IW Studio Heads fired by Activision.

[sack_patrol]

One word.......

 

OWNED

 

 

Not like they didnt deserve it for the EPIC failure that was MW2.

if karma had anything to do with it, it wouldn't have been only 2 ppl that got fired, it'd have been the whole IW and maybe Activision

[Deathmineral]

I think the point CAINuKe is making is that if you weren't a fan of IW/CoD fan, you wouldn't have purchased the game, and the point is a valid one. If a developer tried that kind of crap on a new IP, it would have been a major flop. IW was able to get away with it because of its diehard fanbase.

 

They're not the only ones to take advantage of this though. Look at Blizzard with SC2. No LAN support...yet that won't have much impact on sales. SC fans are going to buy the game no matter what.

 

We as consumers let them get away with this. Hell, I'm guilty of it too....whenever Valve releases HL2:E3, I'll be buying it no matter what...even if its a mere 1 hr of gameplay and gets a 30/100 metascore.

While it's true that we are all probably guilty of it, you were absolutely right that it depends on a diehard fanbase. Myself for example, I've knowingly bought games with DRM before even though I'm strongly against DRM just because I really felt like I needed to buy that game, but I do think that once the line is crossed then these kind of things that publishers and developers try to pull will get through to almost any kind of gamer. I'm a fan of the first assassin's creed game and as much as I would love to continue the game and get into the story more, I won't, because for me the constant internet connection crosses the line, not that I can't handle a constant internet connection but rather why should I? What did the paying customers do wrong to deserve these kind of things in their games? To me it's just crossing the line and hopefully more of the bad developers and publishers out there keep crossing these lines until they lose the gamers out there that don't know any better unless it's being shoved in their face.

[El_Capitan]

I'm a fan of the original CoD, CoD2 + expansions (on PC). CoD3 was noobish (360, but did not purchase), CoD4: MW1 was okay (360, but did not purchase), and CoD5: World at War (360, but did not purchase) and CoD 6: MW2 are okay (PS3, purchased). I was fired from Microsoft once by testing in a private lobby for a company I didn't like, but hated that company even more after that incident (Ensemble). All it takes is a big whig to not like what you're doing and you're gone. It didn't matter, I got hired by MS again, and am good now working at different companies (and Ensemble is now shut down). Those two will likely find a better job, and those who fired them might not regret their decision, but it will bite them in the butt, somehow. Especially if it was something trivial, or a general dislike of their attitude of what Activision is heading them towards.

 

1. MW2 sales have reached over 1 billion worldwide. It's not anything close to failure in sales. As a gamer and QA professional, it's close to failure in potential, balance issues, and support.

2. I never have, and never will, buy a DRM product.

3. The term "hardcore" gamers don't apply to the same group as 5-10 years ago, as games are now targeted to mainstream gamers and young teens that are starting to get into gaming.

Edited March 2, 2010 by El_Capitan

[ClayMeow]

While it's true that we are all probably guilty of it, you were absolutely right that it depends on a diehard fanbase. Myself for example, I've knowingly bought games with DRM before even though I'm strongly against DRM just because I really felt like I needed to buy that game, but I do think that once the line is crossed then these kind of things that publishers and developers try to pull will get through to almost any kind of gamer. I'm a fan of the first assassin's creed game and as much as I would love to continue the game and get into the story more, I won't, because for me the constant internet connection crosses the line, not that I can't handle a constant internet connection but rather why should I? What did the paying customers do wrong to deserve these kind of things in their games? To me it's just crossing the line and hopefully more of the bad developers and publishers out there keep crossing these lines until they lose the gamers out there that don't know any better unless it's being shoved in their face.

I got the original AC from Steam, so I always needed an Internet connection anyway (yes, I could have enabled offline mode, but I didn't), so I'll probably wind up getting AC2 via Steam again. The constant-internet-connection-DRM doesn't really bother me. I could definitely see it bothering people with shoddy connections though.

[Bosco]

Its going to be interesting to see what happens with these two guys gone.

[Fogel]

I think the point CAINuKe is making is that if you weren't a fan of IW/CoD fan, you wouldn't have purchased the game, and the point is a valid one. If a developer tried that kind of crap on a new IP, it would have been a major flop. IW was able to get away with it because of its diehard fanbase.

Not completely true. I'm sure a lot of people bought it simply for the CoD name and possibly because they might even be on IW's hard one. But there are also many people who never played a CoD game in their life and actually really like MW2. Just in my limited circle of friends I can think of at least 5 people who never played a CoD before and really like MW2. Yet I can only think of 2 people I play with that have played at least 1 of the previous incarnations. Not the best sampling but its proof there ARE some people who didn't buy it just for the name. Would it have still done well under a different name? ...who's to say. I'm sure there are a lot of people that like you said, only bought it from name recognization. But at the same time, many of the old timer fans have higher expectations than new people do. Logically speaking though, it's hard for a new game to generate that much hype so by that basis alone I'd say there is no way it could have done that well. GoW managed to sell 5 million copies, but it took a lot longer and also had to include the PC market.

 

Biggest complaint I have seen over MW2 is dedicated servers, and honestly that argument is getting really old. Even if I never played the game before I'd want more than that as a reason to not try the game. Unlike most of the people using that lame arguement I've at least the played the game enough to see both the Pros and Cons of the P2P network. I definitely have to say there are more Cons then Pros on the P2P network system and don't look forward to using the P2P system again, but I'm not stupid enough to call the game a failure for using it. I haven't found many games with addicting gameplay that don't have glaring faults.

 

The game may fail to entertain many people who had higher expectations, but it is certainly not a "complete failure". Anyone saying that sounds no different than ballist1x. There are definitely better ways of describing what MW2 could have done differently and better to make it the game people want to play more.

 

They're not the only ones to take advantage of this though. Look at Blizzard with SC2. No LAN support...yet that won't have much impact on sales. SC fans are going to buy the game no matter what.

 

We as consumers let them get away with this. Hell, I'm guilty of it too....whenever Valve releases HL2:E3, I'll be buying it no matter what...even if its a mere 1 hr of gameplay and gets a 30/100 metascore.

QFT.

 

But that's not why people disagree with MW2 being called a "complete failure", and I believe I covered that above. When I first started the game in Nov 2009 my ranking at level 1 was over 4 Million. When I tried a trial account in Feb 2010 my ranking at level 1 was over 8 Million. Even when you strip trial accounts from those #s, it shows the popularity increasing. If it was a complete failure it wouldn't be gaining in popularity as time goes on. People would find out the game sucks and didn't live up to the hype and stop playing.

[ClayMeow]

Biggest complaint I have seen over MW2 is dedicated servers, and honestly that argument is getting really old.

It's not a lame argument from a PC gamer's perspective. The thing that makes the argument weak in terms of MW2's overall success is that has no impact on 75% of IW's market, the consoles gamers. In fact, the only argument in CAINuKe's list that is valid for all is the short length of the single player campaign, but most people care more about the multiplayer.

 

PS. Please take note that I have never called it a complete failure...that's coming from others.

[greengiant912]

Its going to be interesting to see what happens with these two guys gone.

 

I guarantee most of the guys will leave with them. These are the same guys that went and formed Infinity Ward after breaking away from EA.

 

I plan on seeing a new studio or something form, in addition to some sort of legal action. I don't know what they could fight though...

 

We will likely not see anything happen for sometime, but I am sure that Infinity Ward will eventually be totally different the Infinity Ward that we know today.

[Deathmineral]

I got the original AC from Steam, so I always needed an Internet connection anyway (yes, I could have enabled offline mode, but I didn't), so I'll probably wind up getting AC2 via Steam again. The constant-internet-connection-DRM doesn't really bother me. I could definitely see it bothering people with shoddy connections though.

I'm not saying I can't keep up with that connection, but I don't see enough good reasons out there for me to have to deal with that. Piracy will happen no matter what, especially with single player games like these.

 

Biggest complaint I have seen over MW2 is dedicated servers, and honestly that argument is getting really old. Even if I never played the game before I'd want more than that as a reason to not try the game. Unlike most of the people using that lame arguement I've at least the played the game enough to see both the Pros and Cons of the P2P network. I definitely have to say there are more Cons then Pros on the P2P network system and don't look forward to using the P2P system again, but I'm not stupid enough to call the game a failure for using it. I haven't found many games with addicting gameplay that don't have glaring faults.

See, that is one of the things I don't like about console gaming and the P2P network that it encourages. Now I'm not saying this directly towards you in particular because I've gotten this kind of thing from talking about this with a lot of console gamers and believe me, it really does get old when console gamers try to defend the P2P system by assuming they are more familiar with it than PC gamers when that really isn't true. I've played plenty of games where I was hosting it through myself or someone else, and sure, it's not that bad, but typically you never get everyone in the green when it comes to connection, this is something dedicated servers do and do very well for the most part, but I'm not going to say they are perfect, I've played on dedicated servers that go from 78 to 999 in an instant, but that isn't often. The real advantage dedicated servers have over P2P though is being able to handle things that the game wasn't designed to do, mods for example, you can effectively host a game in left 4 dead and spawn 100s of zombies at once and keep things running smoothly unless you have a beast of a computer... or the more practical option, something dedicated to it.

 

I'm not trying to say P2P can't work, it's been proven to work fine, but it's not as practical as dedicated servers is all.

Edited March 2, 2010 by Deathmineral

[CAINuKe]

I HAVE CREATED A MONSTER!

[Deathmineral]

No, IW is the one that created a monster.

[El_Capitan]

About 20% of the matches I connect to in MW2 (mostly Mercenary TD when going solo, or TD and CTF with friends) end up with laggy connections. I have a 20 Mb/s download, 2 Mb/s upload connection, so it's not me. I bridge my PS3 connection to my computer and upload UDP packets when it tries to find a new host, and I end up being the host 100% of the time, and friends I play with from across the country experience no lag when I'm the host. Before a match beings, MW2 seems to pick a random host. Once it finds a new host during the match, it seems to do a better job at picking a better host.

 

There's no option not to join a game that's already in progress. I really, REALLY enjoy joining a game in progress where I join the losing team where the score is 6500 to 1200, and there's bombers, helicopters, etc. raining down on my spawn point (sarcasm). It's fun getting a loss in 30 seconds.

 

Spawn points... I enjoy (sarcasm again) having a kill streak going and the enemy spawn points relocate to being directly behind me.

 

It's nice that there's so many different guns, but only 2-3 are really ever used by one player that's any good. I'm no noob, my kill/loss is typically 25:0, 34:1, or on worst cases on a bad team, 5:1. Once I try using other guns out, my kill/loss ratio gets worse. MP gets monotonous. It would be nice to be able to use a different gun with different benefits/hindrances for different tactics... i.e. SMG's faster crawl and crouch speeds, Assault Rifles give less damage over certain distances (sniping is easier than using a sniper gun, especially with laggy connections), getting shot by a Sniper Rifle and not dying should knock a player down... etc.