EAis an easy company to hate. Its wholesale pivot to live-service games is marked by loot box mechanics and shady practices across the board to coax as many pennies out of its audience as possible. It’s a big bad corporation that loves money and hates its players, as evidenced by any update to a game that players don’t like.
EA isn’t great. I think loot boxes actively hurt the medium, and the company’s track record for laying off staff this year alone is one of the worst in a bad industry. Thelayoffs at Codemastersthis week follow EA cutting the jobs of six percent of its staff in March, despite CEO Andrew Wilson saying it was “operating from a position of strength” inthe same letterthat announced the redundancies. The company also reportedly cut 200 Apex Legends QA testers in February, according to aKotaku report,and EA subsidiary BioWarelaid off 20 percent of its workforce, 50 employees, in August.
However, we finally have some good news coming out of EA. According toEurogamer, the company has made four of its patents open source and freely available. The highlight is IRIS, the company’s “easy-to-use photosensitivity analysis tool”, which identifies frames in videos that could affect photosensitive players.
Note: The IRIS software is now available onGitHub.
Other available patents include a system that detects if a player has stopped playing and takes over using an AI that mimics their style and an adaptive tutorial system that shifts and changes depending on a player’s skill. The route navigation system from Mirror’s Edge Catalyst has also been made available royalty-free, as well as an animated, personalised coach to give players tips to improve. I’m imagining Clippy as a VTuber, and it seems kind of cursed to be honest.
EA’s SVP of global affairs, Kerry Hopkins, said “Our patent pledge was created on the principle that everyone, no matter their background, should be able to enjoy video games. We are continuing to build on that pledge by open-sourcing our photosensitivity tool, IRIS, and opening up the use of additional patented technology which could help players with motor, cognitive, visual and/or other disabilities have a smoother game experience.
“We want to enable developers across the community to break down barriers to participation, create safer, more inclusive, more accessible and ultimately more fun experiences for players worldwide.”
Many players are already calling this a desperate attempt at good PR, but do the reasons behind it really matter? If EA is releasing these accessibility and approachability tools out of a genuine care for disabled gamers, or if it’s doing so to get some positive news stories in the wake of a bad year of layoffs, those players are still being helped.
The games industry has a poor track record when it comes to patenting innovative technologies. The most egregious example isWarner Bros.’ Nemesis System, used to make the Orc bosses in Shadow of Mordor level with you, learn your approaches, and adapt. It’s an incredible system that really makes the game worth playing (otherwise, it’s just Assassin’s Creed: Mordor with a heck of a lot of Tolkien lore-breaking), but it’s only been used once since, in the sequel.
Depriving rival developers of a clever gameplay system is a different thing from hoarding accessibility technology, however, so it’s worth acknowledging the fact that a company with EA’s resources has released its potentially groundbreaking systems to the world. If this means that just one person can playGTA 6when they wouldn’t have been able to before, it’s worth celebrating.
Next:I Now Have Two Reasons To Go Finally Finish Dragon Age: Inquisition
