Why do gamers hate Activision?

http://investor.activision.com/games.cfm What a terrible lineup of games, franchises that drip with money. None of them are really great they just get attention like movies with massive FX but have terrible scripts and substance. Singularity was the last good game they published although for some reason its shooting wasn't as fun as their previous game Wolfenstein. This Dan guy keeps repeating the same message in different ways it's annoying, I know you can't shit where you work but you got to admit you smell a bit. Games companies eventually won't work for Activision I mean would you really? I imagine promises of their ideas will be in the pipeline and then they're not allowed to say shit when they're fired in case of a law suit. And...come on, they even tried to remake Goldeneye...how cocky was that? Goddamn travesty.

I don't like Activision because they make stupid business moves. Bobby Kotick quotes taken out of context? Alright. I don't like how they lock developers out of their buildings, fire employees without paying them royalties, thus resulting in a class-action lawsuit consisting of ex AND current employees, and the fact that after acquiring Blizzard, virtual pets and items were now on sale. Good job Activision. We shifted hate from EA because they started releasing good content like Bad Company 2, Mirror's Edge, etc etc.

Hmm. "GR: But I still don't understand what drives a lot of the hate. People don't engage in the same kind of behavior in regards to successful companies like Nintendo, Rockstar or Valve. What makes Activision different? DA: People are eager to see a company like Activision fail, and I think that's part of it. It's fun to rebel against authority" I don't think it's fun to rebel against authority. You know what I don't like about activision? The fact that they take a game/franchise/dev company/IDEA, and twist, squeeze and beat it until it's unrecognizable. or Dead. They are the Most Greedy company in gaming by my view, and they don't look at gamers as gamers, or games/ideas as that, they see statistics and money. "a new True Crime game? No. Not Top Tier enough. Cancel it." "Guitar Hero? HELL YEA release them until people can't stand them anymore! Then stop altogether." "Call of Duty? Now This is Top Tier, release one a year from now on.". I CAN'T STAND ACTIVISION. Evil evil evil. not to mention THEY are the ones that ruin a game/franchise then they blame the smaller dev company that they own and shut them down. BS.

I hate them because of the whole "screwing Infinity Ward, overproducing Guitar Hero to the point where music games became culturally irrelevant, not marketing games that they didn't want to succeed" and essentially being the WWE of the video game world. Too big to work right, overly bureaucratic, etc. Hopefully this comment doesn't get kotakued.

Perosnally, I dont hate Activsion nor do I want to see them fail. I'm just so sick and tired about seeing them start a franchise, have it acheive incredible sucess, and then force it down throats SO MUCH that we get sick of it and then it loses all relevence to gamers. This happened to Guitar Hero in only five years. Their whole idea of using a franchise until all thats left is dead rotten carcus may work for them in the short term, but what happens when we all get sick of Call of Duty. Besides WOW and Starcraft,(which are still Blizzard franchises) Activsion will have no oringnal franchises left and will probably experience some serious problems. To reprhase my ealier statment, I don't want to see Activison fail. The last thing I want to see is a lot of honest, hard-working people lose their jobs, many of which probabley have families. That being said, if Activsion deosn't learn to take more risks and create some new IPs (it's not like they're short on cash) this is a sad and very likey future.

I don't know who this Dan Amrich is; but I like the cut of his jib.

Great article. I really enjoyed reading it.

I dont disagree with activision's ability to make great games, i just want them to seriously back more than cod and casual stuff. Cod is a fantastic game, and its great that its still fun after this long, but its going to get old at some point, and that point is gonna come a lot faster if the only thing in activision to compare it to is itself.

Sorry for the typos. I can't seem to edit after posting. Sorry.

I used to love Dan Amrich's podcast while he was at OXM. I respect him and always respected his opinion. Plus he struck me as genuine and someone I would enjoy having as a friend. When he moved to Activision as community manager I listened to the first dozen or so One of Swords podcasts he created and eventually, the unthinkable happened, I felt as though I was listening to an apologist and simply tuned out. Reading this nice article showed me that Mr. Amrich hasn't changed his tune. Perhaps venting on a podcast why you are upset with what people on the internet are saying pejorative things about your company defeats the purpose. It's entertaining occasionally but not more. Dan Amrich needs to laugh this stuff off. Perhaps he's not paid to do that. Therein lies another problem. When I listen to him now I feel like I'm listening to someone with an agenda, albeit with good intentions, or someone who genuinely wants to lift the morale of his new colleagues by championning their cause of putting a congenial face on their work. I simply tune out when I feel I am participating in a glorified commercial. I' sorry Dan. I don't mean too give you flak. It's not personal. I just wish you were an "Independent" again. You know, one of us. Just like the Talk Radar guys who never make me wonder if I'm being indoctrinated by listen. They are just cool guys shooting the sh!t and making me laugh. Plus I'm intrigued what interested you to take this job. I listen to approx 10 video game podcasts per week and I don't have time to start listening to Publisher-specific podcasts. I hope you are nonetheless thriving. To weigh in on the spirit of this article, perhaps I too have been a harsh judge of Bobby Kotick, who seems to have become a lens for my ire about what is going wrong with my beloeved passion of video games. I react to what I hear and what I hear, though possibly a misrepresentation, is quite unflattering to Activision. I'll give Mr. Amrich the benefit of the doubt in his research that his boss is being misrepresented. My gripe with Activision is: 1. Though there are many Activision games in my collection, the best of which is Wolverine: Origins, I always feel like Activision games are really cool but lack polish, which Origins level design suffered from. The most evident comparison in terms of polish is Prototype -vs- Infamous. Why did Activision have to rush Prototype out the door and make a potentially amazing game feel so unpolished compared to Infamous. 2. The Activision penchant for pushing games that are annualizable is another gripe. I don't like incremental improvements in sequels. I want to see an overhaul like in Halo or Rock Band. There are so many games out there that by the time I'm ready to play a sequel to a game, I need at least two years between games. I'm a 5 to 8 hour per week gamer and I've just been weaned off the Call of Duty series after loving CoD4 due to over-saturation. Guitar Hero Metallica admittedly was a labor of love and it was downhill from there in my opinion. Perhaps Guitar Hero 5 showed some remnant glow, but 3. Another gripe is made evident by the Rock-Band versus Guitar Hero comparison. Rock Band is a darling to customers with a steady flow of DLC. Activision needs to sell sell sell new games. I just think other publishers resonate better with me, even though Activision games are very cool on the surface. 4. Admittedly, I don't know the details but suing Double Fine over Brutal Legends struck me as Activision being an imperilaistic bully. 5. I'll admit that I appreciate Activision not imposing Online passes to play the online components of their games. I'm rather disgusted with that. So Mr. Amrich, I know you believe in your job, but Activision's actions seem to speak for themselves, regardless of the head-office drama. I will be the first to download your podcast in iTunes when you eventually transition into your next job. Sorry if I am being hurtful. I've been wanting to express this for a while now.

Yeah I am pretty pist that no questions about the killing of developers came up, but I understand it wasn't a serius interview. Also, I just want to point out that Call of Duty can't be taken as a hardcore game anymore, since all the preps and jocks from my school say that Black Ops is their favorite game of all time. I mean, really?!? One guy even said he hates playing games by himself, because it's boring. Damn I thought that was funny.

I'm sure new/forgotten ip's will be made if people stopped buying COD, like what happened with Guitar Hero (Rock Band is better) and Tony Hawk (Skate is better). problem is, EA can't make a good copy of COD, because Battlefield only gets PC attention, and Medal of Honor isi pretty crappy. If frat boys put COD down (which they won't because of MW3) then Activision will drop COD. (or at least not make one every year.)

I only heard about singularity through Gamesradar and really wish they had promoted it better seeing as it was great and other than cod i dont really play any of there games so thats really all of where my dislike lies in that one thing.

This article made my day. <3 Dan Amrich

I remember back when he was DanElektro on Gamepro a decade ago, constantly being real, real shitty to their real fans on the website back when it was just a fledgling and the chat would die every few hours or so. It got to the point where about 20-some-odd constant users ended up getting fed up and leaving to form their own website, PGNx. He even eventually came on to the board to try and defend himself, with another inflammatory statement. And now he's trying to circumvent the damage done by saying he was misquoted, or joking? Get off Kotick's nuts.

Telltale is making a new King's Quest game? Nice, very nice.

The reason I hate Activision is because, as someone who will be entering into the game development world in probably 3 years time, I hate seeing a big company like Acti just throw smaller companies away when they stop obeying every command that they freaking give them. They've become the big bad hated company for a REASON, and that reason is because they're everything people hate about big business. They're impersonal, they care too much about profits and not enough about giving new companies a start, and they effectively gutted one of the most popular game dev companies, Infinity Ward. It was after they pulled that shit that I said I'm through with them. Last game I bought from Activision was BOps and it just solidified everything I thought about them. I don't buy a game to get the same thing dumbed down, I buy it to have an advanced experience and to see progress. Not "Oh hey, Treyarch, do us a favor, make your next CoD game exactly like a combination between the first Modern Warfare and your shitty game World at War. They'll buy it anyway because they're suckers."

Eh hate the Activision/Blizzard merger.. playing WoW for several years, game was hard now its catered for easy mode just to sell more...

I don't really hate Activision, they just bug me sometimes. Like the way they completely failed to generate ANY awareness of Singularity. That was a mistake. The fact that they shuttered Bizarre. That bothered me. But they've done some good things...put Beenox on the future Spider-Man games? Great idea. Greenlit Prototype 2? Hellz yeah. And even though they ran Guitar Hero into the ground to the point where they had to kill it off, that means they can focus on different things now, right? Maybe some of the marketing money they're saving will go to making sure people are aware of Singularity 2...you know, if it exists. Ever. I may dislike a lot of things about Activision, but if I can name things I like about them, that shows that they're at least doing SOMETHING right, and that's good enough in my book.

I, personally, know exactly why hate Activision - they suffer from what every mega-corporation suffers from: stockholders. Ideally, all the money they get from their cash cows CoD and Guitar Hero, after being filtered through the pockets of the C[X]O's, should be used to invest in new ideas and to take on new risks, which should be ultimate cycle for a company, especially one invested in a creative medium. However, their financial interests collide with any kind of creative internal interests, as seen in most every franchise they have.