E3 2018 Post-Show Analysis: EA

With all the E3 conferences behind us, let’s take a look at how each individual company did. Like with the predictions series we’ll start off with EA and go through in order until we finish with Nintendo.

EA’s got a bad habit of throwing a lot of robots on stage that try and fail miserably to pass the Turing Test, and aside from a few notable exceptions, this year was much the same. They switched hosts to Andrea Rene–co-founder of What’s Good Games and host on Kinda Funny Games--but while she’s absurdly charismatic and looks at ease in front of a camera, they didn’t give her nearly enough control over the show.
The biggest problem I think everyone has with EA’s shows is they don’t seem to understand what’s fit for the big stage and what would work better for post-conference interviews in more private, intimate settings. Instead of having a developer come out to introduce their game, then showing the game and moving on to the next game, we were instead stuck with some weird mix where developers would discuss their game, show it off, discuss it some more, and then show another trailer. No one knew when to sit down, and it seriously hurt the flow of the show.
All that said, let’s break things down:
Positives:

• Unravel 2. It’s a beautiful, touching looking game, and they shadow dropped it at the conference! Instead of having a long build up to the game’s release, they decided to simply have it ready for E3. This is becoming common now, and eventually I wouldn’t be surprised to see every major conference holder do the same thing.
• The exception to EA’s usually robotic presentation can always be found in their EA Originals part of their shows. This year they had two separate indie games pop up–Unravel 2, and Sea of Sorrows by Jo-Mei Games.  The creative art director, Corneila Geppert, came up on stage and you could feel her excitement and elation at the opportunity she’d been given. There are hundreds of indie games made every year, and usually most of them aren’t given such a visible platform.  She understood the weight and gravity of that, and it was just as endearing as it was when the developer of Unravel took the stage three years ago. Sea of Sorrows follows a young woman named Kay, who’s loneliness has gradually turned her into a monster, and the player is meant to help restore her to normal by aiding her in embracing more positive emotions.
• Respawn’s Star Wars game makes an appearance here, of sorts.
• Despite initially managing to tick off millions of people everywhere with its Pay 2 Win lootbox system, Star Wars: Battlefront II really seems to be coming around on its gameplay. They continue to add meaningful content to the game, and it really seems like it’s developing into something special. They announced the addition of Clone Wars content as well as content matching up with the Solo movie in theatres right now.
• The biggest news of the show was EA Origin Access Premiere. For $14.99 a month or $100/yearly, EA is allowing PC gamers the opportunity to play new EA games for free, and have access to a library of over 100 titles from EA’s past. This is monumental–it provides relatively cheap access to a massive variety of games, and really feels like the next step for publishers everywhere.

Negatives:

• It feels like there wasn’t much Battlefield shown at all. Even as someone who’s not a fan, it was baffling to see them treat their primary fall title off like this. The developers talked while concept art showed up, and we got a in-game cinematic trailer while they promised showing off single-player content at Microsoft’s show.  While publishers with their own conferences often have multiple showings of their games–this didn’t feel adequate enough for that in the first place, and was more like passing the buck to Microsoft to do the real marketing.
• Despite being bold enough to add a story mode to Madden for the first time ever, this year’s Madden showing was abysmal. Instead of focusing on the games they dragged out what I assume is the professional Madden champion so he could dunk on beating a real life football player. Presumably this is what happens when you realize you don’t have any new innovations to add and you know you can’t just come out and say “Look. You know what it is; the roster’s been updated, and you’re going to buy it anyway.”
• Command & Conquer’s back as a mobile game. And while it’s going to rustle some feathers, that’s ultimately fine–this is C&C’s best chance to succeed in a modern era. What’s not fine is bringing out two eSports players and putting on a game in “real time” while you have commentators explain the action to us. This grinds the conference to a halt in terms of pacing, and really should have been relegated to after show information on EA’s YouTube.
• Respawn’s Star Wars game appearing? Great. How it was presented? Terrible. Having Andrea Rene come out in the middle of the conference to sit down with Vince Zampanella was awkward, and worse? They had nothing to show! Outside of learning the game is called (maybe) Jedi: Fallen Order, they had literally nothing–not a cinematic trailer, or even a logo to give us.   For a game that’s roughly 17 months out, someone really should have been able to put together a minute long trailer to give us something.  Knowing the name is cute, but that doesn’t tell us anything else.

Grade: C-
Why on Earth was this show eighty minutes long? Everything here could’ve been cut in half–even the Anthem deep dive–and we wouldn’t have lost much of anything. Anything of value ,like developer interviews for Anthem and the “shoutcasted” C&C match-up, could have been thrown up on YouTube.
EA continues to struggle with its lack of varied games coming from different genres–it’s really just sports and shooters, with the occasional Need for Speed to shake things up every other year. Even though Battlefront II is getting it’s act together, they’ve mismanaged the Star Wars license pretty terribly–with Amy Hennig and Visceral Games’ title canceled, there was an obvious hole in their schedule and it just makes their lack of varied titles more obvious.
As we close the door on Generation 8, hopefully EA is starting to make the moves necessary to make their company have the same kind of variety as Ubisoft or Square-Enix.