Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
company and players where the company can give up some amount of
decision making power to benefi t their brand overall.
EA Sports integrated online elements of their games in a manner that
shapes how players engage their games, shifting the terms of play and deter-
mining many of the ways in which players play their games. In so doing,
EA claims tremendous power in setting the boundaries of the discourse
of their games, using elements of technology to enable some sorts of play
that enrich the depth of their of erings, while using the control they gain
through the transition online to restrict used game sales and more fi rmly
curtail the lifespan of games.
WORDPLAY AND EA SPORTS
As a cornerstone of their parent company EA Sports is a key piece of the
video game industry. The sports games they produce defi ne a subset of
video games, and understanding how they work is telling in depicting the
full force of wordplay. Sports games are largely dif erent than other titles,
as they are released each year and are developed on relatively short time
frames, while being subject to tight launch windows. In the midst of these
dynamics, the ef ort to develop reasons why players need to upgrade to
the latest version of the game, especially through the careful leveraging of
online content and restrictions to defi ne the terms on which their games are
played, constitute unique rhetorical expressions.
Wordplay elucidates how sports games shift the terrain of video games
to encourage regular, repeat business. This attribute may account for part
of the isolation of sports gamers within the video game community more
broadly; as the discourse surrounding sports games demonstrate they are
developed and designed in a manner quite dif erent than the kinds of games
likely to win game of the year awards. In leveraging the strength of their
brand and massive marketing campaigns, EA Sports seeks to make each ver-
sion of their franchises a must buy, carefully targeting their core consumers
and broadening their user base when possible. Expansion into online access
and play redefi nes how sports games work, allowing EA Sports to reclaim
control over who plays their game while pushing players to newer version
of the game by cutting of online access.
Sports games are a key segment of the console market and are increas-
ingly governed by how they leverage online play as a tool to sell games, but
one of the original genres dependent on online play, massively multiplayer
online games, demonstrates just how important it is to examine both para-
texts and processes found in the words, design, and play of video games.
