EA CEO Regrets Dungeon Keeper, A Little Bit

Well, it may be a few months too late, but at least we have some closure: EA CEO Andrew Wilson finally admitted that their Dungeon Keeper reboot was badly executed.

Dungeon Keeper, to those of you born in the 90’s, was a classic RTS game where you played the bad guy: building a dungeon full of riches and beasts to lure heroes to their doom and eventually conquer the lands above.  It’s considered a classic these days, and when EA announced the reboot people were excited.  An excitement that quickly turned to controversy when it was discovered that it was a blatant pay-to-win game, where doing anything as simple as digging out a block took time or money.  It was a commercial bomb, so bad that it even forced the company who made, Mythic, to shut down.   And for a long time, EA did the obnoxious thing and refuse to admit it had done anything wrong, saying;

"We're also seeing a lot of game downloads and in-game engagement so that tells us there is a large group of people who are playing and enjoying the game. Obviously, this is counter to some of the angry reactions we've seen around the internet."

Which was shenanigans.  Anyway, to go into all the reasons Dungeon Keeper was bad would be a waste at this point, largely because it’s unnecessary: in an interview with Eurogamer, Andrew Wilson finally showed some (mild) regret for how Dungeon Keeper was produced.

"For new players, it was kind of a cool game," he began. "For people who'd grown up playing Dungeon Keeper there was a disconnect there. In that aspect we didn't walk that line as well as we could have. And that's a shame."

He continued, saying:

"You have to think about value irrespective of the increment of spend that is being made.  And as we look forward, the two lessons we get are, one, where you are dealing with IP that has existed in the past, even though you're reinventing it for a new audience, you have to do your best to stay true to its essence... The second is, when you're thinking about any business model, premium, subscription, free-to-play, value has to exist. Whether it's a dollar, $10, $100 or $1000, you have to delivering value, and always err on the side of delivering more value, not less."

"We misjudged the economy," he finally admitted.

Slightly validating to hear all this, I admit, but it comes a little late.  It seems doubtful at this point they’ll try dungeon keeper again or fix the version currently out anytime soon, but it’s still good to see they’re not just ignoring criticism like they had been doing earlier.  I want to like you, EA, but you’re going to have to stop pulling stunts like Dungeon Keeper to make that happen.