Prince of Persia: Warrior Within Review

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            Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

Review by SteerpikeJanuary 2005

Joking Aside, We Actually Are Quite Close

Like me, my older brother is a writer, and a gamer. Together we’re getting our father into the hobby, but I’m concerned, because so far Dad has been taking after my brother Marcus in matters of taste, and when it comes to gaming, Marcus is much more curmudgeonly than I. He didn’t like Knights of the Old Republic (“too much moving around”).  Or Thief (“too dark”). Or System Shock 2 (“too many monkeys”). Or Morrowind (“too much foliage collection”). Or Far Cry (“eh”).  He is a joyless shell of a human, bereft of brightness and glee, churning with subsurface wrath. He has my pity.

However, his gloweringly lemonish surl, in addition to being endearing, does have one side benefit: when he recommends a game, it’s a safe bet that you won’t be disappointed. And so when he emailed me and said in no uncertain terms that I should pick up Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, I did so, and I was suitably impressed. Sands of Time is an amazing game. It is beautiful, hugely entertaining, and stuffed to the proverbial gills with thrilling play, snappy writing, and excellent voice work. Indeed, even on the PC with a mouse/keyboard combo—a control scheme for which it is not ideally suited—it managed to be one of the best PC games of 2003, selling nearly two million copies across all major platforms and very nearly toppling Knights of the Old Republic for the IGDA’s Game of the Year award. As one can imagine, a sequel was in the cards.

However, in a maneuver of astounding dimwittedness, Ubisoft pretty much disbanded the PoPTeam studio responsible for Sands of Time and shifted the entire writing staff from the original over to work on the upcoming Prince of Persia movie. The new team totally rewrote the protagonist, recast the talented voice lead with a monotonous hack, cut a beloved supporting character entirely, and announced that, unlike the soft-edged dreaminess of its predecessor, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within would narrate like an action movie directed by Ingmar Bergman—that is, bloody and depressing.  And rather than focus on the fiendish jumping puzzles that have been a Prince of Persia standby since Jordan Mechner originated the series for Broderbund in 1990, Warrior Within, while including the acrobatic conundra, would tilt the scales much more aggressively toward complex, combo-driven swordfighting.

Amazingly, these enormous foundational changes have resulted in a game that plays as well as, if not better than, The Sands of Time. It’s nowhere near as original, clever, or well-written, nor is it remotely faithful to the Prince of Persia franchise; but the surprisingly elegant new combat system, rich graphics, action-packed pacing, and control improvements on the PC platform are without peer. Though Ubi made a heroic attempt to ruin it, Warrior Within manages to transcend more than a year of incompetence on the part of nearly everyone involved with its production. So despite the fact that I had serious doubts about this one, I’m no longer at all hesitant to award it our highest honor. Warrior Within is vastly different from Sands of Time, but it’s still a great, great game.

The Dahaka. The What? The Dahaka. The What? The—

The Prince, as fans will recall, allowed himself to be tricked into unleashing the Sands of Time in the previous game by a Jafar-like vizier with dreams of controlling a world populated by sand-filled time zombies. Fortunately for us, though, a contrite Prince and his new girlfriend Farah managed to stuff the Sands back into the big magic hourglass where they belonged. The Prince also used his Sand-filled dagger to rewind the whole grubby affair and undo lots of damage that his actions had caused. Then he kissed Farah and went home to continue his princely activities.

Unfortunately, screwing around with time gets the attention of a huge black tentacle-horn-thing called the Dahaka, a sort of chronological library cop. It’s dispatched to give the Prince some what-for, and our hero has to skip town before this new nemesis can eat him up.  Thus begins the Prince’s life on the lam, and by all accounts it’s been a pretty unpleasant experience: every now and then the Dahaka will turn up and hurtle after him, getting a little closer every time. It would seem that only the Prince’s death will bring normalcy back to the timeline.

Finally, weary of the chase, the Prince seeks advice from a smelly old man who lives in a tent, knowing that unhygienic desert hermits are full of oracular knowledge. Old Man tells him that his fate is preordained: the Dahaka will kill him, and nothing can change that. Thus the Prince conceives of a new plan. He’ll travel to the source of all time, return to the past, and stop the creation of the Sands. If the Sands of Time never existed, he reasons, he won’t have been able to use them to mess up the timeline, so the Dahaka will have no beef with him and will go home.

Problem is, the Dahaka’s home is the Castle of Time on the Island of Time with the Empress of Time (yeah, I was serious when I said the game was written by talentless amateurs), so the Prince isn’t there for much … time before he hears familiar pounding footsteps behind him.

Being chased by a Dahaka makes you grumpy. At some point during his flight, the Prince managed to get some henna tattoos and a gothy new wardrobe. He also has blue eyes and an American accent now, like all Middle Easterners. He spouts moronic bad-dialogueisms like, “You will soon feel the edge of my blade!” Compare this to the wit of the admittedly somewhat foppish—but in a good way—Prince from Sands of Time and you’ll see how brutally the new writers raped this character. Indeed, to call the writers of this game one-lobed idiots gives a bad name to one-lobed idiots; considering that Ubisoft basically terminated the extremely gifted original writing team, it says something about how much value the company places on fiction.

This says more. One of Ubi’s head writers—uninvolved with Warrior Within—was recently asked if quality script writing was a fundamental part of elevating the art form of game development. His answer: “No.”

You don’t say.

In another move of staggering brilliance, the writers cut Farah from the story. The hilarious verbal repartee that these two bickering quasi-heroes shared (“I’ve never told that to anyone before,” “I’m not surprised; it’s the most childish thing I’ve ever heard”) was one of the especially bright points in Sands of Time. It was pretty clear that the original writers intended both to be present in any sequels. Plus, Farah was one of the better-written female characters in gaming.

Instead, they introduced two of the most offensively drawn and poorly written new female characters ever conceived by male game developers who can’t get laid. Doubt me? Check it. That costuming is pretty much accurate. Your new female nemesis Shahdee is even more shockingly uninspired than the rest of the story. In fact, I have little doubt that the small … minded jackass responsible for Warrior Within’s characters described Shahdee in one line in the design doc: “Shahdee is angry and wears a steel bikini cuz steel bikinis are sexy. And she’s, like, hot, because hot chix totally dig my mad phat skillz.” Kaileena, your mysterious seminude maybe-ally, another Middle Easterner with milky skin and green eyes, harbors her own share of poorly written malcontent. And of course the Empress of Time is a hot, barely clothed woman, perhaps intended as a personification of the proverbial hourglass figure (get it?). Warrior Within seriously exhibits some of the most offensively sexist portrayals of women in gaming that I’ve ever seen. I, a guy who is pro–hot woman, was offended.  Ubi set the games biz back again by hiring Cro-Magnon retards to write the sequel to a hugely selling franchise resurrection. The player will not care at all about any of these “important” new characters.

Moreover, the Prince, a returning hero who was much-loved, is simply not a likable character in Warrior Within. He was a bit of a ponce in Sands of Time, sure, but let’s remember that the man was also so genial he somehow managed to inspire Farah—who originally wanted to watch him die screaming—to fall in love with him. He also inspired players to like and identify with his character, a special challenge considering the setting of Sands of Time. Recall that it was the Prince’s hubris that unleashed the Sands in the first place; that and his obsession with pleasing a father who was already quite obviously pleased with him. That would have destroyed the world had the Prince not been given the opportunity to temporally undo his own blunder. Arrogance is very difficult for an audience to forgive, and yet we did, because the Prince was likable. In Warrior Within, he is a sullen, spoiled, obnoxious, bullying caricature, and you won’t give a damn if he lives or dies.

The acting, too, is godawful. The Prince sounds like he’s from Wisconsin and delivers his lines with Award-of-Suck–winning blandness. Shahdee, Kaileena, even the grunt-intensive Dahaka are equally uninspired. Warrior Within pretty much screams “we were too cheap to hire good writers and actors, so we had Raoul from Accounting (the team is French-Canadian) write the script, and the guys who fill our Coke machines said the lines.”

So the story is badly conceived and the characters are hideously written. Still, when it comes to a game, the gameplay is the really important factor, and Warrior Within has plenty of excellent gameplay.

It’s a Reverse Swirl

I played the PC version of Warrior Within, so I can’t really speak to any camera or control improvements among the assorted console versions. But my persistent gripes with Sands of Time for the PC were the clumsy perspectives and control issues that would so often cause me to fling myself into the void. While not eliminated altogether in Warrior Within, the keyboard and mouse controls are drastically improved.

The trick is that in most third-person games, the camera is locked to the character’s back. That wouldn’t work in PoP, where the camera needs freedom to wander, since you depend on its subjective field of view to see solutions to the diabolical jumping puzzles.  However, an unlocked camera by nature introduces control issues, since the position of the camera—your perspective on the game world—is not a constant as relates to the position of your character. In a nutshell, “W” does not always mean forward.

The problem is all but fixed in Warrior Within. “W” means forward from the perspective of the camera, not the perspective of the Prince. Same with “A” and “S” and “D.”  Furthermore, the irritating “swoosh return” blocked-camera effect is gone from Warrior Within—the camera, controlled by the mouse, will simply not go to places where it would be blocked.  While occasionally frustrating in tight spaces, it’s much less vexing than the vertigo of a constantly realigning camera position.

I cannot say enough about the new and incredibly more complex combat system, for which I originally had very low hopes. I suck at Killer Instinct, and my brain is too small and stunted to remember or execute in a timely manner combos of the Up-Up-Left-Up-Left-Kick-Left-Left-Kick-Right-Up-Punch-Kick-Left-Duck-Kick-Left-Right-Left-Up-Kick-Left-Jump variety, and I feared Warrior Within would play like that: the demo certainly led me to believe it would. Yet Warrior Within allows you to carry out insanely complex fighting combos with a minimum of effort.

You could quite easily clamber over an enemy, breaking his neck as you go, snatch his dropped sword, run up the wall, flip backward, land in a blades-out helicopter twirl to lop off some heads, then somersault away from any retaliation and hurl your secondary weapon into an oncoming menace. Most importantly, you could do all that in a preplanned manner; the fighting system is so fluid and so easy to execute that you can carry out extraordinarily complex assaults against multiple targets with only a handful of well-timed clicks.  It’s because just a couple of buttons do a lot of stuff, depending on the context—where you are, where you’re facing, what you’ve got, what’s around, and so forth. Never will you feel so cool fighting hand to hand as when you’re doing it in Warrior Within. You will need a responsive mouse with at least four comfortably placed buttons, but most gamers have that already.

Secondary weapons are a new addition, and one that I’d originally thought would add too much complexity to the fighting controls.  But the elegance of the system overcomes that. Possession of a #2 weapon is quite unnecessary. Many gamers may avoid them, opting instead for the Prince’s devastating strangulation and fatality maneuvers that can only be accomplished when he has a hand free.  Others may snatch them up for use as long-range ordnance but not employ them much in close combat. Fighting in Warrior Within is so flat-out awesome that I wish they’d included an arena style of gameplay, with customizable environments and enemies.

Speaking as a person who hates jumping puzzles, it’s odd that I love them so much in the Prince of Persia games. My grumbly brother, once a 3D animator, was originally drawn to Sands of Time because of the beautiful animations of the lead character when he executes solutions to these puzzles; the Prince has even more unique animations in this game. And though Warrior Within is much more combat-oriented and doesn’t offer dilemmas even remotely as baffling as Sands of Time, they’re still fun and engaging and make great use of the game engine’s skeletal animation.  Each animation is drawn by hand; there is no motion capture in Warrior Within. You’ll run along walls, swing on ropes, slide pirate-style down curtains, and basically use everything in the environment as your own personal jungle gym. They’ve also integrated combat into the environment to a slightly greater degree, though puzzles and fighting are still kept largely separate.

Making a triumphant return are the Prince’s powers of time control.  Originally available through the auspices of his stolen dagger, apparently the Prince can now rewind and rework time just because he’s so damn dark and grim and cool. He’s like a chroniscient ancient Middle Eastern Trent Reznor. As usual, you need to have some Sand in your possession to make even the most basic Rewind powers work, though in Warrior Within, it’s easier to get Sand—you’re in the Castle of Time, after all. It seeps out of dying enemies and can be found in many pieces of crockery that inexplicably clutter the halls of the palace. Generally the time powers are modified and polished, but in truth they haven’t changed much. It’s amazing, though, how necessary to the franchise they have become after just two games: should the next PoP title leave out the time control, I think gamers would abandon it in droves.

They’ve also tweaked the save system. Warrior Within is still very much a console port, so you cannot save whenever you like. Save points are much more common, however, and you’ll generally find a new one after ever major puzzle or combat sequence. You’ll certainly find one before and after every Dahaka event, during which the Dahaka turns up and chases after you for a while. These instances allow approximately zero margin for error, usually involving jumping puzzles that would be quite simple if time weren’t a factor. It’s nice that you can start over at the beginning of the chase sequence rather than enduring a long build-up every time. All in all, save points—which are represented by healing fountains rather than sand whorls in Warrior Within—are about three times as frequent. While I generally prefer the freedom to save whenever I like, in games like PoP it just wouldn’t work, and save points are common enough that it’s no big deal. One thing I do miss is that saving no longer affords you a glimpse into the future.  This was necessary in SoT because the puzzles were so incredibly difficult, but it was also a neat effect and I’m sorry it’s gone.

Finally, it’s considerably longer than its predecessor. Sands of Time was a 12-hour experience, give or take; they claim that Warrior Within is 24-plus hours, though my own experience was closer to 20. Still, it’s nice that they extended the play length from the original, which was too short, though I suspect that extension was easy to accomplish since Warrior Within makes no effort to be even remotely as complex as Sands of Time.

Attach Camera Lens. Add Vaseline.

Warrior Within’s visuals bring back the beautiful muzzy blur. This effect reminds me most of the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, an experience that was to me like watching a dream. But Warrior Within, though it has its share of somnescence and general fuzziness, looks more like the video game version of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. This is mostly because of the setting.

Whereas the Maharaja’s palace in Sands of Time was a colorful, luxurious artifice, in Warrior Within you’re visiting a place that has long since gone to seed. The vast majority of the game is spent in the Castle of Time, which looked great back in the day but looks like Fallujah in the present. Fortunately, you spend a lot of the game in the past, and it’s fun to see how the moss-covered ruins transform into a lavish golden pleasure garden when you are transported to the days of yore.

Most of your jaw-dropping on the Warrior Within graphics front will be related to the animations of the Prince, who looks even more amazing in this sequel. Though reskinned with his stupid tattoos and “I’m an angry goth rich kid” clothing, he is breathtakingly fluid and lifelike. His acrobatics and combat moves are astounding. One day they’ll find a way to combine the elegant fighting system and gorgeous protag animations of Warrior Within with the quality writing and terrifyingly good gameplay of Half Life 2, and we’ll have the perfect action game.

Ultimately, the graphics in Warrior Within are stellar and smooth at high resolution; I played through at 1600×1200 with everything and it was buttah, and my machine is definitely getting long in the proverbial tooth. There’s nothing to complain about here, and the developers did great work with a year-old graphic engine. Colors are far more muted and drab, but of course you spend most of your time in a ruined castle, so that’s to be expected.

Audio, however, is kind of a mixed bag. The clanks and clinks of swordplay, the soft ripple of a curtain as wind passes through it, the whoosh of drifting sand or the spatter of running water, and the mechanical clockwork of the game’s devious traps all sound excellent.  Alas, then, that the voice acting is so dreadfully bad and the musical score is a totally out of place hard rock thumpfest, complete with roaring guitars and drum solos. It’s as though Ministry were hired to design the soundtrack of the next Super Mario Brothers; the music and the game exist in totally different worlds.

One of the great strengths of Sands of Time is the way it is narrated, as a flashback a la Sacrifice.  Though you had to finish the game to see the clever intricacy and structure of the story, the writers and artists made clear that you are playing the game inside the corridors of the Prince’s memory.  Time, he says, is not a river flowing swift and true in one direction; Time is a torrent in a storm. SoT made it clear that the same is true for memory, which isn’t organized in a crisp linear fashion. That game was designed to look and sound and feel like … well, not to beat a dead horse, but like you’re playing a dream.  They cut a lot of that from Warrior Within. Not exactly a capital offense, but jarring all the same.

Warrior Without

Warrior Within is not a perfect game. But many—most—of its flaws are based in the inaccuracies associated with its absolute failure to remain faithful to its immediate predecessor. If it weren’t a Prince of Persia game, I’d probably be raving even more, and though the tone of this review may not seem ravey (maybe I take after my brother), despite its failings, Warrior Within deserves raves.

I just came off a review of Half Life 2, which received a superb score despite a story I considered so riddled with holes as to be utterly nonsensical. At the end of the day, though, Half Life 2’s gameplay, that evanescent “fun factor,” was off the charts. And in a game, gameplay is the most important part of the equation. We see this again and again: games are games. They mean something, but they have to be fun. I’ll take a badly written but fun game over a brilliantly written but flawed game any day.

Warrior Within’s script feels like it was written by a fourteen-year-old whose most advanced sexual experience was sneaking looks at his dad’s Playboys. A fourteen-year-old whose most complex imaginings involve being killed just after rescuing the prettiest girl in school from some terrible danger—dying at the moment he and the girl whisper blood-bubbled protestations of love for one another. A fourteen-year-old who never matured, who resents women, who devalues powerful narrative in favor of masturbatory adolescent fantasy, and who has never, ever, had an emotion beyond puddle depth. The writing is vomitous, the acting nauseating, the characters vile.

Warrior Within’s gameplay feels like it was tuned by industry luminaries of whom no more than a handful exist. Industry luminaries who recognized the need to sell games and tweaked the jumping puzzles to attract more potential purchasers while still respecting that portion of the franchise history. Industry luminaries who also saw the flaws in SoT—the redundancy in combat, the inordinate cruelty of some puzzles, the shortage of save points—and fixed them. The gameplay is without peer, the combat aorta-thrumming, the environments breathtaking.

Warrior Within is not a perfect game. In many ways, it stands as a badly written testament to exactly what is wrong with video games: sexism, teenage hormones, amateurish writing, clumsy franchise handling. But it’s entertaining. It’s incredibly entertaining. Oftentimes we game scholars, myself included (or especially), get lost in what the games need to mean. What they need to do. How they need to affect us. And we get lost in that for a good reason: games are still looked down on, held in contempt. They’re not viewed as the world’s first interactive art form; they’re viewed as a child’s playthings—something of which grownups who play should be ashamed. And so we are defensive of the medium we love.  But in so doing, we often lose sight of the fact that, as important as all that is, they are still games.

And Warrior Within is a great game. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Ubisoft’s Montreal Studio Publisher: Ubisoft Release Date: December 2, 2004

Available for: Game Cube PlayStation Windows XboxPlayStation 2 

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System Requirements

Windows 98SE/2000/XP (only) PIII 1 GHz or AMD Athlon 1 GHz 256 MB RAM DirectX® 9-compliant graphics card (supported cards are NVIDIA GeForce 3/4/FX series (including 4MX) or ATI Radeon 7500/8500/9000 families or newer) DirectX 8-compliant sound card DirectX 9.0c (included on disc) 16X CD-ROM or 4X DVD-ROM drive 2 GB free hard disk space

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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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