Blog Analysis: Electronic Arts doesn't have to be sorry about making an April Fool's joke.

One of the topics I discussed just very recently was about why writing is more important than speaking (Blog Activity April 2014). Taking an excerpt of the article I mention "people who do not want to write show they do not want to lose confidence...(one of the reasons why) had a bad experience memory when they wrote something they feel regret, they will try to avoid it as much as they can." This topic can be analysed and it happens very often on twitter.

Many people on twitter regret of something they said and they just delete it after that. For instance, just recently, on April's fool day, frostbite engine did an ironic joke that it can support the latest Nintendo console for the implementation of the next generation games. They added to the fact that a next generation game with frostbite will only be released to Nintendo alone (that expresses the console is so powerful, no other rival consoles can implement with their hardware limitations). The actual reality is the opposite where Nintendo cannot implement most of the next generation games due to its own limitations of hardware compared to other rival consoles. The ironic joke was very off track: It was too obvious that nobody would believe it, at least for the people that are game literate. As for those that are not game literate, it would influence them in a positive way. Whether for the non game literate was deceptive or not deceptive for them, does it matter when others tried to deceive others on April fool's day? Did the joke had a purpose besides being mean or bullying Nintendo? The answer is that, yes, it did had other purposes. After all, it is the perception of people how they interpret the message. In other words, the same message can be interpreted in a different way. The message could be "hey, Nintendo? You try so hard to rival with the next generation consoles by trying to create games of value. Let me poke you a little bit with your emotional buttons". That is all it did, it poked with its emotional buttons? Was it bad? Not really. This conversation style, to poke emotional buttons, is very common when an individual wants to talk to another person in a more objective rational way. Poking the emotional buttons to "stray them away" from emotional subjects "with pain" can bring conversations to the table that are more non personal and objectionable. This is done often when discussions lack non personal statements. Although my speculations may totally be wrong, it may be an attempt for Electronic Arts to hopefully seal the bond with the next generation (not the Wii U, the one after the Wii U) to support all upcoming frostbite engines by making the right moves (saying something offensively emotionally) to lead them in more rational talk (next generation to have the right hardware specs to implement upcoming frostbite engines). Otherwise, if Nintendo is stuck more emotionally, they will be more egocentric and focus on creating the hardware specs only for their game requirements Nintendo itself develops and not so much for the extension of third party games.

On the other hand, Google made an April fool's joke about the pokemon game Nintendo owns. Instead of being offensive emotionally to Nintendo like frostbite did, Google was positive emotional to Nintendo with its Google maps add on. The Google maps add on Google added allowed users to catch virtual pokemons. It was more of an adventure and went harmoniously well with the original game's goal that the pokemon series is.

Why do we scold for comments that are emotional offensive if there is good will in it? Because all conversations in social media or blog posts are taken in a personal way. Not all of it should be taken in a personal way. Sometimes it should be taken personal, sometimes it should not. The original intention of the April fool joke frostbite did was of good will and EA should not make claims of being wrong. EA has a poor reputation lately and is trying a lot to build bridges and being very personal with the rest of the public. This is good. However, deleting twitter posts and apologizing is a shame, as it shows that we should only accept one dimension of how the post can be perceived and not through other ways that can be seen as positive.

It is a shame Electronic arts chose this method. All this was to save public face and protect their stakeholders. That is one of the ugly things when companies are too big: They have a lot of weight on the shoulders that they start to have doubts if responsibilities can be done rightfully and ethically. These situations are very hard when you have to do everything, such as saving face, for the sake of the stakeholders that have invested a lot of money.

Besides limiting the perceptions to a singular dimension of reality, it made the original poster who posted on twitter and a thousand individuals reading these news a big fear for people to ever write posts with their own expressions. If people are afraid to even write less than 140 characters (the current limit twitter contains), imagine how afraid they will be to write a formal letter or article? I hope many who read news like that or had similar experiences to the original poster who posted that April's fool joke to not be influenced by management and mass media.