Sunday 16 August 2009

The Devil Vs The Tingler

You know, I was ready to come here and do a big post about Bobby "CEO of Activision, Blizzard, Sierra, and Hell" Kotick's latest affront to gaming, in which he claims that people are happy with existing franchises and you don't need new IP. But then I started worrying about my immortal soul.

Now, this was going to be a big rant about how Call of Duty isn't that old a franchise really. Furthermore if people don't inevitably get bored with a franchise some company will come along and do it better and more excitingly - which is exactly what Call of Duty did to the formally popular Medal of Honour franchise. Finally, if you don't create new games, where are these magic "old" franchises coming from?

But you know what? I'm not like that. I wouldn't even call Mr Kotick the stupidest most money-grabbing arrogant over-confident CEO prick who's ever put stupid word to mouth. Let's look at his exact words:

"A small segment of very vocal gamers say everything has to be new and different every year. Actually, people are happy with existing franchises, provided you innovate within them."

You see, perfectly reasonable. It's totally true about innovating with franchises. Look at Super Mario for example, he's been going strong since the '80s and people still get excited about his latest games.

Unfortunately, Activision doesn't innovate. Modern Warfare 2, as good as it may be, is not going to innovate. The most innovative thing about World At War was the Nazi Zombies mode, and that only came with one map. And as for Guitar Hero... don't make me laugh.

The most innovative game from Activision this year was, surprise surprise, an original game: Prototype.

More to the point, we're happy with innovation in existing franchises. I agree with that statement. I'm looking forward to Thief 4, Fallout: New Vegas, Deus Ex 3, Doom 4, Mass Effect 2, and indeed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The trouble is I'm more looking forward to Borderlands, Dragon Age: Origins, Rage, Alpha Protocol, Scribblenauts, and Batman: Arkham Asylum (technically a franchise, but the first in a proper Batman series anyway).

Oh, fuck it, what am I on about? This guy's Satan and he's only saying this stuff to make excuses for pumping out the same shit every year and inflating the price for each instalment. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 in 2011 will cost £70, you mark my words. Go back to Hell, Kotick.



Bobby Kotick pictured in his usual office under the Earth's crust.

- Chris Capel

6 comments:

  1. Ram Raider's currently on a similar vibe. There's a conspiracy theory in there trying desperately to shoe horn it's way in.

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  2. ^Fragmented repetition in fragmented repetition repetitively fragmenting. Oops.

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  3. You've lost me...

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  4. Where did I put you? Baddum Chee!
    *feels dirty and ashamed*
    Aaaanyway, the suggestion of conspiracy was based on an elusive industry insider (you're curently working... inside) writing a similar themed blog post to yours (who was that masked man, all he left was this silver bullet, a pile of horse droppings, and some latent homosexuality).
    Though if the conspiracy theory was already in there it would not have cause to shoe horn. The sentence was fragmented and repetitious. Bad Peachy, bad bad Peachy.

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  5. ^Jeez! I've now gone into spelling meltdown.

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  6. You can almost see the horns.

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