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Leaked Activision Memos Compare CoD, Guitar Hero
Gaming site Giant Bomb got its hands on some internal memos at Activision discussing the status of their flagship Call of Duty franchise. One exec asks, "Isn't Call of Duty today just like Guitar Hero was a few years back?" A response assures him that Call of Duty is more firmly entrenched than the recently-collapsed music game genre, and adds that Activision doesn't get enough credit for innovating. Quoting: "If you really step back and dispassionately look at any measurement—sales, player engagement, hours of online play, performance of DLC—you can absolutely conclude that the potential for this franchise has never been greater. In order to achieve this potential, we need to focus: on making games that constantly raise the quality bar; on staying ahead of the innovation curve; on surrounding the brand with a suite of services and an online community that makes our fans never want to leave. Entertainment franchises with staying power are rare. But Call of Duty shows all of the signs of being able to be one of them. It’s up to us. ... Activision doesn’t always seem to get the credit it deserves in terms of innovation in my opinion, but there is no short supply of it, even in our narrower slate." An editorial at Gamepro takes exception to this, saying that Activision should stop trying to milk its franchises dry.
They stopped milking everything they own dry. Makes you wonder how long they can stay in business like that!
If you really step back and dispassionately look at any measurement—sales, player engagement, hours of online play, performance of DLC—you can absolutely conclude that the potential for this franchise has never been greater.
Wow, they sure think highly of themselves. Do they actually use this type of self promotion & recognition internally?
In order to achieve this potential, we need to focus: on making games that constantly raise the quality bar; on staying ahead of the innovation curve; on surrounding the brand with a suite of services and an online community that makes our fans never want to leave.
Marketing speak too? This sounds *too* much like a pat on the back to me. I wonder of they leaked this on purpose?
There really does not seem to be much that is newsworthy about this. Someone rightly asks the question whether this franchise could die off like their other one, but they are assured that it is still performing well but that they need to ensure that they keep improving the games.
Wow. Captain Obvious does it again!
Guitar Hero had a single, limited idea. There is just only so far that you can push the genre before getting ridiculous. The attempts to add things like a story mode to music games always fails, and since they offer additional songs as DLC then there is very little reason to upgrade to the next game.
There is much greater potential for COD, so it will have a much greater lifespan. And if they stop "milking the franchise" then what would they do instead? Another shooter, but with a different name? Let's face it, the gaming public don't seem to have lost their endless facination with shooting people in games. Sometimes publishers can be faulted for having little imagination by producing sequels, but this is one genre where it is the gaming public who are to blame.
I dont think the franchise will last too much longer if this comes to fruition.
This looks as much like a rebuttal of every CoD fan's outrage over Activision running Infinity Ward into the ground as I could have come up with. They "leaked" what appears to be answers to an interview that will never happen because the public already knows the answers. Activision has squandered their ability to pump out a quality CoD cash cow annually and they want fans to feel that is not the case. I'm not sold. Battlefield 3 trailers are out now that make it look like the new front runner.
Seriously, it sounds like PR material.
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
Where's the innovation? First they copy Guitar Freaks and milk this new franchise dry, then they keep releasing Call of Duty games that basically only differ in their titles. Where does Activision deserve credit for anything besides overstaying their welcome?
...or were they... set loose?
Imagine what would happen if the Valve shat out a dozen mediocre portal-based puzzle games in the span of a few years. Oh no! The Portal genre has collapsed!
All right, let's see. "Entrenched", "sales", "player engagement" those line up well, we're off to a good start. "Hours of _____" isn't even on the board, while "online play" is, and that looks promising. "DLC" doesn't help any. "Quality" and its variations isn't on the grid, but perhaps it should be. Oh, good, "innovation" and "curve" are both there in good places. "Services" isn't on the grid either, but "community" is, and —ooh, hang on!
"Sales", "player engagement", "online play", "innovation", and "staying power!" Yes! BINGO! What do I win?
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
CounterStrike (and CS:S) is still one of the most popular shooters in the world. It also has, to this day, a large competitive scene.
What did the original developers of CS, and eventually Valve, do to make it such a long standing success? It was a FREE mod to anyone who owned Half-Life, and even when it went gold you could still download freely. Despite it being free, it sold 4+ million copies! Likewise with CS:S to anyone who owned HL2, this still sold 2+ million copies. You can still hop on either game and find tens of thousands of people playing on thousands of servers. While the later releases of the CoD series (COD4 and beyond, we'll say for our purposes) may have more users consistently playing, they're also not over 11 years old!
Personally, I'm hoping that http://www.firefallthegame.com/, which will be FREE as well, also has the competitive nature and staying power of CS. Got to play it against the developers at PAX East '11 (they kicked the crap out of our group, btw -- all very solid players), and it's a nicely paced shooter which flows very well. Scott Youngblood (of Starsiege: Tribes) is the lead designer, and many of the devs come from the competitive shooter world; Quake, CS, Tribes, etc. They're all down to earth guys, but they also have the desire and drive to make a game for gamers, by gamers. Not this "Rehashing the same old bullshit", Activision-style.
Making money should be the byproduct of a great game, not the reverse. COD4 had the right formula, but Activision milked it so hard and alienated the PC gaming community. That's a LOT of business they've lost out on.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
This is a great question and one we have thought about a lot, but there are several key differences between the two posts worth considering. First post quickly reached incredible heights, but then began a steady decline. Your reply, on the other hand, has steadily grown every single minute of its several-minute existence.
Your post was a new genre which had incredible appeal, but which had not stood the test of time. Your reply exists in a genre-self replies--that has shown remarkable staying power and wide appeal over a period of years. Plus, your reply has inspired a massive, persistent, online community of players, making it perhaps the 'stickiest' reply of all time.
If you really step back and dispassionately look at any measurementâ"views, reader engagement, hours of online activity, moderationâ"you can absolutely conclude that the potential for this post has never been greater. In order to achieve this potential, we need to focus: on making replies that constantly raise the quality bar; on staying ahead of the innovation curve; on surrounding the brand with a suite of services and an online community that makes our fans never want to leave. Post franchises with staying power are rare. But your post shows all of the signs of being able to be one of them. Itâ(TM)s up to us.
Nocturna81 doesnâ(TM)t always seem to get the credit he deserves in terms of innovation in my opinion, but there is no short supply of it, even in his narrower slate, As I said, when you look at this list of projects and the innovations embedded within them, it is a pipeline any commenter would kill for.
Your post is one of the biggest commentary franchises in this discussion. You have assembled an unprecedented team of some of the finest writers and commentary talent in the world to keep this post ahead of the curve.
Sigh. GamePro. Why the heck are they comparing TV shows and movies to video game sequels? You'd be better off comparing them to sports. Year after year, we get the same sport, same rules, just shuffling the faces around and maybe changing the rules now and then. But that doesn't stop people from watching or playing them nor does it stop the games from being interesting. No, what's important in sports, like in video games is that you get some good competition and entertainment out of playing/watching them. You go in expecting a unique, fun experience when you play a sport or a video game, and from that you derive the entertainment value.
I don't care if they release tons of Call of Duty games, as long as they're good. The problem with Guitar Hero wasn't the fact that they oversaturated the market, but because people got tired of it. Like Dance Dance Revolution before it. Like the Wii a few years after it was released. They cater to the "casual" gamer, who won't necessarily buy every new interation of a game and who will only play once in a while. Call of Duty is definitely different in that it ropes in the so-called "hardcore" crowd, the folks who will buy a game on launch day and are long time, repeat customers who play regularly. The only question is whether Activision can keep the quality level up and satisfy these gamers who have so many other games to play (Gears 3 is coming out, so is Rage and Duke 4) . And of that, I'm not entirely certain....
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
"raise the quality bar; on staying ahead of the innovation curve;"
Call of Duty is a movielike experience in singleplayer, followed by a few maps and a quake3 like FPS. Theres nothing innovative in that, is a "blockbuster" formula, just that, a formula. Theres almost zero innovation in the game, other than the basic mechanics that are already done. Really this talk has not much to do with CoD at all. Is bullshit. But a executive talking bullshit is not new. These people are leechers that get the benefict from the work from the people under him withouth adding nothing.
-Woof woof woof!
Activision, like so many others, is milking the hell out of subpar franchises while the best and most promising end up neglected with minimal attention and generally no sequels.
Personally, I'm still waiting for a sequel to ET. I want to fall into wells in high def.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
My take is that exec A (the CoD is approx. Guitar Hero exec) has valid concerns. My reasoning is that Activision is doing the similar things with it that they did with GH: 1) They are milking the franchise for all its worth by doing annualized releases, whether or not they are really ready or called for. Admittedly towards the end the milking of GH was even worse with an annual major release and then multiple mini releases (GH: Metallica, GH: Barbershop, GH: My kid's 5th grade chorus). Although, I think some of that may already be beginning for CoD. Even if they stick to annual releases, I'm not convinced that people will continue to want CoD that frequently. 2) The highly touted "innovation" is coming at decreasing pace. I'm not going to knock that CoD:BO had some innovation nor deny that they have been more responsive about "fixing" multiplayer. Just that if you think about the biggest recent innovation, that came out with CoD4:MW and most things have been incremental improvements at best since then. That isn't to say that incremental improvements won't sell (see Madden), just that eventually people will have to take a long hard look as to whether the next shiny is really that much different than the current shiny. At some point, people will start deciding it isn't and then things will go to hell for their sales. Right now I think CoD is coasting on its own inertia. Everyone "has" to buy the next CoD because that is the game that "everyone" will be playing. Once, people decide that Game Z (Battlefield 3?) is much more shiny and interesting, I think there will be a rapid exodus that will take Activision by surprise.
This sounds like "I don't want to lose my cushy job" glitterspeak. The only potential I could gather out of this franchise is if every other player stops making war games, which will never happen. Maybe they have a competitive game engine, but unless CoD is orgasmic, its potential will still be limited. Unlike Activision's dairy farming, companies like Valve shine like a vineyard harvested at its peak. I just hope they don't turn their Diablo and Starcraft franchises into dairy farms like WoW.
CoD is not innovative at all, been there done that 10 years ago. It's just become the defacto first-person shooter game. But those are a dime a dozen.
Sounds to me like they're getting a little concerned about Battlefield 3. It really does have the potential to tank CoD if done right.
"Activision doesn’t always seem to get the credit it deserves in terms of innovation in my opinion"
We're talking about the same Activision that bought the Guitar Hero franchise, released an exceptionally crappy Guitar Hero 3, then added the full band concept into part 4 after Harmonix (the original creators of Guitar Hero) released Rock Band and made it popular? Oh, and then Band Hero, lol.
Too bad for Activision that they already lost the talent involved in making CoD a great franchise. After Activition withheld millions and millions of dollars of royalties, then fired Zampanella and West for trying to do something about it, Infinity Ward was reduced to basically an empty shell. Many of its former employees now work for Zampanella and West again at Respawn Entertainment building a new franchise, and I can't wait to see what they make for us.
Guitar Hero is on hold, sure, but Activision is planning a new game in 2012/13. RockBand by Harmonix is still going strong, albeit not as strong as 3 years ago. They continue to release DLC, and they are selling compatible Fender guitars (yes, real guitars with strings and everything) faster than they can make them to use in the game. Not only that, there are two new guitar training games that just came out and are selling pretty well.
So this dead music genre is news to me. No longer the biggest fad, but far from dead.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
I think they need a big name behind the game. Grab writers and a director from Hollywood to do the story. The gameplay they've already pretty much got nailed down, but imagine if they had some big name writers and directors behind the next COD. That's where they can innovate and continue to blur the lines between video game and movie.
or else!