Electronic Arts declares victory in War against Canada
01. Jun, 2009 
40 Comments
You didn’t hear the news? Neither did anybody else… Electronic Arts led a covert operation and Canadians are only now learning of the details.
The obvious tip was the Electronic Arts’ “The Sims” website where the United States of America flag refers to all of North America– including Canada.
I realize that US and Canadian citizens are brothers and sisters, but that’s not the point. Canada is a separate country, with its own laws, culture and pride. Somebody at Electronic Arts had to make the decision to label Canada as the United States and consider its effects, but whom?
Matthew Bookspan, a former Electronic Arts Development Manager and now a Product Manager with Voxeo, suggests the decision to label Canada this way was made by EA Marketing and the Bean Counters.
Mr. Bookspan dismissed my concerns telling me “I think you’re making a mountain out of a mole hill.”
I wouldn’t go that far, but as an American, I would expect him to understand the concern if the roles were reversed. Early in our conversation I asked Mr. Bookspan “If a Canadian software company used our flag to represent North America, what would US customers think?” He answered: “I don’t think there’s a solution that would make you happy.” and “It’s only offensive to those who choose to be offended. You control (or not) your own emotions.”
The more this conversation went on, the more I felt compelled to write this blog post.
Since Mr. Bookspan no longer works for EA, I didn’t take his communication as an official EA position… but through his opinion, I can see why EA might not think it’s a big deal to respect Canada’s individuality.
I’d suggest there are at least two ways for Electronic Arts to keep Canadian customers happy. 1) Respect us by not ignorantly labeling our country with your national flag and 2) Don’t pretend like it ain’t no thang when someone raises a concern about it.
UPDATE Jun4:
It’s been a couple of days since I asked EA for a response on their use of the American Flag to represent North America and I have not yet heard back from Angie Newman, or EA’s PR company, Bender / Helper Impact.
After visiting the American Apparel website, Lee Dale from Say Yeah! posted a comment and a link back to his blog with a possible solution for language selection. I decided to add Lee’s update to this post to keep it from getting buried in the comments section. As you can see from the image on the right, AA seems to have the right idea about language selection. Thanks Lee.
UPDATE: Say Yeah! posted their take on the subject here: http://yousayyeah.com/article/2009/06/how_to_turn_a_linguistic_convenience_into_a_nationalist_uproar
What do you think?
What do I think? I think that anyone who responds to any intellectual debate with “It’s only offensive to those who choose to be offended. You control (or not) your own emotions.” is acting like a complete prick. Not only is that irrelevant to the argument, but it’s a completely absurd statement.
The bottom line is, it doesn’t offend me that EA’s marketing department is foolish. I find it more amusing that American’s are so daft. It’s made in California, not Canada, so what’s with the other 20 flags? There’s a simple solution: include a Canadian flag. And, if not, don’t sell your product in Canada and not expect this kind of feedback.
So, anyone in Mexico want to chime in on this?
Keep on fighting the good fight. We’re Canadians, not Americans! Silly yanks :)
Can you imagine the uproar if we as Canadians lumped the rest of North America into simply Canada? I mean in terms of a bona fide flag thumping country, America trumps all.
But I am Canadian and I like and celebrate our differences, however small they may be.
Typical American arrogance. They always think of us as a “branch” office. Americans want to believe that when it comes to business, the border doesn’t exist and we are all one big happy trading family, so why should they bother with our flag?
EA has a studio in Vancouver, I’m wondering why the Canadians on Team EA in Vancouver didn’t question the decision to leave the Canadian flag off.
Finally – WHY does Belgium score two flags? C’mon EA. Belgium! Really? Two flags. And one goes to the Dutch site!
I’m trying to think of something calm, intelligent, and neutral to say, but I’m simply at a loss for words. I’m legitimately trying to choose not to be offended, to play devil’s advocate, but Mr. Bookspan seems to have pushed the right buttons. Is he at fault for getting me angry, or am I at fault for letting someone who so obviously doesn’t get simple compassion get under my skin?
My worry, though, lies in extending Bookspan’s ignorance to EA-the-company. I mean, he was likely the last person to see this piece, or at least think critically about it. And, while I’m certain there were more senior executives who were exposed to it before, their job is not necessarily to look at everything and think each design element through — their job is to make sure the company continues to be active, that their workforce continues to be employed, and that their product continues to be sold.
Now, that said, the company definitely made a big faux-pas with this… but let’s wait to see what they officially do next (and how quickly they do it) before thinking too hard about anyone but good ol’ Matt.
(Just my two cents)
Certainly an oversight, if not a deliberate slight on the publishers fault. I have been in similar situations working on multi-lingual websites where it’s been suggested I use a flag to indicate language. While this works well for Japan and parts of Europe, it is not a 1:1 mapping. I guess the same is happening for this design. Funny that there’s a map of the world in the background which makes a decent interface for continent selection.
Blargh – what an extraordinary display of arrogance, ignorance, and poor product/marketing management. Could have been a great PR/brand building opportunity to own up, say you screwed up and fix it so it doesn’t happen again. But “it’s only offensive to those who chose to be offended”? Wow.
Ryan brings up a good point. The issue doesn’t come down to whether or not there’s a Canadian flag; you simply can’t put every flag on this page. This inevitably means (as pointed out by @mbooksman) many people will choose to be offended by the omission of their flag. The point is, whomever made the design decision to use flags to differentiate language was terribly incorrect. I get that each of these flags directs to another URL, but that, too, is beside the point. Language does not correlate to borders, or domains.
@Lee, yeah… I wasn’t sure what to think about my conversation with Matt last night. He volunteered his opinion, which I respect and since he worked for EA and seemed to have some legitimate insight, I included his references, despite the attitude. I don’t hold it against him, I think the marketing and bean counters at EA have made him overly sensitive to these kinds of issue.
@Michael Lewkowitz @NewMediaMike, @Ruv, @Alistair. Thanks for the feedback
@Aidan Nulman: Thanks for your input. To clarify, Mr. Bookman no longer works for EA and as far as I know, was not involved in this decision. He engaged me last night as a former EA employee with some knowledge of the background deicisions – that’s it.
@Ryan Feeley. Great point, others have mentioned that too (RE: language). In any case, using flags isn’t the right idea.
I had a look at the site and laughed. They could have used anything to represent the language (which is what they have tried to do with the flags – notice there are two for Belgium – one for French and one for Flemish/Dutch.) and they went for the flags probably because graphically it was the easiest thing to do. So what the site is really assuming is that everyone in North America speaks U.S. English which I think the 110 million Spanish speaking Mexicans (not to mention the 34 million Americans who count Spanish as their first language) would find kinda surprising.
It’s a dumb way to navigate languages – they should have just had a clickable map for pete’s sake!
April
Agreed, thanks April!
Ben, this is yet another piece of fuel for that “ignorant American” story we love to tell each other. Molson immortalized it years ago in the rant, but it continues to live on…and probably always will. Comments like Bookspan’s don’t do much to dispel the “ugly American” stereotype, but as you noted, he’s not speaking for EA.
I think what’s truly disappointing here is the message this sends to the employees of EA Canada in B.C. They’ve already seen planned expansion, but now their own company isn’t interested in recognizing a vital part of their own organization’s national identity. According to Wikipedia, EA employs 1,000 in Canada and also notes that Canadians worked on Sims 3…that’s the real shameful part.
Let’s hope it was just an ignorant oversight and is fixed quickly. Then again, when you look at the country selector on EA.com you find that the stars and stripes is used to select “United States/Canada.” There are hybrid flags that could easily stand in…a little cultural sensitivity goes a long way.
Why not let Angie Newman the PR contact for The Sims franchise know how you feel? http://press.ea.com/contact_info.asp?id=80
This guy is a twit. He smiles a big smile, but he just really doesn’t care about you or what you are feeling. Four out of the five messages he sent you were condescending and shameful.
Micheal is right as well, this could have been a big opportunity. Again though, no real fault for any one particular party.
And Mike caught what I noticed as well, the fact that Belgium has two flags at the bottom middle of the screen capture. They have two for French and Dutch, like Canada should for French and English maybe? Population of 10 million versus 33 million.
I’m with you on this Ben – all the way. Nice of you to edit the typo out of Mr. Bookspan’s tweet too.
This is the kind of casual indifference that makes me seethe, even though I’m not even Canadian. Your strong and utterly reasonable response reminds me of a little campaign my friend Gary Turner launched, way back at the dawn of the blogosphere. Gary was irked by the fact that so many database drop-down lists of country names defaulted to “USA” as the first option (and they still do), with the US always appearing first on the list, regardless of where the software was being installed. He launched DropdownUSA.com (now dead, alas) as an entertaining – but serious – little protest.
What EA has done here also reminds me of how annoyed I get when someone ignorantly describes me as being “from the UK” or “British” – even when they know I’m Irish. The fact that some people don’t seem to understand the difference – or why it’s borderline offensive to consider Ireland part of the United Kingdom.
In short – more power to yer elbow, mate. Aidan’s right (above) when he says we need to see some kind of official response from EA before digging too hard into this – Mr. Bookman clearly can’t speak for the company. But in the meantime we can still ridicule the foolishness of this design decision.
I’ve bought EA games since NHL ’93 (yes I’m dating myself) and I find Mr. Bookspan’s responses to be glib & borderline arrogant. Perhaps that is the norm with a self-proclaimed “software guru”.
If I was EA I’d tell him to cease & desist speaking on their behalf but if this former EA employee’s responses were anything indicative of the attitude within the company then I’ve lost respect for EA as a whole. It will be interesting to see EA’s position on this.
I also wonder if EA created a game (NHL 2010 for example) in Vancouver or Montreal and then decided to slap a Canadian flag to represent North America. I wonder how the Yanks would react to that? It does make sense as most NHL hockey players are from Canada.
All, thanks for your input. Reading your feedback has confirmed my original sense that EA should make the appropriate changes. It was something I noticed immediately after visiting the site and if I was a bit confused and put out, I’m sure others will be as well. I’ll bring this to EA’s attention tomorrow and see what they have to say. Thanks again.
Hey Ben, Long lost relative here!
Got a little story of when I was in Wales. Got approached by a local tv crew at an open market. Asked about piercings and tattoos. End of interveiw asked about being an american visiting Wales. I was wearing a ball cap with Canada on it and a lapel pin with a Canadian flag on it. I politly pointed out that I was not american but Canadian. Response was well your the same thing aren’t you? So I proceded to compliment him on all the great things the english were doing in the local area. He tried to correct me that I was in Wales and there was a difference. I answered “exactly”.
What I learned from this is that maybe some of the confusion the world has about our two countries is actually our fault. I mean look at Australia. Besides the accent they have a much larger profile on the world stage way out of proprtion to their population.
My sense is that maybe we (Canadians) should all get a backbone and hammer home to the world whenever we meet this confusion that we are different.
Keep pounding on EA until it’s corrected!
Well that’s a shame – and more than a tad insensitive. Just yesterday, I was reading on another blog that a Blackberry developer contest was being held all over the world … except in Quebec. Again, it’s suspected that this decision was made by bean counters, who didn’t want to meet the translation requirements. I mean heaven forbid you reach out to developers in their own language.
In both cases, I guess the best way to voice our opposition is to vote with our feet.
Hey Ben,
First of all, kudos for saying something. I’m sure a lot of other people noticed the discrepancy but didn’t take the time to say anything, so thanks.
In my opinion whether you were complaining about the flag or the logo or even just the URL, the former EA employee shouldn’t have been condescending to you. Apparently he’s never heard the phrase “the customer is always right.” Now I’m sure EA has a different official opinion, so I’ll wait to see what that is. But if it’s not apologetic or at least a good explanation, they clearly don’t get their customers north of the border.
On another note – I’m not a designer or a developer – but how hard is it to add in a Canadian flag? It doesn’t seem like it would be the website functionality update of the century…but maybe I’m wrong.
Erin
After riffing on this thread on Say Yeah, I’ve just stumbled upon a decent solution, which also uses flags and country based domains. And wouldn’t it be from those perverts over at American Apparel. Full article here, including the American Apparel solution.
I wanted to give EA a chance to respond before publishing this, but it’s been two days and I’ve yet to receive even an acknowledgment from them about my concerns.
—
Ms Newman,
My name is Ben Lucier and I recently noticed that EA.com has a country selector on the main website that refers to North America. My concern is that North America is represented by a US flag.
By representing North America with a visual icon of the United States you run the risk of alienating your Canadian and Mexican customer base.
In the grand scheme of things, this may appear to be a small issue. But after polling a number of sources, including a former EA product manager, I feel compelled to bring this to your attention and request that an alternative method is chosen that more accurately reflects North America as the United States flag is not an appropriate means of doing so.
I wanted to provide you with an opportunity to provide me with an official EA statement/response on this subject before I escalated the issue within your organization and my own network of peers.
Thank-you for your time and congratulations of the launch of Sims 3.
Warm regards,
-Ben Lucier
After reading all the eloquent comments above (and I did read them all), I fear to add my own, as it’s not much more than a “what they said”. Still:
I’m not sure what annoys me more, that my country, with it’s unique culture and history, and with it’s massive size (2nd largest country on the globe), is simply ignored. Or that doofus Bookspan.
This seems to be a trite little point, but it’s not. This is how it starts.
At a big company that sells internationally, there is usually a vetting process that catches things like this before they ship, and even earlier in the process there may be people involved whose job it is to ensure that products are developed properly for international sale. At a small company there are unlikely to be such luxuries, but instead there is a nimbleness that can respond quickly when a customer alerts the company of a problem. I wonder whether EA is somewhere between a small company and a big company.
American insularity is nothing new, unfortunately. This is why I argue that “most multicultural city” Toronto is a great place to create products for a global market. Let the Americans’ weakness be our advantage. The problem with my argument, however, is that even Canadians typically regard the USA as their prime market!
Not only has EA not responded to you yet, but apparently they’re not monitoring Twitter, resulting in their effectively being represented by an ex-employee. Not impressive.
Here’s what EA needs to do in order to include everyone. :-)
Would make for a lovely landing page, wouldn’t it?
You just shouldn’t use flags as a landing page language selector.
So, can you just send them this so we can be done with it:
http://yousayyeah.com/sharing/flag_na.gif
I think this is a dead issue to Electronic Arts, Lee. I’ve heard no response from them, despite my e-mails to EA directly, and their PR agency. I can’t force them to care about the issue, so my guess is they’ll continue on as they were: the center of the universe.