Sports gaming is under control, but one gaming company stands out among the rest: Electronic Arts.
EA has made a name for itself in its many successful sports gaming series, but over many years, questions have arisen about how the company is managing its games, servers, and problems for users. EA has had a considerable decline in its ability to manage its games as its servers have struggled to hold many of its games. This includes three of its biggest sports games: Madden National Football League, Football Club, and College Football 25.
EA has seemingly found a way to take more money away from users through “a pay to win system”. This is because of a very enticing marketing within the game’s mode: Ultimate Team. People who spend more money tend to build better depth and continue to play at a high level within the game because people are able to get the best new cards and abilities to compete at the highest level. This has not gone over well because of overpowered cards in the game as well as a mix of failed mechanics in the game and company servers.
EA stands by controlling the sports gaming market. They have a licensed agreement with the National Football League, which means they are able to produce the game with players, teams, coaches, uniforms, and stadiums as well as brands that represent the NFL while other gaming companies cannot.
A big issue with EA is that they have more leverage on football games because the license restricts any other company to produce a game with the NFL.
This is sickening for sports gaming because we cannot see what another company’s football games look like in partnership with the NFL, because in truth, EA knew back in 2005 that 2K (company named from the fact games have 2,000 pixels) was dominating with their version of a simulation football game, so they made it so no other company could compete with them in a NFL simulation game anymore.
Over the last few years, the outrage has become extreme due to the carelessness of EA and its employees for not improving their sports games in the areas we have longed for improvement in for years, such as franchise mode, in-game animations, more complicated mechanics, game feel, the same commentators every year, not having custom team builder, or being able to play with historic teams.
These things are what we want to see, but does EA really care?
EA should give us better servers, smooth mechanics, and get rid of unrealistic animations. The most angering thing about all of this is how they respond to the outrage from any sports game they make.
EA does nothing to their sports games after a few months of releasing a game, and we call for them to do something about it so we can keep enjoyment and enthusiasm in the games until next year’s release. EA loves adding new things to the mechanics and the feel of the gameplay, but does nothing to give its users what they want, so it is a struggle to have what we want in these sports games, but we still buy them because we are already sold on it because of our feelings for the sport and its authentic to real life feeling.
In many cases, now we are at a crossroads, because EA makes games we will buy, but we know the shortcomings they give us, and there are even restrictions for other companies to make the same style video game. So it is time we find a way to take away EA’s stronghold on sports gaming.