Originally Posted by Zhohar

Honestly, can any of you tell me how you would, as a game studio manager, transform a completely unrealistic and bogus goal such as "3% metascore increase over 3 years" into a better quality game?

The article is the standard CEO "goals and the timeline for achieving them" dance. It says nothing, it means nothing, and most everyone who works for EA knows it.

Had John Riccitiello meant to actually improve the quality of EA's games, he would not have made the eighth page of a tiny gamer site. He would have made the front page of the Times by pissing off 3/4s of his shareholders and board of directors.

He would have said the following:

1. The time and money alloted for testing a game before it ships will be increased five fold.
The testing team will have constant face-to-face contact with the development team, and the testers will outnumber the developers at least 3 to 1.
The testing will start earlier in the game development cycle and will last longer after the game is "complete" from the developer point of view.

2. Once the game is released, the entire staff will be employed for at least 6 months after the launch date. The play testers will become community managers, and they will report the audience's yays and nays to the developers.
The testers will read forum threads, will scoure IRC logs, will keenly pay attention to review comments and will give those over to the developers who will make changes and churn out weekly if not daily patches to address bugs, exploits, and game balance issues.


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Now, had John Riccitiello said those two things, I would have believed him about the increase in game quality. The 3% over 3 years is a silly little dance to please shareholders. It means nothing.

+1