Activision, coming off the recent firing & suing of the makers of their most successful game ever, is continuing to lose face in the eyes of gamers. I have to imagine that their PR department is reaching for the cyanide pills on a daily basis at this point. "Yeah, we know they made a game that sold 4 million copies in the first week, but we felt it just wasn't working out…" I know, I know, that's a really simplistic way of looking at it, but other, better scribes have theorized what REALLY went down between Activision & IW, so I won't cover it here.
What's bothering me is that Activision is releasing a map pack for their most popular game ever, Modern Warfare 2, at a higher price than previous Call of Duty games. The new "Stimulus Pack" which retails for $15 (or 1200 Microsoft Space Bucks) for five maps, two of which are recycled from COD4. When you figure that COD: World at War's map packs sell for 10 bucks each AND include new zombie modes, this seems a bit under handed to me…
But really, are we that surprised?
Activision has, ever since EA stepped down from the position, taken up the post as the new evil empire of gaming. They've consistently made decisions, statements and retail strategies that frankly defy description. Here they are described for you: Milking the Guitar Hero & Tony Hawk franchises to DEATH, openly stating that they wished to inspire fear in their developers and to take the fun out of game design, forcing developers to create games that can be turned into a yearly franchise, suing EA to stop production of Brutal Legend after Activision themselves said they didn't want to make it anymore… the list could go on and on and on and on and on…
My question in all this is what the hell are they thinking? Yes, we all like money. It buys things and keeps roofs (rooves?) over our heads and foods on our tableses… precious foods… The lengths to which they seem prepared to go to get it though is just staggering. I find it hard to believe that there are informed gamers out there who would stand up in support of Activision should, say, a storm of mutated ants try to eat their headquarters or Bobby Kotick (Psst, I am working on this, but don't tell anybody).
Of course the key words there are "informed gamers," and anyone who's played a COD game on Xbox Live with a headset on will tell you that the uninformed make up a massive amount of the gaming population. Even so, isn't it about time they tried to foster some good will within the gaming community? Any more it seems like they aren't even trying, just blatantly wearing their check books on their sleeves.
Oh well. Sooner or later, the army of gigantic, mutant, zombie (hopefully) ants will rise up and devour them. Then a new evil empire will rise and the process will start all over.