A Peak at the Control EA Has Over its Games

In a return of the Big Huge Wednesday series on Ultima Aiera, there is a link to a thread where Curt Schilling (yes, that Curt Schilling) addresses a fan angry over some problem with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which is a huge sandbox-like fantasy RPG that was developed by Schilling’s studio. It was developed by Ken Rolston (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) who is the executive designer, R.A. Salvatore who created the universe and lore for the game, Todd McFarlane doing the artwork, and Grant Kirkhope who is doing the music (and has an impressive background as well).

I wanted to post that while we complain about a lot of decisions made about games, in our instance Ultima Online, ultimately the responsibility rests well above the UO dev team (or any other particular dev team within EA/BioWare).

Sure, they make decisions we don’t like at times, and we wonder why they don’t do certain things, but ultimately a lot of decisions or things that we think should be done, but aren’t being done, are done because of budget or other constraints placed upon the team by their management.

In this case, Curt Schilling, in a thread on the Amalur official forums (as UO players, you may not have ever heard of this thing called “official forums”), talked about the limitations imposed upon him by EA.

Remember, his studio is the one that designed and created the game – EA is the publisher. This isn’t even a scenario such as with UO or SWTOR or WAR or DAOC where EA outright owns everything.

Here’s the relevant quote:

Man, I am unsure how people can get the perspective of us not being engaged with you guys. We have been, we will be.

I am also unsure of how many more times we can tell you that we are NOT in control of patching, with regards to timing, on any platform but the PC, and even then it’s not that clear cut.

EA has complete control over content released for Reckoning, from the first two DLCs to patching. After them it’s the console manufacturers who have the final word and authority.

No matter WHAT we WANT to do, there is almost nothing we are ALLOWED to do without permission from 1 or more parties, that and a pretty large check as well.

The legalities and the hows and whys are obviously not something that can be made public, but I hope you guys understand this is not something we are in control of.

While we have all criticized the UO dev team(s) at times, ultimately a lot of the problems stem from somewhere much higher up the foodchain, and we should try to remember that.