Yeah, it probably shouldn’t be news when when one large conglomerate calls another empty and says:
"It’s almost the opposite of Electronic Arts, which has commoditized development. It did a very good job of taking the soul out of a lot of the studios it acquired."
It’d be liking Wendy’s saying, at least we don’t treat our employees like McDonald’s does. Which kind of ignores the real point, they both treat their employees like shit.
Yeah, EA is notorious for literally stealing the soul of the development houses they buy, but I don’t remember saying Activision was particularly good at preserving the autonomous of the guys they buy either. As a matter of fact, the only guys I’ve heard are good at that is Microsoft and then only with Bungie (i.e. - REALLY successful dev houses).
Except…EA is so bad at it they actually admit it themselves:
Bullfrog, Origin Systems, and Westwood Studios rank as some of the best development houses of all time. They also happen to represent three of EA’s most spectacular failures. "We at EA blew it," said EA CEO John Riccitiello at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas this morning, "To a degree, I was involved in those things, so I blew it."
To be fair to them, they claimed that in the context of we’re trying to fix things, but still.
You know what I’d love to see? Development houses that didn’t have to be bought up to exist. Development houses that could find good publishers that weren’t always looking to buy them out instead of work them. Baring that though, I’d love to see publisher slash developer houses (EA, Activision, Ubi, etc) that care about the development teams they have working under them and give them a bit of freedom.
Not to over use the statement or anything, but I’d also like a moon pony.
What Would Matt Do: Were I made of money, I’d start a publishing house and run it the right way. Of course, I’d first have to go to business school and learn what the right way was beyond respecting your employees. Though respecting my employees would put me a huge leg up on competition.