Category Archives: video game industry

Down Goes Activision! Bought by Microsoft for nearly $70B

For an extensive look at the glorious early years of Activision, have a read of my article, here: https://thedoteaters.com/?bitstory=console/activision

Microsoft has a deal to buy long-time video game company Activision, to the tune of $68.7 billion. That’s a lot of CoD Points! Looking back at the history of Activision, there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude in them being finally snapped up themselves. Through the years, the company has done a fair bit of acquiring of their own. For example:

In 1997, they acquired Raven Software, makers of the Heretic FPS games. With Raven closely associated with Doom and Quake makers id Software, this eventually gave Activision an in with id itself. Raven was eventually eviscerated with targeted lay-offs, and as with many dev teams within Activision, is now part of the Call of Duty factory.

Neversoft, makers of the Tony Hawk skateboarding games, got picked up in 2000. It was shuttered by Activision in 2014, its remaining team members redirected to… you guessed it… cranking out Call of Duty games.
Speaking of Call of Duty (which you do a lot of when it comes to Activision), developer Treyarch was drafted into Activision in 2001. Which marches us to…
Infinity Ward had made Medal of Honor: Allied Assault in 2002, and was subsequently picked up by Activision in 2003. They would, of course, be the impetus Call of Duty developers. Activision switches between Infinity Ward and Treyarch as lead designers of each new version of CoD.
Grey Matter Interactive (ne: Xatrix Entertainment) had a deal with id to make Return to Castle Wolfenstein in 1999. With id’s close relationship with Activision, Grey Matter ended up gobbled up by them in 2002. Spoiler Alert! They ended up merged with Treyarch to make Call of Duty games! Surprise!
RedOctane made their name by pairing with Harmonix to make the Guitar Hero games. After being purchased by Activision in 2006, they were spared the ignominy of having to toil away on the Call of Duty rockpile by being closed down in 2010.
There’s few long-standing developers as creative-minded as Toys for Bob, started by Paul Reiche III (the Archon games with Freefall Associates, Mail Order Monsters) and Fred Ford in 1989. After making the first two successful Star Control games (we don’t talk about Star Control 3), they found huge success with the Skylander games, marrying real-life figurines with video games. Picked up by Activision in 2005…. do I really have to say this… they’re put to work on Call of Duty games in 2021.

And of course, there’s the big one, when Activision merged with Vivendi, owners of World of Warcraft makers Blizzard Entertainment, to form Activision Blizzard in 2008.

So, when it comes to Activision these days, to paraphrase The Dark Knight: You either get shut down as a developer, or live long enough to see yourself working on Call of Duty games. In the above list, there wasn’t one description of a developer acquired by Activision where I didn’t also have to include the title Call of Duty! That’s what Activision has become: a Call of Duty factory. Game developers are bought, their talent steadily stripped away, and often eventually shuttered or absorbed. It’s a long way away from the initial vision of Activision, that of under-appreciated game designers lifted out of the enforced anonymity of Atari and allowed to take wing as gaming superstars.

For an extensive look at the glorious early years of Activision, have a read of my article, here: https://thedoteaters.com/?bitstory=console/activision

Market percentages of game platforms and genres analyzed.

Leave a reply

This is a graph of the percentages that various gaming platforms and genres have made up of the video game market, from 1975 to present day. It’s completely fascinating.

Culled from a database of 24,000 video games from VideoGameGeek, these charts vividly describe the roller-coaster ride of the rising and falling whims of the video game market. Witness as arcade games dominate the percentage, and then get steadily hammered down into nothingness. Watch helplessly as generations of video game systems yield to their successors, who yield to the next wave, in an electronic circadian rhythm.

To me, it’s very much like watching a colourful evolutionary chart, where organisms emerge from their primordial pong, crawl gasping into the sun of commercial acceptance, who then are driven extinct by more evolved species better able to adapt to the marketplace. It puts The Dot Eaters into perspective: It’s like breaking apart the rock strata of video game history and examining the fossils, in a medium of electrons and brightly coloured photons that is anything but chiselled in stone.

Reading this chart, I also can’t help but think of the companies, programmers and players who are swept around helplessly in the ebb and flow of the ever-shifting, ever-raging video game current.

via ncikVGG of Reddit.com.

Originally published on The Dot Eaters in 2012

SOPA Success!

Leave a reply

Back online. Gleaned from the news, it looks like the blackout protest is an initial success, with SOPA delayed for retooling and the White House coming out against it as it currently stands. Its demise is no certain thing right now, though, so the pressure must continue against U.S. lawmakers. Here’s hoping they do right by the American people.

Stop SOPA!

Leave a reply

The site will be going down shortly, a bit premature but in support of the Jan 18 Internet blackout, protesting the railroading of the PIPA and SOPA laws through the U.S. congress. These laws, supposedly created to curtail piracy and copyright infringement, pass unprecedented and unreasonable powers to authorities to shut down websites and seize IPs merely on the accusation of piracy or the linking to what is conceived to be such. They are too broad and dangerous, and their loose language will have a chilling effect on innovation and free speech on the web.

Video Games Come Out On Top in Enforcement Rankings

Leave a reply

Well, this really goes against the alarmist cry about how violent video games are corrupting our innocent youth.

The Federal Trade Commission in the States conducted an undercover shopper survey, where 13 to 19 year-olds were recruited to enter various outlets unaccompanied, and attempt to purchase entertainment items like movie tickets, video games, and DVDs which were all rated for adults only.

The big takeaway was that the lowest rate of sales of restricted materials to minors occurred with video games. Only 13% of the shoppers successfully purchased the forbidden products. This, compared to the 64% of kids that were sold a music CD labelled with a Parent’s Advisory sticker, warning of explicit lyrics.

Also interesting is the break-down by retail outlets. When it comes to selling M-Rated games to minors, Walmart was the worst offender. So, when it comes to grandstanding about the morality of violent videogames today, Wally World is the best. When it comes to actually investing money into proper training so salespeople don’t let kids get their hands on adults-only products, they’re the very worst.

Pre-order Bonuses: A Cheap Shill

Leave a reply

Pre-order exclusive content is the bane of my gaming existence. Things on this front have really gotten out of hand. Case in point: Rockstar’s upcoming 40’s film noir extravaganza L.A. Noire.

I would like to buy your game, Rockstar. I am more than happy to pony up 70 bucks to immerse myself in your dark, sinister Los Angeles of the 1940’s. I want to exchange legal tender for your years of hard work. I know what I want. I want your game. What I do NOT want, is to have to figure out WHERE to get your game, because different retailers offer different in-game incentives if you pre-order with them. Look at this rap sheet of tawdry streetwalkers:

Gamestop – get “The Naked City” vise case, and a badge pursuit challenge

Amazon – unlocks “The Broderick” detective suit, which increases your fist-fighting abilities and lowers the damage you take fighting.

Wal-Mart – get “A Slip of the Tongue” traffic case

Best-Buy – get “The Sharpshooter” detective suit, increasing your abilities with rifles and pistols.

But wait, don’t pre-order yet! Look what else you get! If you pre-order directly from Rockstar, you get an official L.A. Noire t-shirt. Or perhaps you’ll go to Target and get a $5 dollar gift card and a free Rockstar Games t-shirt by pre-ordering with them.

This is nuts. All I want to do is buy the goddamn game and get the goddamn game. The whole thing, without wondering what I might be missing out on because I didn’t go with another retailer. Sure, all this swag is probably in there anyway or will be patched in later. But they never tell you that before hand, as the heavy beads of sweat pour down your forehead in the harsh interrogative glare of approaching release date. So you’re never quite sure. I recommend anyone feeling the same way I do shoot Rockstar a tweet and demand that all this extra content be eventually available to everyone, regardless of where they bought the game.

Retail-based pre-order bonuses. It’s a mug’s game. And I don’t want to play it.