Activision says "Fallacy to say that we're not innovating"

[trangurismo]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/fallacy-to-say-that-were-not-innovating-activision-6350347

 

[Schwartz]

Oh gosh, that story is hopelessly pointless. It really doesn't explain anything, other than the guy denying that Call of Duty is the same game made over and over.

 

[RTSolvalou]

What any game company must avoid is having one game look like another, you don't want to play a racing game that looks like it's in the Call of Duty world or something, which is tricky when they put a graphic team onto a new project, they've got to make sure their artwork doesn't slip into the style of their previous project.

Activision released a great game over 20 years ago and as much as I'd like to see it remade or a sequel, I'm afraid that they'll screw it up by churning it out within a year and making it with those CoD style, paper thin, soft drink graphics. The game in question deserves better than that, I'd say 2.5+ years of effort in it's production, and the market is wide open for it to be a huge success, if only there was the means for me to do anything about it...

 

[Stiggy]

Activision are innovative, but not in a way that makes their games better. No, they are only innovative in finding ways to make even more money, i.e. Call of Duty: Elite and the Skylanders figurines.

 

[Terronium-12]

After what they did to Bizarre Creations, they and the entire CoD franchise can go diaf.

 

[Crispy]

This is what makes me fear what will happen to Bungie with they're new IP.

 

[LaBounti]

Why can't people just ignore Call of Duty? I don't care much for it. It sells bucket loads and makes a ton of money every year. Even Activision should ignore the criticism and just keep pooping out Money Making CoD games.

They should focus on everything else. They could have done things by spending money on a New racing game from Bizarre Creations instead of the flop 007 Bloodstone and a car combat racer.

 

[Silent7Sniper7]

My honest opinion is that CoD needs to die off now, MW3 is too similar to MW2 & it looks like they're running out of ideas.

 

[Terronium-12]

They should focus on everything else. They could have done things by spending money on a New racing game from Bizarre Creations instead of the flop 007 Bloodstone and a car combat racer.

Except it's their fault both games failed as they did. Plenty of reviews cite Bloodstone as either a good or pretty good game. Same with Blur; it has a lot of the PGR charm but it was under-advertised. I can't recall ever having seen an advert for either game.

 

[Cowboys965]

I like the campaign in the whole MW series, was amazing, but I think multiplayer wise, map-wise, they are running out of ideas. I feel MW3 has such generic maps, like they're just thrown together, worse than other games. They're just a few rooms in an urban setting here and there.

 

[LaBounti]

Except it's their fault both games failed as they did. Plenty of reviews cite Bloodstone as either a good or pretty good game. Same with Blur; it has a lot of the PGR charm but it was under-advertised. I can't recall ever having seen an advert for either game.

With the same minimal amount of advertising and hype would a new Kudos style race be more successful? Maybe. Bloodstone wasn't a bad game at all. It just didn't have enough driving. Blur did get TV time, its selling point was it was kart racer for grown ups. It wasn't a cart racer at all.

 

[Ellis]

It is odd though with call of duty. People know and ridicule the franchise for not moving on but still buy the games. Give it two more and it will be gone then.

 

[Terronium-12]

I stopped playing after 2. I bought 3 and only went through about fifteen minutes of it before not caring anymore, and then fast forward a few years later when I bought MW for the PC - to this very day I still have not beat it, I haven't even attempted to get past the first few minutes after that training session.

And I have no intention to.

 

[Syntax error]

I stopped playing after 2. I bought 3 and only went through about fifteen minutes of it before not caring anymore, and then fast forward a few years later when I bought MW for the PC - to this very day I still have not beat it, I haven't even attempted to get past the first few minutes after that training session.

And I have no intention to.

Mr T, you are doing yourself an injustice buy not playing the single player campaign for MW. It is actually quite good. I'm not a fan of the TDM style multiplayer but that's my personal opinion.


I tend to feel that MW and the entire COD franchise get's more flack than it deserves. A lot is directed at the games being too similar, but they are sequels after all. If they where too different, people would complain about that. Plus the formula clearly works when looking at the revenue generated from it.

I think the article is pretty poor actually. Doesn't really make a strong argument, albeit the response is pretty weak as well. I actually don't really see what the issue is. Games like COD are know to bring in the revenue and thus the company needs to maintain cash flow, so they will put one out every year. Also if we are to level our sites on Activison, should we not take aim at their other half, Blizzard? Three IP's in constant rotation, you could say that innovation is not their strong point any more. We could also set our sites on pretty much every game dev that has made a sequel.

I'm not too concerned about innovation really. This should not be the issue. To take a look at what happens when innovation is almost forced on the industry, we only have to look as far as motion control. Is it what we as a group really want? Or do we all just want a great game that will be fun to play. Innovation for the sake of it might not be what we are really looking for.

 

[Schwartz]

I could think of a few innovations that CoD hasn't even attempted to add. For example, randomly generated maps and a mode where you have to advance through a generated city. I mean really, its not that hard. CoD just fails to make one significant advancement in their games after 4-5 years. Call of Duty 4 changed the world of online gaming. Don't you remember how awesome that felt? No game has given me that feeling since.

End rant.

 

[Terronium-12]

Mr T, you are doing yourself an injustice buy not playing the single player campaign for MW. It is actually quite good. I'm not a fan of the TDM style multiplayer but that's my personal opinion.

You think so? I may give it another go at some point then.

I tend to feel that MW and the entire COD franchise get's more flack than it deserves. A lot is directed at the games being too similar, but they are sequels after all. If they where too different, people would complain about that. Plus the formula clearly works when looking at the revenue generated from it.

I think the article is pretty poor actually. Doesn't really make a strong argument, albeit the response is pretty weak as well. I actually don't really see what the issue is. Games like COD are know to bring in the revenue and thus the company needs to maintain cash flow, so they will put one out every year. Also if we are to level our sites on Activison, should we not take aim at their other half, Blizzard? Three IP's in constant rotation, you could say that innovation is not their strong point any more. We could also set our sites on pretty much every game dev that has made a sequel.

I'm not too concerned about innovation really. This should not be the issue. To take a look at what happens when innovation is almost forced on the industry, we only have to look as far as motion control. Is it what we as a group really want? Or do we all just want a great game that will be fun to play. Innovation for the sake of it might not be what we are really looking for.

My problem is it's just running rampant. 1 and 2 were fantastic and after that it's pretty much a loose formula. I'd wager at guess at my feeling this way has something to do with CoD no longer following the formula it started out with: War. Not the "wars" in the game now, but wars based on actual events. It appealed to that bit of history buff in me.

This could be the case for other folks feeling it fell apart after 2 as well.

 

[Syntax error]

I could think of a few innovations that CoD hasn't even attempted to add. For example, randomly generated maps and a mode where you have to advance through a generated city. I mean really, its not that hard.

Not coming from a programming background I'm entirely unqualified to make any sort of judgment on how easy or hard it would be to program random generated maps, but I assume there are numerous reasons for not doing so apart from the actual programming itself. For starters there is always the issue of terrain that is randomly generated to be heavily biased in either teams direction. I would assume there would be aesthetic issues with random generated terrain for a game with this sort of complexity in the scenery. Battlefield 3 turned out to be a brilliant multiplayer experience and it doesn't have random generated maps either.

That said, I agree that the sequels are all very much the same. They clearly won't be able to sustain the momentum indefinitely before being forced to either die or evolve. For the time being, they are riding the wave, which is the smart thing to do for the series. From a business decision perspective, why gamble on trying something new with the ip and messing something up if it's working well and topping the charts. You wait till the series starts to stall and hit hard with the new innovations and try and inject life back into it.

his could be the case for other folks feeling it fell apart after 2 as well.

I also felt it fell apart in 2. 3 is a much more cohesive game as far as plot and game play are concerned. Although the game play aspect is pretty similar in all three games. MW3 takes very heavily and liberally from the first one even going as far as having an obligatory sneak mission, obligatory sniper from bell tower à la Pripyat level etc. The level design is better than MW2. Actually I think it's pretty much better than MW2 in every aspect. I personally really enjoyed it.

 

[sesselpupser]

I started playing COD when 4 came out and stopped at Black Ops, which was one sequel too far. I liked the SP of MW, but WAW sucked, MW2's SP was too much and I never got close to finishing BO's because it was just so... Dull. MP wise, MW was the best, MW2 was alright but about as balanced as an elephant on a see saw. It became all about choosing your loadout properly ('proper' seemed to be a silenced UMP with rapid fire, a USP with tac knife and a silencer, marathon pro, lightweight pro and commando pro) and nothing to do with skill, though MW was only just about skill in the first place. It was no Quake 3.

Then BO came out with it's poor maps and general blandness, and I stopped playing it when GT5 came out, which was only three weeks later.

Now I play BF3, I mean I've been playing Battlefield since 2 but I did it alongside COD. BF3 delivers everything I liked from Call of Duty (running, guns) and more (teamwork, vehicles, the inability to teleport across rooms to knife people), so I see no reason to ever go back. I would like more co-op missions though, I liked MW2's spec ops mode. Not too keen on MW3's version of it, though.

 

[CaptainHarlock]

Oh gosh, that story is hopelessly pointless. It really doesn't explain anything, other than the guy denying that Call of Duty is the same game made over and over.

A hopeless story? From GameSpot? There's a first! (Sarcasm)