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Call of Duty - The Lawsuit

Posted by Zonk on from the my-favorite-part-is-when-the-lawyer-filed-a-motion dept.

Gamasutra is running a follow-up to their annotated contract piece from last month. As you may recall, the contract became public knowledge because of a court case between Spark unlimited and Activision regarding the title Call of Duty : Finest Hour. The article also covers a legal dispute between Spark/Activision and EA during the formation of the troubled development house. Now, the site is running an in-depth look at their legal dispute. The article explores some of the problems that can face any developer/publisher relationship, and how the legal case has affected that already strained situation. "A constant source of friction was Activision's desire to see a fully functioning game early in the development process. 'At Electronic Arts', he wrote, 'the level vision was able to be constructed without the constraints of frame rate, or memory to get the body of the game in and working,' a process which left polish until the end of the development cycle. 'However, under the more risk-averse Activision system, polish happens through the entirety of the process and there is a consistent desire to have the game playable on disc and running at 30 fps.'"

4 of 21 comments (clear)

  1. Agile Game Development by JoelMartinez · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... to see a fully functioning game early in the development process
    Agile game development people ... learn it, love it. IMO, constructing the "level vision" without regards to performance might help get the game approved by management, but will yield more difficulties in the future than it will solve.
    1. Re:Agile Game Development by HappySqurriel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Way back in the day (when I was a game developer, before I 'burnt out') I used to argue that it would make more sense to build a rough prototype of every level in the game (using assets that wouldn't even look good for a Playstation game) and then to work in short iterations to improve the overall quality of the game. I argued that, although early versions of the game would not be useful for public consumption, the overall quality of the game should be better in the end ...

      I don't know if I was correct, but I have been hearing that the basic principles of my idea are being used by more and more development houses because it allows for far more parallel development (meaning you can have a larger team rather than a longer development cycle).

    2. Re:Agile Game Development by nasch · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Unfortunately, this philosophy has the risk of being abused by management who try and pigeonhole you into solving hard problems all the time ('we thought you were happy') and giving the interesting work to their mates.
      I thought the hard problems were the interesting work. Then again I'm not a games developer, so maybe it's different there.
  2. Re:Am I following this right? by LingNoi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It looks like Spark entered this deal on trust from their ex-employers and got royally screwed on the first game they produced and are trying to get out of the deal while not ending up bankrupt because of the mess EA has put them in.

    Just goes to show that you got to make sure that contacts are bullet proof by a lawyer (wow I guess they are useful after all) before signing anything.

    I don't blame spark at all because if I was reading that agreement I would also just think it was "ok" and sign it. I guess it also shows that even though your an ex-EA employee they can still screw you over.

    As a game programming student even if EA offered me a job I wouldn't take it based on everything I have heard and read these last two years.