pabosher

Activision's Strategy to Make Every One of its Franchises More Fantastical

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So this is a thought that occurred to me some time ago, and this morning's Modern Warfare 3 trailer just seemed to confirm it for me: Activision's influence on publishers is to push them towards the realms of fantasy.

Guitar Hero -- if we compare Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the difference is immediately apparent. Although both started in the same place -- simply pressing buttons as they scroll down the screen -- Rock Band moved towards realism, and trying to teach people to play Guitar, and Guitar Hero focused more on the 'Hero' aspect, and went completely balls-out on the fantasy aspect.

Tony Hawk -- Ok, so this series was always pretty ridiculous (although wasn't the original Pro Skater pretty realistic?) but recent instalments -- Proving Ground, Ride, Shred -- have all been leaning more towards a fantasy element of 'You can be this guy on a skateboard and meet all these CRAZY REAL PEOPLE'.

Call of Duty -- so, from what I understand, CoD was always supposed to be 'You aren't the hero, Private. You're just a dude that's in a war.' MW was unrealistic, sure, but it had some really cool ideas, and the majority wasn't too bombastic. MW2 became an all-out Michael Bay action movie, and MW3 looks like it wants to bend you over a mailbox and rape you through a hole, then stuff you in that mailbox. In war.

What do you guys think? Is it good? Why is/n't it? Reminisce about older Activision games here too, I guess.

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It's fine if you can do it well. Activision games do it with a straight face and a baseball cap on sideways.

Guitar Hero, see Brutal Legend.

Tony Hawk, see Outrun 2.

CoD, see EDF.

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On one level I don't have a problem with it. On another level it would be nice to not 'kiddify' everything. Not everyone wants cartoon characters or fantasy in their entertainment. I think there should be games on offer with more verisimilitude. I doubt Guitar Hero would have become a household name if it had been overly genre-fied from the start.

Note: I was going to make a point about being 'grown up' and having games about the real world. But I don't want to imply that fantasy can't be grown up. But you know what I mean.

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I take your point, however the way I would put it is that Activision 'crappify' everything.

Fuck Activision. They treat developers like factory workers. They've had only negative influence on the industry as a whole.

If anyone wants to call me out on this post, great! If not, great!

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*Snip*

It's an interesting observation, but i don't feel like this is the result of any grandiose plans on the part of Activision. It's probably just simple sequel escalation, making each subsequent game bigger and crazier in an effort to sell copies.

I've also heard some circumstantial stories that Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock is more or less Activision doing themselves what they had actually wanted Double Fine to do with Brutal Legend.

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Activision games do it with a straight face and a baseball cap on sideways.

That pretty much nails it for me. I actually like games that can be out there in a summer blockbuster movie kind of way. I'm sure "event games" or something like that is a big deal inside Activision.

I don't think you go to Activision for the more realistic games, or even games like Metro 2033 that have a gritty take on utterly fantastical surroundings.

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I found my old PC disc of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 about a week ago while digging through some old boxes that I'd moved house with me 5 months back. On a whim, I installed it on my laptop to see if it would run. Last time I'd tried it was with my Vista-based desktop and it didn't run past the main menu. This time on my Windows 7 laptop it works great. Man, that is still a really good game. Makes me sad to see the latest iterations being what they are.

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Fuck Activision. They treat developers like factory workers. They've had only negative influence on the industry as a whole.

Hear, hear! What disappoints me most about this is that Activision was the company that said, "Fuck you, Atari! Games are made by people who deserve recognition, not assembly line workers!" And now most people who buy a CoD game don't know that there are three entirely different studios working on the series (not counting whatever internal outsourcing is going on for maps and such).

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I'm surprised by this thread, I would have thought the general Idle Thumbs feeling would be "we've got enough games trying to be ultra-realistic, let's have some more silly/fanstastic/abstract ones". Or do people feel that the whole industry is swinging the other way now, and we'll soon be running out of realistic games (or that all the realistic games will have this Michael Bay/fantasy twist to them)? Perhaps the growing indie scene is having an influence...

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I love a bit of fantasy in my games, and not just involving infinite dragons or whatever, the same way that I love fantastical movies. I just went to see Priest. I couldn't find anyone else who wanted to go, but how could I say no to evil future Catholic Church and vampire trains?

At the same time, I absolutely hate Michael Bay movies. I gave Transformers a go and actually got so worked up I was furious by the end of it. I don't really get like that with Activision games but I can understand the sentiment. So, I would think there are a fair bit of thumbs who want fantastical elements in their otherwise realistic games, but perhaps keep it more to Die Hard and the first two Lethal Weapon movies type stuff than Michael Bay.

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I like the really whimsical stuff that comes out of the indie scene (like that Nikolai Tesla game). That's just really imaginative and fun. and yeah I love speculative fiction, although I am slowly finding a growing interest in non-genre too.

This thing with Activision though - it's all just gimmicks. They have run out of ideas - if they ever had any - on how to make things interesting without resorting to a genre shift. And genre shifts are not in fact interesting. I don't hate or despise these titles, I may even play some of the,; I just don't find the trend to be all that wonderful either. It makes me sigh.

It's down to bad writing and creative impoverishment. Imagine if the same thing happened in other mediums. What if Ian Fleming had thought "hey I can't think of anything interesting for James Bond to do any more. I know! I'll re-imagine him as a pirate! Yarr!".

Something I got taught by an art tutor: get all the easy and obvious stuff down on the page quickly. Get it out of your head. Then come some better ideas, the ones that don't feel too cheap. Get those out too. Now... keep going. This is where you get stuck and the works gets tougher. But this is also where real creativity and good art happens. Whatever you do keep working at it.

Activision are clearly only capable of stage 1, with an occasional smidgen of stage 2. Rather than exploring and developing their ideas they keep hitting the reset button. Although this is a problem with games in general (Hollywood too).

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