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As someone said earlier, welcome to capitalism.
Just like big movie studios of hollywood make sure hit movies to keep owners happy instead of trying new risky avenues for film art.
Exactly same happened to games when EA, Activision etc. got big. Games evolved to be franchises instead of new cool experiments in game design. Big studios hate risks! They just do the next CoD instead of risking profits.
I'm so sick of this. Every year new FIFA, Madden, CoD, Battlefield, WoW expansion not to mention all the console franchises.
Sure independent small studios still try to make innovative games. But they have very limited resources and it is not cheap to make a modern game. So if your innovative game flops, your company could die with it.
But still, SC2 not being worth it. Those guys are amazingly greedy. Success of CoD made investors want more and more and more to get stock price higher. And here we are. SC2 declared a failure. Not making *enough* money.
I hope they die.
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Activision have a policy with games now, if it can't be made into a franchise that can have new releases regularly then they won't do it at all. Hence why SC2 doesn't fit into that at all (even though they are doing to do expansions and who knows probably DLC, that i guess is not enough).
Making a game that has 1 payment then allows the user to play on your service for years, is not logical to them anymore. You are using their Bnet 2.0 so their logic is of course you should pay. Could be a bit of a problem in the future considering we have no alternatives. Considering SC2's huge budget, long dev period and massive marketing costs (didn't they spend $25 million in SK alone for that i heard?), that probably factors in as well.
On May 02 2011 18:12 ComTrav wrote: This is a "The AAA games industry is freaking out because AAA games are expensive to make, and the Web guys making crap like FarmVille are making tons of revenue without spending nearly as much" sort of thing, not "Starcraft 2 wasn't profitable" sort of thing.
Eventually Activision/EA/Other major developers will realize that developing game applications for Web browsers/FaceBooks/iPhones/iPads/other FOTM is not their core business.
This is important as well. They see others making money from seemingly almost no money in this social gaming trend, and when you compare a blockbuster game like SC2 business-wise it's an easy choice.
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On May 02 2011 18:21 Coeus1 wrote: As someone said earlier, welcome to capitalism.
Just like big movie studios of hollywood make sure hit movies to keep owners happy instead of trying new risky avenues for film art.
Exactly same happened to games when EA, Activision etc. got big. Games evolved to be franchises instead of new cool experiments in game design. Big studios hate risks! They just do the next CoD instead of risking profits.
I'm so sick of this. Every year new FIFA, Madden, CoD, Battlefield, WoW expansion not to mention all the console franchises.
Sure independent small studios still try to make innovative games. But they have very limited resources and it is not cheap to make a modern game. So if your innovative game flops, your company could die with it.
But still, SC2 not being worth it. Those guys are amazingly greedy. Success of CoD made investors want more and more and more to get stock price higher. And here we are. SC2 declared a failure. Not making *enough* money.
I hope they die.
People want huge impressive games and movies yet they don't want the developers/directors to appeal to the masses. If a game has a budget of several million dollars you gotta make sure you cover your losses. It's easy to say that there should be more innovation and risky avenues when you're not the one responsible for hundreds of jobs and the future of huge companies.
I agree to a extent about companies pushing devs into "safe mode" but i also understand why this is done.
Also according to Wikipedia Blizzard is not controlled by Activision
On July 9, 2008, Activision officially merged with Vivendi Games, culminating in the inclusion of the Blizzard brand name in the title of the resulting holding company, though Blizzard Entertainment remains a separate entity with independent management.
So Activision can push for more money grubbing schemes but in the end Blizzard has the final say.
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Vivendi owns both companies, they saw an overlap in their gaming division, hence the conglomerate merged both corporations. Activision and Blizzard don't own themselves.
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I hope this is the end of activision and blizzard. Activision sucks so much it's unreal that blizzard even considered them.
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
T_T Come on Blizzard. You can't just stand there and take this.
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activision's just mad that black ops is failing hard.
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On May 02 2011 18:36 da_head wrote: activision's just mad that black ops is failing hard. Black Ops made more money on the release month than StarCraft II will make in it's whole existence. And they release 1 CoD a year...
From a CFO perspective StarCraft II is indeed a semi-failure, they don't even talk about it when they do Financial reports by the way because it's a marginal game (about 2% of Activision Blizzard operating revenue). Don't think Activision-Blizzard is making a TON of money, it's hard times for nearly every one in the industry.
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On May 02 2011 18:36 da_head wrote: activision's just mad that black ops is failing hard.
they are happy they sold sick amounts, they don't care wether the game is good or not
and btw it's good enough for people to buy the next CoD sadly
my hope lies with DICE and BF3 though
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i'll care about what Activision thinks of SC2 when they turn HotS into a console port.
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On May 02 2011 17:42 Gheed wrote: Of course Activision would think that. Activision is a soulless husk of a company headed by a person whose only interest is hoarding more money
How is that different than any other company? People who shit on Actvision for being greedy capitalists better be complete anti-capitalists or what theyre saying is completly hypocritic.
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How come people even play CoD? Seriously I see no difference in between them anymore. Actually, nothing has happened to the franchise since the very first CoD. Or fuck, even the original MoHAA lawl...
Bothers me those shitty game is selling so good.
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On May 02 2011 18:40 busbarn wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 18:36 da_head wrote: activision's just mad that black ops is failing hard. they are happy they sold sick amounts, they don't care wether the game is good or not and btw it's good enough for people to buy the next CoD sadly my hope lies with DICE and BF3 though
BF3 will be just as streamlined and CoD'ed up as all the other modern shooters. EA runs the show and they got DICE on a much shorter leash than Activision has Blizzard.
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Can certainly see the point, the 50 bucks I paid for the game is nothing for the houndreds of hours of online play I've spent. Hope they find some system to generate extra revenue without going to a flat pay per month model.
To the people who complain about the cost, name me another hobby you can maintain for 5-10 hrs a week for years that cost a total of 50$.
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Hope they all get hit by a car or at least start bringing out good games, instead of milking franchises a la Call of Duty.
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On May 02 2011 18:45 karpo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 18:40 busbarn wrote:On May 02 2011 18:36 da_head wrote: activision's just mad that black ops is failing hard. they are happy they sold sick amounts, they don't care wether the game is good or not and btw it's good enough for people to buy the next CoD sadly my hope lies with DICE and BF3 though BF3 will be just as streamlined and CoD'ed up as all the other modern shooters. EA runs the show and they got DICE on a much shorter leash than Activision has Blizzard.
bleh now that you reminded me of that.. you're right and I'm extremely sad about that
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It ultimately boils down to what we think we should purchase. Our purchasing power sets the tone, if we feel its worth paying monthly or microtransactions or what have you then so be it, if we say hell with that the game's good, but I dont wanna go this route then you elect not to spend the money. Your purchases are votes that you like something a company is doing. I remember when MW2 didn't have dedicated servers, I chose not to buy it. I didn't make a thousand forum threads or ramble on about crap, I didn't give them my money.
Capitalism works because if you don't feel something is worth it, you don't buy it, the company profits less and on we go. If you buy blindly and are an uninformed consumer who gets vortexed in by marketing hype then the fault only lies with yourself.
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i'd pay a monthly fee to play sc2, and if that's what it takes to convince the corporate bigwigs that a game is worth spending development money on, then that's what I'll do. We live in a world where the cost of development new, innovative games is prohibitively expensive, and I don't want to see my favorite pastime die because they are using an outdated (1 time pay) pricing model.
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
On May 02 2011 18:45 karpo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 18:40 busbarn wrote:On May 02 2011 18:36 da_head wrote: activision's just mad that black ops is failing hard. they are happy they sold sick amounts, they don't care wether the game is good or not and btw it's good enough for people to buy the next CoD sadly my hope lies with DICE and BF3 though BF3 will be just as streamlined and CoD'ed up as all the other modern shooters. EA runs the show and they got DICE on a much shorter leash than Activision has Blizzard. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case. I don't see how BF3 can avoid what happened to DA2 and the latest C&C game. Publishers have so much power over the developers.... It's so sad T.T
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