EA Sports and Planned Obsolescence - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 105

passed it by. Perhaps more confounding is that FIFA Soccer 11 , a new full
version of the game, was released the following October, supplanting the
smaller tournament version of the game and giving it fewer than six months
of shelf life. Scorn for this kind of release schedule extends to the full ver-
sion of the franchise as well, with the passionate plea “in short, don't buy
this game. EA releases a new FIFA game every year with marginal improve-
ments, and we suckers keep buying them. It's time we wise up.” 30 Although
players are faced with the desire to heed the warnings and avoid the new
purchase, EA Sports exploits the use of licensing, an annual release cycle
and the clever development of specifi c upgrades to overcome the knowledge
that the games have an exceptionally short shelf life.
The obsolescence built into each of the sports games is a key dynamic
that shapes the discursive construction of EA Sports titles. EA has to
address the perception that they are only tweaking the game each year,
seeking to develop the belief that each version is the best one ever—a must
have. That process is the second area where wordplay applies to sports
games, by focusing on the appeals EA Sports uses to convince players to
purchase the new version of the game, even as it makes their older copy
worthless plastic.
WHY WE UPGRADE
EA Sports has become far more than just a game company and the breadth
of their activities are best shown in the massive marketing campaigns on
behalf of their biggest products. Beyond simply developing a game fran-
chise, EA Sports has to make each edition of every game matter. The key
to this kind of appeal is developing a series of reasons why players need the
new version of the game based on what makes it special and why it renders
the older version obsolete. When done well, the appeals ef ectively build
on each other, creating a well-established perception that sports games are
only good for a year, which is solidifi ed by EA's ongoing marketing ef orts
and the convenient fact that there is a new, real-world season each year to
go along with the new game. There are four key pieces to EA's campaign to
get players to upgrade their games: annual feature hype, an appeal to the
'real,' the development of a roster fetish, and the concluding argument from
these appeals that each new version of a game is the best ever.
The cornerstone of each new game in a sports franchise is the hype that
comes along with the new feature or two in the latest edition of the game.
Although there are occasional wholesale changes in a game, annual changes
are generally refi nements of what already exists. The ordering principle of
these games is that there will be one or two feature additions each year
to garner press and public attention, framing discussion of the game to
“seemingly make the upgrade from one year to the next worthwhile.” 31
This approach enables a marketing department to have an easy hook into