Evil Genius Review

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            Evil Genius

Review by SteerpikeOctober 2004

Mediocrity: A History

I want so badly to give this game a good review, but it commits the one crime I cannot forgive: for lack of testing, for clumsiness and laziness on the part of its designers, it is but a glimmer of what it could be. Evil Genius is the well-intentioned but desperately flawed sophomore offering from Elixir Studios, the British developer responsible for 2003’s well-intentioned but desperately flawed Republic: The Revolution. In this its second game, Elixir channels the spirit of Dungeon Keeper 2, inviting us to play as a wicked mastermind in the campy world of sixties-ish spy movies. You will build an underground lair, conduct criminal activities across the globe, construct a doomsday device, and ultimately bring all the world under your megalomaniacal control. But where Dungeon Keeper 2 was graceful, elegant, superbly tuned—possibly the perfect RTS—Evil Genius is clumsy, boorish, frustrating, and frankly not worth the price of admission.

Any game that has the audacity to compare itself to both X-Com and Dungeon Keeper 2 on its box cover has some serious shoes to fill. Holding it to that quote, I find it sorely lacking, especially in the areas of interface design, play balance, and AI.  It is worth noting, however, that the major flaws in this game are patchable (though it would take one hell of a patch to cover everything), so it’s possible that Elixir is just guilty of unleashing a flawed release candidate on the public. The game itself, the concept, is just fine.

You play as one of three criminal masterminds just starting their careers in world domination. The proud owner of a Volcanic Island of Undisclosed Location, you must use your seed capital to get an underground lair going, staff it with assorted functionaries, and then get to the serious business of trying to take over the world.  This is the Dungeon Keeper 2 portion of the game: dig out and build rooms, manage money, hire people, supervise evil activities, and so forth.

The X-Com portion—and that comparison is on the same level as comparing onions and oranges—takes place on the World Domination Map, where you place minions for the purpose of stealing cash, perform acts of infamy to increase your evil standing, steal unique treasures, and generally do your best to upset the delicate balance of world order. So far as I can tell, the only thing that Evil Genius has in common with X-Com is that both games have a world map.

I’ve been told that I compare games to other games too much, so if this is a quirk that bugs you, it might be best if you stop here.  Evil Genius is all the Dungeon Keeper 2 crowd has had to look forward to since that franchise came to an undeserved end, and it’s on that great game that this mediocre one is based.  Pretty much everything that Dungeon Keeper 2 did right, Evil Genius does wrong. But there are also some things it did do right, so we’ll talk about them too.

Evil 101

You can’t just be evil willy-nilly, of course; if you go too far, the forces of good will come to teach you a lesson. The world is divided into five regions, each with its own anti-evil organization: S.M.A.S.H., P.A.T.R.I.O.T., S.A.B.R.E., and so forth. It’s a prerequisite of crime-fighting that your outfit be an acronym.

As you conduct your evil operations, you gain heat and notoriety.  The former is the amount of attention that your criminal activities are garnering by region; get too much heat and some people will be dispatched to your evil island to deal with you. Heat goes down if you stay out of trouble. Notoriety, meanwhile, increases as you commit nefarious deeds. You need notoriety to get the respect of other evil people and to succeed at certain mission objectives.

The forces of good have two methods of dealing with your evil self.  They’ll send out standard agents pretty regularly, to stalk the sunny shores of your island, snooping for evil activity. Should they locate the evil door to your base, they’ll jimmy the lock and poke around inside—if they find nothing, they’ll eventually go away and you’ll lose some heat. But if they see something untoward, they’ll race back to HQ and soon the island will be swarming with do-gooders, so it’s often best to just drop them in your evil prison.  Problem is, though the game insists that heat is the mechanism by which opponents attack you, in truth it seems more random to me.  There was always a pretty significant presence on my evil island, and after a certain point they attacked relentlessly and with such overwhelming force that I couldn’t use the World Domination Map anymore, because I literally needed all of my human assets to protect my little volcanic island.

The other method that the good guys use is the Super Agents. Super Agents are the James Bond/Cate Archer/Maxwell Smart kinds of people who can seriously disrupt your evil plans, both on the World Domination Map and if (God forbid) they ever come to your island. This would be a better mechanism for game challenge if they hadn’t made the Super Agents hypersentient and nearly impossible to kill. Even imprisoning one is ridiculously dangerous. One time, Super Agent Mariana Mamba (bikini and butcher knife; think Ursula Andress from Dr. No) burst into my evil lair and proceeded to slaughter literally every minion I had at my command—about 75 people—before packing up one of the priceless treasures I’d stolen and leaving me alone on my island (I had hidden my Genius in the safety of the inner sanctum).

You have your own form of Super Agents, called henchmen. These are supercriminals like yourself, but (presumably) they lack the brainpower to be evil geniuses. So they hire themselves out to you.  More become available as your notoriety rises. Only Super Agents can permanently kill a henchman, but Super Agents are so vastly more powerful than henchmen that combat between the two is kind of a joke.

Generally speaking, henchmen are among the most useless units in the game. They wander randomly, usually to the most remote and irrelevant evil locations on your island. You can control their movement, but they pick up their meanderings again unless you maneuver them all the time—while Mariana Mamba was butchering my people, my two henchmen were having a smoke in the freezer, totally ignoring the howling alarms and the shrieks of the dying. Their pathing is abominable, they get stuck on things, their “special abilities” generally wind up killing more of your people than enemies, and their verbal responses are flat-out racist. Their flaws bring into sharp relief that this game is a great idea with very poor execution.

Witness the Power of this Fully Operational Battle Station

One of the most fun and challenging aspects of Dungeon Keeper 2 was the amount of precision required to dig out and build a functional lair. The game’s true masters turned their dungeons into objets d’art, beautifully ticking crystalline lattices of efficiency and design. It was deeply satisfying to watch a perfectly conceived dungeon humming away as creatures went about their daily lives. Lair-building in Evil Genius is also fun, but it includes some bizarre flaws that really hurt the overall effect—due in part to the fact that lair efficiency appears to be of no importance whatsoever, and there’s no need to display the level of care and exactitude so necessary in the game’s spiritual predecessor.

If you decide you don’t like a room and delete it, for example, the area fills up with evil dirt again. You can completely rearrange your base whenever you like. It’s an underground lair. The whole point of it should be that you have to be careful, because once the dirt is out you can’t put it back in. Furthermore, there are clumsy bugs in the system: connecting rooms with corridors should be a snap, but the game simply refuses to build corridors sometimes, saying they’re too narrow when they’re not.

Evil Genius offers a nice variety of rooms (though who ever heard of an underground lair with no guard post?) and is more forgiving than Dungeon Keeper 2 when it comes to the efficiency of nonsquare areas. This is because the efficiency of a room in this game is dependent not on position on the map or proximity to other rooms, but on the furniture you place inside, so you can build to whatever specification you like and stock the place with the furniture you’ll need. However, furniture is stupidly restrictive when it comes to placement and access. Items block each other, people get trapped behind stuff, and the limitations are absurd. For example, you can’t put an evil fire extinguisher on the same section of wall as an evil security camera. Why? A genius might know; I do not.

You control access using evil security doors, which are also flawed.  Doors have four completely useless lock levels that ten minutes of playtesting could have improved. Why can’t you set doors so that only certain minion types are allowed through? Why can’t you order doors to be guarded but still open for your people? Why can’t doors be set to only open when approached from one side? And why on Earth can’t you designate certain areas of your base off-limits, so your personnel aren’t constantly wandering there to sneak cigarettes instead of doing work?

Another great thing about the doors is that they’re useless as security devices. Agents will try to pick the locks to gain access to your base, an activity they could easily dispense with since your minions are constantly walking through the doors, which open for them automatically. Door opens, agent runs through. Security bypassed. If only Bond had it so easy.

You have access to a wide variety of nefarious traps with which to protect your island, but in the end they, too, have too many problems to be valuable. A new and unnecessarily boorish linking system allows you to set up extremely complicated trap scenarios using pressure pads, but in my experience traps killed my people far more often than they killed—or even fooled—the enemy.  The Dungeon Keeper 2 strategy of putting traps at breach points or entrances to offset minor invasions just doesn’t work in Evil Genius, because the traffic of your own minions through those points means that they’ll be the likely victims every time a trap fires.

One section that should have been dispensed with entirely is the hotel-building. Despite the fact that you lair is housed inside an evil volcano on a remote and desolate island, gaggles of tourists inexplicably show up and roam the beaches. If they wander into your base and see something nasty in the proverbial woodshed, they’ll return home and tell the agents of justice, and your heat will increase.  Thus, you must build and maintain a hotel to corral the tourists and keep them away from your lair. This would be okay if the hotels worked—which they don’t—or if you didn’t need to staff the place with crucial Valet minions, meaning they’re not available to do other work. I wound up using automated sentry guns, not hotels, to deal with tourists. They tried to throw everything including the kitchen sink into Evil Genius, and the result is an overly complicated morass of frustration and poor interface design.

The World Domination screen is equally clunky. There are two preset zoom levels—one is too far out, the other is too far in. Movement of your minions, represented by little game piece–looking icons, is unintuitive. You receive no warning when an enemy agent or Super Agent appears in an area where your operatives are committing evil acts, so oftentimes you visit the screen only to find that someone has wiped out a gang of your followers. Finally, the World Domination Map is the only place where you can review your heat levels, and there’s no simple way to view your heat for each of the five do-gooder alliances at once.

Frankly, I could have done without the World Domination section.  It seems tacked on and runs poorly. Its chief purpose is to display the hundreds of acts of infamy you’ll want to commit, both as mission objectives and to increase your notoriety. And, of course, it’s where you get your money—but money is a fickle thing in Evil Genius. You don’t pay your minions or henchmen (!) and pay no cash upkeep for your island or its facilities. You just pay for rooms and furniture, so once your base is “done,” there’s little reason to spend more money.

There Is Still Good in You, I Can Sense It

It’s fairly obvious why Evil Genius is so clumsy a game.  Pretty much all of the creative calories that Elixir has seem to have gone into some really top-notch graphics (for a strategy game)—it sports vivid colors, superb animations, and a level of detail that’s frankly beyond belief. Every evil action your minions perform has a unique and often hilarious set of animations associated with it; it’s fun to just zoom in and watch your people going about their evil daily business.

Reflections, shadows, and similar 3D candy are used to great effect in shiny tile floors, beeping and whirring machinery, and various outdoor effects. This game has really excellent graphics, and the attention to detail is stunning, right down to the logos on the security cameras. Elixir worked its evil tail off making this game as pretty, and as funny, as possible.

And it is funny. It’s so funny that even Dungeon Keeper 2 seems a little dull, humorwise. Evil criminal masterminds are gut-busters when you think about it. Giant lasers, doomsday devices, cunningly disguised traps, goofball henchmen—it’s all there, ripe for mockery. And they didn’t stop at the obvious stuff: If you don’t feel like torturing imprisoned agents in your standard issue interrogation chair, no problem! Pop them in the giant electric mixer in the kitchen or squash them between the moving shelves in your archive room and see how fast they talk. There are, however, no traps or rooms that sport dangerous marine life like sharks or electric eels. You can’t really be an evil madman if you don’t have a shark tank.

The opening score is beautifully evocative of every Bond film ever made, and the in-game music exhibits the same flavor. Voice acting, especially from the Evil Geniuses, is tuned for humor and delivered with great accents and superb comic timing. Generally speaking, if sound and humor were all that made a game good, we’d be bandying phrases like “game of the year” around. But it’s not.

Evil Genius is reasonably stable; I experienced a few crashes but suspect they’re more the result of my system than the game.

You Have Failed Me for the Last Time

You have two types of evil followers: the aforementioned henchmen, who you can control directly but who ignore those orders and are almost entirely useless due to rotten AI and bad pathing; and minions, who you cannot control directly. Minions do the basic menial stuff in the base: tidy up, handle construction, move body bags, guard the place, and so forth. Theoretically, they’re supposed to go about their activities without any but the most macro-scale input from you.

But as usual, the system is flawed. To secure your base, you set up evil security networks composed of cameras and loudspeakers.  When you hit the panic button, intruders (again, in theory) are to be gunned down by all of your menials as they race to the enemy’s location.

But most of them don’t race to the enemy’s location. Most just stand there. You must keep your base on constant amber alert in order to get your people to carry guns; otherwise, they’ll fight with their fists (and they generally fight with their fists anyway).  Worse, opponents are dealt with through a system called tagging, which is both clumsy and incomplete. You can tag anyone: ignore, kill, imprison, or weaken. If someone has a kill tag and a minion wanders by, that minion will try to kill him.

Tagging is a big problem. You have to manually tag every enemy who enters your base, or your people will ignore them utterly. Why the vaunted security networks can’t be set to automatically tag anyone who, say, goes beyond a certain point inside the base is anyone’s guess. But since your people and automated defenses won’t attack someone that’s not tagged, and only you can tag opponents, the system requires constant supervision.

The inability to tell minions where to go and not go is where combat in the game breaks down. I can’t count the number of times I sat there watching as agents blew up parts of my base while minions ignored evil alarms and went about their daily business. Your minions are stupid, and they’re stupid in ways they shouldn’t be. The Valet minion, for example, essentially fills the shoes of Dungeon Keeper 2’s Imp during combat: he picks up body bags and moves them to the freezer, puts out fires, stuff like that. Like Imps, Valets are all but defenseless. Unlike Imps, who run away from dangerous areas, returning only when they get an all-clear, Valets cheerfully walk right into the middle of a firefight and get gunned down. Bad-AI frustrations like this abound.

Each minion has stats that decrease over time and must be replenished using assorted rooms and evil items in your base. But stats decrease far too quickly, and minions aren’t too good at recognizing when they need to, say, head to the archives to brush up on their Smarts stat or visit the pharmacy to boost their Life stat. The result is minions who spend a lot of time staring blankly at the wall because their Smarts have reached zero or, worse, just dropping dead.

Minions turn into other minions: the basic Worker is your primary drone, recruited on a time schedule. Workers can do everything, but not as well as their upgraded counterparts. If you want to train Valets, you need to go out into the world, kidnap a hotel maid, and torture her into giving up her wisdom. The torturer then turns into a Valet and can train others in the Training Room. Valets, in turn, can be upgraded to Spin Doctors and other, more skilled social minions, whose primary duty is to keep the base tidy and reduce heat. Same goes for guards, technicians, and so forth. It’s a good system, but limitations on the number of people you can have working for you mean that you never have quite enough minions to do what you want. Also, if all of an advanced minion type get killed, you have to go out into the world, kidnap another representative of that type, and go through the whole process again. When taken in conjunction with the suicidal Valet example above, it can get damned annoying.

There’s also no comprehensive system of tracking or cataloguing your minions, finding out who they are, where they are, and what they’re up to. Sure, you can double-click one and get the evil gist, along with an unhelpful rundown of activity like “Working for you,” or “Standing there.” But this info should be available as a mouse-over, not a double click, and there should be some way to track all of your minions at once.

Evil Always Prevails, Because Good Is Dumb

It all comes down to control and pacing. Control in the sense that you don’t have enough; minion AI is insufficiently tuned to trust that they’ll do the right, or even the wise, thing. Control is also bad in the areas of pathing, because minions and henchmen alike try to make it to their destination in a straight line. If there is no straight line, they get stuck.

Pacing is the final critical flaw in Evil Genius. You spend a lot of time waiting, either for more minions to train up or for your heat to go down, or for something else beyond your control to happen or stop happening. A lot of time is spent staring at the screen, waiting. And that gets boring.

Sculptors often say that the piece inside the marble block is already there; they’re just freeing it from the excess. Dungeon Keeper 2 was similar in many ways—the game is designed in such a way that there are clear right and wrong ways to do things. And yet you never felt that the game was heavy-handed or dull, and you never sat around and waited. There was always something to do or supervise. Evil Genius aims for the Dungeon Keeper 2 paradigm but misses the evil mark due to sheer awkwardness of interface, design, and AI. That’s a pity, because as great as Dungeon Keeper 2 is, there are only so many times you can make the perfect dungeon. I was hoping that Evil Genius would be a followup we could enjoy for years. Ultimately, Evil Genius wasn’t tested enough, and it shows.

That said, you’ll note that it escapes the evil Rotten Egg award, and it makes that escape for just one reason: despite my myriad and valid complaints about the game, I spent hours and hours playing Evil Genius and had fun for most of that time. Rome: Total War, a title that’s certainly a contender for game of the year and a triumph in every respect, sat idle while I cajoled Evil Genius into being a good game. That I failed is not my fault (it’s never the mastermind’s fault) … personally, I blame the ineptitude of my subordinates. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Elixir Studios Publisher: Vivendi Universal Release Date: September 28, 2004

Available for: Windows

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System Requirements

Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP PIII 800 MHz or higher (P4 1.5 GHz recommended) DirectX 9.0b 128 MB RAM (98SE/Me), 256 MB RAM (2000/XP) GeForce2 MX 16 MB or equivalent DirectX® 9 compatible video card (64 MB Geforce 3 recommended) 300 MB free hard drive space 16x CD-ROM drive (24x recommended) DirectX® 9.0b compatible sound card MS compatible mouse Keyboard

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      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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33 Responses to Goons Loom at Infinity Ward

  • Meho

    So, you make your company a billion in profits in two months. Next thing you know, you’re investigated for insubordination, sued and sacked. Also, your team members are threatened by men looking like thugs yet not wearing uniforms. I guess Pandemic studios are now happy they were acquired by EA and not Activision. They just lost their jobs after making two moderatly successful games.

    Seriously, breaches of contract and stuff, yeah, I can get behind that but having people threatened and reporting “insubordination” sounds like some proper gestapo shit. One would think that after making the fastest selling entertainment product in history, Infinity Ward would be given SOME credit by their Activision Overlords, but I guess Bobby Kottick was serious about the air of fear and uncertainty he wanted to prevail in the Activision cubicle farms. A fascinating story, can’t wait to hear the rest!!

  • Andrew

    Harsh.

    I’m a little wary calling out anything too early but Activision isn’t exactly know for it’s good closure policy of studios, and removal of staff in the past.

    What transgressions they’ve done as publisher-owned, slightly-more-independent-perhaps CO’s – who knows? Will we ever know? 🙁

  • ajax19

    Now that is how you handle insubordination.  Send in security and throw their asses into the brig (i.e., fire them).  I reckon this will be a long and ugly process as most HR-related matters are.  As an attorney, I have had the (dis)plesure of reviewing various HR complaints and matters in my day.  Needless to say the things people do at work simply boggle the mind.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    It is awfully shocking that Infinity Ward, of all studios, would be made an example of with goons and firings. They’re kind of a golden-egg-laying goose.

    Unless of course West and Zampella were actually doing something wrong/unethical/illegal, in which case I’d have to side with Activision. But if some of the tweets are true, and A/B is just trying to bring a rogue studio to heel, there are gentler ways to do it.

  • Meho

    The plot, apparently thickens:

    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/activision-holding-back-mw2-royalties

    “Website BingeGamer (via VG247) was told by a collection of unnamed sources that not a single penny of the $1bn generated by MW2 has been seen by Infinity Ward. ”

    This is still filed strictly under rumours and speculation but, if it’s true, then it’s fucking bizarre. I mean, I know IW are part of Activision, yet you’d expect their contracts to involve some bonuses on top of the salary should their games do well..

    “The report also states that the “insubordination” IW bosses Jason West and Frank Zampella appear to have been sacked for was caused by secret discussions with rival publishers.”

    Because in corporate America the only secret discussions allowed are those between the senior staff at your company.

    OK, some more linkage:

    http://www.bingegamer.net/2010/infinity-ward-has-not-received-royalties-for-modern-warfare-2/

    Also, just for completion’s sake, a now legendary tweet by Tim Schafer regarding this situation:

    “Getting mad at Activision for this kind of thing is like getting mad at an ape for throwing feces. It’s just how the beast communicates.”

  • Meho

    So, what do we know after one day?

    Activision has indeed sacked West and Zampella. Infinity Ward is supposed to be working on DLC for Modern Warfare 2 as we speak. There will be a Call of Duty title in 2010, made by Treyarch. There will be another Call of Duty title in 2011 although it is not yet clear who is going to be the developer. Infinity Ward is now temporarily headed by Activision’s employees Steve Pearce and Steve Ackrich but Activision also announced that a newly formed studio, Sledgehammer Games will be handling future Call of Duty games and will be “extend(ing) the franchise into the action-adventure genre”. Sledgehammer is headed by former Visceral Games executives Glen A. Schofield and Michael Condrey, which, upon playing Dante’s Inferno, I am not sure is the greatest idea ever…

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    1UP says: “In addition, they have formed a new business unit dedicated to publishing an annual Call of Duty game.”

    Isn’t that just so Activision?

  • Andrew

    Oh! Oh! I can name them! Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: 2010 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: 2011! 😀

    Oooh, wait, but we need other genres, wow! so much chance to have the “Call of Duty: ” namers busy for ages 😀

    Sigh.

  • Mat

    That’s abit unfair, Andrew.

    Aren’t you forgetting “Call of Duty: Modern MMO” and “Call of Duty: Panzer Tankz Mini Kartz Racer!”?

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Kotaku’s really trying to help Activision out: new titles and box art.

  • Toger

    I’d play the Wolveriiiiiiiiines version! 😀

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Hey, the Keeping The Peace version has my childhood neighbors on the cover!

  • Meho

    Modern Gwarfare has practically infinite potential for cross marketing!!!

  • lakerz1

    Call of Duty: Corporate Clusterfuck

    LOL

  • Mat

    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/infinity-ward-bosses-suing-activision

    This isn’t looking like a story that will go away anytime soon.

  • Meho

    No, it won’t. More info:

    http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1074524p1.html

    and

    http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1074657p1.html

    Choice quotes:

    “The lawsuit states that in the wake of Modern Warfare 2’s success, Activision refused to honor the MOU or the Emplyoment Agreement with West and Zampella, and instead launched a “pre-textual investigation against West and Zampella to create a basis to fire the two co-heads of Infinity Ward before the first Modern Warfare 2 royalty payment.”

    “”West and Zampella were interrogated for over six hours in a windowless conference room; Activision investigators brought other Infinity Ward employees to tears in their questioning and accusations and threatened West and Zampella with ‘insubordination’ if they attempted to console them.”
    ”

    Anyway, after reading the court document, I’d say it’s ironic that West and Zampella are fighting to retain control over Modern Warfare brand even though I imagine they are sick to death of it by now…

  • ajax19

    It’s not so much ironic that they are fighting to retain control over Modern Warfare brand even though they are likely sick to death of it by now, but rather very tactical.

    According to the court papers and West and Zampella’s side of the story, this MOU gives them control over “Modern Wafare” and rights to certain royalties that were due in the next few weeks based on the sales of MW2.  Control over MW is their biggest bargaining chip here.  They file a law suit asking for that and the money and then when it comes to time for settlement talks they use their (alleged) leverage over one leg of Activision’s admitted three-legged stool as a way to get more money from them. 

    They are suing for $36 million worth of damages, if they “agree” to give unfettered control of the MW series to Activision, they stand a better chance to see more of that $36 million.

    Complains in law suits are often like this.  They ask very everything and anything, because it’s much easier to amend and pare things down than to amend and try to add things be it damages or additional claims.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    I honestly wouldn’t have expected THIS level of greed, even from Activision. I mean seriously, the game made TWO BILLION DOLLARS, people. There’s enough to go around.

    Infinity Ward is wholly owned by Activision, but I imagine all of its employees will probably quit in the next several months. I also wouldn’t be surprised if West and Zampella start a new studio and hire them all back. Doubtless all employees are bound by non-competes, but those are notoriously difficult to enforce, especially in the games industry.

  • Mat

    The overriding feeling I get from this is is that, not for the first time, Activision are just swinging around their weight like some 500lb Gorilla, and whoever gets caught out by it.. well, tough luck.

    This whole situation just smacks of arrogance. Arrogance that they’ve become no strangers to in recent times.. such as slapping a £55 RRP on Modern Warfare 2 in the UK (that thankfully few if any retailers actually stuck with).

    With all this re-structuring (read: milking) I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s afew concerned faces at Treyarch, too.

  • Bowbe

    Ok…aside from all the nerd rage that the “awesome” management of Infinity Ward got fired by their owner corporation lets analyze a few facts.

    Infinity Ward was successful at creating a pretty good fairly engaging and scary single player game. That grossed an estimated 1.5-2.0 billion dollars in the first two months of release. About the third month we realize that the monolithic statue that is Infinity Ward has feet made of clay (about January 2010) when their various patches for the multi player FAIL to stop all sorts of hacks/cracks/cheats that absolutely ruined the game.

    In November 2009 the entire games industry is hailing them as the 2nd coming (again). Their reviews are 9.5+ on every site.

    Now its March 2010 and metacritic fan ratings push the game to a 5.5.

    This same management everyone has hailed were also grossly negligent in releasing multiplayer that was hacked/cracked/and full of about as many horrible cheats as I have ever seen in more than a decade of online gaming. The managment that allowed their code to be accessed by hackers to “look for bugs”. The same hackers who have destroyed the multiplayer experience. I’d fire them too. They really aint worth that much $ in the grand scheme of things and if they broke contract or NDA with another company/entities they DESERVE what they get.

    As for that billion plus it is just a gross. As someone who works in games publishing let me clarify how this works. 60msrp. Retailer keeps $30.00 of that to keep the lights on in their store. Microsoft and Sony have licensing agreements for their perspective consoles that pay them around 1/3rd of the profit up till a game makes “platinum” status then the rate goes down. Its like a movie studio. So of the $30.00 left over after Walmart, Microsoft/Sony get $10.00. Uncle Sam/the Queen/your National Tax Collector gets $10.00 in varied corporate tax, leaving Activision/Blizzard $10 to divvy up as they chose to the creative studio (Infinity Ward). So a big chunk of change but not a Billion dollars. More like $167 million. A very decent chunk of change for sure. But when you consider blizzard/activision gets to keep about $32 million a MONTH from World of Warcraft, its not that impressive.

  • Bowbe

    Likewise since West and Zampella were dumb enough to allow their code to be distributed onthe net I wouldn’t trust them to put out another game that wouldnt be just as messed up as this one was. There were high school kids playing MW2 two weeks before it came out for peets sake. Whent hey logged in after “buying a copy” all their perks were still there. All their points were still there. Now invariably when you play you will see hundreds of players with prestige 10, earned through boosting. The boosting service is SOLD FREELY for about 2000 microsoft points or 3 months live subscriptions.
    My point is, Activision’s strongest case is that someone willingly let a flagship game of their Christmas lineup be hacked and passed about for free diminishing its value and that its value continues to diminish. Someone has to staunch the gouts of blood because quite honestly, folks who prefer a clean multiplayer game will never trust Infinity Ward again. If West and Zampella couldnt or wouldnt find the person(S) responsible for all that out and destruction of their lucrative multiplayer IP then Activision has every right to punish them financially and legally for ruining their good name. You notice the hacking and cracking is very difficult on WOW, it is strictly enforced and checks and balances are put in place to protect the fans. Infinity ward didnt do this or has thus far failed in its obligation ot the fans. Someone has to pay. Simple as that.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    We’ve all seen that pie chart, Bowbe, but I doubt the studio leadership was fired for shipping an exploitable game.

    Are you actually suggesting that Activision fired senior management because of problems with free DLC? Or that Activision cares that there is cheating in the game? Activision sees no revenue from online play. They could care less whether or not it works.

    You’re free to be an apologist for Activision if you like, but your analysis of WHY Zampelli and West were fired doesn’t seem very plausible.

  • Bowbe

    What isn’t plausible about shopping your parent companies Itellectual Property to hacker sites to look for bugs? Thats pretty cut and dried and thats what they did. That would be me posting up chapters of a book for WOTC/Hasbro on a torrent account while also submitting it for publication. You do that in any job you get fired. I’m not apologizing for Activision, I’m pointing out issues of corporate and leadership related negligence that will get you fired.

    Gay bashing. Infinity Ward had two instances of that with this game, once with the youtube vid, 2nd with the in game “joke” about don’t ask don’t tell. Did I think they were funny? Sure because I have a sense of humor. If you work for a big ass company (Bank of America being one) and make a similar joke even on your facebook page outside of work guess what? Fired. Thats corporate culture now like it or not. Unless your a rapper that is.

    Activision may not “make” the dough off the online play as you say but lets call an apple an apple shall we. How many people actually bought the game PURELY to play the 10 hour single player game? 1/10th of the sales maybe? You buy COD games for the online experience. Their negligence ruined the online experience and tell me it hasn’t been ruined after you’ve been buried in three dozen care package strikes. COD MW1 didnt have those issues. This one is rife with them. If your sitting with friends and 8 out of 10 of them agree the online blows and you were on the fence about buying it for yourself are you still going to buy it for full price? No, you’ll pick it up used and Activision certainly doesnt get any $$ off a resale. Check your worship of Zampelli and West at the door please.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Please. I didn’t know Zampelli and West existed until last week. As for the grammatical wasteland that are your comments, if you worked in game publishing then you would know that once a game is bought it’s bought, that its tail is going to be about six weeks, shorter for a game like this because door busters see around 85% of the profit on Day Zero and Day One. You’d also know that as consumers, gamers are mind-bogglingly stupid, and will cheerfully buy games despite warnings of issues just because they’d always planned to.

    Given that Zampelli and West are now suing, insisting that Modern Warfare is their IP, I’m guessing that they probably didn’t knowingly damage it. But who knows? Maybe Activision, a company that has spent the last five years exploiting franchises, closing studios, firing people without reason, arbitrarily raising prices, making stated company policy that an atmosphere of skepticism, pessimism, and fear was desirable at their wholly owned subsidiaries really is the affronted party here. Time will tell.

  • ajax19

    I don’t think anything is “cut and dry” here.  I don’t think anyone is worshipping either of these guys either.

    The only thing we’ve seen to date are Zampelli and West’s allegations set forth in their complaint and the brief, vague comments by Activision about “insubordination”.  That term is incredibly vague and can mean just about anything in the corporate/HR world. 

    Given that this is now in litigation, rumor and speculation is all you’re going to get until more papers are filed.

    As for their claim for damages, the $36 million they allege includes far, far more than just the royalties they think they are owned.  It’s a combination of things.

    As for the value of MW2 and the money Activision made off it, Activision has already announced that the game was incredibly successful and one of the main reasons behind its success last year.  Regardless of the exact total revenue Activision saw as a result of sales (I’m sure it’s easily found in their public filings) it was a significant portion of their overall revenues.

  • Bowbe

    Haha Steerspike. The only point I was trying to make is that if a parent company wanted to axe these guys they have ample reasons to use as their excuses for termination, most of which would stick.

    Thats ALL I pointed out.

    Leaked versions of the game two weeks before release showing you have no control over your own in studio employees or you willingly leaked the game (Check).

    Inability to control the rampant cheating on multiplayer with 2 patches that did not work resulting in dillution of your IP(Check).

    Use of illigitimate 3rd party hacker sites as “sub contractors” to your IP (Check).

    If this was done without the knowledge of the parent company that (Also) could result in a clause for breach of contract.

    Negotiation in private with a rival entity (Allegedly in this case EA?) for re-entry into the EA fold? Didn’t these bozos pull a similar stunt with EA to break from EA and go to Activision in the first place? Thats the big stinker here according to a lot of other sites that are just as informed as the rest of us.

    The rest of us meaning… people who were not in the meeting. I cherish every time someone allegedly or directly affiliated with the “fired side” tries to win the court of public opinion with their lame twitter and facebook updates.

    Is Activision trying to get out of paying their 10% to Infinity Ward? Probably. In this economy anything is possible, especially where stock splits and shareholders are concerned. Certainly not painting them as good guys here, just pointing out several “grounds for termination”.

    You say cool stuff like “Do you honestly believe Activision cares about cheating” Maybe “Activision” doesn’t but the Blizzard wing sure seems to when it comes to cheating in their flagship product.

    You also swing around big numbers like 2 billion dollars and then when I point out the number they recieve is much smaller you go in with the “We’ve all seen that pie chart…” and “Doorbuster specials”. So which is it? They made 2 billion or they suddenly lost their ass on the first two days of sales while Walmart and Uncle Sam reap the reward of Infinity Ward’s valliant effort? Maybe everyone hasn’t seen that pie chart.

    Sorry dude but I’m not trying to sell a bunch of conflicting stories to win an internet argument with you. Note that when combing through my “gramatical wasteland” I again only point out reasons Activision could use to get rid of anyone affiliated with Infinity Ward that they wanted to, and all would be good and legitimate reasons in my book.

    Infinity Ward started with great IP and the potential of a great product with this one. Single player was amazing, but I buy COD games for the online play. So do a lot of other people. I ain’t the greatest at the game but I finish in the top 5 on most rounds and thats good enough for me. CODMW (the first) played for about 6 months solid, had few errors, but bad lag during certain times of the day. There were almost no cheats except for a few wierd places on a couple maps where you could walk the sky and the game was frequently patched and regulated. That was in the day of “good Infinity Ward” They were unshackled by those evil opressive bastards at EA and they were out to make a good name for themselves right?

    This new game was a mess from the get-go that benefitted from lots of hype, fat reviewer scores and millions of dollars in advertising. My friends and I played for about two months almost nightly till all the care package nonsense and the modded guns started showing up everywhere.

    Even in the beginning there were the “turn invisible cheat” in the Afgan map and “unlimited ammo cheats” and “hide down the smokestack and rack up a million kills cheats to get all your nuke patches and what not. Allowing prestige points in private matches? Wow, a booster’s paradise. Thats horrible game design right there. All that is on Infinity Ward and not Activision. They are the studio they designed it, put it out flaws and all as a finished product.

    Too cheap for dedicated servers with that “2 billion dollars” your talking about? Way to piss off the PC gamers and console gamers alike. I should have known something was up when the “online agreement” page flashes by faster than a booster on crack with all run/sprint/knife/akimbo shotgun choices selected. Is that crap Activisions fault or Infinity Wards? Probably a combo of blame in that reguard.

    We waited and checked status of updates/patches and all that came up was “oh we’re working on it,” all the hack tools were available for it before it even launched. Youtube has had daily exploits posted up. People send you messages to you in game wanting 2000 microsoft points or 3 months subscription to LIVE in exchange for 10th prestige.

    All the bells and whistles that should have made the game great are meaningless now thanks to the cheating. All that stuff you strive for as a gamer went up in smoke almost overnight once the non-stop care package exploits were in full swing. I don’t blame Activision for that. I blame Infinity Ward for allowing that to happen on ALL platforms of the game and will likely never buy a game from them or another entity run by Zampelli and West again. IW ruined its reputation with this gamer for sure. I can buy $60 worth of real bullets and have an awesome afternoon at my local gun club instead.

    You are right about one thing though. Gamers are dumb and will knowingly buy a game that is going to break their heart because they “hope” that all the bs will be fixed the next time they play, or when the next version comes out but just like Madden, it never is.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Now THAT’S a good response, Bowbe! I don’t agree, but I respect the use of logic and the lack of bile.

    Allow me to rebut…

    Blizzard can care about cheating until the universe dries up; the position on one game (where cheating might impact PAYING customers) doesn’t dictate company policy. I didn’t intend to imply that Activision doesn’t care about cheating regardless of game, only that they don’t care when it comes to MW2.

    Never argued that Activision couldn’t produce reasons to fire West and Zampelli. Particularly if they were talking to other publishers – which wouldn’t surprise me. Total breach of contract. I never said Activision was acting illegally. The only point I wanted to make was that if I were Activision, and I was faced with losing a studio that just made me *coughcoughcough*illion dollars (no need to incite you further), I might have approached with a different tone…

    along the lines of…

    “Hey, guys, I know you’re looking and I don’t want you to leave us.  How can we work this out?”

    Instead of sending thugs to the office and firing the leads.

    As for the litany of exploits you list, yeah, it’s a broken game. Most games that ship are broken. But the industry doesn’t care about quality – on account of the gamers are stupid thing. All they care about is dollars, and MW2 made a zillion of them. They’re not selling Toyotas, you know. No one dies if a game is shitty.

  • Mat

    The bug issue with MW2 is an interesting one for sure, particularly when you consider what the reaction to so many glitches and cheats would have been if this was Treyarch’s year on the job. I was late onto the World at War scene so barely experienced much of the multiplayer myself, but I noticed the game received one hell of a tough ride from the community about the bugs in the multiplayer. I can’t recall many if any of them being as high profile or consistent as some of the floods of MW2 glitches that have appeared.

    Infinity Ward didn’t come up with anything like Nazi zombies either, and if COD4 is any indication, are nowhere near as supportive of their products with DLC either as Treyarch.

    Still, I don’t really think this is about calling Infinity Ward “awesome” or siding with them against Activision for the sake of it.. or “nerd rage”. IW might have published a buggy as hell game (serves them right for being arrogant over not releasing a beta) but this is just one in an increasingly large number of PR balls up’s by Activision. As Steerpike says, there are surely other ways of dealing with stuff like this other than sending the heavies in and coming out with comments about “subordination” and the like. This is video games development, not an episode of 24.

    Just as an aside, I’ve pretty much called time on Modern Warfare 2 myself now, although that is less to do with the games bugs than it is to do with the simply awful “community” that follows that game around..

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