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Call of Duty - The Lawsuit
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Feb 23, 2007 11:28 AM
from the my-favorite-part-is-when-the-lawyer-filed-a-motion dept.
from the my-favorite-part-is-when-the-lawyer-filed-a-motion dept.
Gamasutra is running a follow-up to their annotated contract piece from last month. As you may recall, the contract became public knowledge because of a court case between Spark unlimited and Activision regarding the title Call of Duty : Finest Hour. The article also covers a legal dispute between Spark/Activision and EA during the formation of the troubled development house. Now, the site is running an in-depth look at their legal dispute. The article explores some of the problems that can face any developer/publisher relationship, and how the legal case has affected that already strained situation. "A constant source of friction was Activision's desire to see a fully functioning game early in the development process. 'At Electronic Arts', he wrote, 'the level vision was able to be constructed without the constraints of frame rate, or memory to get the body of the game in and working,' a process which left polish until the end of the development cycle. 'However, under the more risk-averse Activision system, polish happens through the entirety of the process and there is a consistent desire to have the game playable on disc and running at 30 fps.'"
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Call of Duty - The Annotated Contract 19 comments
Gamasutra offers up yet another unique feature: an annotated contract for a big-budget game. The document, part of a legal dispute between studio Spark and Activision, was released to the public. Game developers Tom Buscaglia, Chris Bennett, and Dave Spratley have chimed in with some insightful commentary on the particulars of game development in the major leagues. Particularly interesting is page twelve of the document, which lays out milestone payments for the project. "Payments totaling $8.5M USD are spread over the initial game milestones. Since these schedules are incorporated into the Agreement, the Notes to this milestone schedule are as important as the other provisions of the agreement. Here the requirement of approval before payment is reiterated. Also Spark is required to do monthly code dumps to Activision throughout the progress of the Game pre-Alpha, and then weekly builds thereafter. It also includes Activision's detailed requirements for the Final Milestone Schedule (FMS), Technical Design Document (TDD) and Game Design Document (GDD) that are very informative."
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Call of Duty 4 Announced 77 comments
The fourth title in the extremely well received Call of Duty series has been announced. Infinity Ward is now working on Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat . The title will end the series' reliance on the theatre of World War II, and will place gamers into a current-day setting fighting terrorists in the Middle East. While the chance to get away from WWII will be appreciated by game-players, not everyone is happy about that hackneyed title. "What followed [Medal of Honor] were such games as Day of Defeat (Activision, 2003) and Men of Valor (Vivendi, 2004.) Ubisoft briefly bucked the trend, boldly replacing the near-mandatory 'of' with 'in' for its 2005 release 'Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30,' but soon fell right in line with the rest of its industry brethren with the 2006 real-time strategy game Faces of War. Ditto for THQ's 2006 RTS game Company of Heroes. Later this year, retail shelves will be graced with THQ's Frontlines: Fuel of War and Midway's Hour of Victory. (That's why for the last couple of years, we and a number of our peers have jokingly created our own World War II game titles, Mad Libs-style, like Call of Honor, Men of Duty, Company of Brothers, etc.)"
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In regards to the quote in the summary... (Score:5, Informative)
Activision's method causes stress on the designers, and perhaps contributes to an "anything for 30" mentality--consoles don't have adjustable system parameters, so those who're designing for a console must sacrifice everything and anything to get the magic FPS number. This is only a problem if the game is developed _for_ consoles to be ported to PC, or developed concurrently with the PC version--because then the PC version will be hamstrung for the sake of the console version. If you're going to release to the PC crowd, do it right: these people have computing power and can generally get more if they need it--or can turn down some options if they don't want it.
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Agile Game Development (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Agile Game Development (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if I was correct, but I have been hearing that the basic principles of my idea are being used by more and more development houses because it allows for far more parallel development (meaning you can have a larger team rather than a longer development cycle).
Parent
Re:Agile Game Development (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, this philosophy has the risk of being abused by management who try and pigeonhole you into solving hard problems all the time ('we thought you were happy') and giving the interesting work to their mates. Since everyone is also thinking about what they are going to be doing on the next project, this usually means the visual effects get done first and the gameplay/AI is left to the last minute.
Parent
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Re:Agile Game Development (Score:5, Informative)
I recall one game that almost ended up a total failure. About two weeks before we went gold, 75% of the levels were just plain bad. QA had been so focused on tracking down bugs that little time was put to deciding what was "fun". The lead programmer put his foot down and made everyone on the team (programmers, artists, etc.) just play the game for a couple days to provide gameplay feedback. Within a week, the level design changes from that feedback helped the game become something we could be proud of, and it ended up being fairly successful. In game development, it is sometimes possible to polish a turd.
Parent
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Am I following this right? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's just getting the studio off the ground. At this juncture, I feel bad for Spark and angry with EA ('course, who needs much reason these days to be angry @EA). Also, Activision is acting cool (or protecting their investment) and helping bail them out of trouble.
Ok
WTF is wrong with these guys? I can't stand most publishers (EA or Activision), but this little dev studio that could who was plagued by drama (and got bailed out, pretty clean to boot) decides to bite the hand that fed em? I say let em' burn (unless this isn't the WHOLE story)
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These days? I'm still angry over their sinking of Origin Systems...
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Just goes to show that you got to make sure that contacts are bullet proof by a lawyer (wow I guess they are useful after all) before signing anything.
I don't blame spark at all because if I was reading that agreement I would also just think it was "ok" and sign it. I guess it a
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About a year and a half ago, on a whim, I did some interviews at some other studios (Sony, Activision, and some independents) just to test the waters. The work environments I saw, and general hours and other procedures that were explained to me, were like EA PRIOR to the easpouse deal. The pay and bene
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writing code: easy.. making a game: tough! (Score:3, Interesting)
Most game companies are based on "labor of love" in that the core "owners" usually have the tools and projects lined up on their own dime and want to sell it. That makes the hard stuff like code and content management, bug tracking and all the "busywork" of making a game at least partly taken care of. Spark was selling only their work... their ability to get projects done... and they didn't deliver. After millions of extra dollars from activision to settle lawsuits and cost overruns they still didn't have their act together. They sold themselves as a content house.. with minimal programming then tried to reinvent the programming wheel and lost focus.
As far as Activision requiring playable games why not? 80% of the work in a modern game is content, not coding. Any house worth it's salt should be able to have a playable test bed in a reasonable time frame. That's a business choice Activision wanted...deal with it. EA might allow "pie in the sky" development of the content, but if you get to the end and have to cut features it's a disappointment. Activision has a much more solid plan to get the basics working and build on it... you can always trim cost on textures, models, levels, etc... That's what the customer wanted... it's a hard lesson to learn to do your work how somebody else wants it... as opposed to being owned by the guys paying for the game... but that's business.
Sounds like they need some boring business analysts in there to straighten them out! When you have to comply with SOX, ISO, HIPAA, IRS, big 3 auto, TS, banking, EDI, etc. you spend most 75% of your time following other people's rules and about 25% doing actual work! Sounds like gaming is finally ready for grown ups to run the place!!! That sounds like FUN!!!
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I once heard a quote: "No game has ever failed to ship because the art wasn't done."
Games are difficult because of the programming. They don't spend months in QA because people are trying to decide if they like the textures or not. A videogame is a horrifyingly complex state machine, and it is basically impossible to eliminate all potential bugs in a modern 3D title.
Game production stalls for technical reasons a majority of the time.
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Best Game Ever (Score:3, Funny)
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