During the EA press conference earlier today in Los Angeles, one of EA’s several incredibly clean and shiny spokesmen (in this case: Patrick Soderlund) was already halfway through describing the new EA Originals indie games program when I did a double-take. Specifically, it was the moment he explained that all the profits from EA Originals games go back to the studios that make the games.
Wait, really? Yes, really. EA is publishing these games, but they’re giving away a lot of the money.
Publishing a game is mindbogglingly expensive. Even a smaller game, like Fe, by Swedish studio Zoink– the first indie game to get the EA Originals treatment– takes a huge amount of money, time, and energy to distribute and sell. So what’s EA getting out of EA Originals? I read all of EA’s online material about this and although it doesn’t appear to say much about Origin exclusivity, it’s pretty obvious that Origin exclusivity could be the biggest part of this deal for EA. This program not only looks great for EA– since it’s literally them just giving free money to developers– but it can also help them bulk up Origin as a platform.
Right now, the people making the most money in videogames are the people who own platforms on which games are sold and downloaded. Platform-holders control us, the audience, because they stand between developers and fans, manage payments, control platform advertising, pricing, sales, and so on. If they can amass a large enough audience, they can point those eyeballs and brains anywhere they like. For EA to compete with the biggest platform-holders out there– console manufacturers and Steam, mostly– they need keep working on making Origin look attractive.
A good way for a platform to look attractive and get new users is for it to have a lot of products which appear nowhere else, and if EA Originals can get them some really nice games, then it could accomplish that exactly. I don’t think EA’s reputation is so bad that they need to pull a stunt like this in order to attract good indies– it’s certainly nice that the people who work with them will get all that cash. Good luck, Zoink!
It’s also worth mentioning that profits are not always the same thing as “the amount of money this game made.” We don’t yet know if EA counts marketing costs out of the game’s revenue before it starts handing over 100% of the profits. (I think this is likely; if they were giving 100% of the revenue, and doing marketing for free, I think they would have said so.) Whatever the case, though, EA will be taking a lot less money than most publishers get from publishing indie games.
Zoink’s game, Fe, seems like an unusual exploration game set in a woodland environment, which are two of the check-boxes on my personal list of Indie Stuff I Enjoy. (It also seems to have a lot of Cosmic Humming, which is a third checkbox of mine, and perhaps the most ridiculous on my list.) Check out the trailer here:
