Electronic Arts jumps on the browsergame market

[mdshare]

So lets discuss what the impact will be by having a bigshot like EA jumping on the browsergame market.

They have now 3 browsergames released as BETA

 

https://www.lordofultima.com/en#

http://www.freaksoccer.de/

http://tigerwoodsonline.ea.com/

My personal opinion is that the browsergame market is far from saturated else such a company would leave that market segement aside.

Also by them entering with the funds and technology they have on board they might indirectly push the quality of browsergames.

Anyway lets discuss.

md

[Taxed]

I like the idea of EA bringing more exposure to the web games market. I think with EA in the market web game developers are going to have to really work hard to develop a high end web game now.

[rulerofzu]

Would have been nice to see what they have done but beta for the one ive tried is full.

[Analog]

With their virtually unlimited resources they will dominate the market. It will be very hard for any single person or small group to compete against them.

[a_bertrand]

Well it's not because they release a couple of web sites that nobody else will be able to make their game. Of course we cannot compete... but still some people may like ours better.

[mdshare]

I see it as a bonus for the browser game developers.

Why ?

1. EA will atract more people towards browsergames

2. EA will indirectly push other browsergame developers/designers to deliver higher quality

Lord Of Ultima Screenshots

bit like tribalwars but also RPG

Screenshots removed by request from Electroni Arts

[shedh]

I agree with md here.

How many gamers have you seen that only play one game? May be a few but some people spend time on more than one game

with the marketing power of EA the new gamers they attract could somehow find their way to your game....

[rulerofzu]

Thought it may be something along those lines. The tribal wars type of game is an attractive market.

[mdshare]

It's more so should appeal more people

combines RTS (Tribalwars/Kingsage style) + RPG (Quests/character) + City Management (Civilization)

[Danny696]

Um yeh tiger woods, alot of people dislike him, theres one game people wont play because on the name. only lord of the ulimatium looks good from the login

[a_bertrand]

Yes lord of ultimatium has a nice feeling from the login page. What I'm interested in, is to see how they will pay back their bills. Limited free version? Payed add-on? As for sure they will not run on ads.

[Danny696]

They own their own severs, and probabbly the domains are like pennys for them, it wont cost that much, if your getting the amount of money they are. And theyll be getting alot of donators

[a_bertrand]

Servers are not free. You need to pay for the hardware, and the Internet connection and/or traffic. Even if you already have a server and you put a second project (or 3rd or 4th) at some point those projects will start to use your server resources, and for that they need to have some entries. Plain donation is not something which work well normally.

[shedh]

I did some very small ammount of reasearch on these games, as we all know that Tiger Woods i internationally know the cost of EA advertising his name will not be as high compared to EA launching a complete brand new game.

Apparently lord of Ultima is a well known game, it used to be a console/pc game but was then discontinued, EA have added this to the Lord of Ultima games which already has a fan base so the advertising in this low.

both these games already have small number of people waiting to get on to the games, also the Tiger Woods game has a number of games on console so EA could use the online game as a way to advertise the console games. So the cost of running the game will mostly likely be taken from the console games so the cost of the online game will be a an advertising cost.

EA are only trying to push their console games with this move into browser based games, which together will improve the browser game market in some way

shedh

[Zero-Affect]

Making online games of previous hits (movies/games) is a great idea, i mean look at startrekonlinethey will have more advertising on fan sites then they actually pay for. I do like EA they do some interesting games but with them launching browser based games i predict alot of companies following in their footsteps and putting the smaller online browser games out of business.

[Jerry]

Could I have a link to the press release or something please?

I think if EA joins the market, it means the market is maturing. Is this good, or bad? I see benefits, and I see downsides. The downside is that the kids who wanna have create their own game to make some money will have it hard, as the level of competition has jumped up severely. Most kids start using scripts they found, but some progress. For those, it is a bad thing.

For the player, obviously, it's good news, as more quality is what they need.

For the guys around here, I think it is bad, for the simple reason that when EA launches a game, they can throw a lot of money into the marketing. Most of you guys can't do that. So it is to be expected that EA will grab a HUGE share of the revenues in this market, at your cost.

[shedh]

EA is just another competitor to us. Without competition the market would be boring, competition is what makes the market, the market is a game to become the market leader.

So all I can say about competition is:

[align=center]"It's in the Game"

[/align]

[mdshare]

There is no press release yet afaik Jerry