Slashdot Mirror

WoW is indeed losing subscribers. Not a little but a lot. It's still very profitable though, so I'm not sure where the "hemorrhaging cash" comes from, but indeed it IS hemorrhaging players, to the tune of about 1.1 to 1.3 million every quarter for the last 3 consecutive quarters (prior to that they were losing in the low to mid six digits per quarter.)

Eventually it will reach the point where it starts to become unprofitable until they scale down their servers, which they are still running as if their subscriber base was about 50% larger than it is now (presently at 8.3 million whereas it peaked at 12.7 million.) 8.3 million is a lot of revenue (I can't say how much exactly given that the monthly subscription cost isn't the same in every region, which is what this 8.3 million figure includes, and they don't provide that information in their quarterly SEC filings.)

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Activision-Blizzard-Q1-2013-World-Warcraft-Loses-1-3-Million-Subscribers-55474.html

Their SEC filings (which detail their financial status according to GAAP, as required by law) for both annual 10K and quarterly 10Q can be found here:

http://investor.activision.com/sec.cfm

I'm sure that if they could keep their subscription numbers secret from the players, they probably would (and I don't blame them, because if I were a games developer I would want to keep real-life issues out of the game itself for the sake of avoiding effects on the actual gameplay given that it is a social game) however that information is very pertinent to investors so it needs to be disclosed there. But if/when they start downscaling their servers, you can expect player drama, so I'm betting that they'll avoid that as long as they can.

HAHAHHAAHa.
Straight from Wikipedia. Yeah. Activision sure doesn't pressure them on accounts, of growth. Nope not at all~

Hint: No one buys a company to NOT control it in some way.

Riddle me this, Batman:
How and activisionBlizzard be separate companies when it has the same ticker ? ATVI

http://www.activisionblizzard.com/corp/index.html

and the annual report:
http://investor.activision.com/annuals.cfm

Tell me how you can read those and thing they are completely separate? Clearly Activision publishing has input into blizzard delivery.

Well, in terms of dollars, the console definitely reigns supreme. The PC game software market is about $700 million a year. Console game sales are over $5 billion a year.

Where'd you get that 700 million figure from? WoW's revenue alone was 1.2 billion for 2010. See page 55: http://investor.activision.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1047469-11-1413
11 million WoW subscribers * 12 months * monthly subscription fee adds up to a fair bit.

You could say it's rent and not sales, but whatever it is the PC games market is clearly more than $700 million a year.

There were 4.5 million units of Starcraft 2 sold in 2010:
http://investor.activision.com/common/download/download.cfm?companyid=ACTI&fileid=440263&filekey=2a37de98-400f-4916-9bb3-ae5ddf1b86b8&filename=ATVI%20C4Q10%20slides%20FINAL.pdf

Add Valve's Steam and non-Steam sales, then add everyone else.

Well, in terms of dollars, the console definitely reigns supreme. The PC game software market is about $700 million a year. Console game sales are over $5 billion a year.

Where'd you get that 700 million figure from? WoW's revenue alone was 1.2 billion for 2010. See page 55: http://investor.activision.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1047469-11-1413
11 million WoW subscribers * 12 months * monthly subscription fee adds up to a fair bit.

You could say it's rent and not sales, but whatever it is the PC games market is clearly more than $700 million a year.

There were 4.5 million units of Starcraft 2 sold in 2010:
http://investor.activision.com/common/download/download.cfm?companyid=ACTI&fileid=440263&filekey=2a37de98-400f-4916-9bb3-ae5ddf1b86b8&filename=ATVI%20C4Q10%20slides%20FINAL.pdf

Add Valve's Steam and non-Steam sales, then add everyone else.

Doesn't exactly seem likely to happen, given there's no sign of a PC release for Halo 3 or ODST yet.

Highly unlikely there will be a PC release. First of all, Microsoft has the rights to the Halo universe (they acquired them when they bought Bungie, and when they spun off Bungie, they kept Halo). Secondly, Bungie and Activision have an exclusive 10 year partnership. Thus, it's highly unlikely that Bungie can license Halo but not have it published by Microsoft Game Studios.

Third, well, I think Halo 2 on PC didn't do terribly well, mostly because it required Vista. So with potential returns like that, it's not likely that Halo 3, ODST or Reach will ever make it to PC.

It isn't the last Halo game ever - after all, Microsoft owns the rights to Halo and you can be sure they're going to capitalize on it, but this will probably be the last Halo game from Bungie for a long while.

during last night's marathon session of Starcraft 2: Liberty (the RELOADED release)

You know, you can say you pirate things because it's a civil matter. However if you out what you pirate, like in this case, the copyright holders can sue you. You have already admitted you pirated and seeded the newest Starcraft 2, so I have personally wrote to the copyright holders to let them know that and everyone should do the same.

The addresses to contact are

Blizzard: https://us.blizzard.com/support/webform.xml?locale=en_US
Activision: http://www.activision.com/index.html#contact|en_US
BSA: https://reporting.bsa.org/usa/internet/edit.aspx
FBI: https://tips.fbi.gov/

The press release is missing from blizzard.com, it's on the Activision site: http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=466030

I do hate it when people neglect to cite their sources, but most journalists probably received this as an email.

I almost forgot.

Since we're on the topic of games

ArenaNet (Guild wars): http://www.arena.net/contact.php

Ironclad Games (Sins of a Solar Empire) http://www.ironcladgames.com/contact.html

Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft) http://us.blizzard.com/support/webform-us.xml?gameId=0

Firzxis (Civilization IV) http://www.firaxis.com/support/

Electronic Arts (lots of games) http://www.info.ea.com/company/company_prlist.php

Valve (Steam: Counterstrike, other games) http://www.valvesoftware.com/contact.html

Activision (Gun) http://www.activision.com/index.html#contact|en_US

So big deal if Nintendo and EA are showing up. We care if any big publishers are going to be there!

Now ads are obviously out of place in certain genres or settings. If I was playing Counterstrike and saw an ad for Axe, I wouldn't care, but if I was playing Thief and saw an a similar ad, I'd probably be pissed off. If I was playing a futuristic RPG and some ad agency wanted to be creative and display an ad for Coca-Cola in the year 2500, I'd probably appreciate the fact that their ad was tailored towards my gaming experience and they went out of their to "enhance" the ad. However, if I was playing Final Fantasy 13 and saw an ad for Coke, I'd probably be able to read a rant on some message board complaining about how someone's gaming experience was tainted, and I would generally agree.

Anyways, my point is that ads do have their place, whether they're welcome or not. If they blend into the game well, then more power to them, let them advertise. If they stick out like a sore thumb, then I don't want to see them and feel I have the right to complain then. But as always, we have can vote with our dollars, and if you don't like in-game ads, then don't buy games that have them.

It's isn't all about DirectX and OpenGL, you know. OpenGL only does graphics, it doesn't deal with input or audio.

Besides, the bigger issue is of writing truly crossplatform software, which isn't trivial once you get past simple programs. Games today use multithreading(pthreads on Mac/Lin, Win32 threads on Win) and other advanced features. For example, how do you open files asychronously on all three platforms? Also, it must work on Xbox 360, Xbox, PS3, PS2, and Wii.

Is it worth it supporting less than 1% of the market? Not all games end up on the PC because of its low marketshare compared to modern consoles, so why should they care about other platforms that have a smaller marketshare? Look at Wikipedia and compare the PC sales to console sales. Or check the annual report of large game publishers(such as Activision) and find their net profit per platform.

The only problem with your description is that Call of Duty games are not published by EA; they're published by Activision. So maybe you should be griping about them and not EA.

Activision never went bankrupt. They did use a tax law that allowed them to reclaim paid taxes after the videogame crash which probably helped.

According to their own website "BHK Corporation, a company controlled by Activision's current executive management team" in 1990, but as it is a publicly traded company that stuff happens. It hasn't been merged into another company or ceased to exist at any point in time.

Is there a FPS game out there that has done a good job of keeping hacks out? I play Return to Castle Wolfenstein, based on the Quake 3 engine, and there are plenty of players who can see through walls, and others that seem to have a supernatural sense of aim. I hear even the punkbuster enabled retail version has been hacked.

It seems trusted computing may help this some in the long term, but I find it hard to trust that I'm not wasting my time fighting an impossible opponent at times.

I always find it amusing when people slam the Gamecube because it's too kiddy. Invariably, people who make this claim don't own the console. Repeat after me: the Gamecube is not kiddy, despite repeated claims to the contrary.

Even if you're not looking at M-rated games, there are several excellent games that are enjoyable for all ages, including F-Zero GX, Mario Kart, Metroid Prime 1 & 2, Pikmin, and Viewtiful Joe. I'd also like to see a kid play Ikaruga for more than five minutes before moving on to something easier. Finally, the PS2 has games like Powerpuff Girls Relish Rampage, Monsters Inc., and Piglet's Little Game, while the XBox has such Triple-A titles as Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure, Tom and Jerry: The War of the Whiskers, and Fairly Odd Parents: Breakin' Da Rules. Does that mean that Microsoft and Sony were "gunning for the kiddie games company role" too? Cutesy graphics does not necessarily equal "kiddie games."

Firefox seems to bypass the Activision window blocking access to the "mature" site. All you have to do is open the link in a new tab (middle-click or ctrl-click on the link).

It's just a silly onclick event handler on the link. Turn off javascript, and you're in. Right-click or middle-click and you're in (those don't register a click event). If you're into being productively lazy, write a simple Greasmonkey script that strips onclick event handlers from anchor tags on Activision sites (maybe be smarter about it and only strip those that call the checkCCCookie() method). Use a proxy to dynamically replace http://www.activision.com/cookie/js/global.js with an implementation that stubs out checkCCCookie().

This silly little check isn't going to stop anybody. So far it doesn't appear that they've implemented this half-assed check for patch downloads. If they do, they will have just shot themselves in the other foot.

really? I just went to http://www.activision.com/en_US/game_list/game_lis t.jsp and right-clicked on the Quake 4 link, and it bypassed the credit card thing. Firefox 1.0.7.

Actually I've been working on the Q3 code for a number of years. I wrote this and this for example.

I wrote the Enemy Territory 2.60 Release for Id/Activision under contract with them.

I've also had the engine source for over a year under contract with Id/Activision so I could write this. You might have heard of this little get together called Quakecon. It was used to broadcast the qualifier and tournament matches.

Care to tell us what exactly is your experience with the q3 engine code?

It was called Interstate '76 ;-)

Awesome game... too bad I can't get it working on my latest system anymore :(

Interstate '76 http://games.activision.com/games/i76/index.html

I don't know what you're talking about when you say ET is not free... From the Official Web Page (sorry, it is Flash-based), to the FAQ at the previously mentioned 4players site; It's free to download and play. Modding of the game is encouraged, and there are several mods, maps and skins for it. Getting ahold of the code for the game is possible, for the purposes of making mods.

However, since it uses the Quake 3 engine, it may not be as free as you'd like it to be. (I'm not sure whether the source code for that is out there and available now - but given iD's past releases of the Quake and Quake 2 engines, it will be soon). Feel free to pick some nits about the definition of the word "free".

Thanks for pointing out the other games as well though, the more the merrier.

You might want to try Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which is free and multi-player. You can get links to download locations here. And if WW2 shooters is not for you, you can try the ETF mod, which makes it a sci-fi shooter instead.

Other good multiplayer games are Starsiege: Tribes and Tribes 2, both were freely available, but it seems now only Starsiege:Tribes is.

In 20-30 minutes you should be able to play a game or two of any of those I've mentioned.

The screenshots are amazing! It looks like Unreal Tournament. It certainly looks promising.

For those interested, here's the Dark Places engine.

My favorite FPS so far is ETF. It's a mod for Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory(free as in beer).
Cube is not bad either.

Maybe they'll team up with Activision next? It's not as is they've not done anything together before...

Or Return To Castle Wolfenstein?

both ET and the patches are on the id FTP, and about all of the usual download sites (and plenty others too). Try activision's rtcw site, and click the Enemy Territory tab at the top, there are several mirrors for both ET and the patch listed there.

A better (IMO) list of mirrors for ETF is here at PlanetETF, also including the torrents which have been posted already.

ET is about 260mb, and ETF is just over 200mb. Not an awful lot to download for essentially two completely free multiplayer FPS games.

On a completely unrelated topic, I'm still freaking pissed at SP2 for making Enemy Territory crash every time I load a new map, amongst many other software products. Maybe I should go back to Win98/2k and thank MS for not "enhancing" them to the point where my other apps don't work.

Try Enemy Territory while you wait, certainly better than Tux Racer.

What? No link? How about GTA 3? 2? 1? No? hmmm... So what you're saying is that you're a COMPLETE FUCKING HYPOCRITE. Right?

You have no problem when a video game shows a white man shooting people (so long as he's not shooting at black people right?) or even a fucking squirrel killing people, and you're cool with showing Some black sterotypes may be true, but as soon as there's a game that actually comes pretty damn close to the truth people start bitching... "Oh, it's racist..." "You're showing a black man killing - that's a stereotype.." No, it's the truth. Black people can kill. So can whites, and asians and puerto ricans and russians and anyone else. Please, just STFU!!!

I guess I should have mentioned RtCW as well. Damn, missed another. :)

btw, the Windows attitude is not constant, I just have a temporary attitude because there are some major offensives in affect from the greed mongers. I do like and use some of the stuff that comes out of Redmond but I'm not going to rally around any of their products in any public forum until they lighten up. If they had their way we wouldn't even have these great games for non-Windows platforms since they seem to believe we must be stealing something from them if we don't contribute to their bank accounts.

burnin

something like this you mean: atvi vs star trek

First, GTA3 was unarguably seminal in video gaming. No doubt about that. It framed not only how games are played, but how they're perceived, how they're designed - through and through GTA3 changed everything about video games.

Enter GTA:VC. It did what - great music? This new GTA is as groundbreaking how? They have mountains? Eating? Minigames? Ragdoll physics?

Rockstar has produced one groundbreaking game. One. And, they've been living off it ever since. Even Midnight Club II, which was racing bliss at its most pure, was developed by a company they bought that had designed the original Midtown Madness series for Microsoft on the PC. Maybe they're waiting for the next gen systems to really do something new, but as far as I'm concerned Rockstar is an overrated one-hit wonder that, apparentely quite accidently, hit an oil well in their background and are sucking it dry. Most of their other work has been luck (Midnight Club II) or medicore to above average at best (State of Emergency, Revolver, Manhunt, etc). What remains to be seen is how long the public will endure variations of the same thing, made more difficult by Rockstar in that other companies are trying to draw from the same well.

No GTA? That's right, because it's an old game. Instead they have True Crimes:Streets of LA (IMHO far better gameplay than GTA3 with more blood, bad language and all the naughty things that make your points moot).

• UT2004 (Also Unreal - 2003 work as well)
• Neverwinter Nights
• SAVAGE: The Battle for Newerth
• Enemy Territory
• Quake3
• Americas Army

• Forzen Bubble
• Scorched3D
• Legends (Tribes2 Clone)
• Chromium (Space Invaders Clone)

Someone has already discussed ICO. So here's some other games Greg apparently didn't play.

Beyond Good & Evil: Not only is the main character strong, forceful, and not sexualized, there are several other characters in the game that are as active in the resistance movement as she is. I guess Greg was one of those people who didn't buy it.

Prince of Persia: So you save the Princess. But once you do (and she kind of saves you, the male), she's forthwright, mostly capable, and witty. And exhibits a remarkable ability to slide through cracks. Still, it's quite obvious as you play the game that your character, male character, is an obnoxious idiot, and that the Princess has been right all along.

KOTOR: Not only can your main character be a female, but one of the primary NPCs is also a Princess-Leia-esque female. Sure, you save her, but she doesn't really need it. Same goes for another female member of your party. They're both quite capable. Well, as long as you level them up. So I guess Greg was focusing on the stereotypical macho Mandalorin?

Deus Ex: IW: Again, main character can be female or male. One of the supporting female characters is diplomat of one of the paths you can take, and is quite forceful.

There's many others, but I'm getting bored of listing them for someone who probably doesn't care. Immediately I'm thinking of Anachronox, Panzeer Dragoon Orta, and then there's a large portion of the old Sierra adventure games. The King's Quest series, the Gabriel Knight series, Phantasmagoria series, and the Quest for Glory series were all developed by women. If I thought a little harder than Greg did in his article, I think I could conjure up some more.

So Greg might have a point: in the games he plays, which doesn't seem like many save the original Metroid and the first 2 hours of ICO, women are probably under-represented. For the rest of us, you know, the people that play games, I think it's fair to say that while it's not an equal representation yet, it's far better than it was even 5 years ago. And oh yeah Greg, you make mention of it, but apparently not enough to convince yourself. There are quite a few women in leadership positions in the game industry, who are approving these "embarassing" "malecentric" games. For example, the president of Activision is a women . Hmm. Greg doesn't play games, and he doesn't know about the people that make them. Can I be executive editor too?

I am not sure, but I have heard that the game Vampire the Masquerade used Java, combined with a graphic engine coded in C. Therefore, they could get the speed of C code and ease of coding of Java.

There are at least two games that use Java for processing their game logic: Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption and Chrome released last year.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption uses Java as its game scripting language, as described here (free reg required) under the "What Went Right" section, 3rd topic (3. Using Java as a scripting engine.). I guess it pretty much says it!!!

However, the current crop of stuff from them (e.g. extreme sports games) is quite good too.

#1 Lets see...Austin, TX or LA, CA? Score one for Cali.

#2 Activision, THQ, Vivendi, and a host of studios both publisher owned and independent are located there.

LA is the place to be in you are a video game maker who likes to buy all the talent, suck it dry as fast as possible and then fire that talent and start again. Whoa, did I just hear someone describe EA?

looking for free games? or retail games($)?
Me, personally, I've been playing Battlefield 1942, which just got Punkbuster added to it. Then there's the free Desert Combat mod for it. Also been playing Call of Duty. And Battlefield : Vietnam should be out within the next month or so.

As for free... How about America's Army? I haven't played it in a long time, but I loved it when i did play it. There's also Wolfenstein : Enemy Territory.

Enemy Territory is an incredibly fun team-based game and completely free. Most people are migrating from the (dead) RTCW now, so if you want to join teams and grow along, this is the time.

the one that is 2 clicks in from this flash based site. (Enemy Territory)

it's based on the Return to Castle Wolfenstein engine, which in turn is based on the (already open source) Quake III engine. :)

I agree. Enemy Territory is an excellent FPS. It's free, and downloadable in windows or linux binaries.

Here's a link. Just click on the enemy territory link up at the top and you'll get a list of download sites.

And it should definitely run on the pc's that you have. Here's the min requirements from happypenguin.org:
Additional System Requirements:

>a computer running Linux x86 (kernel >= 2.2 - 2.4 recommended, glibc >= 2.1 - 2.3 recommended)
>Running a recent and mainstream distribution is recommended
>Intel Pentium III 600Mhz processor or equivalent
>128 MB RAM
>Hard Disk drive with at least 230Mb of disk space
>OSS compatible sound card
>A 100% full OpenGL compliant 3-D video card and Linux driver.

Try few free (of cost) games:

strategy

FreeCiv - new version was just released, FreeCiv is not as good as Civ3 in single player, but it's very playable in mp

TEG - if you want simple strategy (it's risk clone)

lgeneral - panzer general clone

action

RTCW ET - IMHO best team action game

Cube - simple multiplayer FPS, with nice graphics

Armagetron - 3D tron implementation

sport

CannonSmash - table tennis simulation

foobillard- billard simulation

misc

Scorched 3D - scorch (or for younger slashdot users: worms) clone

I've recently been sucked into the competitive gameplay world (where teams organize into divisions, leagues, etc, tournaments are held periodically for cash and prizes, and all that good stuff). As much as I used to chuckle at the thought of "pro gamers", it turns out that there can be just as much nuance to strategy and execution to appreciate in watching a multiplayer video game as there is in watching say a football game. At least to my mind.

One cool thing about mods is that they can be used to improve games to a point where they're suitable for competition. The ETpro mod by bani for the game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory alters some aspects of gameplay to make it more suitable stopwatch competitions.

The other thing mods can do, and this is kinda neat, is actually add in features to accomodate game spectators. Again, using ETpro as an example, bani included some small changes to help shoutcasters quickly identify players and get stats during the match. A multiview feature was also added so that a spectator could watch the game from several different points of view with a Picture-in-Picture style setup.

In the future, I see mods stepping up to fill in the roles that the original game developers either couldn't think of or didn't want to address because the competition world wasn't their target audience. I can see a mod coming out that can not only handle broadcasting video of the match, but offers optional commentary via an mp3/ogg stream from a caster and presents information kind of in the same way FOX does for football games (current scores, tickers for other matches, league stats for players, etc).

Yeah. Mods are crucial if you want to let your users take your software places you'd never even thought of before.

If your wife liked RtCW then she would probably like Wolfenstein: Enemy-Territory. The best part is that it is free.

Maybe my copy is different than your's smart guy. Mine doesn't say Activision O2 on it anywhere. Neither does their website. In fact, good luck finding a current reference to O2 anywhere. Have fun!

And since you really don't know what you are talking about, O2 was never a seperate entity, it was a brand, just like EA Big. Im sorry, your answer is incorrect, please try again later.

bani? The same bani thats trying to turn Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory back into Return to Castle Wolfenstein?

Wow, for such an influential guy you're kinda an idiot.

Gabe Newell = Valve = Half-Life
Nerve = Nerve = Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Man, the just plain wrongness is staggering. Wait until I tell your boys at PlanetWolfenstein. Next thing you know you'll be claiming Splash Damage made Unreal Tournament. You think whoever let you in on the ET source would like to hear about you spreading this kind of slanderous false information about Nerve and Activision?

+1 Inaccurate is more like it.