Matthias

Yeah, that is not really implied by that short quote from the EA CEO with the catchy title. The section at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Arts#Studio_acquisition_and_management_practices already references it and gives a more varied view. Big companies have big company problems. Nothing new there.

Tried to fix things up, but the German Wikipedia articles are way better as it has more high quality and recent sources. There is an interview http://www.gamestar.de/artikel/wie-schlimm-ist-electronic-arts-wirklich-im-reich-des-boesen,3059248,seite2.html (sadly only in German) where Louis Castle described how the creative freedom and unlimited budgets EA granted them, actually let to hiring too much inexperienced staff as well as feature creep and waste of developer resources in their games as all ideas, even the mediocre ones, were implemented. I always thought the opposite was the case: reducing workforce and cutting budgets. I am not sure if he ever made such statements in an English language article.

I agree that this seems to be a common misconception. However many publicly available sources with high impact all repeat that claim. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westwood_Studios#Acquisition_by_EA_and_liquidation is full of gaps, very one sided in that regard and contains a lot of unverified claims Also these community run social media sites like https://www.facebook.com/westwoodstudios and https://twitter.com/westwoodstudios spread a one sided view making people only remember the positive elements. This nostalgic "what if" dream also reinforces the perception that something fully functional was taken from the community by evil corporate overlords.

Yep, I have to agree on this. It reminds me of this terrible XCOM 3rd person shooter where you can "control" your AI combatants and blow up a lot of generic alien enemies. It might sound great, but become really trashy.

I have no idea why they started C&C: Arena in the first place after Sole Survivor was so unsuccessful. Good marketing as they pretty much marketed those quick uninformed turn-ups into brave new design decisions in their "game designer interview" clips.

I am not a lawyer, but it could also be a copyright thing. http://artlawjournal.com/night-photos-eiffel-tower-violate-copyright/

Weird that the radar displays a green background on a desert map.

"Would you like to spend 42 pink Tiberium crystals to finish construction instantly?"

But the Brotherhood of Nod only had the technology and budget of a 90s video game producer so no one believed them.

A leak of unreleased developer material with extensive uncontrolled press coverage. Looks like we are becoming more and more professional.

Cool. Especially the UI improvements are impressive as there is no direct access to the source code. The great RA95 map editor was also a huge inspiration for https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/3377

They should at least disable http://www.commandandconquer.com/en/beta-registration Those people get paid to maintain the franchise and the community is actually doing a far better job in their free time. *shaking head*

Too few people giving the playtests a try and reporting bugs is indeed a problem and delayed this stable release significantly.

I think this hobbyist service is more professional than Westwood Online ever was. Great work!