Matt Bilbey, the executive vice president of strategic growth at Electronic Arts (they have some weird positions…) told Gamesindustry that EA still struggles with its image.

Are they surprised? Consumerist has named Electronic Arts the worst company in 2012 and 2013 in the United States, and in 2017, they really p_ssed us off with its loot boxes in Star Wars: Battlefront II and Need For Speed: Payback. „25 years at Electronic Arts and I still struggle with the external perception that we’re just a bunch of bad guys. We love making and playing games. Unfortunately, when we make mistakes on games, the world knows about it because it’s of a size and scale.

As we got bigger, there is the concern that we had become disconnected from new talent coming through. EA Originals is our opportunity to connect with that talent and those smaller ideas. When you are part of a big company, it’s too easy to fall into the trap where when you see a game concept… it has to be big. The notion of actually coming up with small, unique game ideas… We know from the work that we’ve been doing on our subscription business that gamers will play a FIFA or a Fortnite — they have one main franchise — but then they want breaks from those games to play something that’s maybe five or ten hours long.

EA Originals are also games that we don’t make in the bigger part of EA or don’t make enough of. So while there was a philanthropic part to it, selfishly it was the way for us to connect to the talent on smaller ideas. When you are in a company and have had successes and mistakes around live service microtransactions, free-to-play, what geographies, what partners to work with, what animation engines… it actually feels good for our teams to sit with EA Original developers and you can actually give real advice. It genuinely makes you feel good. It’s advice to help them not make the same mistakes,” Bilbey said.

Perhaps they have that image because they either closed or dumbed down a ton of studios in the past decades. Here are a few examples…

Source: WCCFTech