Does anyone more informed than me know if any Blizzard employee could be fired by Activision? I would always like to think that Blizzard was special in their independence within their publishers claws.
For the record, I really enjoy Scott Jenning's articles.
I swear to god this is going to be another division just like in the 60's with Corporate Rock at one end and hippies at the other. History does indeed repeat itself.
Activision and this crap, NCsoft vs. Richard "Iwasalordtheniwasageneralbrittish" Gariott, atari vs. hasbro/turbine, EA/Borg vs. World...
Well with the modern age we don't need a fucking box with art, a disc, player manual and a 50-60 dollar price tag on it. Downloads take about the same amount of time it does for me to go to the store, purchase it, bring it back and install it, and it's starting to show. Take a glance at your local EB or Gamestop. See that little cart that has one box of damaged PC games on it with two year old price tags on it (months after Tabula Rasa closed I saw a box for TR still being sold at a retail store). Most of your stores have console and handheld games wall to wall. The change is showing from the retail level (PC graveyard) all the way up to the top (Devs. fighting back at Pimp Publishers).
I hear that Activision does have another COD game lined up for 2010 release by Treyarch as a Vietnam game... and they even announced COD:2011! CEO Bobby Kotick has scheduled a yearly regular shit, so get out your spoons and wallets, kiddos!!onei!
Then websearch anything you can find about Bobby Kotex...erm, Kotick... whatever. The more I read the more I'm not surprised about what happened to the Ex's, but very surprised at this draconian bs.
*edit edit: Activision has responded...
""Activision is disappointed that Mr. Zampella and Mr. West have chosen to file a lawsuit, and believes their claims are meritless," the company said in a statement e-mailed to Kotaku by a spokesperson. "Over eight years, Activision shareholders provided these executives with the capital they needed to start Infinity Ward, as well as the financial support, resources and creative independence that helped them flourish and achieve enormous professional success and personal wealth.
"In return, Activision legitimately expected them to honor their obligations to Activision, just like any other executives who hold positions of trust in the company. While the company showed enormous patience, it firmly believes that its decision was justified based on their course of conduct and actions. Activision remains committed to the Call of Duty franchise, which it owns, and will continue to produce exciting and innovative games for its millions of fans."
Note they never say "what" they did though in violation.
On an interesting note... has activision been working with Treyarch for a while with this in mind?
Back in January it was rumored that they had another dev team working on the next CoD. One about Vietnam, a couple of months ago. Huh... it would be neat to have all the pieces of the puzzle.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Does anyone more informed than me know if any Blizzard employee could be fired by Activision? I would always like to think that Blizzard was special in their independence within their publishers claws. For the record, I really enjoy Scott Jenning's articles.
What it is is Activision and Vivendi merged in Dec 2007, with Vivendi owning 52% stake. Vivendi had already owned Blizzard at this time, so in July 2008 when the merger was finalized Activision essentially owned Blizzard as well officially.
It is possibly that an Activision exec could fire a Blizzard employee as a result. Though Activision's track record as of late is just crank out the cash don't worry about quality games. Since WoW is holding steady at 11.5 million subs, doubtful anyone at Blizzard will get sacked any time soon.
What some of you are delusional about is not that activision now owns blizzard, which is true, its that blizzard had not been part of just as evil an empire as activision for more than 10 years prior to their activision deal ever since they sold out in the 90s. False. Blizzard has been an evil empire as long as any of you can remember, people just happen to like their games and give em a pass on it.
Publishers want me to spend more than 50 dollars for a game, fine, charge 80 dollars and allow me to reutrn the damn thing when its a pile of smoldering crap. Until I have the ability to return the crap that gets shoveled out the door, I am not paying a penny more for my games, not the box, not the subscription, and I won't tolerate games forced on slow, terrible servers that the publisher yank at will to try and get their customers to buy their next medicore, DRM filled rehash of yesterday's games.
Right with you. As of now I am paying publishers exactly zero dollars while I continue to enjoy legitimate, online gameplay. I'm having a great time, and have no hassles. I kind of figure that's what entertainment is supposed to feel like. I always figured, but almost forgot.
It's like saying "I don't want to open a single pizza place, but a whole chain throughout the country, and I want someone else to pay for it all while I retain all control."
It's ridiculous.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what a publisher's business model is. The "someone else paying for it" are called investors. The people creating the pizzas are called developers. The stores are called .. stores lol.
So yeah, it is ridiculous. Developers need to get directly with investors and contract for publishing services. Unfortunately, the "big names" have the retailers' attention and shelf space. So they monopolize our money the exact way that Microsoft dominated software sales in the early days, by getting retailers to showcase their products instead of the competition's.
Even digital distributors are vulnerable to this - when you're talking to the entity who has a hundred products on your site, on which you're making a lot of money, it's very difficult to say "hey, we're going to showcase this indie development studio's competitive product just like we do yours. Because that's only fair, right?".
Fair is not the way cutthroat business is done. That indie's product will not be showcased at all if the big publisher has anything to say about it. It'll be listed on the site, yeah, but no front page, no banner ads, no videos, etc.
One of the most interesting quotes of Bobby Kotick last month:
When talking about game designers and developpers:
" Some ego is healthy, but outsized egos should be checked at the door. It takes a village to make a game. If you think you can do it all by yourself, you’re probably the village idiot".
Apparently the 2 directors were first questioned in the HQ's for 6 hours behind closed doors and not even a window present. After the hearings they were fired immediately and were accused of insubordination and breach of contract.
I think - as always - there are 2 sides to this story.
I agree with the first statement, as we have seen numurous cases of designers/developpers who took on the roles as great pop stars that just fell flat the moment they made other projects (Bill Roper, Richard Garriot, Mark Jacobs etc...).
All outsized ego's. I even doubt the capacity of Jeff Kaplan these days when I read upon his attitude as an EQ guild leader. You may hate BK, but I wouldn't like to have his job in a million years with all those "artists" around.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
Good article and it needed to be said. Often times words on the MMO industry dance around the causes of problems with out naming who or what but clouding the issue with metaphors.
There is one thing though that might be a problem with this "small games, self-financed, distributed virtually and virally". I agree its a good idea but we balance on the needle of a huge problem. All this depends on the high speed internet service to most Americans being a stable and available resource. We need to pay better attention because the major players in the ISP industry are working toward the same kind of lesser service for higher prices manipulations that the article hinted at concerning publishers. You will wake up one day and see subscribers dropping off the grid because they quite simply wont be able to afford or have available the bandwidth anymore. One could argue that it wont happen due to the domino disaster effect on internet subscriber industries but looking at our recent issues with our economy I would say we have a problem with some not so smart people running very powerful things, including all aspects of the gaming industry we love so much and industries which it relies on.
Given the current state of our economy, where people with money are trying their hardest to secure this money - leaving out the programmers and artists who aren't making millions, you can't expect any MMO's released to be good.
What can be expected is this industry to barely scrape by with lay-offs left and right. Publishers want a return on their investment. Which translates to 2 year rushed releases, knowing full well that MMO addicts will fork over money on un-finished beta quality games.
I don't foresee any end to this trend until our recession ends (even then, I'm not so sure).
Supporting indy games and independent studio's is great an all, but the almighty WoW has spoiled most MMO gamers. We expect WoW quality games and content, but don't realize how impossible it is to create it. Amazing MMO's that take our hearts and give us months of play-time are extremely rare and take many years to create. It is risky, and as such, are rarely borne.
Time = money, whether you are developing for a publisher or independantly, it still costs the same amount. And I doubt anyone here would settle for less than what they get from existing MMOs on the market, which are primarily done by publishers.
STO? (Wonder if this will become another lesson to upcoming game designers)
Atari made the development costs back just from box and download sales not to mention how little a lesson they learned from Champions Online which suffered from exactly the same issues STO does.
AoC, Warhammer, CO and STO are all MMO's that were rushed out the door and suffered as a result tho at least the AoC Dev team put in the work and have a pretty decent game now.
"These are the guys who made one of the best selling games of all time with a staff of only 75 people."
Where do you get this crap from? Pulling it out of your arse?
"They made good products, they hit their milestones, they made their owners a lot of money – and they got gutted, their leadership, who had founded the company, replaced with functionaries from Activision’s publishing division."
Activision was the one who pushed Modern Warfare 2. Activision owns IW. If it wasn't for Activision they wouldn't be where they are. CoD wouldn't even exist and those rich nasty developers wouldn't be rich.
Scott Jennings, a naive developer spreads his ignorance, news at 11.
Developers are stupid people and these people deserve to be fired, Scott Jennings you just prove how stupid developers can get.
BTW, how do you know it was Activision that denied the ded servers? Wasn't it IW that annouced there wouldn't be ded-servers?
Comments
Does anyone more informed than me know if any Blizzard employee could be fired by Activision? I would always like to think that Blizzard was special in their independence within their publishers claws.
For the record, I really enjoy Scott Jenning's articles.
More on Jennings blog:
http://brokentoys.org/
Granted, its "one side", but, I have to say....announcing the firings in a 10-K report BEFORE completing an "investigation" is shady at best.
I swear to god this is going to be another division just like in the 60's with Corporate Rock at one end and hippies at the other. History does indeed repeat itself.
Activision and this crap, NCsoft vs. Richard "Iwasalordtheniwasageneralbrittish" Gariott, atari vs. hasbro/turbine, EA/Borg vs. World...
Well with the modern age we don't need a fucking box with art, a disc, player manual and a 50-60 dollar price tag on it. Downloads take about the same amount of time it does for me to go to the store, purchase it, bring it back and install it, and it's starting to show. Take a glance at your local EB or Gamestop. See that little cart that has one box of damaged PC games on it with two year old price tags on it (months after Tabula Rasa closed I saw a box for TR still being sold at a retail store). Most of your stores have console and handheld games wall to wall. The change is showing from the retail level (PC graveyard) all the way up to the top (Devs. fighting back at Pimp Publishers).
I hear that Activision does have another COD game lined up for 2010 release by Treyarch as a Vietnam game... and they even announced COD:2011! CEO Bobby Kotick has scheduled a yearly regular shit, so get out your spoons and wallets, kiddos!!onei!
By the way... check this out too...kotaku.com/5485733/ex+infinity-ward-heads-claim-orwellian-moves-by-activision
*Edit: here is the full documentation of the ex-ceo claims - kotaku.com/5485733/ex+infinity-ward-heads-claim-orwellian-moves-by-activision
Make sure to check out page 10...
Then websearch anything you can find about Bobby Kotex...erm, Kotick... whatever. The more I read the more I'm not surprised about what happened to the Ex's, but very surprised at this draconian bs.
*edit edit: Activision has responded...
""Activision is disappointed that Mr. Zampella and Mr. West have chosen to file a lawsuit, and believes their claims are meritless," the company said in a statement e-mailed to Kotaku by a spokesperson. "Over eight years, Activision shareholders provided these executives with the capital they needed to start Infinity Ward, as well as the financial support, resources and creative independence that helped them flourish and achieve enormous professional success and personal wealth.
"In return, Activision legitimately expected them to honor their obligations to Activision, just like any other executives who hold positions of trust in the company. While the company showed enormous patience, it firmly believes that its decision was justified based on their course of conduct and actions. Activision remains committed to the Call of Duty franchise, which it owns, and will continue to produce exciting and innovative games for its millions of fans."
Note they never say "what" they did though in violation.
On an interesting note... has activision been working with Treyarch for a while with this in mind?
www.destructoid.com/rumor-call-of-duty-7-vietnam-159670.phtml
Back in January it was rumored that they had another dev team working on the next CoD. One about Vietnam, a couple of months ago. Huh... it would be neat to have all the pieces of the puzzle.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
What it is is Activision and Vivendi merged in Dec 2007, with Vivendi owning 52% stake. Vivendi had already owned Blizzard at this time, so in July 2008 when the merger was finalized Activision essentially owned Blizzard as well officially.
It is possibly that an Activision exec could fire a Blizzard employee as a result. Though Activision's track record as of late is just crank out the cash don't worry about quality games. Since WoW is holding steady at 11.5 million subs, doubtful anyone at Blizzard will get sacked any time soon.
What some of you are delusional about is not that activision now owns blizzard, which is true, its that blizzard had not been part of just as evil an empire as activision for more than 10 years prior to their activision deal ever since they sold out in the 90s. False. Blizzard has been an evil empire as long as any of you can remember, people just happen to like their games and give em a pass on it.
And wah my robotic executive overlords wont pay my bonus. when you sign your soul over to the devil youre gonna get burned.
Right with you. As of now I am paying publishers exactly zero dollars while I continue to enjoy legitimate, online gameplay. I'm having a great time, and have no hassles. I kind of figure that's what entertainment is supposed to feel like. I always figured, but almost forgot.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what a publisher's business model is. The "someone else paying for it" are called investors. The people creating the pizzas are called developers. The stores are called .. stores lol.
So yeah, it is ridiculous. Developers need to get directly with investors and contract for publishing services. Unfortunately, the "big names" have the retailers' attention and shelf space. So they monopolize our money the exact way that Microsoft dominated software sales in the early days, by getting retailers to showcase their products instead of the competition's.
Even digital distributors are vulnerable to this - when you're talking to the entity who has a hundred products on your site, on which you're making a lot of money, it's very difficult to say "hey, we're going to showcase this indie development studio's competitive product just like we do yours. Because that's only fair, right?".
Fair is not the way cutthroat business is done. That indie's product will not be showcased at all if the big publisher has anything to say about it. It'll be listed on the site, yeah, but no front page, no banner ads, no videos, etc.
One of the most interesting quotes of Bobby Kotick last month:
When talking about game designers and developpers:
" Some ego is healthy, but outsized egos should be checked at the door. It takes a village to make a game. If you think you can do it all by yourself, you’re probably the village idiot".
Apparently the 2 directors were first questioned in the HQ's for 6 hours behind closed doors and not even a window present. After the hearings they were fired immediately and were accused of insubordination and breach of contract.
I think - as always - there are 2 sides to this story.
I agree with the first statement, as we have seen numurous cases of designers/developpers who took on the roles as great pop stars that just fell flat the moment they made other projects (Bill Roper, Richard Garriot, Mark Jacobs etc...).
All outsized ego's. I even doubt the capacity of Jeff Kaplan these days when I read upon his attitude as an EQ guild leader. You may hate BK, but I wouldn't like to have his job in a million years with all those "artists" around.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
Good article and it needed to be said. Often times words on the MMO industry dance around the causes of problems with out naming who or what but clouding the issue with metaphors.
There is one thing though that might be a problem with this "small games, self-financed, distributed virtually and virally". I agree its a good idea but we balance on the needle of a huge problem. All this depends on the high speed internet service to most Americans being a stable and available resource. We need to pay better attention because the major players in the ISP industry are working toward the same kind of lesser service for higher prices manipulations that the article hinted at concerning publishers. You will wake up one day and see subscribers dropping off the grid because they quite simply wont be able to afford or have available the bandwidth anymore. One could argue that it wont happen due to the domino disaster effect on internet subscriber industries but looking at our recent issues with our economy I would say we have a problem with some not so smart people running very powerful things, including all aspects of the gaming industry we love so much and industries which it relies on.
The entire gaming industry makes me sick.
Given the current state of our economy, where people with money are trying their hardest to secure this money - leaving out the programmers and artists who aren't making millions, you can't expect any MMO's released to be good.
What can be expected is this industry to barely scrape by with lay-offs left and right. Publishers want a return on their investment. Which translates to 2 year rushed releases, knowing full well that MMO addicts will fork over money on un-finished beta quality games.
I don't foresee any end to this trend until our recession ends (even then, I'm not so sure).
Supporting indy games and independent studio's is great an all, but the almighty WoW has spoiled most MMO gamers. We expect WoW quality games and content, but don't realize how impossible it is to create it. Amazing MMO's that take our hearts and give us months of play-time are extremely rare and take many years to create. It is risky, and as such, are rarely borne.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Great Article.
I all ways wondered why all the games i like keep getting shorter and shorter.
Greed is bad. heh
STO? (Wonder if this will become another lesson to upcoming game designers)
Atari made the development costs back just from box and download sales not to mention how little a lesson they learned from Champions Online which suffered from exactly the same issues STO does.
AoC, Warhammer, CO and STO are all MMO's that were rushed out the door and suffered as a result tho at least the AoC Dev team put in the work and have a pretty decent game now.
http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/email-infinity-ward-sues-activision/
Lol, Scott is wrong, AGAIN.
"These are the guys who made one of the best selling games of all time with a staff of only 75 people."
Where do you get this crap from? Pulling it out of your arse?
"They made good products, they hit their milestones, they made their owners a lot of money – and they got gutted, their leadership, who had founded the company, replaced with functionaries from Activision’s publishing division."
Activision was the one who pushed Modern Warfare 2. Activision owns IW. If it wasn't for Activision they wouldn't be where they are. CoD wouldn't even exist and those rich nasty developers wouldn't be rich.
Scott Jennings, a naive developer spreads his ignorance, news at 11.
Developers are stupid people and these people deserve to be fired, Scott Jennings you just prove how stupid developers can get.
BTW, how do you know it was Activision that denied the ded servers? Wasn't it IW that annouced there wouldn't be ded-servers?
Lead designer and lead software engineer now leave IW.
Think two more leads leaving puts the burden of proof squarely on the publishing house.
http://kotaku.com/5510262/modern-warfare-developer-loses-two-more-key-players
F2P/P2P excellent thread.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/282517/F2P-An-Engineers-perspective.html