Grampy_bone said:
It's easy to pain West and Zampella as the poor little artists being picked on by the big bad corporation. People are more inclined to automatically assume wrongdoing on the part of Activision; yet what people aren't seeing here is Cui Bono; who benefits? Why would activision gut the cash cow and fire the golden goose if they didn't have a good reason?
Here are the FACTS:
-West and Zampella are extremely wealthy.
-IW has never had to bear the financial risk of funding their own projects. Activision put up all the money while IW reaped considerable rewards.
-Bobby Kotick took a hands-off approach towards IW projects including allowing them to make Modern Warfare even though everyone else in the company thought it was a huge mistake.
So to sum up IW was a corporate owned developer that was allowed to do as they pleased and received as much money as they wanted to do it. Sounds pretty nice, huh?
The rest is conjecture based off the various attacks and information coming to light:
-West and Zampella did not want to make MW2, but Activision insisted that was the only project they would fund, taking a firm hand in IW development for the first time ever. Instead of sucking it up and doing what their publisher told them to do like everyone else in the business, or parting ways from Activision and forming their own independent group; West and Zampella chose to take Activision's money and deliver them a sub-par game.
-IW withheld alpha builds of the game and refused to show code to Activision while still demanding milestone payments. Activision complied where most publishers would be furious.
-IW revealed the 'No Russian' mission after it was too late for Activision to do anything about it; their intent was to create a horrific scandal and controversy over the game in order to damage Activision's reputation. In a bizarre "Producers"-style twist, the mission ends up being a huge success, and the overall "phoned-in" nature of the game (bland graphics, short campaign, nonsensical story, stripped multiplayer features, buggy and unbalanced gameplay, etc) pretty much went ignored by everyone. These guys literally couldn't fail even when they tried.
-Meanwhile West and Zampella were setting up to scupper IW and steal all the good talent for a new developer working for EA, while prepping their "big evil corporation" defense. Activision finds out about this and pre-emptively fires them, as any smart company would do.
While I admit the later points are largely second-hand, it makes an overall more rational story than the "Activision fired West and Zampella because they're DICKS!" line we typically hear. West and Zampella make it sound like Activision was scheming to steal their game and IP. Um, what? Activision already owns your game and IP! They would have nothing to gain by firing these guys and weakening IW...unless IW was planning on screwing them first.
That just screams conspiracy theory.... and is wrong in many ways.
The MOU agreement is going to be one of the key points in the case. I haven't seen the original published yet, but its proported to have several promises. (Keep in mind the whole document was done up to keep them working at activision; the IW contract was about up and they would have been free to shop for a different publisher)
1: Gave them IP rights to modern warfare as well as any "modern" (aka post vietnam) Call of duty game, including veto rights if such a game could be made (not just royalty entitelments).
2: Agreed to let IW work on a new IP after modern warfare 2.
3: Language listing details of giving autonomy to IW.
Now, Activision had to offer this and sign it just to get MW2 developed. It has been mentioned several times that Activision was trying to go back on parts of this. Particularly, they were pushing for MW3 even though the head 2 did not want to do a 3rd game at all. Instead, they wanted to work on this new IP Activision promised them they could work on after MW2.... and they now had full IP rights to MW and could even veto any more futuristic/modern CoD games. By this point I'm sure Activision realised they had made a mistake with the MOU, and the easiest option probably looked like firing the 2 heads.
It likely isn't that simple however. After seeing activision start to backtrack on their document, they likely DID have secret talks with EA. Considering it was their IP at that point though, I'd have to say that was probably allowed. Although depending on the specifics of the MOU, they might have shot themselves in the foot and breached their contract doing so. Reguardless the IP is still theirs, and thus we have courtroom drama (as the IP is worth enough to make a settlement unlikely). I'm pretty skeptical though about the "conspiracy to withhold royalties from their own employees". Seems pretty hard to do considering activision hadn't even PAYED IW the royalties to dole out at the time they were fired. Factor in the known opinions of Activision's CEO and I don't see this ending well for them if it goes to jury.
Time will tell how it ends, but I'm not sold on Activision's version thats for sure.
