U360 Report Card

Projects - A

Was having a studio like Infinity Ward develop what many consider the game of the year in Call of Duty 4 enough for the A grade in 2007?  Could it salvage an otherwise mediocre lineup of games throughout the year?  The short answer is yes.  Both Call of Duty 4 and their other solid hit, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, pushed Activision to new heights.  You deserve a solid Projects grade when you’re attached to 2 of the top 10 games people will remember this year.  RedOctane and Infinity Ward take a bow.  I’d like to issue a plea to Activision, however, to not continue to put us through the back and forth of Treyarch and Infinity Ward with the Call of Duty franchise.  Yes, it sucks to go from potential Untouchable of the Year when Infinity is at the helm to ”just good” with what Treyarch produces.  (good for your grade that COD4 came this year)

Beyond those two titles, I don’t imagine many people are waiting for a chance to play the likes of Transformers, Spider-Man, Bee Movie Game or Shrek which are all movie-to-game franchises.  There’s just something about games based on movies that rub most the wrong way.  Having these must be good for conference meetings and fancy charts; the beauty of necessary evils.  I did enjoy nearly all of them though so my comments about them are done with a heavy heart.  I dare not mention any of the Cabela games.

What these titles did though was keep Activision in nearly every meaningful category of games.  They had shooters, pimps for your rides and poker champions mixed with ogres, spiders, Autobots and metal.  It would’ve been a clean sweep had they produced any racing titles.  In 2008, I imagine that will change.

Community - B

I don’t think I’m the only one that has received numerous emails from Activision about a Spider-Man community network or a Charlie Oscar Delta community task.  Nearly all of their titles have some online community network attached to them.  I recall useless efforts trying to increase my web network for Spider-Man 3 in order to become the Black Spidey.  Was it fun?  Sure.  But it left a bad taste in my mouth from being so disorganized.

Activision was tied to many events and competitions throughout the year that brought fans much closer to the games.  Who can forget the Call of Duty 4 beta?  All of these things helped foster a community around Activision and its games that was pretty good during the year.  It wasn’t great especially in areas beyond mainstream media but they did enough to at least offer fans an outlet.  Remember Activision, there are more fans out there beyond mainstream media.

Most of their community effort was really manifested by the studios Activision houses and 3rd party marketing.  There was rarely any hands-on from the folks at Activision themselves beyond sending their studios out for embarassing moments with Jamie Kennedy.  You have to get your hands dirty with your fans beyond employing email blasts, web campaigns or simply trusting outside marketing agencies.  Yes, Activision is footing the bill but that’s beside the point.

Extra Credit - B

I don’t recall much in terms of titles being extended or after retail issues being patched.  Marvel Ultimate Alliance had a string of new content.  Tony Hawk?  Perhaps the more visible of their title extension strategy came by way of RedOctane and Guitar Hero III.  The pricing on their song packs hasn’t quite appealed to the normal fan in us all.  Couple that with barely providing any at all isn’t a good extension plan to trust when purchasing these games.  And triple that with the fact that their immediate rival, Rock Band, is churning out weekly content makes that trust even thinner.

It’ll be interesting to see how the forming of Activision Blizzard with Vivendi influences next year’s grades.  Two rather large companies pulled off a Voltron move to form a big head so I would imagine some significant strides are coming in 2008.  Before the merger with Vivendi, Activision managed to add notable Project Gotham Racing creators, Bizzare Creations, to a stable of studios that already includes Treyarch, Vicarious Visions, Infinity Ward, Neversoft, Raven Software and others.

I almost graded them lower in Extra Credit because of their downloadable content efforts but that was overshadowed by the positives in the merger and Bizarre Creations addition. 

Overall Grade