Even the opening paragraph of this article, the first part of an interview with the man in charge of EA Games, has some significance to Ultima fans:

When Frank Gibeau took over as president of EA Games in 2007, the company had a bloated roster of ageing franchises and movie licences of questionable worth. Together with chief executive John Riccitiello and chief operating officer John Schappert, he set about re-structuring the company, formulating a ?city state?-model in which studios were given greater freedom and individuality.

The Guardian goes on to ask:

Over the last two years there?s been a philosophy change at EA, with a move away from large rosters of games and close centralised control, to fewer titles created by semi-autonomous studios. How has that worked out?

We feel like our strategies are really hitting their stride, they?re working. At the time, we were trying to go from 20 average games down to six to eight great games, such as Mass Effect and Battlefield. We?re also going from 13 different technology engines down to two or three.

Two or three technology engines? It would see that EA DICE’s Frostbite 2 engine is a lot more versatile than I initially thought, and can do more than power amazing-looking war shooters:

Is the move to fewer game engines about freeing up studios and allowing them to concentrate on creativity?

To a degree. With Frostbite, we?ve built a technology that works across genres. I don?t want engineers, artists and designers to be fighting their tools, I want them creating great gameplay experiences. That was definitely a conscious decision ? we?ve got to get out of fighting all these engines, because I can?t even move an artist from one game to another. The beauty of Frostbite is, the spectacular piece of technology that you see in Battlefield 3 and Need for Speed: The Run is just the tip of the iceberg — we?ll be taking that tech across more genres to help us do great things in the future.

That attitude, though — that he doesn’t want his people fighting against their tools, and would rather that they have solid technology platforms from which his people can build great games — is, I think, the right one. I find myself wishing that someone like Gibeau had been in charge back during the latter days of Origin, especially during the production of Ultima 9. That attitude of scaling back the tech base and building for the future could have been — would have been — advantageous back then.

Of course, because it’s been big news lately, the inevitable question about the social space:

Social connectivity has become a key element of EA games over the last year with the Autolog and now Battlelog features. Where do you see this going for EA?

It?s a primary design pillar for us. Social mechanics and social features drive gamer engagement — you stick with the game longer, you play with friends, it gives us the opportunity to put out more downloadable packs, different features and keep you engaged longer. We think of games as a service and underpinning that has to be that you can find, communicate with and compete against others in the community.

You know…if you look back at articles I’ve written about EA, you can almost track my conversion from rabid anti-EA nutjob to open EA fan to about the time that Gibeau took over EA Games and began implementing his changes. There are articles on the site dating back to 2007 which are highly skeptical of EA; articles written a year or two later are much less hostile to the company, and much more in the vein of “hey, these guys seem different.”

Which, of course, they are. And apparently, much of it is due to this man. If so, remind me to buy him a beer if ever I bump into him.