The EA Originals program aims to bring indie developers into the spotlight and provide a platform for their games to shine, one of which is Zoink Games' Fe, and we talked to EA executive vice president Patrick Söderlund about the program at Gamescom, who filled us in about what the philosophy behind it is, and how he feels that EA should give back to the development community.
"EA is a triple-A, blockbuster-type company, and my job, and my absolute passion is towards building the best triple-A games on the market, and for them to be the equivalent of, you know, a Chris Nolan film, or whatever comes out, like, we wanna be seen as the high quality - you can go into a store and buy a game with an EA brand on it and know that I'm gonna get... this is value for money, I'll get something that I can enjoy," he explained. "That doesn't mean that it'll always be 100% on Metacritic of 10 out of 10s, that's not what I mean, but it's like high-quality, well-functioning, fun, and long-term experiences, which is what we are trying to sell."
"So is it possible for our teams to build original-type games? Absolutely. Do I think that it makes sense from a business perspective? Maybe, but probably not. And then that's probably one of the reasons why we believe that the Originals program can work, and when we tell people how the program works, when we have development pitches, they don't believe us at first, they think we're crazy, frankly, like 'why would you give us all the profits? Don't you make any money on this?' Nope. And they're like "why?" And then there's [two] main reasons for that, for me."
"The number one reason for Originals is that, frankly, for us to get in contact and get in touch with people with unique abilities and unique skills. Studios like Josef Fares, Hazelight, or Zoink, or whoever else that we work with, right, they have ideas and thoughts that we don't, to compliment what we do. That's the first thing."
"The second thing is, it almost becomes a philanthropic approach, you know, for EA. We feel we want to give back. I started my own development 10,000 years ago it feels like, and I know how difficult it can be sometimes to just get sponsored and get money and get to be in a position where you can actually deliver on your experience. I feel like a company the size of EA, we have a responsibility towards the development community, and towards the players out there, to actually help these smaller developers, and then obviously one can look at that and say that's egoistic and self-centred because we want them to work for us. We do, but they don't have to, it's their choice. If they don't want to they can leave."
Do you like the idea of the Originals program?