USPTO Suspends The War Z Trademark

[SoulSalmon]

This, my friends, is what the suicide of one's career looks like.

This is almost as entertaining as the Ocean Marketing stuff.
http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/27/2664284/penny-arcade-vs-ocean-marketing

Ah, good times, watching him squirm at the end after he finally realised who he was dealing with was priceless.
Hoping the same thing happens to Titov, although he seems to still be around after Big Rigs so I don't know what it'll take to get him outta here.

 

[Therumancer]

How the hell did I not know about World War Z?! That movie looks awesome!

Not surprising, I didn't know about it myself.

A bit of history though, from what I *DID* know.

"World War Z" was origianlly from a novelty book written by a guy named "Max Brooks" (if I remmeber) who instead of just making another zombie-horror novel, deciding to release a book that was supposed to be a sort of "scrapbook of the future" after humanity had successfully fought off a Zombie apocolypse and recovered. It included practical information, recounting a breakdowns after the fact of famous incidents, and recollections of survivors relayed in a past tense. I believe it inspired a full out "survival guide" and some novels once it became successful, becoming a sort of genere cult-classic.

There being a movie, and plans for games based on this doesn't surprise me, though to be honest despite how it looks I think as time goes on this franchise is losing it's soul. The original idea was that it was a differant take on some very stereotypical material. The more traditional stuff they release (movies, games, novels, comics) the more it lose it's originality, it just becomes part of the pack it set out to break away from.

I find The Walking Dead to be the best comic book series I've ever read, then the Game is in my top 10 all time. The Z movie is about the running zombies though so it should be good since 28 months isn't happening.

"The Walking Dead" is okay, I don't consider it anything special other than having been at the forefront of bringing the zombie genere into other mediums on a large scale. On some levels I consider it to be the "Twilight" of Zombies, not so much due to having the low quality of Twilight, but because it took something that was saturated into nerd dom to a huge degree, and actually managed to transition it for the mundanes.

The video game stands out less for the subject matter than for doing a very good job at storytelling, it's pretty much what other interactive movies like "Heavy Rain" should have been like.

Speaking for myself I love the genere, but I generally can't say that any specific works represent a favorite. The reason being that the original "Dead" series creator tried to get arthause with it, by making statements about consumerism and such. This has unfortunatly tainted the genere's development as nearly everyone doing a zombie movie either tries to also make the same kinds of arty statements, or worse yet, introduces the same kinds of nonsensical events meant to make a point outside of the movie itself, into it, without even that reason. It basically amounts to a situation where people do stupid things just to move the plot/point along, and there is little or no world building. "Walking Dead" probably is the most fully developed zombie mythology out there due to the time it lasted, but has it's share of horrible writing (tension for no reason other than having human drama because they feel the need to have it) and tends to do everything in the most generic and bland way.

I myself have long thought they should drop the whole "science zombies" thing and go back to the old days of supernatural zombies to mix things up.

I guess it says something when the thing I like best of recent zombie media I'm consumed is Calrton Mellick III's "Zombies and Shit" and that's a satire.

 

[Vhite]

Despite late arrival, this game sure looks like the top failure of 2012.

 

[BoredAussieGamer]

If I had to guess, the only reason anyone still follows this story is purely for comic value.

 

[bificommander]

Well, this is one of the quickest trainwrecks of a launch since APB.

 

[Bindal]

Well, this is one of the quickest trainwrecks of a launch since APB.

Just with the difference that APB was not intended as a scam AND became quite decent.

 

[Antonio Torrente]

Why does Titov's career just won't die?!

 

[Froggy Slayer]

This entire case is like a car wreck, if a car wreck was large enough to build a tower of burning cars into the sky, which crushes thousands of people below it until a plane flies into the top, explodes, and knocks the tower of cars into a train track at which point a train carrying a cargo of dynamite crashes into the blockage, setting off a chain reaction that leads to the cars then blocking off a river, causing a boat crash that spills oil all along the coastline. And then, Titov the Traffic Warden, who let the cars through knowing that they would crash is all like 'This is your fault for not looking before you went through!'.

 

[Groenteman]

Again, this War Z was made by the same guy that made almost unarguably the worst game of all time: Big Rigs, and he was/is planning on making a sequel.

I'm sure negative attention isn't a big deal for the developer.

Wait is that realy true? I saw a video of Big Rigs and that game is so hilariously bad and broken that they could have only dont that on purpose. Its basicaly a scam (I do see some similarities...).

Someone who made that kind of digital vomit actualy still works in the busyness?

 

[Radoh]

So... lawsuit then?
Seems like this is going to lead to a swift destruction of an entire studio, which is fun I guess, since the last time we saw something burn down this bright was that guy from Ocean something marketing.
You know the one, the guy who held Corporate information hostage?

 

[Absolutionis]

Again, this War Z was made by the same guy that made almost unarguably the worst game of all time: Big Rigs, and he was/is planning on making a sequel.

I'm sure negative attention isn't a big deal for the developer.

Wait is that realy true? I saw a video of Big Rigs and that game is so hilariously bad and broken that they could have only dont that on purpose. Its basicaly a scam (I do see some similarities...).

Someone who made that kind of digital vomit actualy still works in the busyness?

Yep! Both lead producers are Sergey Titov, and it's confirmed to be the same guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Z
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rigs:_Over_the_Road_Racing

 

[Groenteman]

Just read up on this man, and the more I did the more appaled I was at his work. In this interview here
http://www.yourewinner.com/index.php?action=stitovinterview
which was about his part in Big Rigs he claims to only have made and sold the engine, which he had programmed in Ukraine where its nice and cheap. He seems mostly pretty amused by it all, not at all shamed or remorseful of the people who were basicaly ripped off with his engine as pretty much the sole functioning part.

These quotes pretty accurately displays the kind of busyness he does:

Interviewer:
Were you responsible for Remington: Big Buck Trophy Hunt in any way?

Titov:
I've found that guys from Activision/Gamemill made this game, and once again licensed my tech.

So basically my business is:

a) Develop and license tech to game companies. As you may understand, sometimes some companies want to do things cheap and are not willing to pay even 200-300K for an engine.
b) Find cheap development teams in Eastern Europe for US/EU companies.

Funny fact for you - Gettysburg and Civil Wars together sold over 100k copies in USA. Walmart rules!

Interviewer:
It takes a true genius to write games that defy all conventional styles of game mechanics.

Titov:
You're wrong
It takes a true genius to sale them !!! That's why I think the Gamemill guys are true geniuses!

(Gamemill published Big Rigs)

Aaand then theres the recent War Z debacle, the realy questionable microstransaction system, the fact theres a 4 hour respawn which you can pay off, the fact you can die again seconds after spawning, the many many reports of censoring on the steam forum, the whole 'you just misread the description...

Basicaly hes a money grabbing con man. Do not buy things with his name on it.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

Sergey Titov is a fraud, plain and simple. Until you apply physical pain no fraud will ever admit his crimes.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

False advertising.

Copyright infridgement.

A really, really, really @#$%ity game.

WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?

He's a Russian fraud. For a while, after USSR collapsed and before Putin came to power - there was some obnoxious stuff going on there. there were several examples, among other things, of "games" that were actually disks full of garbage files, aka unusable junk sold as games. This was... Business. And nobody got jailtime or fines for selling nothing as something.
Now times are changing, fines are applied, laws started working (and there are great Russian developers who put those shitmakers to shame) and, having lost their niche, cretins like Titov are trying to pull some frauds of worldwide scale.
Trust me I know how it is, I'm Russian myself. What can I say, I'd rather have guys like him do their thing outside of homeland...
Although he's gonna try the War Z fraud in Russia specifically too http://www.ag.ru/ (google translate second news post). Only chances are he's getting no luck there too. Unluckily for him when our people spend money on PC games that's mostly on Steam.

 

[FFHAuthor]

Not only that, but they've potentially done "irreversible damage" to the World War Z trademark name.

I think Paramount will have managed that one all on their own once people see the movie they've made.