In case you hadn’t heard, Activision is in a bit of spotlight this month. Certain things that may or may not have occurred involving a certain developer (Infinity Ward) or two (Bungie Studios) have understandably kept the publisher in the headlines and will continue to do so for just a bit longer. But this certainly isn’t the company’s first rodeo – they’ve been around for roughly three decades now and I have a distinct feeling that it will be another thirty before we know it. Because they run themselves as any business should and, at times, they’ve run the developers under their corporate umbrella in the same way. I’m not sure if this will eventually catch up to them, but some of their business practices past and present could, hypothetically, damage the game industry. I present here, the top five ways Activision just might do such a thing (corner or destroy the gaming industry).
5. Destroying franchises we love, one game at a time: It was pretty awesome when it was initially revealed that not only would we be getting a crack at the games we love, we’d be getting that chance once ever twelve months – sometimes even more often than that. The Guitar Hero franchise will be my exhibit A in this case as it received not one or two iterations last year, but ten. Ten games from the same franchise in a single year is something I would find acceptable from Ubisoft’s Imagine series, but not from a series that Harmonix made excellent with the first two games in the franchise. Everything seemed to go downhill after that and with a steadily declining interest in music titles and the plastic instruments that go with them – it’s doubtful as to how long the series can be kept around. To make matters worse, the Tony Hawk series and Call of Duty franchise seem to be treading on the same fate. While it should be mentioned that Call of Duty is currently in jeopardy following legal proceedings existing between Infinity Ward and Activision – the annual timetable with which the titles were being produced would only spell doom for the series given enough time. On the other hand, Tony Hawk has, following the release of Ride that it is comfortably happy seizing patchiness and then blaming fans and critics who believed they had already made up their minds to hate the game, according to Tony Hawk himself. I think the problem is a bit simpler than that and it isn’t hatred.
4. Business approach to an artistic industry: Activision has revealed itself to have a very simply business plan. Create triple-A, blockbuster titles that can garner ridiculous amounts of money, rinse, repeat. Even the CEO of Activision, Bobby Kotick has come out and said he has no interest in pursuing to publish titles that can’t be “exploited” at least once every twelve months. By blatantly encouraging quality as opposed to quantity and appealing to the lowest common denominator when possible – Activision can theoretically be guilty of attempting to stagnant the video game industry.
3. Absolute power corrupts absolutely: Activision has an insanely great amount of talent in the proverbial stable of developers nestled gently under their corporate umbrella. With such a high vacuum for exceptional talent at their disposal, it gives them an unwritten belief, as it would appear from the outside, which they can buy or sell just about anyone under that umbrella. Companies like Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Blizzard and now Bungie all serve to increase the overall talent in league with Activision – serving merely to increase their powerbase in the games industry as a publisher by the sheer amount of content they control. Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo and the people who served to embed the dauntless Halo franchise into popular culture are published by Activision. Thus, it makes them one of the most powerful publishers in the industry. While it doesn’t necessarily seem to help if those they publish produced less than stellar titles, by mixing it up and having various development house contribute artists and assets to the same franchise serve to keep them from being branded with a qualitative typecast.
2. Annualized Mediocrity: As stated previously, Activision has zero problem streaming titles out from the exact same franchise year after year and with the amount of talent they have along with the big name series that they work on, it was only too realistic for Bobby Kotick to state, “And then on the second question, Tony, on the pricing, we’ve had for all of our launch titles in the back half of this year, some of which contain peripherals, as you point out, very strong retailer acceptance and support for all parts of our plan, including our merchandising plans, our marketing programs, and our price points. And Tony, you know if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further.” I hate to break it to everyone, but they could if they want to and people would surely still buy the products. Just look at the Stimulus Pack DLC for Modern Warfare 2. It was priced at $15 and still sold 1 million its first day on the Marketplace. But by serving up the same thing year after year to the gaming community – without investing in any new IPs from start-up companies - the possibility steadily increases statistically that they’ll all eventually settle into a modicum of mediocrity. It would be like becoming the McDonald’s of the video game industry.
1. Lack of Creativity: It’s understandable that Activision would continue to practice the same tried and true business practices that has led it to financial success and ultimately allowed it to formulate a small empire of developers able to churn out a constant stream of games that allows them to pad their bottom line on the reports at the end of the fiscal year. Activision does do their best to allow developers to do what they’re talented to do and vice versa – or so we’ve been led to believe. But as an idea, I’m going to suggest that Activision pull an EA and instead of churning out a single sequel to a blockbuster series in a fiscal year, they invest in a slew of independent, upstart titles and give something new a chance to flourish. Eventually, if you continue to feed gamers the same sort of food, they’ll either get bored and look for something better or become oversaturated to know anything of quality.
So, how do you feel about Activision? Do you agree with how they run as a publisher or would you rather see something else come out from them? Hit out forums (click here) and let us know what you think or if there is a darker, even more threatening company lurking in the game industry that we may not even be aware of. But most importantly of all, keep your eyes on PlanetXbox360.com for all the latest news, reviews and features on everything about the Xbox 360.
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