Info is slowly trickling out about the recent bang-up between Activision/Blizzard and Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward. Terminated studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella have filed suit against their former corporate masters, alleging wrongful termination, meanness, and stealing of royalties, and asserting that they own the rights to the Modern Warfare IP. My buddy Bill Harris over at Dubious Quality has his usual insightful analysis of key portions of the lawsuit, so rather than …
So check this out. It would seem some large and scary dudes showed up at Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward’s Encino offices and… lurked. Apparently they’re a gift to the studio from owner and industry goliath Activision/Blizzard. Meanwhile two of the company’s top dogs, Vince Zampella and Jason West, weren’t in the office – they were at Activision. In a meeting. Now we hear that CTO/CCO West, at least, has been fired. Activision recently made …
Speaking at DICE (thanks Kotaku), Activision/Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick apologized for said he didn’t mean it when he advocated “taking all the fun out of making videogames,” and that “an atmosphere of skepticism, pessimism, and fear represented ‘mission accomplished’” for his developers. Words are cheap; you’re gonna have to do better than that, Bobby. Also: salad, motherfucker. It’s what’s for dinner.
The MMO market is a very strange beast, and one that analysts don’t fully understand yet. Why not? Because there are still mysterious depths to be plumbed. Years ago I wrote an article about virtual worlds in which I expressed shock at the fact that Lineage had four million subscribers. Now the gorilla is World of Warcraft, and all the big companies are trying to cash in on what they perceive as the MMO money …
It may be a matter of public record that I harbor a certain degree of dislike for Activision/Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, but really only in the sense that I wish him an eternity of pain and suffering at the claws of specially-trained torture demons, that his blighted genescape be eradicated from this earth as one might eradicate smallpox or plague. But I only feel this way because his pompous bean-counting has already damaged a creative industry, and he’s intent on turning that creativity into something that can be quantified on a spreadsheet. Still, reading my latest Game Informer, I could hardly blame Kotick for the remark that he wouldn’t have paid seven million dollars for Blizzard in 1995. Of course, he later paid something like 18 billion dollars for the company, but that was later.
Yesterday Steerpike wrote a thoroughly enjoyable take on Electronic Arts going back to its evil ways, but in all the fuss and rightful condemnation we shouldn’t be forgetting that there are other players in this game too and that they’d like a minute under the spotlight as well.
It’s in vogue these days after Kris Graft eloquently defended the various malignancies of Activision/Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick to support the man, claiming he does all he does as an effective executive officer and not as an imp of Satan himself. Of course, then Kotick goes and does something like giving a speech to the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference, during which he said – didn’t imply, said – that his goal is to “take …
The degree to which I hate Activision/Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is nigh-unmeasurable. I loathe the man; I hope he falls into a deep, deep hole with ground glass and spikes and hot lava and sharks and scorpions and poison and fire ants and chromic acid and knives and dead puppies at the bottom. I didn’t think it would be possible – you know, physically – for me to despise anyone in the games industry more …
With the all press that LucasArts has gotten for releasing Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition and several of its classic adventures on Steam, it was really just a question of time before other publishers would follow. First to jump on the “everything old is new again” bandwagon: Activision with news that they’ve expanded their offerings on Steam to include the King’s Quest and Space Quest Collections, Aces of the Galaxy, Time Shift and 3D …
Review by Meho Krljic Developer Radical Entertainment Publisher Activision Released June 9, 2009 Available for PC/Xbox 360/PS3 (Versions reviewed: Xbox 360 and PC) Time Played 10 hours Verdict: 4/5 Thumbs Up “Come on, you play games because they are about destruction, not creation. Admit it!!!”
It seems obvious, when you think about it. Activision/Blizzard recently announced that Zork Legends, a browser-based, presumably free massively multiplayer game! Now you can visit the Great Underground Empire with your friends, and reflect in live chat on the various inadequacies of the Flathead Dynasty, leading all the way up to Lord Dimwit Flathead and the collapse of his kingdom. Zork’s natural silliness seems to lean well into MMO territory, as oddly-named players behaving badly …