WIRED MAGAZINE wrote:

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello is very sorry about what happened to Bullfrog. And Westwood. And Origin Systems.

"We at EA blew it, and to a degree I was involved in these things, so I blew it."

In his presentation kicking off the final day of the DICE Summit, the head of the videogame superpublisher acknowledged that his company's previous strategy of acquiring talented developers just didn't work. But these days, even as EA and its competitors swallow up more and more developers in the race towards consolidation, Riccitiello thinks things are working out right with companies like Bioware and Maxis, by letting them keep their corporate culture.

Riccitiello said that the company's "one-management-size-fits-all" mentality with its acquisitions in the past only stifled creative freedom. "When I talked to the creators that populated these companies at the time, they felt like they were buried and stifled," he said.

Electronic Arts acquired Bullfrog, creators of acclaimed strategy games like Populous, in 1995. By 1997, the group's star creative talent, Peter Molyneux, had quit.

"Creative teams can be thought of as flowers in a hothouse -- you move the temperature up or down a few degrees and the flowers will die," he said.

The fear that talent will flee a studio, leaving no value left in the business, is "well-founded... it's exactly right," said Riccitiello.

"The command and conquer model," he said, "doesn't work. If you think you're going to buy a developer and put your name on the label... you're making a profound mistake."