The Time for Inaction has come!

I read this today.

A little part of me died inside. The part of me that loves football, as well as creativity and innovation in video games. Any hope for the kind of advances in gameplay and design that were evidenced by Sega’s NFL 2k5 has just been completely smashed.

I absolutely refuse to buy any EA Games in the foreseeable futures. A boycott, if you will. Here are my terms…

We will no longer buy games from Electronic Arts (hereafter referred to as EA). We will resume buying EA games when these conditions have been met: 1) Fair pay is given to all EA developers for overtime worked, as determined by a third-party auditing institution to be chosen by a majority of EA’s developers. 2) Rights to NFL and NCAA football teams, players, and insignia are licensed to other companies AT FAIR PRICES to make competing products. 3) A licensed game that doesn’t totally suck, and nets an average score of at least 90%, as measured by GameTab.com and GameRankings.com, on all current-generation platforms that the game is released on. We’re sick and tired of crap like Lord of the Rings: The Third Age and Goldeneye: Rogue Agent.

I’m sick of the useless marketing tripe. I’m especially nauseated by the EA’s marketing extravaganza masquerading as an awards show. Brooke Burke as Best Performance by a Human Female? So, why weren’t Jen Taylor of Halo 2 (Cortana) and Merle Dandridge of Half-life 2 (Alyx Vance) nominated? Oh, that’s right, Halo 2 and Half-life 2 weren’t published by EA. I forgot. These were character portrayals I actually connected with. Cortana and Alyx Vance represented deep characterization that was only possible because of the quality of their voice acting.

I’m not going to buy anymore games from a company that only milks developers and stifles creativity.

I encourage anyone and everyone to take your purchasing power and don’t buy another EA product. Let’s face it, it’s not like you’ll be missing much, anyway.

I’ve set up an online petition for anyone that wants to be counted as one who will not buy crap from a crappy company.