Activision Hate Not Based in Reality, Says Activision

[Fox242]

I don't hate Activision as a whole. Who honestly can? They've been around ever since the days of the Atari 2600 and have made a plethora of memorable games. I don't hate the company, I just can't stand Bobby Kotick, the company's asshole CEO and the PR people who make us gamers out to look like rambling idiots.

 

[kebab4you]

Yeaaah, not even gonna bother correcting the guy, will take way to long time...

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

Hah! That's hilarious, Activision says that gamers don't hate Activision. Does that seem ridiculous to anyone else? until they make a decent and original game and stop overcharging for their AAA sludge I will not believe that gamers don't hate them.

 

[KSarty]

I have to give EA credit. They realized that gamer's didn't like them and they worked towards fixing that image.

Here comes Activision with the same problem and their response? "Trust us when we say, you would actually like us if you weren't so misinformed."

 

[Loonerinoes]

That picture *never* gets old. Such a beautifully serene, yet crooked, look. <3

What I really think it boils down to is this: It's not about what they've been quoted as saying in this article (about making tough decisions). Because if it was, then why doesn't the flak that EA got for things like gutting Pandemic or Westwood studios, the latter of which really became rather iconic for many gamers, sprawl as much out of control as Activision's similar deeds do?

Because Activision's damage control and PR, alas, dropped the ball on those instances. All of their responses when the crises came up (with both Brutal Legend as well as Infinity Ward) were very poorly timed and/or chosen. And STILL, months after the debacles ran their due, they STILL feel the need to bring them up.

Here's an idea. Just focus on the games themselves and the next time legal or studio problems come up? Please make statements that are a bit more diplomatic...and you might want to get ole Bobby away from the podium. Few of us really know of how good he is in managing or so forth, but for PR statements he really needs to go, with others making statements for him from now on. It's as simple as that.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

Activision. It's not you. It's Kotick. Kotick.

Activision has made some pretty okay games, but "It's just business" is the cheapest and most intellectually dishonest cop-out response to use in the industry. Sure, make money if you want. But listen to us gamers as well. We are the one's that ultimately play the games in the end, not the corporate suits rambling on about whom gets the most money out of the latest merger or whatnot.

 

[Mr. Grey]

First off: I know the Empire, I gave my life several times for the Emperor and wished that he guide every other Imperial I met. I ran around planets ridding the galaxy of the scourge known as the Rebel Alliance and took them on in the skies and space above.

That company is no Empire and that man is no Emperor of mine!

Now on to my suggestion that might actually work for Activision: Take back the ten dollars you added to PC games and you can make EA look like the bad guys since they followed suit. If they don't drop, the ire is shifted or at least mitigated, if they drop back immediately then at least you can take credit for reducing the price of PC games and hope that the attention span of the internet is short enough not to realise what actually happened.

Evil? Maybe. Brilliant? Possibly. I don't care... I just want ten dollars taken off unless they can show the honest math that proves they need it.

 

[Scott Mansley]

Hitler didn't think he was evil either.

 

[subject_87]

My theory is that they're projecting Mr. Kotick's utter lunacy onto the rest of the world. Bobby, look, the world's disdain for you is completely justified, so clean up your act and stop putting your foot in your mouth.

 

[thebighead01]

Lol no one who is evil thing they're evil, they think that what they are doing is good. If you think you're doing good, and then people come over to pat you on the back to tell you that well then you're doing good. if you think you're doing good and people compare you to Darth Vader then guess what??? you and your company are fucking evil!!!

 

[Snotnarok]

It doesn't make you evil if you hire a group of people who make you the biggest selling piece of entertainment ever and then you fire the heads and deny the promised royalties to them unless they stay with the company for another year(which wasn't in their contract).

Then you make a deal to no make any shooters in the Modern setting, then you put out a game in the cold war ...with guns that are out of the 70's and 90's.

That doesn't make you evil it just makes you complete bastards.

 

[Antari]

So I guess watching the decisions they've made for the past decade must have been a dream.... Not reality at all. Thankfully I'm not as stupid as the AI Activision usually uses in its games.

 

[Stickfigure]

OK, you're not evil, then. Just stupid.

Activision's great accomplishments of the last few years:

- Infinity Ward debacle, essentially killing off their superior COD developer.
- Brutal Legend debacle, cancelling a nearly-finished game, then suing when someone else decided to finish.
- The dilution of the once-proud hero franchise, with massive flops like the DJ Hero series and Band Hero.
- Brutal Legend debacle part 2, where they make a mediocre Guitar Hero that attempts to remake the general atmosphere of Brutal Legend.
- Announcing plans to charge for FMVs

Then the inclusive nature with which they embrace their core audience with lines such as:

- "Don't do female leads because they don't sell."
- "The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."
- "? You know if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further,?


Activision has frankly been living off sheer force of the Call of Duty series' momentum and everything Blizzard does. And the only reason Blizzard seems to progress is because Activision has almost no power over them.

 

[Nurb]

The people ruining the gaming industry claiming to be the victim. AWWWW IT BREAKS MY WIDDLE HEART. If they go bankrupt for alienating gamers as they take away more control and charging the same amount for less game, more charges for DLC, and other stupid decisions, I won't shed a tear.

 

[tiredinnuendo]

Shamus did an Experienced Points on Kotick which I felt made some pretty good arguments. In brief, the TLDR version is that Kotick lucked into a really good job, and frankly doesn't have the savvy and talent for it, but from a market perspective it's better to keep him on than to replace him.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8169-Experienced-Points-Age-of-Kotick

Oh, and one more thing:

Hitler didn't think he was evil either.

We have a winner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law

Goodwin's Law effectively states that the longer you talk, the more likely a given topic is to come up. You could just as easily make it about kittens or pies and it would be exactly the same. It is not proof of anything, nor is it an argument winner. The internet needs to stop treating it as such.

- J

 

[luckycharms8282]

I hate Activision because they screw up games that have multiple installments in order to make more money. Word of advice Activision, don't make gamers pay 15 bucks a map pack for maps from a previous call of duty game.

 

[Krakyn]

Evil rarely thinks that it's evil. They use justifications to defend their actions, and they change their way of thinking to fit their actions. They're what we D&D nerds call neutral evil, the most common evil.

"Hey, I need to make rent, so robbing this person is okay. It needs to be done."

Evil, but they don't think so.

 

[NLS]

They shut down Bizarre Creations. For that I will never forgive them.