Thursday, March 4, 2010

infinity ward and activision


So the big news this week is the shake-up over at Activision with Infinity Ward. In case you haven't been keeping up, earlier this week the heads of Infinity Ward, Vince Zampella and Jason West, were fired for apparent "insubordination" and "breach of fiduciary duty." Yesterday, the two former Infinity Ward heads filled a lawsuit against Activision for breach of contract, among other claims. Chances are you already know what's going on, so let's move on.

Activision. Electronic Arts. Ubisoft. What do three of the biggest publishers in the world have in common? They are notorious for over-saturating their market and killing off their most successful franchises. Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, Medal of Honor, Prince of Persia, Madden, etc...the list goes on and on. These companies force developers to churn out yearly installments of their most successful games, as well as tons of spin-offs and DLC. Consumers get sick of the same shit over and over again (Madden), or they can't afford to keep up with the massive amount of micro-transactions to keep their games fun (Guitar Hero), or the game quality eventually just suffers from a poor development cycle (Tony Hawk).

EA used to take most of the flak for this behavior when their sports and fps titles were dominating the market. Now that EA has milked most of their franchises dry and sales are slipping, they're no longer the dominating force they seemed to be 5 - 8 years ago. Activision, pardon me, Activision-Blizzard is a fucking powerhouse right now thanks mostly to Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and World of Warcraft. Blizzard is fine...they've got WoW, they've got Diablo III coming out, and if all else fails, they can finally make a Starcraft sequel. But things aren't looking good on the Activision side of things. The Tony Hawk series is literally a joke at this point, people are finally starting to get burned out on Guitar Hero, and now they've lost Infinity Ward, the developer that FINALLY got the console FPS right (fuck you, Halo) with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. So what does this mean for Activision and the entire CoD franchise?

Well, for the time being, it means absolutely NOTHING. Treyarch is doing this year's installment of Call of Duty, and the map pack DLC for Modern Warfare 2 will still be developed by Infinity Ward for release this year. Next year, on the other hand, will probably see the downfall of CoD as Activision has stated that not only will they continue the main Call of Duty series, but they are going to start making non-FPS Call of Duty titles too, including an action/adventure title slated for 2011.

Basically Activision lost their best developer with IW...the guys who created Call of Duty, made it huge, re-invented it, then made it even bigger. Instead of slowing down and making sure they don't fuck up the series with sequels and offshoots, they are plowing right along sticking to their predictable release schedules. Right now Activision is just trying to push as many Call of Duty games out while the series is popular since they can sell titles based on the name alone. Inevitably, Activision will do what they do best and kill Call of Duty by over-saturating the market. In the mean time, Infinity Ward founders Zampalla and West will no-doubt move on and create a new FPS franchise under the umbrella of another major publisher. So fear not, you'll be back playing a new Infinity Ward title soon enough. Now, let's just hope that Treyarch can deliver a solid follow-up to World at War this fall, before Activision runs CoD into the ground.

-Brian T.