LibriumArcana.Games

Posted: **Fri Jul 11, 2014 7:58 am**

EA's free-to-play reboot of the classic Dungeon Keeper could have gone better, to say the least. It used the beloved franchise as a skinsuit for a sleazy cash grab. Not only was it panned, but it also sank its developer, Mythic. Six months later, the company is still dealing with the fallout. While EA CEO Andrew WIlson recently apologized for the whole thing, saying it was wrong, Frank Gibeau, EA's head of mobile, has gone the other direction and speculated that audiences just weren't ready for it yet.

"Dungeon Keeper suffered from a few things," Gibeau told Games Industry. "I think we might have innovated too much or tried some different things that people just weren't ready for... I don't think we did a particularly good job marketing it or talking to fans about their expectations for what Dungeon Keeper was going to be or ultimately should be."

While Dungeon Keeper ended up killing veteran developer Mythic, EA will still maintain the game because of its commitment to players. As Gibeau said, "[W]hen you bring in a group of people to Dungeon Keeper and you serve them, create a live service, a relationship and a connection, you just can't pull the rug out from under them. That's just not fair."

It should be noted that EA can no longer legally market the game as free in Europe, due to its crazy amount of in-app purchases. At this point, it's likely best if EA just stops talking about Dungeon Keeper all together and moves on.

Innovation is what killed it huh? I think Gibeau is living in a more vivid fantasy world then the game world itself.

Posted: **Fri Jul 11, 2014 9:24 am**

Instant reviews are such a boon. When I saw that DK was out on mobile I had a brief moment of excitement, followed by reading the reviews and finding out that it was F2P with a million IAPs and said 'Fuck that.'

This kind of reminds me of how the music industry took it in the teeth from online distribution. Back in the day it was totally common for record labels to strap a shitload of crap filler songs to a popular single and sell an album for eighteen bucks. The arrival of internet distribution (via piracy for much of the early go thanks to the music industry fighting the entire concept of online distribution) killed that pretty much dead.

The irony there was that back in the late nineties Blockbuster put forward that they were going to create a service by which you could go to their outlets and burn discs full of music from whatever sources you wanted, paying by the track and so on, and that was killed to protect the filler album model.

Same thing here- they played by the old rules of being able to push crap out the door and get adopters via nostalgia, only to be killed because the market power of consumers has increased. So fuck 'em.

LibriumArcana.Games

EA: Dungeon Keeper Mobile died because of you.

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