Calax

They made the best product of the company and decided to act a diva to squeeze Actvision. There is still a contractual obligation to pay dues, the IP rights of MW and the time to work on a new IP. I do not have knowledge of the actual contract between Acti and IW, so I can't say for sure whether they did or did not breach their contract by negotiating with another publisher. Which I still need more conclusive proof other than a few office emails that actually say nothing. Well, in the info released by acti during their investigation, they dug up emails between west and zamp, and their competitor that stated that they were basically jumping into their employees personal files and taking code. Also, they were obligated to do MW2, and while they did do that, they were using threats of turning it into Duke Nukem Forever on Acti to get more money. I though that they were amidst the renegotiation of their contract when they contacted another employer. Not that I know of. Contract renegociations I'd think would take place just before the contract was up with a good employee rather than a year+ before the contract ended with a disgruntled employee. And the contract they were under was a 3 year thing (which means it was made in 08). They were promised a chance to work a new IP which was not given, they weren't fired because of calling their bosses idiots and did; in fact, went on to work on MW2. What IW did was wrong and rightful terms for termination, but Activision waited until completion of MW2 to terminate them. Now Activision wants to throw them out, after they made them a boatload of money. Not only it brings down their arguments but makes Activsion look opportunistic and greedy; which i'm sure that they are not Usually you don't get very far by telling your boss "Sure, I'll fulfill my contractual obligation... if you give me more than you're contracted to pay me." They effectively used the game to extort Activision. And Activision has stated that they would pay the bonuses to the employees still at acti, which kills the millions of dollars west and Zamp are asking for. There hasn't been any release of the contract west and zampnella mentioned so we can't comment on that at all. And west and zamp are acting like divas (as you put it) making it sound like they were the only people responisble for the entire game when it was a team that they led. Add to that the fact that they took more than 1/3 of the entire bonus pool FOR THE ENTIRE TEAM ON THE FRANCHISE (which, in the complaint by acti sounds like that includes the bonuses payed to Treyarch for 3 and WaW) and it seems like they've already gotten their bonuses for the entire franchise. I'm sure that Activision wasn't intending for a massive amount of the bonus money to just be stuck into two pockets. And volo, to use your painter discussion, it's like you hired a painter, he did your doors and one wall of your house then said "By the way, this'll cost you another 500 bucks at the end of the job" and when you refused started charging you by the hour while he just sat on a lawn chair getting a sun tan. Also, show us where it said that those two men got 10% of the overall profits from MW2. Please. And wouldn't there be a clause of "money already paid"?

the game informer preview was rather glowing about things. I was a little sad because neither of the two characters mentioned were tagged with my name but .

So it was not to early to start negotiations with another publisher for when their term ends, or to secure the rights to MW (which seems to be a favorite of both Activsion and West/Zamp). While is true that West and Zamp are matching their word against Activision's, I am inclined to believe them since they were kicked off from the company and escorted out of the building. Those things usually go with an investigation, otherwise they would had given them a notice in advance. Well, except the part where West and Zamp were flown out from their studio to talk over a quick divorce with Actis competitor. And the constant bitching they did in front of their staff and the discussions about how they're going to divorce Acti, making it sound like they were just gonna up and leave if they didn't get their way. Also, I got the year wrong, they were locked in till 2011 not 2010. They still had MINIMUM of a year with activision before they could think of moving to another employer. Which is legal talk for: "they were planning to leave us" The more I go over this I feel like this is a divorce and custody battle over MW's rights. Not just "They were planning to leave us". As mentioned in court documents they also refused to continue work on MW2 until they got what they wanted, they openly called their bosses idiots/incompetent (which would get you fired in ANY situation), and seemingly did their best to make acti look as bad as possible while they were there so that they could easily hire their current staff when they moved. I'm sorry, but if ANYONE pulled that sort of garbage in ANY work environment that person would be dealt with... usually with being terminated for insubordination or something similar.

It seems to me it's still applicable if the character appears to be under 18 even if they they are stated as being older (emphasis mine):

Yet the allegation of them trying to take all the money came from Activision, no doubt a result of the Orwellian investigation. West and Zamp previous moves seems to be to secure the intellectual property and get out of Activision before the sh*t hit the spin offs. They had a strong disagreement with Activision and the result is plans to break up, and legally they haven't done wrong (until proven). Although I gotta say that Activision's case is starting to take form, their strongest platform seems to be that they were planning to "defect" for the competition Well, even if they were trying to get out before "the sh*t hit the spin off" they were still locked into contract until at least 2010. As to the orwellian investigation, we don't necessairly know if that's even true. Activision denied it happened, and right now West and Zampnella's complaint has as much evidence to it as Activisions. And the strongest platform would probably end up being "insubordination".

And the full body of the cross complaint is up http://kotaku.com/5513707/modern-legal-war...t-boom-boom-pow Basically Activision states (as I mentioned above) that West and Zampanella decided they were better than this and were openly trying to set themselves up to make/join another studio, as well as take most of the bonus money that the IW team would get for themselves. Activisions move (from their perspective) was primairly financial, and to knock the feet out from under West and Zamanella's attempt to get out of their contract (which still had 2 years on it). Activision was also trying to actually get work done as West and Zamp were using the games they were making as hostages for negotiation leverage against Activision to effectively try to extort money.

One of the possible "bad endings", to be technical there is no good ending. those are the only two endings I've heard of.

I'd probably spring for it, I admit... mostly because i love the discussions with the devs.

http://kotaku.com/5513756/the-biggest-brea...eo-game-history Apparently the two were taking close to 1/3rd of ALL the bonus pay generated by CoD (all the games together), and were demanding more. Activision has stated that they're going to give the bonuses to the rest of the studio, but are trying to keep it from west and zamp. According to Acti, both became full of themselves to the point where if they didn't get their way, they'd stop all work on MW2, overall refused to cooperate with Activisions business plan on COD, and openly saying that Activisions execs were incompetent and "openly discussed divorcing Activision", even though they were locked in a contract till 2011. In a return, the attourny for West and Zamp has said that they should still be at activision because Now I'm not sure, but he seems to deny and confirm at the same time, he claims that the claims are false, but they haven't had any negative effects on the Publisher. So either A) the claims are true and the insubordination and breach of duties should be ignored because hey, nothing bad happened eh? or B) Activision making said claims hasn't hurt their profits. anyway link: http://kotaku.com/5513845/axed-call-of-dut...ive-future-soon

Wow, apparently World of Warcraft is quite the tool for examining how to manage people in a business like atmosphere (and also is a good place to find for the social dynamics of gangs (re:guilds)) http://kotaku.com/5512468/how-world-of-war...e-the-workplace

Perfect? Possibly, at least the bump of a .5 score (or whatever miniscule amount to get it to perfect) as most reviewers noted the distinct tonal change and the jarring shifts between humor and emo (For example, doing one mission where you're talking to brucie about his awesomeness, then the next griping about how you killed people, sold people, tortured people...) But it was still a fantastic game overall. Not perfect but very close.

Basically if you liked GTAIV you'll probably like this, otherwise you probably won't enjoy it as much.

And there's the point. No game features that level of amorality from the western us. And I'd like to point out that you seem to have selective perception as my original post featured "TO MY KNOWLEDGE" within the text that you were responding to.

Just gonna point out that in the original post, the quote only makes mention of the fact that members of the governments security forces being attacked. So it's not like the guerrillas are posting bombs inside subways or anything. That said, I think that for the most part a guerrilla war requires that one side be winning popular support. In Afganistan the US linked it's popularity to the popularity of Karzai (or however you spell it), and thus when it turned out the guy was corrupt as hell and his brother was the biggest opium producer in the country, we kinda lost the popular support in the country. Probably the best thing we could have done to warn off enemies would have been to basically to make an object lesson of the taliban, in a unique style. I suppose it would basically be honest to god state terrorism, but go in, wipe out most of the government, then exit swiftly, and point to the ensuing chaos as a sort of "Yeah, you screw with us, that's what'll happen." Totally A-moral, and the equivalent of beating up a homeless guy then leaving him to bleed out, but it does make a point and slam it home with a couple of exclamation points.

Huh, I guess as long as you have the choice not to be a complete murderous psychopath then it's perfectly ok.

If you dig deep enough, you can find that people have died from any number of seemingly stupid and/or harmless things. Including, but not limited to, autoerotic asphyxiation... My point was more that S&M is much easier to get out of hand than your average thing, after all, at some point one person is put in near total control of the other and one mistake leads to death, same with autoerotic asphyxiation, but without the power transfer.

slept, woke before my alarm went off (doing that a lot these days) and sat here in front of my computer with my NWN shirt on.

Fallout 3, arguably WoW (one of the undead racials is to literally get health back by eating a dead humanoid). On the of S&M that somebody mentioned above. From what I understand it isn't always safe... these are people who are looking for a thrill and a sense of powerlessnesss, there have been deaths from people who take it to far and either don't let the partner breath for just a tiny bit to long, or whatever. Honestly, the biggest thing about this is that children are involved. No western game to my knowledge has featured children in situations where they may be hurt/killed/whatever. GTA's liberty city will be depopulated in a generation, COD4's middle east civilians all sent their kids away to another country, in Gun the wild west doesn't have much of a family workforce... sometimes this is explained (FEAR has the only child seen start slaughtering people, HL2 has the inhibitor field) but most of the time not. Heck some games (Like Gun) only have a few women that are visible in cutscenes only. Also, something to note is the ending to rapelay, you either get stabbed by one of the girls in bed, or thrown in front of a train for being a horrible horrible monster (back when this first came to Americas attention, somebody did a review showing the woman stabbing the guy with a butcher knife as he sprayed blood like a MGS enemy). Does this necessarily make up for the fact that you play as a rapist who also impregnates the women? No, but it does kinda send a message tho don't it?

It certainly is, I've tried it on my roommates computer for a few hours - great fun. Albiet a bit repetative and MMO-ish. It is, but not so MMOish that it's inaccessable to your average gamer, and it's FANTASTIC when played with friends to share the hilarity (like when you smash their car so it ends up on its nose against a cliff).

Been playing borderlands between bouts of FFXIII. It's... addicting

Well, the thing is that we can't really judge another culture. After all usually when we discuss how a-moral a culture is we tend to superimpose our own ideals and morals onto that culture. And he is right about crime statistics, they do have MUCH lower instances of crime.

From Kotaku, A former japanese Hentai writer responds to CNN's report: http://kotaku.com/5509703/manga-creator-bl...e-and-insulting

I played one match. I can see where it'd get fun, but from what little i saw in the demo it just didn't drag me in.

*downloads the demo* this is going to be interesting. I was actually thinking of reinstalling taking command, or something for some more hard core strat (been playing through M:TW2 but *shrugs*) stuff and maybe this'll fill the void.

just out of curiosity, how old are you now Calax? turn 24 on the 20th, kinda nice for fafsa as under ANY circumstances I'm considered independent.