The giant video game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) is not universally loved – if you play games or talk about them on the internet, you may have noticed. Despite releasing some of the most successful games of the last 20 years (Fifa, Battlefield, Need For Speed, Mass Effect) the company has plenty of detractors. Why?

Like its great rival, Activision, EA is sometimes seen as a soulless corporate monolith, interested only in frisking players for as much cash as possible. For two years running – in 2012 and 2013 – it was voted the worst company in America by readers of the Consumerist blog, beating banks as well as corporate tobacco and weapons manufacturers. The disastrous launches of SimCity and Battlefield 4, the confining and somewhat invasive nature of the publisher’s Origin digital gaming platform and the voraciously monetised smartphone version of Dungeon Keeper, have kicked further dents in its reputation.

If you were to lead the company, what would you do? This was the question facing Andrew Wilson almost a year ago. Previously the president of the EA Sports label, the Australian became chief executive in September, replacing John Riccitiello. He took over a business that had seen six years of financial decline, its attempts to muscle into the casual gaming space having led to the expensive acquisitions of Jamdat, Playfish and Popcap, its sales falling, its MMO (massive multiplayer online) Star Wars: The Old Republic haemorrhaging money. What would you do?

The player-first philosophy

Wilson looks every inch the young thrusting business exec. Square-jawed, tanned, super confident, he is what a 3D printer would come up with if you typed in “modern CEO”. He is personable but media savvy: when we met in Cologne, it was clear he has a message to get out there. He doesn’t waste time.

“When the board asked me to take on this role, there were definitely things I wanted for the company – that I’d wanted for a long time,” he said. “I wanted us to be player first – to think about who the player is and what they want. For a long time, the games were the most important thing that we had. But then, in some ways, we got to thinking about EA itself, about how to to make it a good company. I said, okay, the player needs to be the lens through which we see the world and the filter through which we make decisions – and if we do that everyone wins. Players end up with great games, the people who work for the company end up working in a much more positive place and ultimately the shareholders will get a return.”

But the philosophy was tested, and found wanting, within a month of his appointment, with the controversial launch of Battlefield 4. It was a mess; the multiplayer servers were continually down and saved games kept disappearing. Investors began a lawsuit against EA claiming that they had been misled about the product. Months later the company released its free-to-play smartphone version of much-loved strategy classic, Dungeon Keeper, but the game was full of aggressively pushed in-app purchases. Another controversy, another dent to the public image.

What has all this taught him? “There are different elements that you hope to learn from,” he says. “As you push the boundaries, things are not always going to go how you like. One of the things we’ve tried to do is give our teams more space to evaluate where they are at at any given moment in time and change development process to facilitate that.

“With Battlefield Hardline, we wanted to get it into the hands of gamers earlier and really test it. The beta test was stable, so clearly some of the things we’d learned since Battlefield 4, on the server and the client side, were working. We learned about scalability and stability and that allowed us to let gamers in earlier and give us feedback. What we got from the community was, ‘this is cool, but we think the fiction should go deeper’. We were then able to make a judgment call on that. I don’t think it would have been possible before.”

Hardline, a spinoff from the main Battlefield series, featuring cops and criminals, was delayed to allow for more development. Responses so far have been mixed: some have seen it as a re-skinned Battlefield 4 but the hands-on sessions at E3 went down well. “Moving Hardline was the most frightening moment of the year,” said Wilson. “It was a hard … it was a big deal. But the feedback was positive from the gamers, the studio and the shareholders who invest in our decisions.”

It’s ready when it’s ready

So is this the EA maxim now: delay launching if necessary? Wilson says it is. “We decided that we couldn’t get an innovative Need For Speed title out this year so for the first time in 17 years we’re not launching one, we’re giving the team extra time. We moved Titanfall on Xbox One out of our fiscal year; we moved Dragon Age, we moved Hardline. These were difficult decisions. The business of what we do, as measured by the stock price and fiscal returns, has grown - to me that’s reassurance that we’re doing the right thing.”

But there’s something else game players are worried about – the dearth of originality in the mainstream games industry; the reliance on long-running franchises. In 2008, EA released Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge, two idiosyncratic and fascinating games – they were not amazing sellers but they have dedicated fans. Can that happen again, in the era of 400-staff teams and multimillion dollar budgets?

“We can experiment more now than ever!” exclaims Wilson. “I grew up in this business making games where the first [contact] you had with a player was when you dropped the demo. But the funny thing about demos was, by the time they were out, the game was done – if you got any feedback there was very little you could do. Now look at what we’re doing with Shadow Realms – we’re not planning on launching that until late 2015, but we had it playable on the showfloor at Gamescom.

“Our objective now is to bring players in much earlier. It gives us a better sense of what we’re investing in and whether there is demand for it, and it gives players an opportunity to say, ‘we like this, we like that, but it would be cool if this happened’. Here is the reality of games development. When you sit down and talk to the great creative leaders we have in the industry, the vision they sell is often intoxicating and contagious. However, what often happens is that either the vision doesn’t manifest in the game, or the player never gets to the vision because of a dumb HUD or a poor UI or some other fluff that gets in the link between the idea and the gameplay.

“This whole concept of the industry hiding everything until the very last moment is an outdated way to make games. Invite people in as early as you can, deal with the feedback and build that back into the game. What you get two or three years down the track are amazing games built with the help of the community.”

Virtual reality and Hollywood

We talk a little about industry trends and virtual reality comes up. Wilson is clearly intrigued by the concept but isn’t sure if the consumer format will be head-mounted displays, holograms or some other platform. “We have a series of incubation labs working in and around that technology, across the company right now,” he smiles. “When and how [they will be released] we’re not certain, but it’s very interesting to me.”

I mention that I think virtual reality (VR) will bring about new forms of gaming that are more about presence and emotion than action. He nods enthusiastically and tells me about something he saw at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, which has a successful game design course – Wilson has lectured there a few times.

“They had a project set up on Oculus Rift where you’re in a hunger line waiting for food. As you standing there, the person in front of you goes into shock from low blood sugar and collapses. The researcher are registering the ways in which different people responded.

“What I can tell you is, it’s amazing the impact that this experience has – you watch playback of people playing, you see them kneeling down trying to pick the person up, they’re reaching for their mobile phones! I just think … that’s games. I want to make games that immerse people like that.”

That’s interesting, I say. Take a company like BioWare: it makes great genre adventures like Dragon Age and Mass Effect but it would be fascinating to see the studio tackling a drama, something in the real-world. A romantic comedy even. If games did that, couldn’t they truly overtake cinema as the emotional story-telling medium of our age?

“I don’t want us to be a movie studio, but do I believe that story and emotion and the development of characters is going to play an important role in games,” says Wilson with unguarded enthusiasm. “If you look at a lot of films today, they’re basically video games. They should have been video games. When I sit down with Patrick Söderlund [head of EA Studios], this is what we talk about. We say, why aren’t we sitting in Hollywood reading cool scripts, and then building games that immerse people? Our medium can deliver on scripts so much better than a linear two-hour story can. Yes, I think that’s in our future.”

Present tense

Meanwhile in the present, there is plenty to do. Fifa 15 is on the way; Dragon Age Inquisition and Hardline too. Sims 4 looks interesting but fans are worried about how much content is being left out of the initial release. Wilson says he doesn’t want to focus on extracting money from people, but a hobbled Sims release followed by waves of downloadable content would hit the company’s reputation once again. And Wilson says he doesn’t want that: he doesn’t want to be a contender in the Consumerist awards ever again.

“We didn’t even make it out of the first round this year,” he laughs. But it is awkward and for a moment the tension shows. “When I came into this job, the board didn’t want the company to be perceived that way. I said if we commit to delivering amazing games built on creativity and commit to engaging with gamers when they think we have done them a disservice, then that puts us in the best possible position.

“I hope we never appear on that list again, I truly do. But I expect that, as we push the boundaries of entertainment, we will get feedback from time to time that people want us to do different things. That’s okay. That’s the cool thing about our industry.”

We’ll see. But certainly the company has reported better than expected earnings in the last two quarters, with Titanfall proving a strong seller. It is expecting big things from The Sims 4, Fifa 15 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, and there is something new on the way from Burnout creator, Criterion.

I have to ask one last thing as I’m being ushered away. How is the EA Dice team doing with the much-anticipated shooter Star Wars Battlefront and the surprise sequel, Mirror’s Edge 2? “Both are in development,” he says. “We had a review in October, where the executive team headed up to Dice to see the latest on both of those games. They are making amazing progress. We also saw some other stuff that’s hiding in some dark corners up there; they’re incubating new ideas. We’re feeling very good about the future.”

Sims 4 is out now on PC. Dragon Age: Inquisition is out on PC and console in November. Battlefield: Hardline is due on PC and console in early 2015. Keith Stuart travelled to Gamescom on a press trip with other journalists, with accommodation and transport organised by Electronic Arts.

• Battlefield: Hardline – hands-on with the cops and robbers shooter
• Sims 4: gaming’s fascinating answer to reality TV