I knew about Electronic Arts before they were a gaming juggernaut. Back then, they were nothing more than an insignificant name that just so happened to be responsible for a game I just rented. See, this particular feeling is also present when I see EA now: they can do all these bastardly deeds for the "good of all gaming profits" or make the most exhilarating experience that God himself would want to program, and I would neither hate nor love this company.
Simply put, I see EA as a group of lawyers who are attempting to make videogames. Everytime I hear anything related to EA, it's usually about billions of dollars, lawsuits, exclusive rights, buyouts, all the fancy stuff that I'd normally hear from CNN. Honestly, this stuff doesn't boil my blood. It puts me to sleep. It's the same speeches I hear from people protesting against Wal Mart; no matter how evil this company is, I'm still gonna shop there. I'm not emotionally involved in the world's problems where I'll go to extreme lengths to make my life harder by shopping at some mom and pop store out in the boonies just to send a message nobody even notices.
The worst thing I've seen EA do was play the role of a living room Santa, pretending to eagerly listen to your heart's greatest desire, give some half-hearted empty promise of delivering your dreams in physical form, only to find out he goes home to booze up, vaguely remembering what you, out of dozens of other screaming children want, and tossing the first thing he sees in his laundry bag-turned-gift-sack to send to your house. He probably goes to the basement to beat the midgets that assemble your gift, completely unphased with the fact that he's nothing but real Santa's loser imposter who has real elves, and just simply doesn't give a f**k that he's really some long lost relative of yours being paid by a more successful family member to play the fictional role for s**t's and giggles...that way, when things go awry, you'll hate Santa instead of dad. You know, like for every missed opportunity some developer under the EA label creates, they won't get the backlash...everyone just blames EA for it.
In this day and age, EA's not a single entity of closet boogeymen who destroy our favorite franchises. There's literally a vast collection of games made by dozens of other companies that make better versions of it, or completely new experiences. There's absolutely no reason to single out EA for gaming's problems, much less waste all that energy just to make some witty little comment drowned out by me-too bandwagon hate. The way I see it, every smiling and majestic representative for a videogame company wants my money, they're just good at bulls**ting their way into my wallet. It just so happens that EA lost that particular skill as of late, so the cold hard truth about videogame business practices shines the limelight on them.
I seriously doubt that all the despicable things that gaming has faced was produced by one person. I mean, aside from the working man, I doubt anyone who makes a million dollar salary knows a thing about gaming anymore. Every company's got this single-track mindset of saturating the popular goods until people get sick of it, and snuffing out what doesn't crack double platinum sales. This ass-backwards mentality applies to companies that don't even produce videogames as well. This is a media that's more concerned about advertising their goods than making sure you enjoy the product. This is a hobby controlled by people using your money as donation for some stupid ass experiment to appeal to people who don't even like a certain genre. Everyone does it...don't blame a company that made it popular, blame the idiots who assumed we wanted a round 2.
Disclaimer: I'm so drunk off my ass, that if I've made any sense at all, it was purely unintentional. :)