Anti-Activision feelings “a little bit strong”, says co-founder

I used to like AvtiVision when they were bringing us good Spiderman & Tony Hawk games, lately? Nope, last think I enjoyed from them would be Prototype, before that probably the True Crime games, which they’ve canceled the reboot of.

I’m getting really tired of all the Activision employees bitching all the time. For the last time, put a muzzle on these guys!

Business is business. To some it’s evil, to others it’s just how shit works for better or worse.

You never need to have sympathy for executives, they’re more than capable of handling a bit of trash talk, but arguably there’s a considerable disconnect between what running a business entails and how it’s percieved from the outside.

Alan Miller should definitely be respected by anyone who claims to care about developers rights though. He was among the first to grant developers things like credits and royalties.

Don’t buy into it. Activision has tried to reason with people, but in the end they’re not about video games as much as they are about a new pool. Now don’t get me wrong. Business IS business. Money should always be the top priority, but if making a quality, memorable experience is so far down the list that you start cutting employees due to ‘redundancy’ and cutting corners graphically and in innovation, you get games that are clearly for those with zero taste. No thanks, Activision. Make games that I’d want to play or get out of the gaming business.

Yes, the CEO making 20 million dollars from selling socks he owns to people who will then want a similar amount of money regardless of how the company pulls it of, be it by firing people, closing studios, or just raising prices is all about video games.

Once a company’s stocks go public, it’s never about the games anymore.

HauntaVirus, i dont work there, and obiusly you dont either, so lets not comment regarding something we dont know, if they are bitching, well maybe there is something in that company we dont know, and they do.

And i know many of you stated that money is money, and business are business, but to tell you the truth i dont buy it, a company can be pretty profitable treating their employees the way they deserve (humanly speaking), and with nice working conditions,this industry in particular has tons of examples, if they choose not to do it this way, well is because they think that fear is the biggest motivation, and the best cutter of costs incentive in the world, in order to not expend time recolecting and analyzing data, avoiding the stablishment of a quality process into their procedures.

I’m just impressed that you actually believe that Activision cultivates a culture of abuse, in a business that’s desperately competing for creative talent. There’s no way you’d ever get any sort of talent in the business by mistreating anyone, and quite arguably Activision has only been bringing in more of it over the last few years.

Games developers and executives aren’t helpless tribesmen brought in on a slave galley. They’re highly talented, highly competent professionals, a lot of whom know what they’re worth, and what they can demand from a company based on their talent.

We can all agree that Activision has chewed up and spit out its fair share of studios, and they arguably did run Guitar Hero down in a mad gold rush, but the notion that they intimidate their workers and mistreat them is just a total lack of understanding of how the industry works. They’d be an empty office building within a week.

Nobody’s holding guns to anyones heads. Even at Infinity Ward, where people arguably saw the very worst side of business, the vast majority of the studio stayed throughout the combined shitstorm of rumors, uncertainty and docked pay.

As for redundancies, it’s just the nasty side of economics, and every other publisher has also been cutting down both talent and infrastructure. Personally I thought The Saboteur was one of the most entertaining open world games I’d seen in a while, even in it’s unfinished state, but EA basically decided to rush it out the door before it was done, and kill Pandemic when it predictably failed to live up to expectations.

I could choose to see that as a malicious act, but really they just probably couldn’t afford a studio that couldn’t make their production targets. If you run a business on sympathy and wishful thinking, you stop being a business, and start being a charity, and somehow I don’t think that would leave very many operational publishers.

DSB, i agree at some extent with what you said, but lets not forget that more now that ever, some companys practice mobbing in order just to avoid free thinking, people that are better preper and have their own voice, that is what i meant and i believe that you can be a very profitable company without doing this kind of treatment, maybe this issue doesnt exist in activision, but for what we been reading for the past years i think this is a key issue there, but hey is my humble opinion, maybe you are right, but iam kind of sad with this type of running business, thats all.

Again, you wouldn’t have a company for a very long time if you practiced mobbing, because people don’t have to work there if they choose not to. The critical thing to ask yourself with all this is: Where’s the evidence?

Rockstar was well and truly taken for a ride as soon as they started cutting benefits and raising work hours. Where’s the similar revolt within Activision, if abuse is a company policy?

People are free to imagine what they like, but undeniable there’s a narrative being written about Activision that is not exactly based on investigation and facts. Like I write above in the case of Pandemic, actions that can be percieved as evil are really just economic neccesity. And I really don’t see why it would imply that the people who are still employed are being mistreated.

Personally I thought West and Zampella were the best thing about the entire company, but I have too much skepticism and common sense to buy into the idea that Activision are a fundamentally evil company, in the James Bond sense of the term. I think people just watch too many movies.

DSB, okey for me mobbing is when you dont let your employees have free thiking or willing,when the activites run from the point ¡do what i said¡, because i know better and iam the boss,and when you dont obey, well they put you in places you dont belong, according with your preparation etc, and minimize your wroking conditions (salarie, equipments, etc).

Having said that i do see something of this in activision, with harmonix in guitar hero, with Infinity in call of duty, and even with double fine, because you as a developer cannot dictate the direction the way you think it is best for the game or the way you wanna it, creative and innovation wise , the only thing that matters is leave it how it is, because it makes tons of money, that practice send you a direct message to your subconcious, you maybe dont realize it at first, but you are being mobbing, and the worst part is that this type of practice works, because you always want to climb in the company, so you said all the time yes to your boss, becuase if you dond do it, you know what is going to happen, and on the other hand maybeyou percieve it with a teammate or fellow employee, but becasue is not happening directly to you, you just dont care or you give the blind eye.

I dont have proves, but based on what i been reading, let me think this way, but maybe iam wrong, and iam watching too many movies like you said, or is because iam seeing the things way to dark, but it was great having this conversation with you thanks, and like i said is my humble opinion, and is like you stated this is not happening in activision.

Ah right. In that case I misunderstood. That’s not really what mobbing means. Mobbing is workplace abuse, by either leadership or coworkers.

The Double Fine case was most likely a question of Schafer not meeting production targets, which is supported by the final game feeling pretty unfinished, even with added investment from EA. We don’t know what happened with Infinity Ward, though. It seemed like Zampella and West had a plan as soon as the shit hit the fan, ending up at EA within weeks. That’s not your normal gestation period for “courtship” in a billion dollar industry, but ultimately we just don’t know. They seemed to be treated pretty well before that if you ask me, though.

Harmonix and Guitar Hero on the other hand are both great examples. There’s absolutely no question that Activision completely failed to make proper use of that IP, and that’s a huge shame for all involved. I’d say that’s their biggest fuck-up in more than a decade. That’s a clear cut case of incompetence and greed.

I didn’t mean to imply that you watched too many movies, you’re making perfect sense, but the whole idea of an evil organization terrorizing its workers, as it is often laid out, is just not very probable. Activision isn’t the roman empire

I don’t think either of us know how Activision handles its IPs or its studio heads though, or how much they’re involved in development, beyond the fact that they like big franchises, and they like adding studios to those to maximize what they can get out of them. You might be right that they interfere too much, but I wouldn’t know.

Personally I’d say you need to give people a certain ammount of space if you want to benefit from their creativity, but there’s no way of knowing whether Activision thinks differently or not.