Calax

i dont know what this means but it sounds dirty as hell. I just realized that I haven't played a PC game since the week Mass effect 2 came out and I beat it twice in row... am i missing something or has it been kinda slow for pc games this year so far? Its been like that for more than five years @Calax: I'll do that when I get a full account, I don't think my trial char can switch servers? Not that I know of, I could RAF (recruit-a-friend) you and if you bumped to a full acct, you and a character of my choosing would get something like 100-200% xp from 1-60 to make leveling easier (Which gets most of the tedious old world stuff out of the way). Plus there are a few other perks along the way for us (special mounts etc). And Ent, Azgalor is a PvP server in the central standard time zone. Admittedly the only difference between pve and pvp is that you can have world fighting.

McDonalds tries to keep their employees happening but they don't have control over the individual managers and franchisees do they. My point about all of this is that West and Zamp were VERY easily in a position where they could make things miserable for people, blame it on their bosses, and look like kings.

Volo, I pointed that out because one of activisions reasons for not paying was specifically because West and Zamp were doing their level best to cultivate a work crew that'd be easy to poach from one company to the other.

If you jump over to azgalor server I can mess around with you.

Honestly, if west and zamp were THAT petty, I can see them covering up the missing stuff until to late (I'm sure Acti doesn't have their pets leaning on every member all the time.)

But ACT were pushing an unreasonable date, not only they would have to scratch a lot of ideas that might have gone into the game but also release a buggy game, hence the multiplayer. Even if you put out a quick release game with enormous amounts of executive meddling, you still put the name of the company that's publishing the bloody thing in there (Kotor2 anyone? Still had the publishers logo). They didn't put in something that had been specifically ordered to be put in there, which counts towards that insubordination that you're desperately trying to discount. And Activision can't go into each game themselves and slam it in there, if they did that they'd have to extend every release date while the checked, and then coded in if it wasn't there, their logo.

I do like how you're taking the willful disobedience and making it the fault of the person who set the terms. Basically blaming the parent because the kid didn't bring in his homework, and giving the kid honor roll.

I don't think activision (when they publish) is able to go in and actually change the code...

http://kotaku.com/5515061/ousted-modern-wa...h-former-rivals They've already got a new studio at ea http://kotaku.com/5513948/call-of-duty-bat...activision-logo And they ignored direct standard orders on MW2 (by not posting the acti logo in the game AT ALL)

I was more referring to the version of me that people can kill by tossing grenades into my purse

I'll be honest, I'm taking acti's side because A) nobody else seems to even think that acti MIGHT be right in any way shape or form because they're the big bad corporate goliath going up against west and zamp's david. B) West and Zamp need to be taken down a notch. Just because you do one thing in your life doesn't make you the greatest thing in the world. Just because Michael Bay made Armageddon doesn't mean he's a horrible horrible douchebag, just because michael jordan practically carried a team to the champs doesn't mean he always rocks etc etc. Yes I understand when a developer wants to work on their own project. But they should wait for the opportunity to present itself (and hush about the MoU, it hasn't even been proven to exist beyond the minds of West and Zamp) and sell the idea then, not drop development on what they're contracted to do and use those resources on what they want to do instead (which is what IW was threatening I believe).

But they aren't the guys at troika. Plus is hard to work when you aren't allowed in the premises and is actually ACT responsibility to fix them. Am I reading this right... Person makes messed up product for distributor, Messed up product is released to public, Person whistles while the money pours in while the distributor has to take a massive financial hit for the garbage product? I mean, come ON. If Toyota assembles a car that kills somebody, it's not the Daves dealership that gets sued, it's friggin Toyota! If distributor forced them to release the product sooner than it is market ready, it's fault of the greedy distributor... In no other business you can force your workers to put unfinnished product into the market and get away with it... only in software business... something should be done about it, but no one cares and looks like customers have lot of lube ready and realy love to bend over... Not quite. Movies have been released before they were ready, although they are usually pushed back, and south park practically lives on the idea of doing everything last minute and turning it in before it might be ready to be released (there were a few episodes where the audio wasn't necessarily in place correctly when south park when on air.

This is mostly true here as well. Birthdays just get used as excuses to go out and party/get drunk. Sounds lame, but it sure beats a birthday cake and people singing "Happy Birthday". As for Calax... how old are you anyway? By the way you're describing it, it sounds like I'd have already fled to some other state if I was in your situation. turning 24 on the 20th. I've tried fleeing (joined the navy and went to another school) but just kept having to come back for various reasons. Oh, and dev boys, can I get an update on where I might be in New Vegas?

If you ever head into Ames, drop me a line. The only family I got along with on any real level is my mom. That is it. Also, forget about birthdays. I stop celebrating them or even acknowledging them since I was 14. In the end the only person you have to live with is yourself. DO what makes you happy, do what will allow you to survive. ... Uh, Iowa state IS ames... For those who don't know Iowa State is about 20k of Ames 45-50k population.

But they aren't the guys at troika. Plus is hard to work when you aren't allowed in the premises and is actually ACT responsibility to fix them. Am I reading this right... Person makes messed up product for distributor, Messed up product is released to public, Person whistles while the money pours in while the distributor has to take a massive financial hit for the garbage product? I mean, come ON. If Toyota assembles a car that kills somebody, it's not the Daves dealership that gets sued, it's friggin Toyota!

Eh, honestly if I have to go to him for ANYTHING he'd lord it over me. He takes advantage of anything he can, and will outright extort me for stuff (or he used to, until I basically stopped talking to him all together and will do whatever I can to not see him...) Yes and no. I've had an on and off psychologist who I saw and would bring this stuff up with them. But usually what ends up happening is that they either only listen to the psych (who tends to make things seem a lot less controlling) or the argument ends up getting dragged out. We made an agreement that things brought up there wouldn't be used at home (effectively creating a sort of moderated safe zone) but, of course, my mom ended up breaking that a number of times when my dad effectively "reported" what was said in the session while she was at work, some of which was directed at her and she took as if I'd shot a puppy and started coming after me. And as I mentioned before, in the OP (I think I mentioned it anyway) I had to start writing letters that I'd leave around the house to get any form of conversation beyond "I'm the boss, if you don't like how I told you to live, get out." about this sort of thing. All of us consciously want me to get out, but it seems like every step I take to getting out, is met with a step to keep me here, or otherwise make my life hell. Hell, I was looking at two schools for where I'd go and literally decided against one because I didn't want to be near family of any kind (3 of my dads 7 close family members live in Tuscon and surrounding area, with the other college I was looking at being U of A), to prevent them from coming to see me using the family as an excuse. My mom has always been the domineering type, she is currently teaching which I think gives her some outlet (as in: she lets up on me because she holds the academic lives of about 100 students in her hands), but more and more it's seeming like anytime I show my face, I get yelled at about SOMETHING, which leads to me showing my face less and less (at this point, I'm basically in my room except for school, some console gaming when the family isn't home, food and work) which turns it into a bit of a vicious cycle. Both my parents seem to think "It worked for us, you can do it too!" particularly my dad. He admits it took him two goes at college to actually get a degree... and tells me stories about how at 12 he was delivering newspapers, and then he left his house at 19 for school, then worked as in drywall, on a oil rig up in alaska (nearly loosing his hand), he chased chickens for a job, and basically did anything that came his way because dammit he was independent. Of course, his cost of living wasn't nearly as high as current (I live in the RICH suburb of sac... within 5 miles of my house there are multimillion dollar homes), and he didn't exactly have bipolar, ADD, Asbergers (no confirmation on that yet... I REALLY don't wanna have ANOTHER diagnosis >.<, and my mom at one point said "you people" in reference as if I was a friggin minority), got kicked out of the navy for at least 2 of those, have had 2 incidents of near suicide... Hell, when my computer broke I had to practically have an emotional breakdown before they did ANYTHING to help me with it. The only way I stayed sane during that period was using web based IM systems on my moms laptop, as well as watching anime on there and playing my ps3/xbox360 like a nutcase. Even though I'm medicated right now I think I'm at the nadir of my bipolar cycle (if you wanna call it that), which is usually what leads me into the depressions. I'm praying to god I can salvage one of my grades (philosophy, where i didn't really do most of the initial homework, but am working on the "big" projects). The other three seem to be going well, My anthropology class is actually getting more difficult (I learned most of the early stuff by watching and laughing at the critical analysis videos by ExtantDodo on youtube about the creationism v evolution stuff), and my mathclass I'm doing ok in, but the teacher is horrible (never budgeting enough time, our last three classes have started 10-15 minutes late, it's 5 units technically, and the teachers idea of explaining a concept/teaching a formula is to derive the formula then give us class work to do saying "use the formula" without really showing HOW to use the formula... most of the students are learning simply by staring at the bloody book. The only other class I'm taking is History 313 (US from 1860-1950) where the teacher only has a total of 3 assignments and bases your grade on how much you've improved on writing his papers over the semester, but he teaches friggin awesome information (like the highway everyone uses this side of the American River (Hwy 50) was originally gonna be the transcontinental railroad until they found the route that is currently I-80). And it probably doesn't help that all this garbage is happening within 16 days of my birthday.

For such a short deadline they did a pretty good job. There are many things that go into making a game and one of the biggest reason as to why a game fails is because of the publisher wanting a unreasonable release date. Also the reviews and public opinion mostly complain about the multiplayer, which is usually a never-ending fight to improve. Well, from what I have heard, even when it was released it was a bug riddled mess that included bugs like the ability to park yourself in a wall and be invulnerable, and then one where you could wield shotguns akimbo. I mean if these guys had any integrity at all they'd be like the folks at troika and actually get a patch together EVEN IF IT WAS WITHOUT PAY for that garbage. Agreed, but according to the MOU the rights to every CoD title set on the modern era belongs to IW. The problem is that this rubs ACT the wrong way because their strategy is, "do a bunch of spin offs and cash in" They basically strip mine a video game's success. As stated below, the MOU has yet to be shown to exist. They claim it exists, but people also claim that the world used to be encased in ice and a giant meteor shattered the ice to create noahs flood. And right now it seems like both have the same mount of proof. I doubt that an MOU wasn't agreed since it's unlikely that West and Zamp stopped the aforementioned whining on '07 without a reason. It's on the name "Memorandum of understanding" without reaching an understanding and putting down in a contract, MW2 production wouldn't had begun. BTW, good luck on your family troubles Well that MoU might also be the thing saying that they were locked in for three years with Acti. And when they attempted to move to EA (or whoever) they broke the MoU themselves.

have a hot daughter I could wed instead?

west and zamp are asking for "Millions". I'd say they're owed a couple hundred thousand but not millions.

Maybe, but the accusations had relevance then. Now they are just being used by Activision to keep the whole shebang for themselves. Sorry but it doesn't quite works that way. To keep in with your analogy is like: Real estate agent (Activision) and people who do all the interior design (IW) for the sold houses. Now people like the agent's houses because they are good property on good condition, and because of that success he starts selling mansions. Should the interior design people continue to work for the same wage as before? What's wrong with them trying to renegotiate or get out of an arrangement that doesn't work for them anymore? Well, it'd be more like the interior designer started doing really good job on the early houses, but once you move into mansions, they do half the design and then try to hike their rate. Like I said before, they are the creators of the series. Usually royalties are paid to the creators of anything. Not necessairly. Activision owns the rights to COD. Not necessairly MW2 (which is one of the things in contention in the court case), but as owners of CoD they're entitled to CoD's money, and if they win and technically own the rights to MW (from everything that's been said, IW just has claim to creating anything in the MW line, not necessairly owning the rights) then they can pay a flat fee to IW and be perfectly legal. It all depends on how the license is handled. Yes, when looked at it from a monetary perspective this is a case of the cheap avoiding the greedy. But let's be realist; West and Zamp have no need to come back and fix a game that is making money for the people that are trying to kick them out of everything they worked for. Plus the rest of IW is still with Activision, if the game is buggy the fault and fix lies now with Activision. On an slightly related note; there is still the presence of the MOU that has been violated by Activision. This is where all of West and Zamp dues are stated. Even before they got canned there was no real attempt by IW to fix their stuff. And the MOU hasn't been even shown to exist beyond claims by west and zamp so it's possible it doesn't exist at all and west and zamp just made it up to gouge money from an employer that they hate similar to how guys would claim false disability.

I don't intend to burn bridges, at all. I just don't want to be around them for quite a long while I was going to compose a lengthy reply based on the collective wisdom of my four-and-a-bit decades of life. Then I read this post and realised that you're not going to get any better advice than this. Well, one of the things I was thinking of doing while at Iowa was doing foreign exchange type deal in England and possibly a few others. It'd break my bank, but hell, it'd be worth it.

As I mentioned, I'm probably going to head to Iowa in the fall... and from that point on I'm gonna stay at least 1k miles from where they live...

Ok, I've applied to a College in Iowa state as a physics major (haven't heard back), meaning that (among other things) I'll have to drive half way across the US to get to the school. Got a couple of friends out there (went there a few weeks back, tore up my throat and chipped a tooth four wheeling, got the thing buried in 4 feet of clay too), and was planning (under the assumption that I'd get in) that I'd transfer from gamestop to gamestop, and work the seasonal. My first year would be only taking quarter time (4 credits) while earning residency. Today I got told by my parents "You have to have a 20 hr a week job during the summer!", currently I've got MAYBE 4 hrs a week because I'm lowest on the totem pole in terms of rankings (GameAdvisor, your basic rank and file gamestop worker). I'm gonna ask for more hours and some training so that I might be able to x-fer as an SGA (shift leader) and have guaranteed more hours while there. But if I do ask for this it's gonna mean that I'm not gonna have the job hours I'm practically being ordered to have. I'm hesitant to do summer school because I don't want to have another reunion type thing (grandparents 60th anniversary) where I fly out (last time to vegas) for a total of a day, after having class in the morning, then flying back (basically fly friday and sunday) particularly across the US (family in NY this time). And now the land of ultimate bitching. Currently I'm not talking to my brother, as he threatened to kill me after I told him to show me the same respect he expected me to show him, or I'd probably end up in a fist fight with him (the words he used were "and you'll end up in the back yard with a snapped neck"). And I'm approaching that point with my mother, as within the past week, she's triggered one fight, and was spoiling for another one tonight. The previous fight was over the fact that she thought she could override anything I chose to do because technically everything here is purchased by her (true), and I had gotten pissed off she erased something I was gonna watch, and simply said I'd probably be doing the same. Fight ensued, one point I brought up was that she assumed that if she put ANY money into anything in my life, she owned that particular instrument, as evidenced by the fact that if she paid a bit towards repairing my motherboard earlier this year, she'd own the computer as a whole and would be able to lock me out of it if she wished. She said that this was irrelevant as without the motherboard the computer doesn't work, well great, without the power cable the TV doesn't work, does that mean for 5 bucks I can own the tv? (of course not). Anyway, after that fight I had both parents come up and accuse me of not taking my bipolar medications because I was OBVIOUSLY at fault and irritable which ended up leading to the fight. Even though I wasn't the first one to raise my voice during the conversation. Sometimes it seems like I'm expected to just roll over and do what they want no matter what, and then turn around and tell me (not one sentance later) that I should stand up for myself. FFS pick one and go with it, either control my life and be honest about it, rather than this whole shock collar thing, or let me bloody well make my own choices and don't order me to do stuff if I'm able to do stuff. I ended up writing most of this stuff in a letter (well, most of the stuff brought up in the first argument) and finally got her to take some responsibility for starting the fight, but tonight she started it again and only got called off after a phone call. I don't know if it's the fact that I'm leaving and they want that last bit of domination of facets of my life before I go. But it seems like since I applied they've become very much the control freaks. Ok, my mom was always a control freak, but she tends to keep it under control (HA Ha ha... I kill me). But it's been getting back to the point of "Didn't see it, it didn't happen" in terms of homework, research on school, anything. I'm being accused of not putting in enough work to go to school (And I'm supposed to find a job in Iowa how? OH you want me to get a job that will expect me to stay for the holidays when I'd probably be taking off in august? Yes, I'd feel perfectly fine doing that, and you somehow expect me to be able to get out there with having worked that job, and being trained and INSTANTLY get to the top of the hiring pile and get hired lickety split... riiiight...). I don't want to be doing two jobs again as 6 days a week is murder on me. *sigh* I'm so tired of being told that I can do anything. That if I just try hard enough I'd find a job that'd make me happy. That I'll be happier with a job... I have a job currently that I'm mostly happy with, I want more hours, but other than that it's ok. I don't want to go back and be a miserable drone expected to have a friggin clowns smile for 8 hrs while doing a total of two things for 8 hrs straight and then get yelled at when I don't show enthusiasm for monotony. I did that for two years an all it got me was a miniscule paycheck and so tired from being yelled at all day because some numbskull on the grill put THESE onions instead of THOSE onions on their burger, that I didn't go out at all, and was in general snarky as heck. I don't like getting yelled at for saying "I don't want to". I don't like getting yelled at because I try to stand up for myself to my family... I don't like being told that I'm not worth of respect. I don't like being told that I think I'm more important than I am in this family. I HATE being told that I'll never amount to anything if I think to far ahead and don't want to start anything that I consider short term in terms of relationships or jobs. ... *sigh* sorry for the /wrists emo rant.... just needed to put it somewhere that people can see and ignore.

Or in 07 right after the release and success of MW which puts them in a good bargaining position. Activsion at the time was pushing for the sequel which was delivered before the dateline that Activision set, for which they were promised bonuses that remain unpaid to the whole of IW. Well that's the point at which they were locked into the 3 year contract that held them till 2011. The charges of insubordination and hunting for new employers originate from at least a year after they'd signed the contract, meaning that they were trying to get out of the contract during the production of MW2. They created a really successful series; is it wrong of them to want to capitalize on their success? The game hit gold and a sequel would more than likely amount to a high number of sales. The case is because of wrongful termination in order to avoid paying dues, or simply put West and Zamp got cut out of the deal which they made. IIRC they hold the IP for the creation of the CoD series, which means that they earn for every title release with that name even if it is WaW. Is not that Activision doesn't want them to have all that money, is just that they don't want them to use that money and fame(of sorts) to decide to split taking away their most successful product. There's a difference between capitalize and extort. Capitalizing would be getting a client base (using a real estate example) and using it to earn a larger one that earns you more money. So you sell somebody a house at a low rate and they suggest you to another person and eventually you have a group of regular buyers, then you expand. Extortion is using your success and your next product as hostage. So, you sell a house at a low rate, but on the next one you only show garbage houses in crime riddled neighborhoods who also have the worst schools in the area, unless they pay you 12 grand under the table to see houses in the same economic zone as the one you sold em previously. As to the bonuses issue, IW is trying to cut West and Zamp out of that because they have a tenancy to take gigantic amounts off the top for themselves and let the rest be parceled out to the underlings. IW has said that they're gonna give the pool to IW after all this is worked out. And sure, they completed their game, but if it were a house, the back wall would have fallen off and the customers would have ordered the contractors to come back and rebuild the damn thing to code at no cost. I've yet to see West or Zampnella say that they'd come back and fix the bugs in their software or "bring it up to code", at no charge. They're just as greedy as you're saying that Activision is.

Really? I didn't see anywhere in their complaint that they as a pair of people, got a cut of the profits. The company might have, but not the individuals within the company. Maybe back in the day of 2 man game makings this might have happened but I highly doubt that anyone would be happy if two people got a cut of the profits while the others got a flat rate and a single one time bonus. Heck I highly doubt that any individuals would get a percentage of the profits within the gaming business model now a days. Also, even in groups that do get percentages, the percentage isn't that high (3%?). And again, the company is getting paid. If I do fantastic work at gamestop to the point where the store gets a bonus overall, but end up getting canned for making a racist crack to a black customer, I don't get the bonus even if I had a heavy hand in the earning of that particular bonus. I still delivered my product, but didn't get anything beyond my hourly rate.