EA's Executive Responds To 'Worst Company' Controversy

Not long ago, Electronic Arts was named (rather hilariously) the Worst Company in America after fans responded to a consumer affairs blog survey, which earned the company the "Golden Poo" award. That means it beat out both BP and Bank of America, which is an impressively bad thing to be able to brag about.

Despite being named the Worst Company in America, however, EA remains positive, with executive Peter Moore making a statemen about the company's stance and how they felt overall about that determination by the general public.

"Yes, [being named Worst Company in America] was ridiculous," Moore said. "And this was also the time of sub-prime mortgage crisis; banks are dumping hundreds of thousands of people out onto the street. You try and be defensive and say this is stupid, this is ridiculous; and then you go, 'Maybe there's a kernel of truth here.' Maybe this is a moment we can step back, look in the mirror, look at who we are, look at how we're perceived, and figure out what we need to do to do something about it. Perception is reality so if there perception is that we're not a company that puts players first, then how do we change that?"

It's pretty refreshing to see Moore owning up to the problems caused within the company and perceived by the public, having created a committee within EA that went to scour social media websites to see if the allegations were true, and if people really did seem to "hate" EA the way they felt they did.

"We were guilty of some stuff," Moore was able to agree with, but he didn't elaborate. That might be part of the problem going forward if EA is possibly focusing on areas that don't actually need improvement.

"Then we made a deliberate attempt to say, 'Fine, how do we go forward here?' And the mantra that we came up with was this concept of player-first," the executive explained. "To this day, in fact this morning, in meetings, questions are always asked--what do we need to do here? When do we ship that? What type of experience does this need to be?--somebody will say, but is that player-first?

Moore and the rest of the company are looking into altering operations to become a more player-positive company, taking what players think and feel into consideration rather than focusing on revenue, monetary gains or anything other than public perception. Under this model, the company has the opportunity and vehicle for some real change, so hopefully there'll be some alterations in the future that fans can be proud of.

This article first appeared on World Wide Gaming

[H/T Gamespot]