Activision/Vivendi Merger Looms, Fallout Continues

Ever since the announced merger between Activision and Vivendi Games the community has been all aflutter with speculation and fallout. Here we are, six months later, and the shockwaves continue to resonate throughout the industry as the actual merger looms closer. Gamasutra has an in-depth investigation of what this deal actually means and what some of the details might be.

Comments

Fallout Continues?

[vertinox]

Well, I'd certainly hope Fallout 3 would continue development seeing neither Activision nor Vivendi have anything to do with that game. ;)

Re:Fallout Continues?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still, that does seem to be the most important part of the story. Editors, please include more about Fallout and less about Vivendi and Activision. TIA

Re:Fallout Continues?

[Drooling Iguana]

I was very disappointed that this article had nothing to do with a sequel to Loom, though.

Re:Fallout Continues?

[Spy der Mann]

I was very disappointed that this article had nothing to do with a sequel to Loom, though. Loom was made by LucasFilm Games, not Activision. Altho a Loom/Fallout merger sounds quite interesting... :)

Re:Fallout Continues?

[Eudial]

I was very disappointed that this article had nothing to do with a sequel to Loom, though. Loom was made by LucasFilm Games, not Activision. Altho a Loom/Fallout merger sounds quite interesting... :) Unfortunately, it looks like they're gonna build it in shockwave :-(

Re:Fallout Continues?

[Anonymous Coward]

Loom was done by Lucasfilm Games, but the developers were from Infocom. That's why it actually doesn't look anything like any other Lucasfilm game.

it will be disaster

[unity100]

i started online gaming with diablo (brief stint for a month) in 1998, and then at the same year with starcraft, full fledged.

i witnessed how blizzard, a fantastic gaming company, was totally f@cked up by a shitty merger resulting in despicable shareholder pressure, losing vision and path. oddly, starcraft as a game rather escaped the disaster that has befallen blizzard as a company.

what happened to wow could be shown as the perfect example on how a trend setting game has been turned into a pitiful cash cow, just after the fashion of gamebreaker of the gaming world, soe.

Re:it will be disaster

[moderatorrater]

I'm curious about how you think they screwed up World of Warcraft. One of the great things about Starcraft was how everyone had played it, no matter whether they were a hardcore gamer or not. The same thing's happened with WoW. They've developed the story fairly well, the mechanics are well balanced and open to being used to tweak your character but without requiring it, and created an experience that's unmatched by anyone in the genre (wow, that last sentence sounds like an ad).

I just fail to see where they've abandoned their morals and lost vision/path. I'm honestly curious to hear your views on what's happened.

Re:it will be disaster

[OMNIpotusCOM]

He's Emo. Anything that turns a profit is bad, especially if it turns a profit partially because of a merger with a larger company, even where the larger company mostly stays out of the way. You see the same thing with Halo and the Bungie and Microsoft partnership. People think that Bungie lost its way after Halo 1 because of the merger, when it's more appropriate that Microsoft just wanted to secure the stability of a company that had created the flagship program.

He probably still thinks Ultima Online would be successful were it not for EA's influence, when the truth is that EA kept UO alive.

Re:it will be disaster

[garylian]

The only thing Blizzard screwed up with WoW is their pathetic lack of new content.

In the time that WoW has had 1 major expansion to it, EQ2 has had 4.

SOE understands that you have to keep the high-end gamer more satisfied with new and challenging content, as well as appeal to the lowest common denominator. It took them a long time to figure out the lower portion of it, but they keep the 20+hr a week gamer more happy.

Re:it will be disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you just not have the faintest idea what "emo" means?

Re:it will be disaster

[unity100]

a promising content game been turned into a game in which you are put to toil for 2 months on average on 5% gear progression, each expansion nullifies your hard earned gear and introduces new rep, gear grind, so that you can just keep on paying.

it is precisely calculated. you cant get 20% advantage, you dont get 1%. the advantage is noticeable during progression, but minimum to the extent that you wont be making good progress lest that you may be able to quit the game, after satisfying achievement lust. it is precisely tailored to be a timesink to make you pay continually.

progression is a good thing, and everyone enjoys it in games. yet, progression in such calculated and marginalized form is just a despicable method of cash cowing players.

Re:it will be disaster

[Usekh]

Yeah, the biggest MMORPG in history. Man I wish my company could have that kind of disaster :(

Re:it will be disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the majority of high-end gamers are going, "Oh f---- not another expansion, I don't want to grind anymore..."

Re:it will be disaster

[AuMatar]

And the 20+ hr per week gamer is about 2% of their customer base, if that. And those people will stick around almost no matter what. No, what Blizzard needs to do is focus on low end content that everyone will experience, not another high end dungeon that less than 1% of players will ever see.

In addition- I don't want 4 expansion packs. I don't want to shell out 50 bucks more every few months, on top of a monthly fee. Blizzard has been great about not just adding content, but adding free content. EQ2 nickel and dimes you for everything. I'll take Blizzard's way of handling things over Sony's any day of the week.

Re:it will be disaster

[unity100]

earning big bucks doesnt mean that something is necessarily good. give me enough advertising budget and a mediocre product, give me support of a global big buck corp, and i'll even sell painted turd to billions.

Re:it will be disaster

[Kingrames]

...short for emotional?

Re:it will be disaster

[Usekh]

You know that is a really easy thing to say but just how do you measure if something is good then? positive reviews? amount of people playing? amount of money made? just how much more popular it is than any of it's competitors? In all of those WoW is ahead by a large margin.

Re:it will be disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is a difficult concept to grasp, but nothing is intrinsically "good". It means I am the only one who can decide if I judge something as "good". What other people qualify as "good" is absolutely of no consequence to what I qualify as "good" (unless I define "good" as being in concord with other people).

WoW have absolutely no interest to me. To me, it is not even a mediocre game, it's a just a boring pastime that is used as an excuse to do nothing. You like it? Great! But even if I'm the only one on earth who think WoW is a turd, it doesn't change the fact that I think WoW is a turd.

Re:it will be disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually he's being realistic. The doom of all of the good game design houses from back in the day have always been the Corporate Overlords, uncaring about what makes a game and more into that bottom line...

And for a clarification, EA may of kept UO alive, but they killed the Ultima in it.

Re:it will be disaster

[Trahloc]

... you cant get 20% advantage, you dont get 1%. the advantage is noticeable during progression, but minimum to the extent that you wont be making good progress lest that you may be able to quit the game, after satisfying achievement lust. it is precisely tailored to be a timesink to make you pay continually. ... So to get your point right... an online rpg should have a beginning, a middle, and an end where you can then stop playing and go "I finished WoW!"? I thought the whole point was to play a character while exploring new and interesting stuff with friends, thats what the expansions do. Or are you going to commit suicide once you get your next promotion at work because "I finished Life!"?

Btw, I stopped playing wow over two years ago because my work schedule shifted out of sync with friends and family so the real fun part of the game died for me. It's an chat room where you get to kill and blowup stuff, no different than going to the pub. Except you can do it with family and friends on the other side of the globe, nightly.

Re:it will be disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's his, where's yours fucko? Go ahead, I dare you use LOLcats as a reference, all they do is bastardize one of the original meanings.

Re:it will be disaster

[OMNIpotusCOM]

Sure, that may have been the way it WAS 10 years ago, but we're talking now, and getting past that stigma will let you realize that three of the most popular gaming companies in the world are owned or in partnership with much larger companies. Valve is owned by Vivendi, Bungie used to be partnered with Microsoft, and BioWare is currently partnering with Microsoft.

Now, I'm not saying you're entirely wrong, because all you'd have to do is look back at Rareware and their Nintendo ownership before you see your corporate overlord strawman, but Rareware also released some of the most popular and innovative games during its partnership with Nintendo - Goldeneye, Killer Instinct, Donkey Kong Country, Blast Corps, etc... The basic "evil" that came out of that deal was that they were supposedly not allowed to develop their own IPs, that's what they said anyway. So what'd they do when they broke away from Nintendo? They released Viva Pinata and whatever the fuck their other 360 flop was.

No, the mergers and partnerships of today are more like the big company helping the little company than it was back in the day. Microsoft shoveled money to Bungie, Vivendi shoveled money to Blizzard, and the resulting games are better for the money that was dished out and the lack of influence the bigger company exerted.

The hostile takeover is a thing of the past when it comes to companies in the public eye. How many people do you know who won't buy another EA game because they keep buying out their competitors (Madden is the only NFL game)? I know many.

Re:it will be disaster

[JorDan Clock]

Yeah, but WoW has had plenty of content added that wasn't released as an expansion. In fact, since the last expansion, they've added three major instances and voice chat. I really don't see expansions as any kind of metric for content. Blizzard doesn't need the 20+ hour a week gamer to be happy. They need all of their customers, gamer or not, to be happy. That's why WoW completely trumps EQ2 in subscription numbers. And when it comes to a games success, nothing really says it better than how many people paid for it.

Re:it will be disaster

[Dachannien]

"Emo"? I think you meant to say "a Democrat".

Re:it will be disaster

[OMNIpotusCOM]

Now THAT'S the way you question word usage! =)

Re:it will be disaster

[sammyF70]

hmm .. you're not the only one who thinks WoW is not good, though answering as AC makes you quite a turd yourself I'm afraid.

Re:it will be disaster

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

While I agree, and wish more people felt this way, multiplayer games have a bit of a catch: Some games depend entirely on having a good userbase to be enjoyable.

I'd say as far as personal enjoyment of gameplay goes, one of my favorite games that brought me the most enjoyment was playing Natural Selection 1.04 in the Clan216 server.

Some combination of the gameplay and having a server filled with regulars whom I knew I could trust lead to a level of consistent enjoyment I've yet to find in many years of gaming after that.

But even if I go fire up NS1.04 (which I still could, if I were so inclined), it would be nowhere near the same experience as playing with the people I used to. Instead I'd be running around in empty servers, or stuck trying to convince 16-20 friends that they should go out of their way to play and then deal with what they personally find "good".

Sometimes you're stuck making sacrifices. A large number of people liked CS beta7 more than 1.0C, and 1.0 more than 1.3, and 1.3 more than 1.5, and 1.5 more than 1.6. If people didn't suck it up and adapt to the changes they found bad then they'd never have anyone to play with and the community would be so scattered that it would shrivel up and die.

Personally I really don't like WoW that much, but I played it for a long time because there were parts that I enjoyed and it meant playing with the friends I like to game with, so I put up with it. There is a lot to be said for it too, I've yet to find a game with as nice interface for client side modification -- something alot of other games would outright ban for fear of cheating but instead allows for endless customization.

Re:it will be disaster

[AdeBaumann]

>It's an chat room where you get to kill and blowup
>stuff, no different than going to the pub.

Dude, I want to know which pub you frequent...

Re:it will be disaster

[dintech]

Pay attention to the link. It's easily confused with this one. This little guy is much happier though.

Re:it will be disaster

[Daswolfen]

I think he is referring to the fact that they are really pushing the Arenas as an eSport. While I don't think that anything in WoW should be a eSport, the things that they have done on the PVP side hasn't really affected the casual or PVE Raider that much. Bizzard has pretty much always kept close to the original lore of the the Warcraft universe (except for a couple of major retcons... i.e. the Draenei). Of course, I wish they wouldn't bow to China so much... I really want to play a Pandaren!

Now, if he was referring to Bard Hero, I for one welcome our new Activision overlords and look forward to thrashing my way through Azeroth with my guitar controller :)

Re:it will be disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet it's the pub with an IMSAI in the corner always asking if you'd like to play Global Thermonuclear War.

Re:it will be disaster

[geminidomino]

Now, if he was referring to Bard Hero, I for one welcome our new Activision overlords and look forward to thrashing my way through Azeroth with my guitar controller :) Guild wars beat you to it. :)

Re:it will be disaster

[Leonard Fedorov]

I don't think Valve has anything to do with Vivendi any more - given they self-distribute via steam and the orange box retail was done by EA...

Re:it will be disaster

[garylian]

No, the reason WoW trumps EQ2 in subscription numbers is that it came out of the gate with a much better product, and it had a much lower requirement for processor/memory/GPU.

EQ2 was a mess when it was released, with SOE still sticking to their formula they had in EQ1 of grind, grind, grind, and making things difficult for the sake of difficulty. Stuff like corpse recoveries and having to do time consuming quests just to change your bind point.

WoW came out with lots of fun right out of the box, and not a lot of unnecessary hassles. Time sinks were much less in WoW. Blizzard did a great job out of the gates. And since then, they've been slow as hell to add a lot of content.

They've long since fixed those problems, and in my opinion, EQ2 is now a much better product than WoW.

Adding an instance is not a huge amount of content. I'm fairly certain SOE has released that much content for EQ2 without a box set, and they've still had 4 box sets released to WoW's 1.

Re:it will be disaster

[unity100]

you still dont get the point.

a bar would be a nice place to hang out. but the bar goes out of being a nice place when bartender takes up greed and tries to get the most out of you regardless of what you want to do, forcing you to drink a bottle of whiskey with small tequila glasses and charge you every glass. this is how wow has become.

Re:it will be disaster

[Avatar8]

That really only applies to EA and all the great talent that they sucked in, chewed up and spewed out all over their inferior products.

Blizzard has always delivered top quality games. I have yet to be disappointed with any of their products.

Re:it will be disaster

[brkello]

You just sound desperate now. WoW is the most polished, most enjoyable to the masses, MMORPG to date. It didn't do it through advertising like you try to imply. They did it because they took the idea and improved upon it. Your complaints in previous posts show that you don't like MMORPGs in general. WoW is arguably the best MMORPG out there and that is why so many people play it. Your bitterness about it is confusing. You don't like MMORPGs, we get it. That doesn't mean Blizzard sold their soul to the devils or made a bad game. They just made a genre of game you don't like. Can you understand the difference?

Re:it will be disaster

[brkello]

Yeah, but the problem is not that you don't like it. The problem is that your reasons for not liking it has to do with the genre and not with this specific game. I am not a big fan of Apple products because I think they are over priced. I can still understand why other thing they are a good product though. Your bitterness about this is what is so confusing. Fine, don't like the game...but you still have to post about it and say that it was a bad move on Blizzard's part. That's just stupid.

Re:it will be disaster

[brkello]

You sound more reasonable than the guy you are responding to. But why do you wish more people disliked what you dislike? I just don't understand this sentiment. If we were all the same, we would be boring. I sure as heck won't see the Sex in the City movie. But I have no problem with it being made and enjoyed by people (as long as those people don't drag me to it).

Re:it will be disaster

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

It's more I wish more people enjoyed what I liked than me wishing they disliked what I dislike.

I have no problem with people liking something I dislike, though with the same stipulation you said as far as not being dragged out to it. I just think gaming encourages the dragging you out more so than anything else, because people depend on your presence for the full experience of the game.

Re:it will be disaster

[unity100]

oh oh yea. im desperate. bitter. lack 'skiLLz' and whatnot.

you should go back to the pvp forums in your bambino haven and babble there. i have quit that game to get away from the idiot bambino fanboism you are displaying. go worship at the altar of your cash cowing overlords. i bid you a formal farewell.

Re:it will be disaster

[Avatar8]

I think your numbers are way off. You need to look at it more like a bell curve.

-5-10% of the players are so casual that they'll never see any "endgame" content.
-5-10% are so hardcore they reach endgame rather quickly (a few months at most) and see nothing but endgame for achieving full sets of the top gear. (How you're trying to measure 10-25 people getting a drop in an instance is beyond me.)
-The other 80-90% of us are in the middle. We play how we want, we see what content we want. Hardcore-casual. If I want to raid and possibly get some gear, then I do. If I don't, I had a fun few hours playing with friends. If I want to make money, I spend time gathering resources, crafting, providing a service, doing daily quests, etc. It's all progress in some form or fashion. I couldn't possibly say (neither can you) if that's 1% or 5% improvement every day because there is no end point.

Yes, the one expansion so far nullified a great deal of gear. People complained for all of 10 minutes until they started getting their new gear. At the same time, that expansion allowed the middle of the bell curve, those 80-90% to get gear the likes of which they'd only seen on those hardcore 5-10% or might have one or two pieces of a dungeon or tier set. We'll see this pattern repeated in WotLK.

Yes, it's designed to keep us interested and coming back for more. It's perpetual entertainment, and that's exactly what we're paying for - to be entertained. I'm gladly getting my money's worth and it's actually saving me money from buying other games each month or going to the movies.

Blizzard has always delivered quality. Even if their quality slipped 10%, they'd still be leagues above the quality of most other game producers. I see this merger as a good thing. Finally, someone will be able to compete head to head against the monstrous beast of EA in regards to acquisitions, contracts and resources. I don't think it will affect Blizzard's quality.

Re:it will be disaster

[unity100]

what you are missing is, the game entirely turned into a gear progression game, majority of the content is reduced to this, and what you get happens to be 5% over 3 months. its like drinking a cup of tea with a dropper. and the sole reason is to satisfy shareholder greed.

Re:it will be disaster

[Avatar8]

LACK!?!?!

The only people I have *ever* heard complain of a lack of content were the few quick consumption, over achieving, detail ignoring, hardcore raiders. Those people that level to 70 in a month, raid all the high end instances for a month and once they have a tier 4/5/6 set, they "done" and complaining about nothing to do. This, by far, is not the majority, or even a significant percentage of WoW players.

I consider myself part of the middle group, the casual-hardcore. I've played since beta, I currently have two 70s with two more in the works and five other 40+ alts. I raid three to four nights a week for 3-4 hours a night. Playing multiple characters of various classes and races I've seen a much wider variety of quests than typical players. I know for a fact how much the quick consumers are missing of content. It is barely conceivable that any one person has seen all the content (all quests, all locations, all dungeons) even approaching the 4th anniversary of the game's release.

As someone else mentioned, I hear more often people complaining of too much content. Even people I know who only play one character 20+ hours a week missed some original Azeroth content, still haven't seen some BC quests or dungeons much less participated in the patched content addition we received a few months back.

In the time that WoW has had 1 major expansion to it, EQ2 has had 4. Quantity != Quality

The subscriptions numbers speak loudly, but ask any WoW player and they'll tell you that we see new content every few months for free. I'd much rather receive more bang for my subscription dollars than have to go purchase an expansion every few months.

Re:it will be disaster

[Avatar8]

I still think you have it backwards. I agree that almost all the systems of progression result in gear improvement, but there are so many methods to achieving gear it's much more like trying to take a sip of tea from a 5 gallon bucket. Quest rewards, faction rewards, instance raiding, crafting and PvP are the main methods. Pick two and you've got several weeks of 25+ hours/week play to reach the highest level.

Just because a very small percentage of the population thinks there is not enough content because they *skipped* most of it or the 15% of the game that fits their play style is not enough to keep them interested as long as the players who enjoy the wider variety the game offers is no basis to accuse WoW of lacking in content.

Re:it will be disaster

[unity100]

I still think you have it backwards. I agree that almost all the systems of progression result in gear improvement, but there are so many methods to achieving gear it's much more like trying to take a sip of tea from a 5 gallon bucket. Quest rewards, faction rewards, instance raiding, crafting and PvP are the main methods. Pick two and you've got several weeks of 25+ hours/week play to reach the highest level. methods matter little, when all of the methods are carefully calculated to make you toil around 3 months for 5% progression.

either time needs to be shorter, or percentage higher. for they have made gear progression the entire centerpoint of the game.

underbog differs little than blackrock depths. same goes for every other instance in the game. basically they are the same thing, in different combos, in different looks.

Re:it will be disaster

[garylian]

Sorry, but I wasn't a power gamer by any stretch of the imagination.

I duoed the game to lvl 60 with my wife on our mains, with a few trips into instances with guildmates. It took us 9 months to get to 60, and we found we had nothing to do but grind for the futile hopes of completing some armor set, or doing PvP. We don't PvP, and the reason we quit EQ1 was the grind factor. So, lack of new content was very hard to deal with.

In EQ2, we've played for over 18 months, and still don't have toons at level cap together. I got one toon to level cap just before the level cap went to 80. The world is so much bigger, with so much more to do, that I haven't gotten bored like I did with WoW.

Yes, Quantity != Quality. But lack of New Content DOES = eventual BOREDOM. And it is boredom that has a sizable number of folks quitting WoW for AoC, or dreaming of Warhammer, or hoping that some other game comes along that gives them something NEW to do. Will many of those people go back when AoC's end game proves to be boring? Maybe, or maybe Warhammer will take them on.

All I know is that my over 1K member guild saw over 800 people alone join our PvE side guild in AoC, and most of those quit WoW or some other game to give it a run. Another 200+ PvP'ers left WoW for AoC, as well.

There's a reason why the next WoW expansion is so anticipated: Players will finally have something new to do!

Re:it will be disaster

[Avatar8]

I don't doubt you, but I simply feel you missed a great deal. I have an image of someone making a long journey to the Grand Canyon, walking to the edge, looking over it for 5 minutes and then leaving saying "Okay, I've seen it."

When WoW first came out there were 2500 quests per faction. Each faction has three different starting zones and those zones are completely different play up to level 20. From 20 to 60 there are numerous paths to take to see different zones and different quests. When BC came out, the quests doubled at least and provided another new starting zone with a new 1-20 experience for each faction. Add to that the PvP opportunities (I don't PvP either) and all the instances, really the game is endless.

It is simply unfathomable to me how anyone, even playing only one character could possibly experience everything this game has to offer. That's why I get the impression that people simply gloss over everything or skip major amounts of content entirely.

I don't question that there is a lack of new content, but I don't think it is necessary when those complaining haven't bothered to look at all the old content.

Activision Stock Price - ATVI

[moore.dustin]

In case you were wondering, yes, Blizzard and its assets have pretty much been priced into the stock already. Now that the merger is looking solid and ATVI revised profits upwards a few weeks ago for 07, the stock has gone to $34 after hovering around $27 for a few months.

A friend close to the two companies says: A stock price of $40 is likely to take some time (18+ months) and would be contingent on the performance of both Activision Blizzard and EA. EA will probably need to slip to the #2 publisher in order for Activision Blizzard to consistently trade over $40.

World of Guitar Heroes ?

[terrymr]

Guitar Heroes of Warcraft ?

Re:World of Guitar Heroes ?

[cbuskirk]

Done!

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/features/bard/bardclass.xml

Re:World of Guitar Heroes ?

[Lacota]

Already implemented:Level 70 Etc.

Re:World of Guitar Heroes ?

[saramakos]

Man those orcs wield a mean axe!

Re:World of Guitar Heroes ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was actually listening to Through the Fire and Flames from the GH3 soundtrack when I clicked that link.
That undead guy is a mean guitar^Waxe player.

are these publishers even necessary?

[DragonTHC]

Large publishers seem somewhat obsolete these days. These publishers are hard-wired for physical distribution. They spend probably half the whole budget on marketing.

With publishers like steam, I'm not quite sure these old school publishers are even necessary.

A small development house can now sell on steam and provide their own marketing in the form of a website and advertising on web television networks like revision3.

That way, they can provide most of their budget to the actual game instead of 9 television commercials and booth babes. Though we'd miss the booth babes.

sound off, are these bloated draconian publishers really still necessary?

Re:are these publishers even necessary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those distribution streams serve a niche market. There are only so many people who use steam or watch web TV commercials.

There are orders of magnitude more people who shop at Walmart and decide what game to buy based on how big the display sign is.

There is money to be made from that market, money enough to justify billions of dollars of sales.

Until steam reaches those kinds of numbers at the expense of traditional distribution, these types of publishers will continue to exist.

It is only what you make of it

[BlackCobra43]

If you have "Keeping-up-with-the-Jones" syndrome then no, you will never be satisfied with WoW because there will ALWAYS be someone with more time to lose on the game than you. The same applied to "skill-based" mmorpgs like UO; the more you practiced and accumulated wealth the more advantaged you became.
 
Your problem is envy, not mmorpg design.

Re:It is only what you make of it

[unity100]

your problem is psychological projection. research what that means.

my issue is not with OTHERS in the game. my issue is with my own progression in the game. regardless of how far ahead or behind you are compared to others, its still a '2 month grind for 3.5% gear progression' game.

Valve and Vivendi

[OMNIpotusCOM]

Last I had heard was that they were suing each other, but still wanted to be partners. Vivendi was suing Valve because Vivendi felt lied to about the popularity of Steam, and Valve was suing Vivendi over some deal Vivendi had with cybercafes where they were doing leasing on the original Valve games... something like that. I hadn't heard any updates on either of those topics, so I figured they just got settled out of court.