I hope you are correct I really do. But look at the damage EA has done to the gaming industry over the last 10 years - the streamlining, dumbing down, consolizing of PC games, draconian DRM schemes, shorter games etc. EA is in it for the money and nothing else - they don't care about creative ideas, immersion, world-building etc. All they want is to make the maximum profit with a minimum of effort/cost. I'm not saying this is all bad because game companies most turn a profit to survive but there is a fine line here. A writer, painter, movie-maker must also make money to survive but I hope we can agree that there is a huge difference between genuine artists like Kafka, Picasso or Fellini and then hacks like Stephanie Meyers, Michael Bay or Uwe Boll?
I say again that if all this deal with EA does is bring some good old games to GoG then I'm down with it but lets just hope it doesn't start a landslide into Hell for GoG.

With all due respect and being well aware of what happened with Westwood, Bullfrog, Origins and so on, you CAN'T boil everything down on EA.

Streamlining, dumbing down, consolization of games is really and solely to blame on EA? Or did they their part as much as all other big publishers did?
EA started the draconian DRM schemes? As far as I know, they didn't use Starforce. If you're refering to the outcry following their implementation of SecuROM with activation limits on Mass Effect and Spore - Bioshock takes the lead here, which isn't an EA game.

Replace EA with Activision (CoD, Guitar Hero), Lucasarts (abandoning adventure-genre, at first console exclusive Force Unleashed), Rockstar (Red Dead Redemption) or any other publisher. How many fit that description? Don't worry, I have your answer: almost all.

Well, I do hope nothing untoward happens as well but I don't expect it.

I actually think "consolization" is a myth. Bad ports already had a name and we called them "bad ports". The rest of the consolization perception is nothing more than the games industry expanding and new folks becoming interested and it had positive benefits as well. Without this growth we'd have never seen Angry Birds and maybe not even Minecraft, not to mention some pretty amazing "mainstream titles". Actually this part got longer than I wanted and I don't want to discuss it in this thread. If you want to discuss it make a new thread "Consolization: Fact or Fiction" or some such, it's its own topic.

The other stuff you complain about was not really brought to us by EA (though they have participated later on): activation on PC started with Bioshock, that was 2k, PC game clients (outside of just a multiplayer game finder like GameSpy) was brought to us by Valve. Cutting LAN play (my personal gripe) was done by Activision with MW2 and then by Blizzard (StarCraft 2).

One might argue they are in it for the money (and they certainly have treated their employees very poorly at times), but EA has actually published some very "unsafe" titles along with all their Madden rehashes. Spore, for example, was a mess, but it was a risk that EA took (and paid for, btw). Bioware was allowed to take a risk on DA:O. Hell, Mass Effect was a risk, when you look at it. Who knew people would love that game so much? Warhammer Online was a risky MMO (existing property controlled by an insanely control freak company).

I do hate "Stephanie Meyers, Michael Bay or Uwe Boll" creators or the world. I can't say I've never enjoyed a single thing they've done, but largely not. EA seems to be making some effort to turn around their poor corporate culture from a few years ago, and it does seem to be working. I don't know if they'll ever be 90s EA again, but I don't want to give them kicks in the nuts for doing the right thing.

Why would EA be privy to any more information than any of GOG's other business partners? Moreover, if they were of a mind to steal someone's business model and spend them into oblivion, why would they pick GOG, of all places? And if that was their goal all along, aren't they going about it in an awfully roundabout way?

Besides, competition is good, even for GOG, and if EA can actually improve on GOG (your words), why should we object? Wouldn't launching an even better source for good old games be a pretty big positive in EA's column? If it turns out that GOG is directly responsible for publishers giving greater attention, care, and accessibility to their back catalogues, isn't that a good thing?

Anyway, if EA is just a blind, soulless, money-hungry corporation that doesn't understand or care what gamers want, what are you worried about? If they're that out of touch, are they really going to be stealing GOG's customers?

Your point isn't exactly good. You don't really get brick-and-mortar stores that have some sense of identity like GOG has (DRM-free, bonus content, etc) -- they mainly just sell games so there's no reason to fear you'll lose something you appreciate.

(I'm not saying I share the same fears as the OP, I'm just saying your point isn't valid.)

Spore might have been somewhat risky (it was an experimental game)... DA:O and ME?! There's nothing risky about those. EA had at that point incredible amounts of experience when it came to marketing and efficient development.

Whatever would have happened, they were both going to be profitable. As it turns out they were more than profitable, which would still have been something to be expected. There was nothing risky about those games.

EA did publish some risky titles (but not too many) along the years, but DA:O and ME were not among them. Off the top of my head Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii could be considered a risky move on their part -- and admittedly it was only marginally profitable. Still, EA knows how, when and why to take risks, and they do it without actually putting themselves in any kind of danger.

DA:O was risky because everyone thought nobody likes "hardcore" rpg's these days.

A big risk was also Mirror's Edge. And it failed. ERGO: people don't like new ideas, they like old ones.

And EA is fullfilling that idea great. EA makes good games. People like them, because they are good. Yes, a billion of flies cannot be wrong. Because flies know best what's best for THEM.

If you don't like to be a fly, please dine somewhere else.

I believe you are ignoring the first line of the thread you replied to where I said "it is sad the way this thread has gone" - not where it started.

Seriously this is getting silly. EA are teaming up with GOG to take them down from the inside. It's all a plan to get GOG's operational info (like that's a secret!) and steal all their ideas (if they want to steal the concept of DRM free games, I'm ok with that). GOG is not a complicated concept. EA don't need to infiltrate it, they just need to acknowledge the demand for such a service. If they wanted to put out a competitor to GOG they could, but it simply isn't a big market for EA.

You do realise how niche we are don't you? That GOG feed had 10K people listening, that doesn't even register on EAs meter. They sell games by the millions, the idea they'd try to "steal GOGs ideas" is just silly. I suspect that nobody at EA in any kind of senior position is even aware of the GOG deal, they are concerned with their new release of "FIFA 2012 ultimate football timewaste".

We're just not important enough to be used.

I wouldn't really think it's that "hardcore", but whatever.

Pretty much this, common wisdom was these games would not sell on console. KOTOR was the only indication to the contrary, really.

That's because you suffer from a bit o' 'Stockholm Syndrome' being a console player, yourself. I think, objectively speaking, it is pretty easy to spot said 'consolization' in things like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Deadspace and pretty much all of EA's recent big name titles. Is that true for most other AAA publishers? Sure.

I'm well aware of the differences in games today vs. those of yesteryear. As I said (perhaps poorly) what you see as consolization is largely just the evolution of the industry as its audience has gotten bigger (by at least an order of magnitude, in fact). Also, some games are somewhat influenced by their toolsets and PC toolsets are the same as XBox 360 toolsets in a lot of cases.

I'm not excusing poor ports, but I don't buy this "all games are dumbed down now" argument. It's clearly not true, there's excellent games on all platforms that contain great mechanics and gameplay. In fact, we get more great games now than ever before.

Being upset that every RPG doesn't copy the same, exact formula developed over a decade ago is kind of silly, that would be boring, for one, and some of the evolutions are actually good (even if I don't necessarily prefer them all).

The indie game market is about as big as the mainstream market used to be (as far as hours of gameplay you can find in decent games), that's how much the industry has grown.

I think the word consolization means more than just a bad port - to me it means the entire process of dumbing down most games like Oblivion, Deus Ex 2, Modern Warfare2 and Fallout 3. But I understand your point and wouldn't want to start a new thread on this because it would just lead to a flamewar of PC vs consoles and as you can see by my username I'm way to old for stuff like that.
Yes EA have released some unsafe games but most of their cash-cows are their sports franchises where they take no chance what so ever. I agree that not all EA is doing is bad but it is a company run by suits and NOT game designers/artists. But I actually do agree that we are seeing an ever so slightly attempt at improvement from them. If this is just silence before the storm or what we will have to wait and see.

That's just a matter of semantics. What I call consolization you call 'evolving towards a melding of PC and console toolsets.' I don't see much of a difference. People don't like using the term 'dumbed down' because it has a pejorative slant; however, the reality is gaming mechanics (specifically RPG ones) have become more and more 'watered down' and/or deemphasized over the last several years. And now anything that has experience, perks, and a few cut scenes to deal with choice and consequence are labeled RPGs. People can still pick and choose what they buy however it is frustrating that most 'RPGs' today have 'evolved' into like more than third-person rail shooters with the previously mentioned light RPG elements. And it's not just RPGs, slowly but surely you've seen the extinction -- at least AAA wise -- of Adventure games, Flight sim games (e.g. Wing Commander) and... well... pretty much every genre and sub genre that people are clambering for EA to put on GoG. Ironic, no? All because consoles dominate the industry and EA won't really invest in something unless it caters to the majority of the console audience. And thank goodness for that. But my thoughts on this matter are mostly directed towards EA.