Sacrifice Review

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Sacrifice

Review by SteerpikeJuly 2002

Here’s the Story

As veteran readers are already doubtless aware, and as newcomers quickly gather, this site is devoted to games of certain genres—specifically, the ones we like to play and talk about. There’s nothing wrong with NFL 2002; it’s just not the sort of title you’re going to find headlined on a site where story is king. I bring this up because there was a brief and friendly discussion about whether or not Sacrifice belonged in our stable of reviews when I offered to do the job.

The truth is, though Shiny Entertainment’s Sacrifice was billed as a real time strategy game—albeit one very different from all the others out there—it’s a disservice to describe it as such. With few exceptions, real time strategies are twitchfests involving little actual strategy or depth. From a story perspective, for every Hollywood-quality Starcraft there is a written-while-in-the-bathroom Outlive, and the RTS genre has become much more about technology than artistry—which is exactly why Sacrifice is a stranger in a strange land for an RTS.

Sacrifice is real in the sense that it exists in the physical world; time will pass while you play it; it requires both the left and right hemispheres of the brain to be played effectively. And that is where its shared genealogy with “Real Time Strategy” (according to the practical definition of the genre) ends. The truth is that if the game had been marketed as what it is—a brilliant and unique reimagining of nearly every aspect of PC gameplay from story to execution, it probably would have sold a lot better.

An intensely story-driven game in every sense of the concept, the Sacrifice campaign tells the tale of Eldred, a powerful conjurer whose less-than-altruistic experiments led to the utter destruction of the reality that was his home. With demons of both the literal and figurative variety in hot pursuit, he sets off through the ether as the last survivor of his people, eventually finding himself in a bizarre and starkly beautiful new realm of islands floating on a sea of astral void.

Lost, frightened, and (presumably) harried by the guilt he carries as the individual solely responsible for the destruction of his home and everything living there, Eldred works to right the wrongs of his past in this new land. Here five gods vie amongst themselves for power, gleaned from the reverence of mortals. Each god has a stable of champions, wizards such as Eldred, but a war is brewing and all are eager to hire on some temporary new help.

Replayability is evident in Sacrifice from the get-go. Though the game is played from beginning to end in a total of ten missions, fifty actual and unique scenarios await the player—because at the outset, you have the opportunity to work from whichever god you choose. Eventually, of course, you must declare your support for a single deity or alliance thereof, at which time the others close their doors to you; so in order to experience everything Sacrifice has to offer, you’ll have to play through a few times. For those who give this beautiful, complex game a chance, however, that’s hardly a burden.

The Haagen-Dasz of video games, Sacrifice finds a perfect golden mean between strategy and action. It’s as ideal for RTS buffs hungry for something new as for action fans looking for a real challenge.  You’ll be asked to keep track of a ton of onscreen action, maintain a unique spellbook and bestiary with which to smite your enemies, and, of course, play so late that you get in trouble at work because you overslept.

And You Thought Your Job Was Tough

Though the gods are at war all the time, their squabbles are largely petty and mostly bloodless until a grim prophecy about divine betrayal and a second apocalypse puts everyone on the offensive. How you as Eldred choose to deal with your own role in the destiny of this strange land is dependent largely on which god(s) you choose to serve, and the moral quandaries involved in this decision are rich indeed.

The oftentimes infuriatingly superior tree-hugger Life Goddess Persephone will load you with healing spells and troops bent on domination through justice. The currently ascendant Pyro, God of Progress and Advancement (his definition of “progress” appears to focus largely on the application of explosions and violence, brutally and often), while appearing theoretically evil, may indeed simply be a blind servant of futurism. Charnel, God of Slaughter and Strife, revels in misery and dark forces while still adhering to a strict—if somewhat alien—moral code of his own. Chilly-willy Stratos, of Air and Knowledge fame, looks for answers to ancient questions in the unexplored corners of the universe, while invertebrate James, God of Earth and deification of Shiny’s original success, Earthworm Jim, lays out his openness and honesty for all to see.

Here’s the trick. One god is a traitor; one is a terrifying wolf in sheep’s clothing. One cares nothing for the world and is bent on domination even at the ultimate price; another is deeply honorable despite protestations of monstrosity. And the fifth may waffle so long before taking sides that the decision becomes meaningless.  Into this morass you are thrown, and much of Sacrifice is spent pondering your own moral compass. As available paths dwindle, you may realize too late that the side you’ve chosen represents the very ideology you meant to set yourself against.

If you prefer not to look so deeply into the Black & White-ism available in Sacrifice, you’ll still find a spectacularly violent and wonderfully thrilling adventure composed of epic, earth-shattering battles between deities’ champions, fought in a dreamlike landscape as weird and varied as it is beautiful.

Real-Time Strategy Redux

The nuts and bolts of gameplay do bear similarities to the RTS genre. On the battlefield, Eldred is placed in control of an altar to the god he has chosen to represent for the mission. Wizards in the field can be destroyed only when their altar is desecrated by an enemy; a rather terrifying eventuality that involves the ritual and bloody sacrifice of an opposing creature. Desecrations are easily stopped, but this requires you to essentially drop what you’re doing and race back to the starting line, so it’s wise to prevent them from occurring in the first place, rather than trying to halt one in progress.

Pure mystical energy sprays high into the air from mana fountains sprinkled across the landscape. The conjuration of towering manaliths channel these magical carbohydrates back into your character through the auspices of floppy-eared Manahoars, helpless creatures who gather magical energy for their patron wizard. Using this raw power, you cast spells to devastate your opponent and summon fantastic creatures from a bestiary that grows and expands based on whom you serve.  Each wizard’s spellbook should be slightly different from everyone else’s, as your progression through the game and the gods you serve determine the powers at your disposal.

The raw material for your armies are souls, either collected from the corpses of the faithful or brutally converted from fallen enemies.  Souls are the key to a game of Sacrifice—you will spend most of your time battling enemies and allies alike for control of them.

Blue souls float above the corpses of your own creatures; they are free for the taking. The souls of enemy creatures glow red, however, and before you can claim them as your own you must summon a special minion called a Sac Doctor to gather the soul and rush it back to your altar, where a painful-looking conversion ritual is performed on the hapless soul before it’s added to your pool.  Of course, the souls that are red to you are blue to someone else and vice versa; during combat a great portion of your strategy is forcing your opponent to clear off the battlefield while leaving some souls behind. In this manner you can chip away at even the mightiest wizards—as a sorcerer without souls is all but helpless.

You summon an army and dictate its formations and general behavior, then head off with your menagerie in tow to crush the enemy. There’s not much in gaming today that’s more spectacular than watching Eldred and his mystical army on the move, or climbing a steep hill and seeing an opponent lumbering across the horizon with a vast cavalcade of beasts in tight formation. Essentially, therefore, the base structure of the game is similar to real-time strategies—you must police your assets, generate an army, and produce structures. But since there are no “bases” to speak of in Sacrifice, and the building of structures has been reduced to an absolute minimum, management of troops and resources takes on a more expanded role.

Beyond that, the RTS comparison breaks down. RTSers will squawk that there is “strategy” involved in building massive armies that come thundering down on enemy bases. That’s bull. Real strategy involves formation, maintenance of supply lines, control of critical areas in a theater, and so forth; success in Starcraft (and I don’t mean to knock Starcraft, but it’s true) is really a matter of good timing, not good strategy. A clever Sacrifice player will make use of feinting, diversions, and pincer maneuvers, all of which would be a waste in classical RTS, in which victory is determined by sheer numbers.

Since you need at least one soul for every creature you summon and there is a finite number of souls on the board, you can forget about huge armies. Also, since your own character is out there with your army, casting spells and hurrying around running combat-related errands in the middle of the slugfest, being outnumbered is really a matter of perception. The best Sacrifice players I know run around the map alone or with a skeleton crew at most, preferring instead to shackle their armies to areas that they must keep well-defended.

You Shore Do Have a Purty Mouth

Sacrifice was one of the first games to employ hardware transform and lighting. It manifests itself in this case not in the presence of more polygons or unusual environmental effects, but as a colossally stupendous draw distance and uniformly curved surfaces covering a polygonal wireframe. Sacrifice stands out as one of the most beautiful games on the market—I was recently introducing a friend to it, and she announced that were it not for Morrowind, it would, in her opinion, be the best-looking game she’d ever seen. Considering that this exchange took place more than a year after Sacrifice’s release, gamers who haven’t given it a try yet can be assured that the visuals will not disappoint them.

Those familiar with Shiny’s other escapades, from Messiah to MDK, will certainly be unsurprised by the lethally day-glo tinting. Each god’s little corner of the world is so parti-colored that you’ll think a rainbow vomited on the screen. Strong fog tables and engine-supported full-screen anti-aliasing are icing on the cake to Sacrifice’s powerful visuals, which will manage an easy thirty frames a second with today’s top-shelf accelerators.

One warning to Radeon owners—given ATI’s total lack of interest in providing quality drivers for its products, and its total contempt for the wishes of its consumers in this area, you may experience some problems when playing Sacrifice. Nothing so serious that it will prevent you from running the game, but there are known performance and feature problems limited to the Radeon. ATI doesn’t care about fixing them and Shiny is no longer patching Sacrifice, so it may be in your best interest to keep ATI’s current driver release, along with a WHQL certified release and possibly a beta driver on hand, until you nail down what’s best for this game.

Shiny is one of the few studios that places great significance on the quality of their voice talent; they realize that bad acting can ruin an otherwise good story and therefore spare no expense on their voice actors. Sacrifice is no exception. To a character it is well and subtly acted. The sharpest ears may recognize Tim Curry as Air God Stratos, and though the rest of the cast may not be known in Hollywood, it’s a veritable who’s-who of A-list talent in the voice industry.

Music, as well, comes straight from the Computer Game Orchestra First Seat. Though Sacrifice isn’t exactly a loud game—it doesn’t feature pounding explosions or earsplitting bass effects—the delicacy and power of the score go a long way toward evoking the mood that the designers appear to have been going for. Music in Sacrifice is exactly what game music should be: excellent and completely invisible. This sadly means that Sacrifice did not win any special achievements in soundtrack, but it certainly makes for a pleasant experience for the gamers.

My Dog’s Name Is “WASD”

Sacrifice could have been a control nightmare—imagine a third-person shooter like Max Payne’s controls set in a real-time strategy game’s engine—but in fact they’re relatively graceful so long as you’re out of the stone age as far as hardware is concerned. You’re going to need a mouse with a scroll wheel that doubles as a button and a keyboard you’re able to wrap your hands around (you could play Sacrifice well on a laptop so long as you used an external mouse).

In fact, I wish Black & White had emulated the control scheme of Sacrifice, since the two games share many graphical similarities. Essentially you move Eldred around with WASD and control your pointer with the mouse. Camera control is achieved by holding the middle mouse button or by maneuvering the pointer to the edges of the screen. Beginners will have a hard time with the controls while they get the hang of it, but veterans are so well-oiled that they can zoom around the battlefield, picking up souls and casting spells, all the while knowing precisely what’s going on around them.

Creatures are big and brightly colored and, when selected, surrounded by a huge white bounding box and status icon that can seriously get in the way when you’re trying to pinpoint an object in the play area. It’s the price the designers paid for such large and highly detailed creature models, but the bounding box was a little more than was necessary. Complaints as far as the control structure go are limited to the vague but persistent irritation associated with wanting to click one object only to find that another is in the way.

Most levels in the game offer a number of objectives, some optional, so you won’t get stuck in the ho-humness of level after level with the same objectives. Ultimately your goal is usually the same—destroy an enemy wizard’s (or wizards’) altar(s), but the way you go about it and the challenges you will encounter on the way vary greatly.

Aiding you in this adventure is a highly disrespectful homunculus named Zyzyx. He will guide you through Sacrifice’s three excellent tutorials and is a critical player in the story itself—he, along with more than a dozen other characters, is the backbone of the story as well as its supporting cast. Zyzyx flies around the battlefield and calls out advice and situation reports, along with the occasional catcall, and can generally be relied upon to get in the way when you need unobstructed vision. Despite his I-quit attitude and tendency to take cuts in line, however, he’s an invaluable resource that most players can’t help but be fond of.

As the game progresses, you’re naturally granted access to more and more powerful spells and creatures until, in the final levels, you have attained the pinnacle of power, the mack-daddy of magic, your god’s mighty capital creature and capital spell. I always like games that allow you to deform the terrain of the game world. I don’t mean the crappy you-can-chip-the-rock-where-we-say-you-can of Red Faction, I mean the bust-up, rumbleicious, crunch-all-you-want, we’ll-make-more-total-freedom-of-a-capital spell in Sacrifice.  Tear off the lid off a mountain and watch lava spew forth, suck an entire enemy army into the swirling vortex of a tornado, hurl opponents miles into the air, slice out a Delaware-sized chunk of the map and watch it fall into the nothingness below … this is the glory of the capital spells in Sacrifice. Effects like this are satisfying graphically and viscerally, and they are the kind of reward players deserve for progressing toward the end in a game they’ve adored.

There Is No Fighting in the War Room

There’s plenty of goofiness to go with Sacrifice’s chilling story of demonic incursion and power-mad wizardry. It’s obvious that Shiny has a lot in common with its (former) fellow Interplay minions Black Isle and Bioware. We all remember Fallout, a franchise that somehow managed to incorporate laugh-out-loud humor into a series of games set in a postnuclear world where more than five billion were already dead and the rest likely to die under the smoking barrel of your character’s zipgun.

In addition to snappy writing, humor is contributed via the creatures.  Take the hideous Phoenix, Pyro’s capital creature. It’s the opposite of pretty much everyone’s mental image of the mythical beast. It’s fat. It’s pink. It’s got about nine feathers. It looks like a semiplucked escapee from a fat farm for chickens merged with a Powerpuff Girl.  And far from being a flaming bird of paradise that rebears itself through its ashes, it is ungainly when airborne and fires a ruddy laser beam that tears through legions of foes. Not exactly the glorious firebird of Archon, a game I consider to be Sacrifice’s spiritual predecessor, but a witness to the creative genius and incredibly disturbed humor that stokes the furnaces at Shiny.

Sacrifice is such a hectic game that it will probably not appeal to epileptics, nervous individuals, or people who have a hard time keeping track of a number of events at one time. The game’s true masters are totally aware of everything going on around them and can dodge and weave through the middle of combat, gathering their own souls, converting others, summoning creatures and casting spells without a break in the action. Beginners should take heart; Sacrifice is relatively easy to learn and very difficult to master, but if you give it time you will be rewarded.

Also included is the Scapex level editor, one of the easiest mapmaking utilities I’ve ever seen. Scapex allows you to create your own Sacrifice maps and populate them with scripted events and objectives; in ease of use it’s similar to the editor that Starcraft shipped with. Instructions on how to use Scapex are included in the printed documentation—a nice touch—even beginners should be whipping up levels in no time. Sacrifice.net offers quite a selection of excellent user-made maps and episodes.

There is a very small community of gamers who still play Sacrifice online. They are few and far between, so if you want to try your hand at online combat, you’d be better off organizing a game among your friends than trying to locate some other opponent. Chances are you won’t find many active Sacrifice servers these days, though it doesn’t hurt to look.

Showmanship and Genius (Or, the Inevitable Section That Uses the Words “Looking” and “Glass”)

Despite total critical acclaim (it is one of the highest-rated games ever) and near-complete adoration from fans, Sacrifice sold very poorly. It was relegated to the bargain bin at most stores within a month. This is depressing on a number of levels.

Consider that Shiny is a small studio that, until its recent acquisition by Infogrames, was at the mercy of its publisher, Interplay. Interplay has been in desperate financial straits for the last three years, so the failure at retail of an expensive project like Sacrifice was disastrous to everyone. The attempt to build sales by squashing it into a genre into which it doesn’t fit made things worse: dyed-in-the-wool RTSers didn’t “get” Sacrifice and didn’t commit the time necessary to master it. Casual gamers were put off by its bizarre landscapes and complicated storyline. Those parents who bother keeping track of what their kids do were concerned by the demon-lord undertones and splatterfest violence in the game. Despite the lack of human characters, so much blood is spilled in Sacrifice that Wal-Mart released a “friendly” version of the title with entire levels stripped out.

Ultimately the pitiful message of Sacrifice’s failure is that it’s not a good idea to be innovative. If you make a highly imaginative game set in a unique world and requiring a very open mind to appreciate, you’re going to get burned. This says bad things about the industry, implying that the lowest common denominator is the safest audience to cater to. It does not encourage publishers to offer financial support to the Shinys of the world—a grim thought indeed, since studios like Shiny are the creative successors to Looking Glass, the collapse of which left a scar on our industry that will never truly heal.

Despite poor performance at retail, there have been noises over the past half year about a sequel to Sacrifice. Shiny’s a small studio that can only work on one project at a time, and it’s currently focused on a video game adaptation of the Matrix films—a dumb idea, in my opinion, since I defy you to name more than three games-based-on-movies that have been remotely successful. A recent Sacrifice.net posting from Dave Perry, Shiny’s president, makes a few remarks about the potential for a Sacrifice 2. Perry’s notice manages to use several hundred words without actually saying anything, but it nebulously implies that Sacrifice will be a standalone game and that there will never be a sequel.

That thought is the most depressing of all, because if true, it means that the Man wins—Shiny acknowledges that being creative leads to failure at retail, and it prefers to latch onto potentially surefire movie franchises rather than be one of the industry’s true artistic movers and shakers. And again Looking Glass turns over in its grave. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Shiny Entertainment Publisher: Interplay Release Date: 2000

Available for: Windows Macintosh

Four Fat Chicks Links

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Screenshots

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System Requirements

PC: Pentium II 300, AMD K62 550, K63 450 (II 450, AMD Athlon 450, AMD Duron 650 recommended) Windows 95/98/00 DirectX7.0a 64 MB RAM (128 MB recommended) 4X CD drive (8X recommended) 650 MB free hard disk space 8 MB D3D DirectX certified video card (16 MB recommended) DirectX certified sound card

Mac:Mac OS 8.6 300 MHz or faster G3 or G4 processor, 128 MB RAM, 8X CDROM or DVD drive, 3D graphics acceleration with 8 MB of video memory

      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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