First Modern Warfare 2 map pack coming to Xbox Live on March 30 originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Modern Warfare 2 enlists 25 million unique players, Bowling says originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Continue reading Law of the Game analyzes ex-IW bosses' suit against Activision
Law of the Game analyzes ex-IW bosses' suit against Activision originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Whether you want to call it an "expansion," a "map pack" or just "DLC," some images and video from purported unreleased "Modern Warfare 2" content showed up on the Internet this week, and they look legit. Depending on how things go in court, these shots could represent the last "Call of Duty" content ever created under the oversight of former Infinity Ward heads Jason West and Vince Zampella.
The new map pack includes three new areas and two re-purposed ones from "Call of Duty 4," according to The Tech Game and GHETTOMAN1, whose name appears in the Vimeo video capture credits. Given that Activision has already had the YouTube footage taken down, however, it can only be a matter of time before they move to knock down what's left on the site.
The fact that the company moved so quickly suggests that we're probably looking at the real thing -- or at least a preliminary version of the content slated for release this spring on the Xbox 360 and 30 days later on the PS3. Hopefully the release goes smoothly with the legal firestorm ensuing right now around Activision and Infinity Award.
Did you get a glimpse of the "Stimulus Package" footage? Do you think it's real? Sound off in the comment section below.
Tags: activision, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, call-of-duty, call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2, Infinity Ward, NEWS, PS3, stimulus-package, Xbox 360
Billions of dollars? Got it. "Astonishing arrogance and unbridled greed"? Alleged. Video games are so close to being Hollywood, that we must celebrate a breakthrough: A possibly boring contract dispute that could be as juicy as Leno vs. Conan.
We've got an executive that the Internet fans love to hate.
We've got not one, but two top creative guys kicked out of a job that they seemed to be doing well.
The analogy fractures if we add that these two men, Jason West and Vince Zampella, are more successful in their field than Conan ever was. They crushed more competition than Leno. They have run a development studio called Infinity Ward that just created the other billion-dollar entertainment spectacle of the fall, Modern Warfare 2. That's the one without the blue cat aliens; it's the single-player and multiplayer game of war loved and played by millions on Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s day after day, the game Ice-T loves and the one that had a midnight launch attended by James Gandolfini, who just stopped by to see if he could grab a copy for his son.
You'd think they would be the kings of the world after creating a game like that or even guests on somebody's Tonight Show.
No, they were fired on Monday.
Given that they were fired — given that games are supposedly an enormous cultural force — then you might expect an Internet uprising. Changed photos in your Facebook feed. Virtual pep rallies in Twitter.
If video games were as huge as the video game people say they are, you'd expect the entertainment world to be buzzing that two more Conan-like nice guys whose work is loved by 18-34-year-olds got (allegedly) screwed by a big corporation. Shoved aside after a job seemingly well done. Replaced by some interloper who will sit in their chair, behind their desk, handling their coffee mug and entertaining their audience. "Insubordination" the company says, but not yet making public any insubordinate acts.
For at least 10 years, maybe 20, video games have been on a quest for Hollywood-level respect. The millions in sales and the billions of dollars have helped the entertainment world's little brother get some proper credit. But the whole effort's been a little weird, because the gaming world doesn't play out the way the rest of the entertainment world does. Take the sex scandals. They don't involve anyone sleeping with anyone. They involve naked bodies in a game a kid might play. The awards shows get red carpets full of people People wouldn't recognize or Kiefer Sutherland accepting his award for voice-acting in a game, complaining about how dreary the work was.
Games are still figuring out how to be big-Hollywood. Maybe this week's events can help, if we can just frame them right.
Attempt: Bobby Kotick is Jeff Zucker, the guy who brought Leno back and let Conan walk. Well, Kotick may even be the Darth Vader, though he recently said that he thought of himself as Luke Skywalker.
Kotick's company bought Zampella and West's Infinity Ward about a decade ago. The two developers had already brought Steven Spielberg's World War II video game series Medal of Honor series to dominance with Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Then, for Kotick's Activision, they and their team created a Medal of Honor competitor, Call of Duty, and beat their old series. Their second Call of Duty trumped the first. Activision let another one of its studios make the third Call of Duty. Then, West and Zampella's studio made the fourth, a 2007 phenomenon that sold 13 million copies.
The next events in this saga would be contract stuff and rivalry. Itching to make something of their own, West and Zampella carved out an agreement with parent company Activision, one of those oddly specific deals like giving somebody the Tonight Show in five years. Their understanding, written out for the lawyers, wasn't public, but this week's lawsuit described an arrangement that permitted only West and Zampella's team at Infinity Ward to make a Call of Duty set after Vietnam. And, according to a lawsuit, it would entitle West and Zampella creative freedom, say-so over the Modern Warfare branch of Call of Duty games and royalties.
The ousting of these guys would be the thing that make fans rally, but only if fans knew who Jason West and Vince Zampella are. They are extraordinarily successful game developers with a typical game developer trait: Their presence in the public spotlight is only slightly more pronounced than J.D. Salinger's. They and the rest of their studio refrained from press attention, even in the fall when TV news stations became interested in their last game letting players, as an undercover CIA officer, participate in a terrorist act.
West and Zampella are out. Infinity Ward has a new boss. And Call of Duty continues to have other people in the kitchen Infinity Ward and Activision built: a new Activision studio called Sledgehamer and an old one called Treyarch. The latter had been making Call of Duty games during Infinity Ward's off years — it takes two years to make a Call of Duty game — and Infinity Ward's feelings about someone else working their stove were poorly masked.
When Conan got the offer he could refuse, to move his Tonight Show to midnight, he became a brighter pop culture star and the most widely-supported unemployed millionaire of the current recession. The firing of West and Zampella, the dismissal of the top two men from the top series in video games today, has caused smaller ripples. It's big news, but not pop culture buzz.
The NBC suits may have been right about Conan. Leno was back this week, beating Letterman just as he did when he left. Conan's on Twitter joking about French Fries. But Conan fans can at least rest assured that those NBC suits felt some heat.
West and Zampella don't have many people Tweeting their names or even knowing them. Their studio, Infinity Ward, is in transition under new leadership. And Call of Duty soldiers forward. With this one there may not even be a change in quality. It's too early to say and therefore too early for Modern Warfare fans to panic.
But if there's a time to protest, this is it. If there's a time for video games to prove they are big enough that even their scandals and contractual disputes can generate buzz, it is now. We might not have even figured who the bad guy is yet. Perhaps Darth Vader really is Luke. Perhaps the "insubordination" was indefensible. But are Zampella and West the new Conan? Check Twitter.
[West and Zampella PIC]
[Team Coco modified image by Kotaku]
Activision/Infinity Ward court documents detail ex-studio heads' many, many complaints originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The lawsuit filed against Activision by two ex-Infinity Ward leads alleges that the publisher of its Modern Warfare games carried out an "Orwellian," "pre-ordained" investigation designed to "manufacture a basis to fire" them in order to avoid paying them bonuses.
That suit, filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court on March 3, was filed by founders Jason West and Vince Zampella in an attempt to be paid royalties earned from the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and to regain rights to the Modern Warfare line of games.
West and Zampella's lawsuit claims that Activision is simply trying to withhold (or reduce) bonus payment on the billion dollar selling Modern Warfare 2. In a dig at the publisher's CEO Bobby Kotick, the suit notes this is "not surprising, given that Activision is run by a CEO who has been publicly quoted as believing that the best way to run a videogame studio is to engender a culture of 'skepticism, pessimism, and fear' and who prefers to pay his lawyers instead of his employees."
The two are seeking "in excess of $36 million" in damages.
In the suit, Infinity Ward's ousted founders claim that Activision refused to honor its agreements with the development studio, agreements that granted the Call of Duty creators creative authority over "any Call of Duty game set in the post-Vietnam era, the near future or the distant future" and any title under the Modern Warfare brand. No such game, the suit reads, "can be commercially released without the written consent of West and Zampella."
That agreement, legally a Memorandum of Understanding, was signed by West, Zampella, and Activision Publishing president Mike Griffith in March of 2008. That MOU, the lawsuit explains, was signed to induce the two to continue as co-heads of Infinity Ward, grant certain royalty arrangements for Modern Warfare 2 sales and games built on Infinity Ward's technology, and to "ensure that Infinity Ward employees received rewards for their hard work."
The suit against Activision contends that the publisher opted not to honor the MOU or West and Zampella's employment agreement, but to "launch a pre-textual investigation…to create a basis to fire the two co-heads of Infinity Ward before the first Modern Warfare 2 royalty payment would be paid..."
"From the very beginning, it was clear that the purpose of the investigation was not to uncover any facts concerning any actual wrongdoing, but to manufacture a basis to fire West and Zampella," the lawsuit reads.
West and Zampella claim that the publisher refused to explain the basis of the investigation, insisting "in Orwellian fashion" that the two "already have a clear understanding of what they have or have not done."
"Anything less than their full cooperation with the inquisition would constitute 'insubordination," which would justify the firing of Zampella and West.
"Activision conducted the investigation in a manner designed to maximize the inconvenience and anxiety it would cause West and Zampella," the lawsuit claims, alleging that the two were "interrogated for over six hours in a windowless conference room" and that other Infinity Ward employees were "brought…to tears" by Activision investigators.
The ousted Infinity Ward heads believe that the investigation was "a charade," citing "trumped up grounds for termination" and "charges that were disproved in the investigation" at the root of their March 1 dismissal. Activision, they claim, had "already made up its mind" to terminate the two in an attempt to deny them payment.
We've reached out to Activision reps for comment on the suit, but have not yet received a response.
To read the full court document filed by West, Zampella and their legal team, and obtained by Kotaku, head over here.
The two recently-ousted studio heads of Infinity Ward, Jason West and Vince Zampella, have filed a lawsuit against Activision for breach of contract. The pair, who were fired earlier this week after claims of insubordination, are stating that Activision was scheduled to pay them significant royalty payments and terminated them before those payments would go into effect.
In a statement, the attorney for West and Zampella, Robert Schwartz, said the following:
"Instead of thanking, lauding, or just plain paying Jason and Vince for giving Activision the most successful entertainment product ever offered to the public, last month Activision hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual 'investigation' into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of 'insubordination' and 'breach of fiduciary duty,' which then became the grounds for their termination on Monday, March 1st."
Apart from financial restitution, West and Zampella are also suing for control over the "Modern Warfare" brand.
It's highly doubtful that this case will ever get to trial, and Activision isn't giving up one of their most lucrative franchises anytime soon. Likely that the case will settle out of court and Activision will help fund West and Zampella's next development house and project.
Tags: activision, call-of-duty, call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2, Infinity WardFiled under: Hacks
Ousted Infinity Ward founders file suit against Activision originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Alleged Activision memo: Infinity Ward remains central to Call of Duty's future originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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