last few surviving webmasters. Tell us how EA loves us. The interesting question is...why?

Wild guess: Marketing reasons. Face it, people: There are two key factors in computer game marketing: Gaming magazines, and communities. No doubt EA has enough financial power to ensure good ratings in the magazines, but in order to get people to buy rather than to burn, they need us. People who have been with the series for long enough to support it by buying, and who are enthusiastic enough about the game to convince their friends to get it.
Now, honestly: Can you imagine the standard YR modder telling a friend "Yeah, that's the new Electronic Arts RTS. It's soooo cool dude, you definately have to get it!". No. And you know why? Because a) EA RTS's aren't "cool". They're either the same thing phrased differently (Engine + C&C-Sticker == Generals, Engine + LotR License == BfME, BfME + Patches == BfME2), or just a plain insult to the community (YR to a small extend, Generals in all it's glory).

Now imagine what a marketing departement would do to you if you told them that all their fancy C&C and LotR licenses were useless, because the community hates them. Hating people don't buy. They sail the seven seas, perhaps, but they don't leave money on your dresser.
They tell you to fix it. FAST.
So you go out all Mastermind ("Let's make some friends!") and tell the people what they want to hear - "We love you! We support you!", while, like Napoleon in Animal Farm, you just use other people's ideas and save support through cheap gifts.

-----------------------

I could sure expand this post by another ten paragraphs, but in about an hour, I have to leave again - army calls ?_?
So, I guess you get the basic idea. Make up your mind people. When EA does things "for" us, always ask yourself one thing: What are they getting out of it? That may sound paranoid and hostile, but truth is: If they loved us that much, they wouldn't have completely ignored us for years.

Zero Hour patches - gift of love or bugfixes that shouldn't be necessary in the first place?
XWIS support - attempt to save online play or cheap way to give the community what it wants and impose serial checks and corporate control on them?
The First Decade - their way of showing their love to the series, or just a best of album while we're still waiting for Tiberian Twilight?


A box of merchandising is peanuts for EA. Don't let 30 mousepads make you forget the past few years.

[DCoder]

I don't think Kaufman is the one to blame here... Whatever he did, it's still better than what Delphi gave us.

[C&C_is_my_way_of_life]

RIGHT ON :clap: EA sux ive been sayin tht for years but youve finally said it in words i could never say it in i thank you very much
first it was redalert 2, YR that went downhill cuz EA had to interact n get westwood out of the picture which really made it go downhill but what i dont get is why dont they leave well enough alone seriously they only interact when the community (the little peons in thier eyes) comes up with something good that they can take n reproduce making us think that theyre doin us good
then renegade they got rid of westwood n left them to die n got XWIS O YAY XWIS fuck them! they cant leave well enough alone n have to get rid of something good n make it look as they are doing us a big favor when they really arent
EA is good n all but they really have a nack of fuckin up our C&C games

[Whiteboy]

Though I don't blame Kaufman (he's just a guy doing his job), I will always hate EA, and not just because of the reasons Ren mentioned here.

[Banshee]

Hmm... nice discussion here. As Renegade said, and I agree, all EA moves were for business purposes only.

A lesson I've learnt with PPM is that what makes the community is the community.

So, it's natural that the community, once developped, becomes much more creative than the game developpers.

- Community made XWIS, EA made it official by adding the legal crap, paying the servers, redirecting WOL traffic and serial number check (although this one existed before EA touch their fingers there, but it became more developped with EA). Of course, it comes with a price. Since traffic is much higher now, the server is slow and people are starting to use Hamachi and other alternatives now.

- EA used community sites and events to promote the First Decade. I admit that, as webmaster, I kinda had the feeling that I was used with this event (and I really was, lol... although no one was more used there than CNC King and Sonic, from CNCNZ who organized everything), but all webmasters who participated from that event were bought with an uber EA gift pack box to provide prizes for their contests. It was a win win situation, although EA won much more than anyone else.


- I'm not looking foward to The First Decade package. Maybe that will bring more visitors for PPM, but I see nothing new there. Even the fact that these games will now run with XP... I have XP here and I run everything with no problems at all. And.. they say it comes with some extra 'making of' or 'fan goodies' at the DVD, but... we've probably seen much more in the community sites than we'll ever see there. The only thing that makes me think about the possibility of maybe buying that thing is that it comes with Yuri's Revenge. I have two pcs here and only one YR copy. Using a no cd crack is good for lazy people, but I can't play rock patch related mods.


- The Zero Hour patches were good. But they used a lot of community work. Most of the assets from ACETON team was used in 1.03, including the Aurora Alpha model. EA only compiled the files there and wrote the documentation. Then, it was up to the community to test the bugs and after some good set of emails, they've made a fix (1.04) and took one month to release it.

Would you kindly tell me what exactly a person qualifies as a "community leader"?

Apparently, I was qualified as a RTS community leader not because of PPM or Revora. It was because of the Open Map Competition event. Maybe they might know anything about PPM or Revora today, I'm not really sure if they know these places exist... specially Revora that hosts the highest ammount of C&C and BfME mods and sites than any other C&C or BfME community hosted in the history of these games.