If you read my past blog posts (it won't kill you), you should be able to predict that in some way I will insult Call of Duty in this post. Just as a rule of thumb, as long as Activision keeps publishing Call of Duty, I will keep insulting Call of Duty and Activision. Obviously, I should not just be pointing the blame at them. This blog post is intended to push the blame onto some of my favorite companies for their controversies. I can put these behind me, but it's time for me to let hot air out and start the list:
1. Repeatedly pushing games to bad developers- Electronic Arts is the main offender here, as for some reason they did not learn from the mistake of publishing a reboot of Medal of Honor by Danger Close Studios, with intentions of alternating between Medal of Honor, and Battlefield each year. They had to go on and publish Medal of Honor Warfighter, which predictably did not go well. EA decided to close down Danger Close and rename them as Dice Los Angeles (an extension of the Stockholm studio who just so happen to be my favorite developers). I fear that EA will publish games developed by Dice Los Angeles as developed by EA Dice. I may as well go back to Call of Duty if Dice Los Angeles has the reigns to Battlefield 5.
2. Annualizing Franchises- Activision is probably the worst offender here. They have published one Skylanders and one Call of Duty title each year ever since their first installments. At least they are smart enough to cycle between development studios, so that our games end up polished. I would also put Ubisoft on this list for Assassin's Creed (particularly the Black Flag and Unity incident), but since they decided to give themselves a break after Assassin's Creed Syndicate, I'll give them a free pass.
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| From a Cracked slideshow about ideas rejected from the next Call of Duty |
3. Poor online gaming- Electronic Arts gets another strike here. Poor team balancing, horrible server connections, and overall being sloppy. More often however, it is the developer's fault, such as 343 Industries Halo Master Chief Collection horrid launch. It is also tempting to strike Microsoft for their intermittent Xbox Live outages this year, but since they have not been affecting me, I will let them slide.
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4. Making problems with the developers- Chances are, you have heard about how Hideo Kojima left Konami to form his own online studio. I am particularly more shocked by Activision. When Infinity Ward (Lead developers of Call of Duty) heads Jason West and Vince Zampella were caught negotiating a possible partnership with EA, Activision fired the two men in fear that they were disclosing sensitive information. West and Zampella formed Respawn Entertainment, and EA published their first title, Titanfall. This was all going down between development of Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3, and along with the developers went the studios reputation, as Modern Warfare 3 was panned by fans, and Titanfall received praise.
5. Knocking off other games- According to Charles Cable Colton, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". I lately have been exploring new franchises similar to the ones I play. One of these in particular is "Saints Row", a more humorous version of "Grand Theft Auto". I was relatively impressed with how the game played, and overall, I decided it was pretty good. Other knockoffs, such as Watch Dogs nearly held me, but due to sloppy gameplay, I was glad when my disc "randomly" disappeared (it was misplaced, still missing). Let me refer briefly to the fourth point. Titanfall, minus the Titans, was a first person shooter involving jetpacks and parkour. Call of Duty Black Ops 3 was about jetpacks and parkour too (I am willing to be that Activision wanted to make this game to spite the former Infinity Ward staff and Electronic Arts). To say the least, Call of Duty lost once again. There are countless other knockoffs, such as the Simpsons going at Crazy Taxi, Grand Theft Auto, and even Tony Hawk's. Only the Grand Theft Auto knockoff/clone went well.
6. Exploiting rivals- Sony is now the absolute worst offender in the list. At the Xbox One reveal, no one at all liked the digital rights management scheme. Sony followed with the Playstation 4, announcing there would be no similar plans for their console, immediately polarizing the gaming community and gaining a huge one up on Microsoft. While turning the tables on your opponent is certainly a necessary strategy for getting ahead, all I saw Sony doing was the Straw man fallacy (a common deception technique in public speaking where . This month, Microsoft closed Lionhead studios (of the Fable franchise), and Sony popped in to offer the out of work developers a job. While this can be viewed as goodwill on behalf of Sony, I tend to view it as them seeing how many more nails they can fit into Xbox's coffin.
7. Bribing reviewers. The worst offender for once is not a game publisher (But I won't let EA and Activision off the hook quite yet). The guilty party here are game reviewers. A good source to check out before buying a game is Metacritic. They have 2 scores on their page: Average of official reviews (IGN, Gamespot, Gameinformer, several others), and an average of consumer scores. Here is a sample review page. I am not saying it is wrong to add in a bonus for reviewers, but when it is intended to boost a score unfairly, that is where I draw the line. Take a look at IGN's video review of Call of Duty Black Ops 3. IGN did everything except review the game. All they did was summarize the game and gave it a near perfect score. EA also has the shame of promising free updates to consumers in exchange for five star ratings. Those who would not rate the game five stars would be redirected to a fake review page. While both cases are equally shocking, I am more angry with reviewers, leaving good games with poor ratings.
These are the 7 worst things that game publishing companies have done in my opinion. Chances are, I did not mention something you would have liked to see. I understand the controversies of digital right management, questionable marketing, and the reason why no one truly likes preordering games.
Game on
-Jacob Bacci
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