Electronic Arts Shuts Down Origin Systems? 343
An anonymous reader writes "Waterthread.org has picked up the following on the studio that brought us the popular Ultima and Wing Commander series: 'Game company Electronic Arts is expected to tell its Austin employees this week that the company will be shutting down Origin Systems, its Austin operations, according to sources. Employees will be offered an opportunity to relocate to California or accept a severance package. Company officials could not be reached for comment. Austin is the #3 location in the U.S. for game development with more than 50 companies making major contributions to the game industry, including game development, publishing, tools and middleware and chips and hardware." The Wing Commander CIC has also posted a epitaph for Origin."
Damn... (Score:5, Interesting)
RIP to the best of the old-school studios, from a former OSI employee and servant of the Crown.
Everybody else just made crappy games. We created worlds.
EA kills another great developer (Score:3, Interesting)
This will kill Ultima Online. (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, it did have a long run.
Origin, Bullfrog (Score:2, Interesting)
Not a surprise. (Score:4, Interesting)
play Ultima Online like its 1999! (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a whole lot of UO emulated player run shards alive and kicking today. Many are attempting to recreate that era for UO which changed, like I said when EA gutted the OSI team. I have found www.preuor.com [preuor.com] the best shard for that purpose. They have meticulously made efforts to recreate the small things that made UO great. Try it, you'll be surprised how fun a 2d game mmorpg can actually be and best of all its free (no monthly fee or game purchase required).
www.preuor.com [preuor.com]
Re:Origin, Bullfrog (Score:2, Interesting)
Will C&C ever be the same? Doubtful.
Re:Origin, Bullfrog (Score:3, Interesting)
As a game developer, i'd say Maxis is actually doing very well for itself. As Maxis being Maxis... yeah, I think they may have lost a little of their creative edge because of EA's meddling. But they still make good games for the time being.
Re:Not a surprise. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:play Ultima Online like its 1999! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OK. And... (Score:2, Interesting)
Additionally, they could probably save money and keep their current offices open if they used slave labor. Just an idea.
Could be worse. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Where is #1 and #2? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:This will NOT kill Ultima Online. (Score:3, Interesting)
In the end they refused to get me a code. This are several postions on uo.stratics.com (the official UO boards) about this 'issue'.
Get that weak stuff outta here (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a general question: did anyone else pillage the city of Yew over and over to build up money and experience? (Note: it was the only city that didn't have guards, and the druids were easy pickings). Getting killed by orcs was humiliating, and I had to level up *somehow*
Origin will be missed... those games are unqualified classics.
Re:Why relocate to California? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's EA to a freakin' T, and it practically brings tears to my eyes the projects and franchises they've run into the ground. Okay, namely it's just Ultima Online 2 that will never see the light of day, and it boils my blood that EA dropped the ball on that one! They're riding UO 1 like tobacco companies ride cigarette sales, and
EA is too powerful (Score:4, Interesting)
2.) It markets the hell out of everything. NBA live for example has out sell Sega ESPN basketball every year. Soon competition from Sega might disappear and voila less competition again. They can keep the baskeball standard low for 5 years while they tweak their engine. Not good for consumer
3.) EA is losing quality yearly like M$ especially on the PC product line.
Re:Why relocate to California? (Score:1, Interesting)
God, after living in Texas most of my life, I still don't get the whole anti-hispanic thing here in SoCal.
Re:Where is #1 and #2? (Score:4, Interesting)
About 4 blocks from my house is the huge EA Canadian headquarters (950 employees) where they do all the sports games, and then downtown we have Radical Entertainment, Relic, Threewave, Rockstar Vancouver, Barking Dog, etc...
Open Source old projects? (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably not. Old games tend to just die, unfortunately.
Goodbye. (Score:4, Interesting)
EA destroyed Bullfrog, Origin,
What do they sell now ? The Sims
Some google cache links (Score:2, Interesting)
Rap Sheet - Ultima Series [google.com]
Rap Sheet - Wing Commander Series [google.com]
Wing Commander CIC [google.com]
Re:Ultima V Dungeon Siege Remake (Score:4, Interesting)
Just last week I bought Dungeon Siege, the first computer game I've bought in a year, just so I could play the fan-based remake of Ultima V featured on slashdot the other day [slashdot.org]. It was a neat concept to remake an old (but loved) game.
There's also a user created Wing Commander mod for Vega Strike [sourceforge.net].
I really dig the user-created remakes. They're just so crappy in comparison to the originals.
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Re:It is true (Score:3, Interesting)
As a number of posts above have covered, a community [wcnews.com] still exists around a game that's been dead for roughly 6 years (WC: SO was released in '98).
I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only guy who wants Privateer on Linux or a modern OS, or even a multiplayer version.
What are your thoughts on releasing the source to the community for really old timers like Privateer, Armada, etc.? I think there's a lot of potential for a community project.
Goodbye old friend (Score:2, Interesting)
That doesn't change the fact that U IV was one of the reasons that I got into computing in the first place - the power of that world - I mean honestly - what other game forced you to take notes!!!! Hello! I was a freshman in high school at had like 6 notebooks - one for each subject and one for Ultima.
In many ways, I think, it was the first departure from the true D&D style of the very early TSR games that was sucessful and paved the way for so many great games later.
Just because we knew it was coming doesn't make the final death knoll any less sad.....
Goodbye old friend
"Creativity is dead" (Score:4, Interesting)
Even things regarding a game's difficulty is being gutted. Whens the last time anyone here played the singleplayer mode of any game and actually had trouble with it?
Re:Origin WAS great, but what have they done latel (Score:1, Interesting)
Origin games from a different angle (Score:3, Interesting)
Crusader: No Remorse and No Regret however, were amazing. To this day I wish someone could figure out how to get them to run on WinXP systems (Installer refuses on non-win9x and no compatiblity didnt help) so i could spin through them again.
Creativity is alive and well (Score:3, Interesting)
That's silly. In the last several years we've got numerous creative games from major companies, and no reason to believe this will change. Animal Crossing, Dance Dance Revolution, Shenmue, Space Channel 5, Pikmin, and the Sims, off the top of my head.