Calax

Ditto. And this, ladies and gentleman is why a 'culture of fear' leads to totally unnecessary aggravation and fallout eventually. I ****ing hate suited wankers who think that bullying and jackboot tactics are both efficient and somehow proof of their rare genius. I've never met Activision's CEO, but I remember saying the same thing when we discussed his moving in. Graarrrgh. I look after my staff and nurture them. They do great work. It's not rocket science, people! I think that the article has a point that most of what they claimed in their complaint was aimed primarily for shock value. Personally, I doubt that everything West and Zamp are saying it's true. If it did turn out that Acti is doing everything they can to completely cut the devs out of profits, then they'd probably have a full scale revolt from their other developers (and a few class action suits like the ones leveled against EA over unpaid overtime... only worse). They claim they're owed BILLIONS in revenue from acti (after "Lining their pockets"), which strikes me as odd given that Activision would be the ones pouring millions into the ad campaign, and probably into the voice work. Overall, I find that the language that West and Zamp used was designed to tick people off or inflame public opinion. And it almost feels like they're trying less to get firm legal standing, and more to draw attention to themselves and to garner public support.

that can cause quite a bit more debt

Holy bobsled! Steams sale for today is Hitman and Deus Ex, every SINGLE game for 17 dollars!

Well, when they jumped ship from EA and Medal of Honor they turned around and took their place as kings of the FPS with that. Stating they HAVE to have that publisher and brand name is meaningless. IW is the brand name not the publisher, they set the standard throughout their many games. Except that they'd started the standard wayyy back in Medal of Honor:Allied Assault. While they were part of a different publisher and company, and got frustrated for about the same reason (I think) and the same two guys who got fired, quit and formed their own studio that all their employees joined, called infinity ward. Now if I was a publisher and that was the history about the formation of one of my internal studios, I'd probably be a bit worried if I heard that they were shopping around, much less was being told that they were saying "We wanna do what we want, go shove it".

Either I'm misreading what you're saying, or you've gone through a different route from me.

It's really good, it's better than most that you see, but they didn't clean up the accents on their characters (Lt. Blake for example has a boston accent, while one of the females has a VERY french accent).

Well, when they jumped ship from EA and Medal of Honor they turned around and took their place as kings of the FPS with that. Stating they HAVE to have that publisher and brand name is meaningless.

Those are the dangers of investing, my friend. That's why you don't put a million dollars on the hands of someone unless you believe that there will be a return. But they obviously believed on IW or else the CoD series would be a few games shorter. An ounce of prevention... The CoD series don't need to be cured. it doesn't but if the devs decided to go bat**** crazy they would

Those are the dangers of investing, my friend. That's why you don't put a million dollars on the hands of someone unless you believe that there will be a return. But they obviously believed on IW or else the CoD series would be a few games shorter. An ounce of prevention...

Money. They needed start up income, and assumed that they wouldn't mind a few strings. Heck they even went along with the "distortion of vision" that was CoD2 and didn't make a fuss. It's feeling like when they realized they might be onto something with a modern day shooter in the vein of the WW2 sucesses that they wanted to basically be the sole controller of the item. So basically they'd do what they wanted and acti would HAVE to publish it... even if it was call of duty:modern warfare, Carebears edition. I'm all for letting a group go with it's design decisions, but they still need to honor the requests of their bosses, and (if they're indie) make changes if the publisher has problems. I mean, Too Human seems like the perfect example of developer does what they want without any form of publisher input or control, and it turned out to be a bland, boring mess of a game. They did delivered a product with each game completed, there was no guarantee that it would be a success with any of them. Now that one of them turns out to be gold and they want to protect themselves from goldiggers, can you blame them? BTW, Activision would had let them go a long time ago if they did the Carebears edition. The investors in any product have a right to check on the development of it as well as to take measures to protect it. They have the right to pull out their invested money if they feel that the product won't meet their standards. But that doesn't qualify them to make games, which is why they hire developers. It doesn't qualify them to make games, but if they do invest and it's a multimillion dollar flop they can't get that money back and it'd be a fairly significant loss for them. Even if they pulled out before it was released they'd still have a fairly large loss on that.

To a degree it was. And several of the supporting characters were just kinda stereotypes (blake, hassan...). One thing that bugged me

well they did say that they were changing it so that you actually had to manage and position your army with indirect fire etc

Wasn't there a point where Bio wasn't owned by EA? To be indie and then get bought out tends to be a SLIGHTLY different situation than being formed under a publisher. And it's not just "your one persons opinion" (which makes no sense as a sentance but *shrugs*) Even Yahtzee pointed out that the game seemed to have no moderating influences that could hold the developers starry eyed wants in check. You make games for the public, not yourself. Full creative control works in books, but in games it doesn't because what if IW decided they would tank Acti alone by making Call of Duty: MW: Cows edition, where you simply were one of the dead cows on the fields of whatever this is land?

I think their mainly just learning how not to go insane with the story. I mean people don't want a 60 hour Final Fantasy scale story (I don't think it'd work) but it seems like they're getting better about length (and not going "OH SH!T! We don't have the room to cram what we want on here!" and then tying up the story quickly). As to movement controls, I was fine with them, just took a tiny bit of getting used to but I can't imagine how it could be better given what they were using.

Money. They needed start up income, and assumed that they wouldn't mind a few strings. Heck they even went along with the "distortion of vision" that was CoD2 and didn't make a fuss. It's feeling like when they realized they might be onto something with a modern day shooter in the vein of the WW2 sucesses that they wanted to basically be the sole controller of the item. So basically they'd do what they wanted and acti would HAVE to publish it... even if it was call of duty:modern warfare, Carebears edition. I'm all for letting a group go with it's design decisions, but they still need to honor the requests of their bosses, and (if they're indie) make changes if the publisher has problems. I mean, Too Human seems like the perfect example of developer does what they want without any form of publisher input or control, and it turned out to be a bland, boring mess of a game.

They did that because it got SO bad in Civ 3 that spearmen would just hold up an ARMY of tanks in one city due to the bonuses.

Is an analogy, is not 100% perfect. The fact is that it was not a marriage it was a business relationship, they had no reason to tell Activision that they where in negotiations to change publisher as soon as their contract expires. They needed that leverage on Activision as a bargaining ground. A cult following is not the same as primetime exposure. The kind of publicity that whole lot of money can buy; they wouldn't have that. Doesn't matter how good is the product, without advertising their sales will be lower than with it. As a matter of fact advertising is the major factor on games sales. The falling out was not because publishers want to make money; if the publisher makes more money the developer makes more money. Or in this case they don't; the case is not just about control. There are unpaid royalties and breach of a contract that allowed IW to work on a new IP and the rights to the MW future titles. This is because Activision is trying to seize control from IW's founders. *shrugs* they're both wrong, but I personally think that IW is trying to be off of any leash, and wouldn't be happy if they were told to really do ANYTHING that they didn't want to. They want the best of both worlds (indie, and owned) and none of the downsides.

Yep, and given the quality jump between Indigo and Heavy Rain, it's gonna be awesome.

Just finished the Supreme commander 2 campaign. And now: thoughts After you get used to the different resource model it's actually pretty fun. The biggest thing that annoys me however is the story. Basically the first two parts of the campaign (UEF and Aeon) serve only to create plot points for the third. In the UEF campaign, you rebel against a xenophobe and defend aeon cities, all of which ties slightly into the aeon campaign. The only thing that really ties into the third (cybran) campaign is the consequences of the FINAL mission. In the Aeon campaign you're playing a character who's kinda rebelling against her government because she doesn't think they do enough. (by kinda I mean "runs off on her own and follows a group that is more in line with her ideals") Her story doesn't really have an end beyond linking up with the UEF commander from the first campaign at the end, and having a SINGLE plot point that affects the cybran campaign. The Cybran campaign feels MUCH bigger than the other two, because you're not fighting localized battles for the most part. The final missions for the other two campaigns are "Attack the primarly military base on the planet" and "defeat three commanders while keeping friendly commander alive" respectively. The Cybran final mission has you duking it out with waves of experimental units and other units charging at you while you try to use land units to destroy a number of objectives and finally the enemy commander... on a space platform while looking down at a planet that's under threat. Now I understand it's stupid to nitpick this because "Lawl, it's SupCom, Taylors games have never been story driven!" but still, even the laziest of stories in RTS's tended to tie together the campaigns (assuming the campaigns were set up in this style). You don't just have each campaign tied together with a throwaway line and a cameo from the guys in the others. Gameplay wise it's kinda fun, as I mentioned before the economic model is more like starcraft than SupCom1, but it works out well. Experimentals don't feel horribly fragile anymore and the later ones can actually take a SIGNIFICANT beating before going down. There are some basic units on each team that you really only use. UEF is a "titan" assault bot (titan in quotes because this sucker is about the size of the standard units), Cybran is their aa unit, you gotta back it up with some ground fighters, but these suckers pump out their own shields so if you mass them you'll see experimentals having trouble getting through the 30 layers of shields. And the Aeon is a mostly their basic fighter unit. Shields have been changed so that they don't just fail all over. If you focus enough damage on one section, that sector will drop eventually, letting your shots through. So layering your shields around your defensive structures is a good idea. They removed Tiers in terms of factories and other structures. You don't need to upgrade your land factory to produce the best units, it comes with them. Factories CAN be upgraded so that they have built in defenses, shields, and radar (minimal use the defenses, at least the AG stuff). And defensive structures no longer are upgradable to another tier. As I mentioned above the experimental units are MUCH tougher. But they come in two "tiers" based on research. for each faction there are one or two that are found early in the tree, they are more easily killed than their bretheren and thus I used them for early stopgaps on defense mostly. The later tier are the ones at the end of the tech trees, This is where you find the galactic colossus and it's cousins. They're MUCH bigger than the early tier units and can usually beat an entire army into a pulp (assuming the standard acchilies heel isn't there, air units, but each team has an anti-air experimental now). For comparison: That's the fatboy (the cross shaped unit on the left). which is tier 1 That's the King Kriptor, the Tier 2 experimental. (again on the left, the only blue thing there )

Ah, yeah, true. I think that was more just the devs wanting to cap that bit off

There are cons to being independent, such as lack of resources and publicity. To continue the marriage analogy, this was more like they were in the middle of a separation and free to see other people. But this is the corporate world, manners and good will only get you so far. IW was protecting themselves against a much larger entity, fairness went out the window at that point. Usually when a couple is getting seperated, both parties know about it. And from the looks of the current situation, IW hadn't exactly told Acti that they were looking at other publishers. And the cons you mentioned are not exactly applicable. Resources maybe, but publicity is doubtful. If the IW team had left the company to form their own studio, they'd probably have a fanbase simply for people knowing who they are. They want to have their cake (and be getting resources from somebody else, not having to worry about their own income etc because their corporate bosses pay the bean counters) and eat it (act like an indie studio who get total creative control and get to do whatever they want how they want to, not having to answer to much) which is unrealistic. Even if they were at EA or Ubi or Take Two they'd be unhappy because all of the publishers are trying to get as much money as they can. Sure Acti goes about it hiding their motives less, but EA is the group that brought us "Tiny updates to game with a roster change" aka: Madden after all. Basically the only way they're going to get the level of control they want is to become an indie studio.

I wouldn't call that supernatural

According to the documents they were negotiating their contract while they were "courting" other publishers. Activision is; no doubt, fighting for their most popular product on the market. But i'm on IW side on this one, 1 good MW game is better than a thousand spin offs. It is their right as creators after all. Then all the designers of cars should have complete creative control over their car? And they should tell toyota, honda, ford, and chevy to shove it because "the car doesn't need a cupholder! or upgraded crumple zones! that ruins the aesthetic!" While I understand where IW is coming from, going out and trying to sell a game to another company WHILE they were still under contract (and owned by) Acti is a move DESIGNED to anger Acti (Imo) and to me smacks of trying to trigger something like this. And the "has total creative control over any game made in CoD post-vietnam" thing strikes me as quite specific for what was going on. Yes, one good game is worth more, but if you're that desperate to keep creative control and be independent, FORM AN INDEPENDENT STUDIO! Don't sneak around behind your bosses back and see if somebody would buy the game first, leave THEN do it, just like you don't go out and date other women behind your wifes back, you divorce her THEN start dating again.

That's always gonna be the problem with mysteries like this. Once you know who did it you can metagame your way to the killer pretty quick. And I didn't notice anything of the last thing you mentioned Over all I can't really see them doing much better than they did, at least with the particulars they chose.

Oh jesus, I can't stop laughing! http://www.texassecede.com/faq.htm