As some of you know, I and my crack team of super-hackers have occasionally been able to access EA servers and retrieve important company information, like who was assigned to bring bundt cake at the holiday party, or the fact that next Friday will be refrigerator clean-out day on floor 22. This time we hit paydirt - an excerpt of meeting minutes from a recent EA/FM briefing meeting. Some interesting things going on behind the scenes....
EA President: Good afternoon Firemonkeys. This is our first meeting since the Le Mans update. How did that go?
FM: Well sir, it was a very popular event, though there were a couple of glitches. One event was released as un-winnable, and we had some issues with the loaner car and upgrades not being transferred to the players upon finishing.
EA: Well, what do they expect?! Nothing is free in this world, so why should they get cars and upgrades for free?
FM: They actually had paid already for the upgrades.
EA: Oh boo hoo. The car was free - they want more things for free as well?? Ridiculous. Which reminds me - anyone who has eaten the peanuts from the bowl on the table will have $35 withdrawn from their next paycheck.
Intern: Excuse me sir - but at the start of the meeting we were told they are free.
EA: That was 30 minutes ago! We’ve had to open up two more cans of honey roasted since then, flooding this room with peanuts. Peanuts don’t grow on trees you know! Now enough of that, what’s going on with our users?
FM: Our forum is still down for temporary maintenance - seems like our forum’s IT guy is still out on a smoke break. But, we were able to get an infiltrator into the MyRealRacing forum. We got some good intel until our mole was banned from the site.
EA: What did he find?
FM: A couple of interesting observations. First, they appear to be a very well organized, united group bent on enjoying the game as much as possible, while at the same time spending as little money as possible. Second, there are apparently girl racers. We weren’t expecting that. We may add glitter paints to our paint color palette. As you know, women will spend inordinate amounts of cash on shiny things, so there’s a great marketing opportunity there. We also observed a huge and unexplained interest in the 70’s television show Welcome Back Kotter. A significant number of posts mention the show.
EA: Well, we know from previous research that many of the forum members are over 40, so that doesn’t surprise me. After all, that WAS quite an amazing series! I still play old episodes on my betamax when I get the chance. By the way, why was the mole banned?
FM: He called the forum members thugs and criminals, and for some reason was eliminated from the site. We didn’t expect that - on our old forum we were called thugs and criminals so much we thought it was normal forum lingo and that he would fit right in. Apparently not.
EA: No worries - it’s not an official site, so I’m sure they’ll never have more than a couple dozen followers. Now I also understand someone in your organization increased gold payouts recently. That isn’t true, is it?? You know how I feel about giving out gold.
FM: Yes sir but not to worry. Even though we increased our payouts by up to seven times under limited circumstances, we reduced the opportunities to achieve payouts by 10 times in all circumstances. That’s keeping in line with your “black hole” economic model - money comes in but does not go out.
EA: Very good then. You may go. However, I want to remind you of the five points I laid out in my memo to you recently. Always heed them:
P romote every new update as the “biggest, best ever”
I gnore all complaints, bug reports, help tickets and social media posts
P enalize users who have currency balances that don’t align with game progress
P illage and plunder whenever possible
Y ank any and all user-appreciated features away as soon as they are released
