EA Kicks Activision While They’re Down
By now, Activision’s extremely poor public appearance is known from the hardest of the hardcore, to even the casual crowd. Initially, Activision’s image was tainted by their CEO Bobby Kotick and his plethora of unprecedentedly ludicrous public statements concerning Sony, his staff, and Activision supporters, but this was only the start of their headache.
Their image continued to rapidly wither in the eyes of the community this past year due to their harsh,“police-state” methods of running partner company Infinity Ward. This lead to two of their most talented lead designers being forcibly removed from their offices, and ultimately ended in a multi-million dollar lawsuit, and the self-explosion of Infinity Ward. But from the ashes, Zampella and West created a new studio, backed not only by an exclusive partnership with Electronic Arts, but also with more than 30 of their previous co-workers. Now, just as the dust settles, Activision’s history is brought back into mind by a statement from EA.
Growing proportionately with the gaming industry, Electronic Arts is one of the giants in video game publishing companies. They’re often compared with Activision in terms of quantity and variety of titles produced each year, but recently during an interview with IndustryGamers, EA’s COO John Schappert explained just what sets his company a part from the other mega-publisher, Activision.
“I would say we’re two very, very different companies. What we try to be is a company that embodies creative development, that fosters the development of games, that treats talent as well as you possibly can, because at the end of the day, that’s what our industry is and that’s what our company is.”
“Without great people we can’t have great games, and without great games we don’t have much of a company and so it’s all about taking care of the people that make the products and treating them as the most precious resource because they truly are. So that’s really our philosophy.”
Speaking directly about Activision and their former employees, Schappert went on to express his enthusiasm to have more creative minds on board.
“… stories of late [regarding Activision] haven’t been very positive. And we couldn’t be happier to have Jason [West] and Vince [Zampella] as part of our EA Partners program, or Ted Price of Insomniac.”
How do you feel about the two giants? Do you think they’ve both done enough to rectify past mistakes?
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12 Responses to “EA Kicks Activision While They’re Down”
Much like sports fandom, people love a winner and winning cures all. If EA or Activision makes a hit game, all is usually forgiven. And aren’t pre-orders for the next Call of Duty game out-pacing that of Modern Warfare 2 already? Activision is already laughing at the fickle crowd during the so-called “PR nightmare”.
cod black ops is going to be great , medal of honor is going to be great too. they both put out pretty good games. but of course they are going to go against each other. don’t forget it wasn’t that long ago every one hated ea. now every one loves them like they never hated them?
Iv bought the past 3 call of duty games now and im just sick of them now.there the same thing over and oVer.i do enjoy them but lately i have stopped playing all of them because im sick of the online.im not going to get black ops because i dnt feel its worth buying a game thats nt gonna hav much changes in it.id rather get games like dc universe gt5 and lbp2 in november then waste more money on the call of duty franchise
the thing is no matter how much people hate Activision they still want to own and play the next best thing and right now everyone looks to Call of Duty to give it to them, everyone except for me and very few others. I have hated Activision for a long time now, but that didn’t stop me from buying MW2 just because I knew it would be a great, albeit short, FPS experience. As a company I definitely prefer EA, as soon as Activision decides to burn Kotick at the stake that may change, but as far as whose games I like better it’s hard to say. I never buy games because of their publishers, I buy games based on the merits of the game itself and sometimes on the developer behind it.
Yay! ^_^ EA may do bad things from time to time, and can definitely neglect quality, but they are without a doubt the better of two evils when it comes to Activision.
Rob946
actually everything i’ve heard about black ops is they changed things up , like the pace of the missoins. ect. black ops is looking like a pretty good game imo.
While I do think it’s a bit low to do this Activision set themselves up for it. I have yet to hear how people are treated under EA but so far they have done a pretty good job of not being douchebags. Activision needs to change their image or face the music that just about everyone hates them right now.
Having been to EA Canada, I can safely say that they do still embrace creative minds. It’s a very relaxed environment, and people generally seem to enjoy working there. They may have grown to an insane size, but they haven’t yet lost their touch.
doesn’t matter to me who publishes or develops the games, as long as the game is good I’m in.
I own quite a few EA games, and the only two games I’ve platinumed are from EA. On the other hand, I don’t own any Activision games. They just don’t make anything that appeals to me, and if they do make something that sounds interesting, it usually gets mediocre to bad reviews.
Probably because EA believes that the people who make the games are important, but Activision’s philosophy is that they don’t matter one damned bit. Just so long as Kotick gets his gazillion dollar bonuses and can have the biggest yacht in the harbor at Saint Tropez and impress all the other mega-rich folks, that’s all that matters at that company.
I haven’t called a single Call of Duty game. I don’t own a single game that was published by Activision.
That’s the way its going to stay forever. I am NOT giving my money to that company, no matter how “great” or “amazing” or “groundbreaking” their games are. If you treat your customers like dirt, then you don’t deserve to have your games bought no matter how good they are.
Well let’s put it this way, EA Games have set things right by making sure that they grant their employees creative freedom where as Activision decided they’d just say sorry and then get carry on what they were doing before they apoligised,
it’s not enough to say your sorry if you don’t know what you have to be sorry about. To be honest I think EA Games are the same they’ve always been, they just look like a good company because their always compared to Activision,
Much like sitting next to the dumb kid so you look smarter. Who cares who smart you are that other guy’s basically a retard.