EA Executive Mentions UO’s 17th Anniversary (Updated)
Yay! It’s that time of year when Frank Gibeau, President of EA Labels, who is over all of the EA Labels, including BioWare, acknowledges Ultima Online. He didn’t just acknowledge it once, but twice, in speaking about the future of Star Wars: The Old Republic. It’s been a while since he’s publicly mentioned UO twice in a year, and in the same interview no less!
In an article at Game Industry International, Gibeau was talking about the longevity of BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG.
He mentioned UO’s 17 years:
We also announced a… mass amount of content thats coming for the service, so we’re going to be in the Star Wars business for ten years, who knows? We’re still publishing Ultima Online for seventeen years.
He mentioend UO again when pressed as to his confidence in SWTOR:
We asked Gibeau if he’s absolutely confident that a decade from now EA would still have people playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. He answered, “I am, actually. We’re still playing Dark Age of Camelot, we’re still playing Warhammer, we’re still playing Ultima Online, we’re still playing Runescape, we’re still playing Lineage. What’s beautiful about an MMO is that when you get to a certain scale it stays with the program for a long time.”
EA’s Commitment:
1) He’s talking about a commitment to SWTOR to keep it around.
2) He’s talking about things that have been announced for SWTOR to show that EA intends to keep SWTOR around for 10 years.
3) He’s holding up UO as an example to show that EA can keep an MMORPG going for 17 years, I mean 15 years.
UO is cited as an example of EA’s commitment to MMORPG longevity by somebody who is playing up the future plans for SWTOR, yet we hear very little about the future plans of the very game that he is holding up as a defense of SWTOR! Sneak Peeks are NOT future plans, they are part of the story arc/anniversary celebration.
How about Mr. Gibeau telling us what he intends on doing to keep UO around for say another year or two, let alone 10? I would have loved to have seen the look on his face if the interviewer asked him about his commitment to keeping UO going after he just used it to illustrate that EA can commit to MMORPGs.
Mr. Gibeau’s Memory:
He also tends to have no idea about when UO was created. Around a year ago, when he claimed that UO was “widely profitable”, he seemed to think UO was still on its first decade when it was actually nearing the half-way mark of its second decade. Now that it’s hitting the half-way mark of its second decade, he seems to think it’s been around a few years longer. Now it is true that UO is not high on his list of priorities, but still, we’re just a few months away from UO’s 15th Anniversary.
Before anybody says I should just be grateful that he at least mentioned UO, that’s not a good attitude to have.
Note: I have nothing personal against Mr. Gibeau – in fact, I respect that he started at EA in 1991 as a game tester and worked his way up to one of the top positions in the company. The industry is full of companies with upper executives that have a fraction of Mr. Gibeau’s experience in gaming.
The problem is that the only time people like Mr. Gibeau talk about UO these days seems to be when they are trying to defend SWTOR. Makes UO players feel really good, especially since it’s being rubbed in our faces that that they announcing all kinds of things for SWTOR while we are kept in the dark about UO!
