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So what happens if you are a game developer and you stop listening to your community? The time was we thought it depended on the size of the developer – after all, the indie developers seem to spend a lot of time interacting with their community (we know that Icarus Studios sure does).  But it seems that size doesn’t always matter these days. Now we do understand that there are myriad different factors at work here (who is owned by what parent company for example) but still… 

 The cartoon below is something that our own Fran put together early, early this morning. She saw it at breakfast and knew she just had to whip up a parody version.

 

Are they listening?

 As we have said all along, we desperately wanted Warhammer Online to succeed, after all, Julie is a fan of the tabletop version from way back.  It seems if you are Electronic Arts and you consider all that has transpired with what used to be our favorite game you decide to “cut bait” – or at least slowly whittle away at it.  It could be that some of the parties involved had a bad case of what our mothers used to call “selective hearing.” 

 But not all the “big guys” react in the same way when things go a bit sour. 

If you are the 800 pound Activision/Blizzard gorilla you simply stick your fingers in your ears and say “WE CAN’T HEAR YOU.”

 Now we will be the first to admit that the NPNM team are not fans of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games. As a result, when the news feeds came across our desks we tended to give them only a passing notice. So we would like to take a moment to thank a reader/commenter who goes by the name “McDonagh” for bring the matter to our attention.

 It seems that there is more violence in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 than some people would like in their games. Here is an excerpt about the part of the game that has raised more than a bit of a ruckas:

 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the latest in a series of ultra-realistic first-person war games, the last of which won a Bafta earlier this year for its story and character development. In the course of the ten hours or so the game will take to complete in solo mode, the player will assume a variety of roles in a global war against Russian ultranationalists led by Vladimir Makarov.

“Like many war-themed titles, the game – set five years in the future – features bloody conflict throughout, but Modern Warfare 2 is so harrowingly realistic at some points that an on-screen warning offers players the option to skip scenes they may find disturbing…One of the most controversial of these is an episode where your character must choose whether to kill unarmed civilians in a Russian airport in order to infiltrate a terrorist sect successfully. The scene is so genuinely shocking in its brutality that the game’s distributor Activision has already attempted to forestall criticism by issuing the following statement.” – Technology Times Online, full article available here:

I can’t hear you!

Here is the statement, via technology times online, issued by Activision in response to the issue:

 ”Modern Warfare 2 is a fantasy action game designed for intense, realistic game play that mirrors real life conflicts, much like epic, action movies. It is appropriately rated 18 for violent scenes, which means it is intended for those who are 18 and older.”  - Activision, Distributor for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

In the mean time, it appears that the game has been banned from Russia and all copies of the console game recalled from store shelves, this comes to us via www.GamePolitics.com

“Every copy of the console version of Modern Warfare 2 has been recalled from stores in Russia due to the content of the “No Russian” mission, better known as the controversial airport massacre level. Likewise, Infinity Ward has released an official patch for the PC and Steam versions of Modern Warfare 2, entirely removing the mission from the game…The game’s content has raised the ire of the Russian gaming public as well as a number of politicians who object to its portrayal of Russia’s armed forces as terrorists who invade the United States and subsequently erect statues of dead terrorists in Washington D.C.” – Sol Invictus, of Hellforge, entire article available here.

Hellforge reports that a revised copy of the game will be available on Russian store shelves within the month.  However, Telegraph.co.uk’s Nick Cowen reports that Activision claims that the Russion Banning is a lie:

“However, Activision says these reports are untrue. An official statement released by the video game publisher said: ‘Reports that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been banned in Russia are erroneous. Activision only released a PC version of the game in Russia which went on sale on Tuesday, Nov. 10.’” – Nick Cowen, Technology Times Online, entire article available here:

One way or the other, if what Julie’s marketing teacher taught her back in grad school is true, there is no such thing as bad publicity – there is only publicity.  That being the case, it seems you can’t buy publicity like this.  After all, there is no better way to get someone to buy something than to tell them they can’t have it, or even that they might not be able to get it in the future.

In the end Bobby Kotick and Activision are “laughing all the way to the bank” as it is oft said. As we saw a bit earlier, the stock options Mr. Kotick just exercised are worth a cool $20 million and Activision, with Bobby Kotick at the helm, is even better shape:

“The debut of the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 looks sure to become the most successful product launch in the history of entertainment, with global first-day sales estimated at $500 million. Less than 24 hours after launch, first day sales of the controversial and violent new new game are set to exceed the previous record set by Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008 by $200 million.” –  Nigel Kendall, Technology Editor, Technology Times Online, entire article available here.

God Bless,

Sr. Frances (& Sr. Julie)