Posts by FrieChamp

  • RAGE

    Money post right there by KFS! I completely agree, very good assessment of EA's and Actiblizz's roles today.

    Defrag: As KFS already mentioned, I'm familiar with the EA Partners programme. While it's a collaborative effort during the development of the game and EAP's input might help, the studios keep creative control of the game and I'm pretty sure that Valve and id are more keen on the big marketing bux, not necessarily the creative input.. I just thought it's funny because Carmack talks about why they are not comfortable with partnering with Activision or EA anymore: id used to be the FPS arm of Activision, now that there is Infinity Ward with the highly succesful CoD series, things have changed. They don't want to compete in-house. That's why a merge with Bethesda makes more sense, because they do completely different games. He also said something quite striking on the subject of acquiring funding for independent studios as a whole: Publishers don't like the idea of funding a project when they don't own the IP, because the developer might quit the cooperation after the first game and work with a competing publisher on the sequel. They would build up a franchise from the ground up that a competitor would profit from later on basically. As far as I can see that's what's happening with Rage, EA and Bethesda at the moment.

    Quote from Sentura

    that's a great comparison, KFS. to me it poses the question whether it will actually change for activision blizzard, or whether they will just stay money hungry since it is an easy way for them to go (all things put aside, world of warcraft, guitar hero and call of duty each probably make more money than any other franchises from other publishers). obviously you would only want to change your business strategy if things don't work out... and i'm just not sure that's the case with activision blizzard...if they do, however, it'll show that the industry is progressing into maturity.

    I'm absolutely positive that Actiblizz will continue milking the franchises until they are no longer profitable. As you said, from a business perspective, it's the logical thing to do. That's where I agree with the post by KFS: EA is a few steps ahead of Actiblizz, not necessarily in terms of success, I mean they've already lost momentum on some of their most profitable game series. Fifa, NFS, Battlefield...that's why they invest into new IPs and that's what's Actiblizz is going to do WHEN market need for those GH and CoD games declines. It's what the big hollywood studios do too by the way, purely business decisions.

    The idea that Actiblizz would stop development on sequels for these games, just for the sake of "helping the industry progress into maturity" is a noble, but less likely thought...and rather vague too, I don't think these are thoughts that cross Robert Kotick's mind

  • RAGE

    I think it's funny how Carmack talks about the aquisition by Bethesda like the perfect merge as opposed to the alternatives which would have been Actiblizz or EA, yet the game (RAGE) is published by EA

  • MapCore Job Census

    Oh shit...my condolences to everyone who is without a job now. What a mess, it feels like it was just last week that Grin announced all these new studios and projects and now the company's bust. I guess a lot of people are looking for a new gig now, anyone feel like opening up our own studio?