Command and Conquer 4 and what it can teach us.

This post is, as usual with me, as late as your first date. But in that same way, it eventually showed up, grinning stupidly, oblivious to all its faults.

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So Command and Conquer 4 flopped like everyone predicted. Not a surprise. The game is bland, stank of foul betrayal, and is a momumental insult to fans of CNC and RTS gamers everywhere. I wrote about it here last year (ed: now 2 years ago).

I would like to take a moment to spit in the faces of every single person who tried to defend CNC4 pre-release. Every single EA fanboy who said "the new style needs a chance, shouldn't be written off", and every EA moderator (under contractual requirements) who said "don't judge the game before you've played it". Those flimsy veiled excuses don't hold up anymore now, eh? Too bad the bombardment of criticism might have actually curbed the game from ending up such a disaster, but no, instead, we had to not stomp on EA's pathetic marketing campaign for this abomination, only so that we could expose it for being a laughing stock later. Unfortunately, since now it's 'too little, too late', CNC fans got screwed out of a proper sequel (and conclusion) and EA's like 'herpy-derp, we couldn't have forseen this, lawl'. Except for the fact that if they listened to us, instead of hiring moderators to lock/close/hide threads of criticism on their forums, they wouldn't have gotten so badly reamed by every single reviewer. The true, loyal CNC fans did their part. It is EA, and the EA fanboys have no one else to blame but themselves.

However, I'm not here to relive every moment of the nightmare that is CNC4, but rather to educate you on its history, from which, we all may yet learn something. Perhaps this is indeed CNC4's only redeeming quality: it acts as a beacon of tragedies for others to beware.

After CNC4 was released, it's review scores submitted, and it's initial wave of buyers suckered in (about ten people total), CNC4 developers, some of them now ex-employees, were freed from contractual stipulations and revealed the asinine development processes behind the game. In the following link, Greg Black, ex-EA, tells us some of the ugly truths behind CNC4 that fans were forbidden to know before the game's release date. Additionally, Sam Bass, lead designer of all EALA's CNC games, divulges more information about his own power struggle with EA management over the game's direction.

Since I don't expect you to want to sift through it all, I've summarized the major points for how it became such a disaster.

1. As CNC4 was nearing its release date, the number of remaining developers dwindled. EA was trying to cut costs for the project and removed non-essential staff from it's payrolls as the game neared a releasable state. It was also known well ahead of time that ALL of its developers would be terminated by release date. As you can imagine, this didn't promote company atmosphere or enthusiasm. The developers went to get their uninspired game out the door and collect their final paychecks, all while already looking for new employment elsewhere. It didn't help any that the release date was pushed forwards and that CNC4 was expected to be a rushed project since Starcraft 2 was creeping on the horizon.

2. CNC4 was originally designed as a multiplayer online browser game to be marketed in Asia, with very loose ties to the CNC universe, and no singleplayer inclusion, nor any plot advancement. Since it was a lightweight browser game, there was no base-building, macromanagement, nor harvesting of resources. EA management later decided that it would be wiser to repackage the game with a shoddy, cheap singleplayer and as an entire game, cramming a game that was never designed to fit the mold into something else. The designers didn't like it, but they didn't have a choice. Once the fans learned about it, they weren't satisfied either, but the damage was done and EA had no intention of reversing it.

3. In the backlash caused by the poor writing in both CNC3 and Kane's Wrath (CNC3's expansion), Sam Bass, somewhat tired of working on CNC, promised fans that the next main title in the franchise would be an epic conclusion to the story, and resolve most major plot holes and finally answer the fan's questions on the enigmatic Kane, the primary antagonist since the original Command and Conquer. This would release him from working on yet another title in the foreseeable future (up to this point, EA has forced EALA to produce a new CNC title every 6 months), and would allow him to appease the fans he's had to apologize publicly to so many times before. Unfortunately for Bass, EA's intervention demanded that a game that almost entirely contradicted the lore had to be bent and reshaped to fit back into the CNC universe. Worse, EA uncovered Bass' intention of concluding the main plot and revealing one of its greatest mysteries, and promptly forbade it. In the disagreement that followed, Bass retracted the original plot for CNC4, removed the information about Kane, and closed the saga leaving more questions and plot holes than before. At first, it seemed that Sam Bass had lied to the fans. With his admission post-release, Sam Bass has indisputably betrayed and misled fans with misinformation under stipulations of his contract. Even though EA drove the project into the wall, Bass is not entirely blameless for continually oiling the wheels.

4. Following the rather lackluster (but at least palatable) titles of Red Alert 3 and Kane's Wrath, the fans were issued public apologies and promises of better feedback methods pre-release as well as consistent patch support post-release. So for CNC4, they had an invitational pre-screening, gathering pros, prominent players and CNC-fansite reporters to a convention in Germany. The feedback was almost entirely negative, but the developers expected this for the reasons above (which at the time they couldn't disclose). Knowing that EA would never let them alter the game, they curbed the criticism with excuses, claiming that the product was still unfinished, and that it would be much more acceptable by release, even though the main criticisms were with the game fundamentals which were already set in stone. Following the pre-release convention, a multiplayer beta was issued, but as accurately confessed by Greg Black in the above interview, there was insufficient time to have a meaningful beta where feedback could be evaluated and used to further develop the game. Beta and release were practically the same, which is unsurprising, considering all EA betas are like this now. See: Need For Speed World, Medal of Honor, Dead Space 2 betas.

Overall, no one's surprised that EA released a terrible title. No one's surprised that EA management was at fault for leading the trainwreck either. At one point I thought EA had sensibly canceled Tiberium (the CNC FPS game), but then for them to promptly lead this project into disaster makes me think their judgment is spotty at best. EA is never going to learn from its mistakes, but other developers can. And while EA has a lot of buffer room when making such errors, others don't. Learn from EA. Don't be a shit stain on gaming.