I wasn’t there, but I hear EA threw a hell of a Super Bowl Bash, complete with bev-o-rages and those delicious little sausages on toothpicks.  Since I wasn’t invited (34th year in a row) I can only guess that it was yet again another modest affair attended by invited professional athletes and their posses.  Parties like these typically cost well above the six-figure mark, sometimes WAY above it.  So if money was no object for a Super Bowl Party, why did EA come up so short on payroll that they had to issue pretty little PINK invitations to the unemployment line to so many of its Tiburon staff right down the road?

If we are to believe the corporate big boys at all of the major publishers, they are really hurting for money right now, despite having been one of the only sectors of the economy to show badass growth in 2008.  If their frickin’ industry is BOOMING then why in the heck are these guys losing so much cash?  I think parties like this are just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s sort of a status symbol for some companies to throw lavish affairs attended by huge celebrities.  But at the end of the day, what do they REALLY accomplish except perhaps getting them 10 seconds of mention on Entertainment Tonight IF one of the celebrities makes an ass of themselves in some noteworthy way while at the party.  Otherwise, think about about what 250k dollars or more could have bought them in marketing (you could own G4 for a week), or community attention (you could pretty-much fly someone from EVERY major game blog or site to attend the event and still have enough money left over for a Ferrari).

That, or you could…… y’know…. not fire a few people and let them keep making games for your company which you could in turn use to make even more money than you spent on their services.

I know!  This concept is CRAZY!

Yeah, I’m overreacting a bit, but I can’t help but get that same feeling about this EA party in the aftermath of all of these layoffs, as I do about a car company complaining its going under, while flying their CEO in a private jet to ask congress for money.  It’s different… but the same.  To me.

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