Why do gamers hate Activision?

Personally, it is understandable the way they milk good ideas. You might hate it and never buy into it, which is clearly good for you, but they need ignorant people to buy the worthless crap so they can make good, solid games. My issue is that unique games, like Prototype and Singularity get relatively little advertising, when compared to COD and other guaranteed hits. They have so much going for them, and if something catastrophic happens, they can always use WoW as a fallback. Come on Acti! Give us some genuine good stuff!

I like Activision, well at least compared to EA

"Activision's Singularity was a critical darling, but didn't make a huge impact at retail" Maybe that's because Activision didn't seem to give two shits about that game. I know the article says there are two sides to every story and things that seem crazy to us make sense to people behind the scenes that have all of the information. Maybe that's true. Maybe they found a study that showed that not marketing a game at all and making sure nobody hears about it is actually a great way to make the game sell. Maybe Raven Software said some bad things about the mothers of Activision employees and Activision punished them by doing their damnedest to make the game fail. Or maybe they were handing out flyers for the game to save money for the next Call of Duty marketing bananza. Until I can see their thought process on setting Singularity up to fail, pounding Tony Hawk, GH, and (probably) COD into the ground, and mismatching games and developers (How was it a good idea to make a racing game developer make a shooter [Bizarre Creations and James Bond]. Their last shooter [The Club], didn't go over well, did it?), I still think they are nuts. If you want the fast answer for why I am sick of these people, here it is: I loved GH to death, but the constant sequels ruined my love I loved Spiderman 2 The Game to death, but the sequels were the exact same game with added glitches on top and my love died down I loved COD4 to death, but the yearly sequels changed nothing and added bugs and balancing issues, effectively killing all my interest in what was once my favorite multiplayer game.

Dan.. just leave me alone...please stop watching me

Ill put it simply (mine is a passive dislike, I don't care enough to hate): - Release good stakeboarding game, next year release sequel with barely noticeable difference, repeat until every last penny has been squeezed from dying corpse of said skateboarding game franchise. - Release bland music game, next year release sequel with barely noticeable difference, repeat until every last penny has been squeezed from dying corpse of said music game franchise. - Release bland FPS game, next year release sequel with barely noticeable difference & no imagination or creativity for full price, repeat until every last penny has been squeezed from dying corpse of said FPS game franchise. Yeah, bending over for shareholders and the buring Singularity. Their only interesting game.

LOL at the first pic, Dan Amrich watches you poop.

I have absolutely no problem with Activision's dev teams: in fact, some of my favorite games for the past few years have come from Activision studios (Singularity, MW2, Spider-Man 2). The main problem is where the company seems to be headed (Singularity got basically zero marketing while Black Ops got its own Jeep, IW basically got a lobotomy soon after MW2 came out, Spider-Man seems to be getting onto the "new game once a year" trend-train that has currently ended in a massive wreck for both Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero). All of my fears seem to be personified in Kotick (filed a lawsuit against West and Zampella after raiding their office and interrogating them for hours before firing them, tried to sue Tim Schafer for using a game whose rights Activision had sold to EA months beforehand in order to prevent a later overlap between the awesome story of "Brutal Legend" and its lame rip-off "Guitar Hero: arriors of Rock", has been quoted multiple times saying stuff like "I want to take the fun out of making video games"). Honestly, I really believe that if Activision just pulled a "BP" (changed a head executive who was making the company look terrible in the news after several disasters and bad decisions for one that never made the news, thus allowing their image to slowly regenerate) by replacing Kotick, my personal ban on Activision would almost instantly stop (I would need to be certain that the new executive wasn't using Kotick as a role model and going down the same path: the gaming community is user-friendly, as in "ask for a donation from time to time, and you might just be surprised how many people are willing to pay extra just to keep games, and their creation, fun") and I might even buy a game like MW3 (even though it hasn't been announced, everyone knows it will). P.S. For bonus gamer respect points, settle any lawsuits you currently are having with former developers, especially popular ones like West and Zampella, with terms extremely favorable for the developers (it might cause a little belt-tightening in the short run to make ends meet, but the happy note those suits would end on would bring many gamers who had been on the fence running back to buy your latest game: I should know, the initial IW kick-out set me on my anti-Activision spree).

See, it's funny because they completely ignored the whole "killing off studios" thing. On a lighter note, Damerich ftw. I actually made fanart of him and sent it to Antista a while ago, but it never got posted. Sadface.

Pitfall FTW

I always love GR and Dan uniting to make something beautiful, but I still wish a few, slightly hard-hitting questions had been asked. Bizarre getting dealt the James Bond game, Singularity not getting a marketing push, etc. And yes, I read the beginning and I wasn't expecting an intense interview. I don't hate Activision near as much as a lot of people (maybe that's because they hired Dan the man Amrich), but there are a definitely a few things I question with them.

When is saw that picture caption, I couldn't stop laughing.

DAN! Stop staring at... that... (Luvs the Dan!)

Laughed so hard when I saw Dan right away!