Comments on: Move Over, Electronic Arts!

Move Over, Electronic Arts!

Fuzzy Monster — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:01:33 -0800

What happens when Vivendi buys a $9.8 Billion dollar stake in Activision? You get the largest pure-play online and console game publisher in the world.

By: Avenger

Avenger — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:31:25 -0800

Call of Warcraft: The Wrath of Lord Hitler coming soon to a PC near you.

By: cortex

cortex — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:35:13 -0800

Tony Hawk's World of Skatecraft: Faceplant Adventures is going to be shit hot.

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:46:47 -0800

Somebody get me a 9-year-old to show me how to stick the ollie move in the Molten Core run. I keep tripping over my sword.

By: undule

undule — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:48:16 -0800

What is "pure-play"? -- that's a new one by me, at least in this context.

By: Argyle

Argyle — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:53:49 -0800

Hrrm, as an avid video gamer, I'm of two minds on this. Blizzard has the best reputation in gaming, bar none, with a string of success going back to 1994 with the launch of Warcraft. Activision is a publisher rather than a studio, but with a fairly good reputation. I'm guessing the money people see synergy & vertical marketing opportunities a plenty. My take is that gamers will decry this as Blizzard 'jumping the shark' and becoming a faceless producer of some great games with a plethora of crappy games based on crappy movies. You can look at the history of Electronic Arts (EA), once a premiere game studio awash in innovation and creativity, turning into a publishing automaton with such classics as "Sims 2 Teen Style Stuff" and "Def Jam Fight for NY", to see what gamers might fear.

By: danb

danb — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:57:41 -0800

I think I trust Blizzard not to screw this up. There aren't many other companies I'd say that about -- maybe Bungie and Valve. I think this will end well.

By: Fuzzy Monster

Fuzzy Monster — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:03:38 -0800

What is "pure-play"? -- that's a new one by me, at least in this context. In this context "pure-play" is an investment term meaning "a company devoted to one line of business."

By: Phire

Phire — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:17:01 -0800

Guitar-craft? ...

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:18:22 -0800

Blizzard has the best reputation in gaming, bar none, with a string of success going back to 1994 with the launch of Warcraft. Agreed, but note also that many of the folks responsible for that string of successes left to form Flagship Studios.

By: slimepuppy

slimepuppy — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:23:39 -0800

Interesting stuff. Won't be too long now before gaming has a studio system on par with the film industry. It's a big business that is only getting bigger.

By: infinitewindow

infinitewindow — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:44:17 -0800

I've called Blizzard a fag, what more can I do? (That line never gets old.)

By: mek

mek — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:48:54 -0800

Agreed, but note also that many of the folks responsible for that string of successes left to form Flagship Studios. posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:18 PM on December 2 [+] [!] Roper's team dropped a big smelly deuce with HG:L: that game will haunt them for years to come. It's not clear at all that Blizzard has lost any meaningful talent; given FSS' track record so far, I'm not impressed. They appear talented at releasing buggy unpolished crap. Since their Vivendi buyout, Blizzard has continued to crank out extremely impressive content. They are utterly untouchable in the game industry, in a completely unprecedented manner. The Burning Crusade was probably the greatest game expansion in history, and WotLK looks just as shiny so far. Vivendi is good at letting Blizzard do their thing. I also have no doubt that behind their obvious activities (WoW, Starcraft 2) lurks a top secret project.

By: Justinian

Justinian — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 13:02:17 -0800

Blizzard has the best reputation in gaming, bar none, with a string of success going back to 1994 with the launch of Warcraft. As a long-time hardcore gamer, I wouldn't go quite this far. Blizzard has a great reputation for regularly turning out consistent, polished, extremely high quality games... with little innovation or barrier breaking. Compare to, say, Valve who has a reputation for inconsistent, long release schedules of semi-polished but brilliant, innovative games. Is the former a "better" reputation? I dunno. I do know that a Valve game is much more likely to push the boundaries of gaming than a Blizzard game. It's also more likely to take twice as long to come to market and need more patching.

By: ten pounds of inedita

ten pounds of inedita — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 13:29:50 -0800

I'm not sure that that's correct; the new company will still be smaller than EA.

By: aeschenkarnos

aeschenkarnos — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 13:40:18 -0800

Blizzard has the best reputation in gaming, bar none Bioware and Microprose (may it rest in peace) have produced comparably excellent games and comparably few duds. I think it's hard to rank reputations at the top and bottom ends.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 13:48:47 -0800

Justinian, Blizzard may not be tremendously innovative, but at least they know to copy from the right things as opposed to the wrong ones. Diablo came out at a time when most people in commercial game development saw roguelikes as a design dead-end, if they knew about them at all. Diablo may be far from the best roguelike, but for what it is, it's quite good.

By: graventy

graventy — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 14:08:20 -0800

Compare to, say, Valve who has a reputation for inconsistent, long release schedules of semi-polished but brilliant, innovative games. hahahaha. You're telling me that Valve has inconsistent release schedules and Blizzard doesn't? Blizzard and Valve both tend to operate on the "when it's done" release mentality. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think the Diablo 2 expansion was delayed at least 6 months, and the WoW expansion. I could be mistaken, but Blizzard isn't exactly speedy on releasing games.

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 14:23:02 -0800

I prefer the "when it's done" release schedule. Unless you think it's better to have a shitty game today instead of a good game tomorrow, I can't comprehend why anyone wouldn't.

By: basicchannel

basicchannel — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 14:23:15 -0800

I think the Diablo 2 expansion was delayed at least 6 months, and the WoW expansion. I could be mistaken, but Blizzard isn't exactly speedy on releasing games. posted by graventy at 2:08 PM on December 2 [+] [!] Blizzard regularly releases major content updates for World of Warcraft. Not sure what you mean, friendo.

By: Jon Mitchell

Jon Mitchell — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 16:23:23 -0800

Hrrm, as an avid video gamer, I'm of two minds on this. Blizzard has the best reputation in gaming, bar none, with a string of success going back to 1994 with the launch of Warcraft. Activision is a publisher rather than a studio, but with a fairly good reputation. Blizzard was already owned by Vivendi - a large publisher. It's not like this changes that much. Vivendi have been letting Blizzard just do their thing, as far as I know. Where I work (a Vivendi-owned studio) has always had a bit of an underdog complex against EA, the biggest studio in town. Wonder how this will change things for us?

By: mek

mek — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 16:32:45 -0800

EA may be huge, but their reputation is terrible. Being acquired by EA is a virtual kiss of death.

By: ersatz

ersatz — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 16:34:37 -0800

The Burning Crusade was probably the greatest game expansion in history Beg to differ here. Brood War was for me the only expansion that advanced the original story by far while also introducing successfully new gameplay elements. Let's hope that Activision-Blizzard doesn't get overrun by an EA mentality (poor Origin&Westwood).

By: Jon Mitchell

Jon Mitchell — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 16:34:46 -0800

True. I really hope Bioware can dodge the curse...

By: graventy

graventy — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:19:00 -0800

Blizzard regularly releases major content updates for World of Warcraft. Not sure what you mean, friendo. Right. Those are patches, though. Actual products get delayed fairly regularly. Burning Crusade was delayed at least 6 months from the initial date, and Diablo 2 and its expansions also were delayed. Again, although this is annoying, it's much less of a problem when the games are so consistently great. Perhaps they have gotten better, but they're still not perfect.

By: Justinian

Justinian — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 19:22:33 -0800

Diablo may be far from the best roguelike, but for what it is, it's quite good. But that's what I said; Blizzard makes great, polished versions of things already out there. Valve pushes the boundaries with less polish.

By: lazaruslong

lazaruslong — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:04:31 -0800

TBC was indeed the best expansion ever released. The post and Q&A over here at World of Raids pretty much says that nothing is going to change with blizzard except for having better distribution, marketing, and money. This is a win win, imo. Also, LF 5s team fulll merc/venge warr pst

By: lazaruslong

lazaruslong — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:05:09 -0800

Whoops, forgot the link: This post.

By: lazaruslong

lazaruslong — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:07:08 -0800

Right. Those are patches, though Not really. Patches in the since that you don't pay for them, but the instances and zones as well as the reworking of the game itself that is released in these updates are huge, require months of work, and are generally awesome. Pretty much like "unlocking" 3 more months of fresh content for free, or like several mini-expansions.

By: Riki tiki

Riki tiki — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 00:03:33 -0800

Brood War was for me the only expansion that advanced the original story by far while also introducing successfully new gameplay elements. Isn't every single quest, dungeon, raid, and battleground in The Burning Crusade an advancement of the story? Granted, it's not a linear storyline like the RTS installments, but the extent to which they've flushed out (some of) the existing storylines while also introducing new conflicts and villains is truly impressive. As for gameplay elements, they added new spells and talents to every class, which drastically changed people's playstyles. On a more technical level, they added new dimensions of stats, like resilience, and new conflict scenarios (like Arena). They haven't yet introduced any new classes (which would be a direct parallel to the most defining changes of Brood War), but the next expansion will indeed have a new "hero class," the death knight. I don't mean to sound like a brochure, but damn. Brood War was spectacular, but almost everything it did has been done by Burning Crusade as well, and on a grander scale.

By: lazaruslong

lazaruslong — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 06:38:00 -0800

Riki tiki: "Brood War was for me the only expansion that advanced the original story by far while also introducing successfully new gameplay elements. Isn't every single quest, dungeon, raid, and battleground in The Burning Crusade an advancement of the story? Granted, it's not a linear storyline like the RTS installments, but the extent to which they've flushed out (some of) the existing storylines while also introducing new conflicts and villains is truly impressive. As for gameplay elements, they added new spells and talents to every class, which drastically changed people's playstyles. On a more technical level, they added new dimensions of stats, like resilience, and new conflict scenarios (like Arena). They haven't yet introduced any new classes (which would be a direct parallel to the most defining changes of Brood War), but the next expansion will indeed have a new "hero class," the death knight. I don't mean to sound like a brochure, but damn. Brood War was spectacular, but almost everything it did has been done by Burning Crusade as well, and on a grander scale." QFT.

By: Fuzzy Monster

Fuzzy Monster — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 09:43:02 -0800

Here's what Wall Street thinks of the deal.

By: Phire

Phire — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 10:00:08 -0800

Activision Blizzard, Heh. Thanks for the link, Fuzzy.