Activision Accused Of Trying To Kill Off Indie Studio 29
Gamespot is reporting on a lawsuit pending between Call of Duty: Finest Hour developer Spark and Activision. Spark claims that Activision broke the contract they had signed with the publisher. From the article: "According to Spark, the agreement it signed with Activision called for it to make three games, the first of which was Call of Duty: Finest Hour. However, in its complaint, Spark alleges that over the next two years, 'Activision induced Spark into reducing and delaying certain of its rights under the contract by falsely promising that it would continue to partner with Spark to develop the second and third titles in the Finest Hour line, when in fact Activision had already decided to bring the development of the sequel in-house at Activision so it could realize an even higher level of profit on the sequels than it had on the original game.'"
Looks like yet another reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Looks like yet another reason... (Score:1)
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Pretty damning... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course we only have one side as we get the usual corporate response of "we dont comment on pending litigation", but this looks pretty calculating on Activision's side. Hire the developer, feed them BS after they develop a top selling game, make they sign reduced agreements, slowly b
Re:Pretty damning... (Score:4, Insightful)
</gripe></bitch></moan>
That's just my opinion.
Re:Pretty damning... (Score:2)
or did it just turn into a Gathering of Corporate Whores?
Re:Pretty damning... (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't really matter if their name is tarnished and developers feel that they're a bunch of bastards. It's not like the beginning of the graphically-oriented games, where there were only a few people that could code something that people would play.
decent game programmers and artists are dime a dozen now. it's no longer an arcane art understood by few. hell, they have college courses for it now. instead of publishers scrambling to pick up de
Re:I didn't know Activision even made games... (Score:4, Informative)
It's not much different than EA and Ubisoft, except that Activision prefers to spread their people out, and retain a 'studio' name, whereas EA and Ubisoft prefer to group studios together for shared resources under larger campuses.
The benefits and negatives are different for each: 'boutique' studios like Activision does means there is little room for change at each studio, they will each do 1 or 2 games at a time, tops, and often specialize in the same kind of game (Neversoft doing Tony Hawk, and Raven doing FPS games, for example). The studios and teams are smaller, and there is not much cross-studio tech sharing.
EA and Ubisoft's style allows for multiple teams and therefore multiple titles at one studio, allowing more options for the people at the studios. Building a larger studio also makes feasible larger benefits like on-site cafeteria, sports field, and a gym. The downside is a perceived loss of 'individuality', but the public seems to care about that more than the employees (I know from personal experience, the benefits at the large companies rocks the socks off anything small companies struggle to provide).
A quick (perhaps flawed) analysis.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A quick (perhaps flawed) analysis.... (Score:2)
I'm not a grammar Nazi or anythting... (Score:2)
I'm neither a grammar Nazi, nor is my grammar particularly good, but I wonder if the poor wording in both the /. headline and the article text is indicative of the direction that that Internet news is headed:
The headline error is obvious.
I don't see any glaring errors there, but it just seems wordy. Why not "...Activision induced Spark into reducing an
Re:I'm not a grammar Nazi or anythting... (Score:3, Funny)
it's been done before by others (Score:1, Informative)
And in other news (Score:2, Funny)
Re:And in other news (Score:1)
Yay (Score:3, Insightful)
It's painfully obvious that people want to play simpler, well done games... why don't the studios tell the big publishers to screw off and go make something that's not going to require huge amounts of funding?
Unfortunately (to answer my own question here) I have a feeling that lack-of-creativity isn't just isolated to the big publishing houses... this is what I'd imagine if a modern game studio tried this.
Boss: "Ok guys, we need to come up with a small game that's going to be fun to play and different!"
Programmer 1: "I know.. how about an FPS with... grenade launchers!"
Designer : "Pah... that's TOTALLY been done before!... we need something ORIGINAL like.. an fps with high tech microwave weapons."
Programmer 2: "I had this weird idea once. How about a game where you roll stuff up into a little ball... and the ball gets bigger and bigger until you're rolling up stuff like buildings!"
Boss, Designer, Programmer1: "GHEY!!! What's WRONG with you?!? Go back to kindergarten n00b"
Re:Yay (Score:1)
Be careful what you agree to (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming this is true:
Shows what you get from relying on promises from managers. Never give something away without getting the promises in writing.