14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts is one of the biggest gaming companies out there, being topped only by the Activision-Blizzard corporation. This status brought to EA a not so kind reputation of wanting only to squeeze every penny out of a game and not caring about its quality. But this is something the corporation wants to change, by employing new quality standards and being more patient with the studios and companies it has partnered with.
EA boss John Riccitiello recently spoke with Gamasutra about this very interesting subject. He went said that his company was put in the uncomfortable position of canceling games, the latest one being Tiberium, for not meeting quality standards. It was something that had to be done to ensure that money was not spent wrongfully.
“If you want to put good food on the table and you’ve got chefs in the back, you give them better ingredients, better training -- and when you burn the omelet, you don’t serve it. When something's not meeting expectations, you can course correct by giving it more time, more money, changing the concept or killing the game. If you're committed to quality, you take one of those paths,” Riccitiello explained. "If you preclude any one of those paths, quality will suffer. EA will kill a game or two a year. Forever.”
Then, he directly approached the Tiberium issue, saying that it is just something that happens when you are committed to bringing quality titles on the market.
“Any company that serves every dish that comes out of the oven whether it’s burned or not is not committed to quality. U2 made great albums, Steven Spielberg made great films. It doesn’t mean they don’t have their Tiberiums.”
A very interesting statement from the EA boss, and it really reflects the new direction the company wants to head. But still, some people think that the scrapping of the Tiberium project was quite severe because the title promised quite a lot of things and with the fan base already created by strategy titles, it was bound for big sales.