14 DAY TRIAL // Publisher Electronic Arts never aims to exploit customers with its games but the company has done it a few times before, before understanding which lines it should never cross in its relationship with the player base.
Frank Gibeau, who has been a constant source for news about how Electronic Arts approaches video game development, has told Kotaku that, “We discover the line as we build games, and we talk to our fans, and they tell us what the line is and sometimes we cross over it and we pull back.”
He added, “Which we’ve done a number of times. If you walk the halls of EA’s creative teams when people are building, there literally aren’t people with knives in their teeth with bandanas on thinking of ways of how to screw the customer. They actually are starting with the notion that they want to make something awesome. They want to make an epic experience.”
Gibeau, who is the leader of the EA Labels division at Electronic Arts, has said that the publisher has done serious research and knows how it might further gouge or exploit customers but it is refraining from doing many of the things that lie within its power.
The executive talked about microtransactions that could change the balance of the game, which are well known and used in Asia but have never been well received in the West.
Electronic Arts has been accused of tweaking its video games and their launches in order to extract as much money from the player as possible.
As more and more companies implement a free-to-play model, gamers are more aware of when and how they pay in order to enjoy their game and they tend to react badly to microtransactions that alter game balance.
Electronic Arts has launched a number of successful free-to-play games, including The Sims Online and the now closed Dragon Age: Legends.