EA’s Insensitive Tweet About Single-Player Games Is Quite Ironic…

star wars jedi survivor timeline

A recent job listing on the EA’s careers page attracted a lot of attention and excited many fans. The listing called for a new design director to join Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto at the EA Seattle studio. Their role would involve overseeing the development of a new Battlefield single-player campaign. More specific details are unknown for now.

Unfortunately, EA extinguished this excitement with one incredibly insensitive tweet. The tweet reads, “They’re a 10 but they only like playing single-player games.”

This tweet is insulting to gamers that enjoy single-player titles, and it has upset many past and current developers working on EA games. The head of Respawn Entertainment, Vince Zampella, even responded with a face palm emoji. Not only is Zampella in charge of the Battlefield franchise, which includes the new single-player campaign being developed the EA Seattle studio, he also created the Titanfall franchise. Titanfall 2 is regarded as one of the best single-player FPS campaigns in recent years — something that a lot of critics agree on, even.

Several writers and developers working on the highly anticipated Star Wars Jedi Survivor game voiced their frustration. One producer replied, “just having an existential crisis at the fact my publisher doesn’t know what me or my team does.”

What’s most troubling, however, is the response from former design director Zach Mumbach of Visceral Games. Visceral Games is credited with delivering some of EA’s best-selling single-player games like Dead Space. In 2015 the studio was shut down by EA while developing an action-adventure Star Wars game code named Project Ragtag. Hundreds of staff were made redundant, with EA claiming the reason for doing so was because there was no interest in single-player games anymore.

On top of this, other game studios are chiming in by mocking EA’s tweet. The developers behind Sea of Thieves shared this tweet. While I don’t understand the comment directly, it’s clearly a dig at EA. It was published soon after the backlash.

This ill-advised tweet has once again opened up old wounds. EA hasn’t sincerely apologized for the tweet but has made a follow-up post. In it, they call the backlash an “L.” It’s hardly the most professional response. This comment by EA is so ironic because it owns the rights to some of gaming’s biggest single-player games.

In recent years, however, many single-player experiences have fallen short or been omitted entirely. Battlefield 2042, for example, lacks any single-play mode despite having a storyline.  I hope the social team learns something from this backlash. A person runs the account, and people always make mistakes. But posts on social media like this should always need to be approved. Let’s hope EA stops following silly internet trends and acts more professionally.

Respawn Working on a New IP Per Job Listing

It’s funny to think that EA, of all publishers, have the audacity to say something like this given their past titles (both multiplayer and single-player) haven’t exactly been 10’s. There is no guarantee that a game featuring multiplayer will be a success. Heck, just take a look at Battlefield 2042. It scrapped the franchise’s single-player campaign to focus solely on multiplayer, and look how it turned out. 

While there are more and more people being pulled in by multiplayer gaming these days, narrative-driven single-player games will always have a spot in gaming. This is where gamers find themselves in magical new worlds, be able to step into the shoes of another character and get lost in ’em, and other possibilities more. If EA thinks this way about single-player games, doesn’t that paint a bad picture for the single-player games they are developing? 

What’s your thoughts on this? Harmless internet take or is EA not self-aware at all? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments.

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