No and no... also no, and possibly noooooooooooooooooooo.

If creative businesses do not allow creativity to factor into their decisions then the product they're creating eventually becomes stale, overly familiar and boring.

Creative industries are very different from uncreative industries for this reason. With someone like Kottick in charge of the biggest western game software developer who values short term gain, net profits and good bottom lines over risk taking on new creative options in the long term it's only going to harm the industry as game innovation stagnates and new releases come straight of a production line ala Madden.

It's putting business people in charge of creative industries, people exactly like Kottick, in the past that as all most destroyed them, the best example being Marvel Comics which only a decade and a half ago came very close to dissapearing.

And businesses that put creative people in charge instead of money people? How about Apple, or Pixar. Even if you don't like their products, billions do, much to the chagrin of their competitors who are run by people like Kottick.

I'll accept your apology in the form a haiku.

Yet millions of people still buy the products.. Hmm.


Sorry, who funded Guitar Hero again? Oh Activision, and that created a whole new genre of gaming...Hmm

Also if you are concerned about short term gain, how did they turn Activision into the biggest game publisher during Kotics nearly 20 year reign??

Sport games have been improving continuously, and selling consistently, what is wrong with EA's approach there.


APPLE!?. APPLE!? WHAT! Hahaha, what creative ideas have they had besides "Make something existing good looking and easy so anyone can use them?" They have good artists and programmers.

MP3 players existed before the ipod, Tablets existed before the ipad. Seriously Steve Jobs is as money hungry if not more than Kotic. Instead of redesigning their fucked up iphone 4 they give away a stupid casing and complain that other phones do it too.. You really think that no one in the entire dev process of the iphone 4 noticed that the phone cant make calls if you hold it NORMALLY?!

But instead of fixing it and pushing the release back they got it out of the door to sell millions.

Would you rather Activision put out new IP all the time and go bankrupt? What was Blizzards last new IP? Starcraft, Warcraft or Diablo? Arnt they creative?

It's like when they turned the hospitals over to the business people Lorrie. The soul of health CARE was lost to the dollar. With money men in charge of stuff that has a soul, you lose the soul for a production line of heartless commodity.

You end up with fucken MacDonalds, and aiming for the lowest denominator which is brainless consumer driven MacEntertainment that the majority crave. Why do you think fucken news sites are full to over flowing with fucking Paris friggen Hilton and bloody MacNews SHITE.

Infinity Ward is going through this right now. You lose the art if you concentrate on only consumerism and profit. It is inevitable unfortunately. Indie gaming will become the soul of the industry.

Thank Christ for DICE.

Um, yes, that's pretty much it, taking existing technology and making it user friendly by valuing creative and innovation over dinero.



To the first point yes, note EA's example by putting out new IP's and experimenting as an idea's house rather than a battery farm, and playing with their own IP's and giving us the fresher and more interesting Bad Company, while the competition is cashing in with a dumbed down version of their game from ten years ago Battlefield 2.

To the second point Blizzard is an isolated case of pouring buckets into developing and expanding their brand. And they certainly don't milk their brands, how many Diablo games have we had in twenty years? 2. How many Call of Duty games have come out so far?

It didnt work, look at the sales of Dead Space, Dead Space extraction, Brutal Legend (which was mostly funded by Activision) and Mirrors Edge.



Bad Company 2 is Call of Duty Mixed with Battlefield 2 with destruction. That isnt a bad thing, but there isnt anything original about it. DICE are going to kock Battlefield 3 out of the park I would think.


How many of them have been bad? Call of Duty 3. COD, COD 2, COD 4, COD WAW and MW2 have all been brilliant games for their time.
Gamers buy them and play them in droves. You cant blame a company for giving gamers what they want, they have been punished when they try to do something different and to be honest I cant blame them.

When they let a lot of their teams do something creative we get shit like Tony Hawk Ride. But sometimes we get things like Modern Warfare 2.

If EA keep releasing Skate games I am going to keep buying them because they are awesome. Thats a game I would love to turn into an episodic game. Buy new sections of the city, new islands etc. The game as it functions doesnt need a new retail release, but most people arn't savy to digital downloads yet, expansions dont sell as well as a new game.

I think there's a formula that sale's and marketing guys are trying to identify that involves regular releases with minimum updates - far beyond franchises as we know them. Call of Duty is nothing compared the EA Sport's model.

I have a theory that content will be delivered and sold by the megabyte. Nothing will be quantified by quality but it will eradicate piracy...maybe I've drunk a whole bottle of Audrey Wilkinson 2005 Shiraz (@Sprouter).

\o

Nothing will stop piracy except MAYBE 'cloud' tech, but still doubt it.
Like PC server protections on games like CSS. As soon as an update is made to security, BAM, new haxx.
But that's way off topic. Continue...

My friend has a pet rabbit

my dog kills pet rabbits

Peter Rabbit?