Kotick - “I would have Call of Duty be an online subscription service tomorrow”

I don't think anyone is surprised at Kotick's dick-y quotes anymore.

"I strive to breed a culture of fear and thrift."

If APB's business model proves succesful, then Activision might head in this direction. I don't care to much for the franchise though...

Yeah, I agree. It's just feels weird to pay monthly fee for an FPS game. [Even tho APB is not an FPS...]

You know, I already posted this yesterday: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/385059 Just fyi

really not happy seeing what gamers or gaming industry has become after COD or WOW released.

I would say GTA as well, but that game seems very well thought out and developed. I dont like it, but its good quality game.

I never visited the SoaSE forums so far...:P

Well it's in the Off-Topic section... which, now that I look at it from Elemental, isn't there. Elemental has a Misc section, that for some reason doesn't include off-topic. But from Sins I can see all the Misc stuff. More forum weirdness, I guess.

It must really burn his butt that folks can play the game for many hours and he doesn't get a cut from that.

He's moving towards everything being hosted/stored in the cloud where they'll have complete control over their games (unbreakable DRM?) and our information (to sell for additional profit), and selling us the game (plus microtransactions and DLC to get the 'complete' game) then having recurring charges to play.

 

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, buuuuuut:

- MMOs were around, and financially successful, prior to WoW

- FPS players are dicks in general. Not necessarily 24/7. I know a girl, never heard her cuss once in 14 years. She plays an FPS and she's worse than I am. (Profanity and general unkindness wise)

- The gaming industry is just that, an industry. It has to make money to stay there. Admittedly, turning everything into a subscription is NOT the way to go about it. Booby Kotick is A. The Devil or B. A Corporate Megalomaniac, depending on who you ask (sometimes both!)

- COD didn't cause it either. It's Booby Kotick being in charge of the people making COD that is causing this problem.

Correct, however no game prior to World of Warcraft generateed some US$4,000,000,000.00 in subscription revenue, that's excluding retail sales I might add, or become a cultural phenomenon.  World of Warcraft showed how incredibly viable a subscription-based model for games actually is and changed the way Publishers viewed their games.  A constant stream of revenue as opposed to the cash injection model of a standard retail release is significantly better for any company, and now everyone is looking at ways to establish one.  The most common method is downloadable content.


Actually, success caused it.  If Modern Warfare 2 had of failed financially, do you honestly think they'd be making US$15 Map packs for it?  If Starcraft was a poorly received cult classic rather than the most successful RTS game ever created, do you think they'd be charging US$60.00 for the sequel, with plans to charge players per player created map?
People want what Activision sell, and Activision knows it's market well; they could charge US$120.00 for Starcraft II and it would still sell and it would still break records.  They do what they do because their customers allow them to do it.

"Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it". - Publilius Syrus, 100 BC

I promise you Kotick knows this quote off by heart.

It's easy enough to say, "if it's too expensive don't buy it." As depressing as these trends are, the only way to change these people is to not buy their product unless they change things. I've practiced this policy for a while now, and so far, there are enough good games out there without overbearing subscription fees and hidden costs to get me going.

I wasn't really planning on getting Starcraft 2 until it was cheap. I haven't heard about the whole charging for custom maps thing, which pretty much means I won't be getting it at all now. Which I'm fine with.

Listen, these people don't listen to complaints. They look at one thing only. If you want them to do something, hurt them in the wallet. The market only works if we as consumers are willing to withhold cash, because ultimately, consumers decide which business policies work and which don't.

To a lesser extent, it's like Warhammer 40k enthusiasts. They're constantly complaining about how expensive their hobby is. I guess it occurs to them to switch to another game, but they never organize themselves enough to do it. Meanwhile, their prices go up and up and up.

Yep, weird stuff...

Charging for custom maps in sc2? Where did you read that? Have never heard it at all.

Yeah, and who is gonna make the CoD games now? Treyarch? Subscribing to something that might vanish seems a little bit weird. Yeah, and Kotick is dense and corporate. Not bad, just aware of how the maret works. I can point to the quote ZehDon said above. Or simply say that the free market strives to make as much money as possible. The consumers make the market and the market makes the consumers, supply and demand, etc. This is the world we live in, if you don't like it change it. I didn't buy mw2 or haloODST because generic fps is not something I promote.

If they had contious development and a incrase in game systems and a decrse in assbastards. It would be an improvement.

 

That isn't going to happen. FPSes tend to end up like all the worst people from WoW's barrens chat given a gun and told that the winner gets to the bang the loser's sister.

I can't point you to the Blizzard post at the moment, but it's really not as bad as it sounds. Blizzard will not allow 99% of the maps to be sold. The pay-to-download custom maps will be those that introduce new graphics assets (tilesets, unit models, etc) and are essentially of professional level quality - which the vast nearly unending majority of all maps won't be Also keep in mind, it's not Blizzard that will be deciding which maps are pay and which are free in their user-submitted database. It's the map makers that will be able to *try* to get their map to be sold.

http://kotaku.com/5343006/blizzard-you-may-sell-your-starcraft-2-maps-on-battlenet-eventually

Annatar, I also heard that according to the BNet2.0 terms of service Activision has total ownership over everything that gets sent over BNet2.0, meaning they could simply decide to not let the premium map makers not see any money.

Activision has nothing to do with Blizzard. Sure, Activision merged with Vivendi (which owns Blizzard) and became the dominant partner, but part of the deal includes Blizzard not reporting to Activision:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16458

Or a more detailed version: http://www.wow.com/2009/04/12/activision-blizzard-is-not-blizzard/

That said, there's tons of scary stuff in virtually *any* Terms of Service agreement. Hell, for World of Warcraft they reserve the right to just delete your characters and accounts if they feel like it. But it's not like they would do it. Think of it logically - if they didn't let premium map makers see any money from sales, why would the map makers continue making premium maps?

Uh huh Annatar, so is that why Kotick appointed a toadie to oversee the "Blizzard business unit", and has Mike Morhaime subordinate to this toadie?

Link?

Also, just a little fyi.

The Korean Fair Trade Commission recently ruled that the SC2 licensing agreement needed changing in 17 places to be sold in Korea. Blizzard has done this for the Korean version, but I wonder how it will effect other versions and if there will be different terms of use for different countries.

source

Yeah, I saw that thread. Of course Blizzard kinda had to since Korea is where the bulk of the pro-gamer e-sports thing happens, so they sort of have to make sure their game can actually be sold there and not banned. They probably wouldn't have changed the terms if it was one of the leagues complaining, but who knows. For other countries? It probably largely depends on the consequences of not changing it. Germany for example also has a very large portion of RTS players, and if its agency that regulated what can be sold and what can't threatened to ban the game, I'm pretty sure Blizzard would change it too.

But that said, most of that stuff is really something that's not going to happen because at this day and age it would cause a huge public outcry. As I've said before, many EULAS and TOS (not just Blizzard's) contain lots of scary wording, but for the sole purpose of covering their asses from any conceivable legal threat. These things aren't written to communicate intent of action ("Hey we're going to take your custom campaign, put it in our next expansion, and make money from it!") but just to try and cover all the angles. It's not like they're going to start deleting accounts because it's a slow day at work on a Friday afternoon and they can

Got three.

First Link

Second Link

Third Link

So yeah, a guy named Thomas Tippl is now the COO of Blizzard and head of the "Blizzard Business Unit", and he reports straight to Kotick.

Firstly, Tippl is not the COO of Blizzard. He's the COO of Activision-Blizzard, the parent company post-merger. From first sentence of link 2:

Secondly, given that Blizzard was owned by Vivendi of course meant that Morhaime was not the top honcho overall, and still reported to someone at Vivendi. Now he reports to a different guy who reports to Kotick. That's pretty normal I would think when one company owns another, but it doesn't automatically imply that the owner is going to start messing with Blizzard. In fact, the third link points out this fact in two places:

Notice where it says that Blizzard remains an "independent" unit. And:

Pretty much sounds like Blizzard is still overseeing their own properties.

Blizzard continue to operate independantly in terms of game Development, however this is more of a kindness than a contractually protected position.  Activision Blizzard is the name of the parent entity - the bosses of Activision Blizzard are the bosses of Blizzard Entertainment and so Blizzard's management staff will still be required to take orders from their higher ups.
Blizzard game releases are a licence to print money, and so Activision's money men aren't going to mess with what clearly works, however, we're beginning to see trends of a different Blizzard than the one of old. 
The Sparkling Pony release for World of Warcraft was an example of this, as is the lacking feature set and regional restrictions placed on Starcraft II's multiplayer network, Battle.net 2.0.  The fact that they're trying to gain a profit from any portion of the game post-release, as in custom maps, shows they're thinking more about the bottomline than in the past.  With the retail price of Starcraft II being the same as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's inflated price, and the fact that Blizzard split their long-awaited game into three component spaced a year apart thus meeting the Activision requirement of all franchises having a yearly release, we can see the impact of the merger.
Blizzard still retain their independancy, however they're certainly not immune to Bobby Kotick.

So if they'd just called the second and third ones expansions, it'd be okay? Like with every Blizzard release in the past since Warcraft 2?

This assanine "splitting up the game" stuff has gotten stupid at this point. All they did was pre-announce the expansions everybody knew was coming. For the love of god, stop spreading misinformation.

They didn't split anything. Starcraft 1 came with three campaigns. Starcraft 2 comes with one campaign that is more then twice the size of any of those, and significantly more sophisticated. Sounds like a similar level of content to me. Were people really expecting triple the campaign content in Starcraft 1? Because in order to be pissed off about the "split", that has to be your original expectation.