Monday, February 6, 2012 7:54 AM EST
THQ tumbles hard in wake of failed uDraw tablet
American game publisher and developer THQ posted a $55.9-million loss for the typically lucrative holiday quarter this week.
During an investor call Thursday company CFO Paul Pucino placed the blame squarely on the poor-selling – and recently discontinued – uDraw tablet peripheral for Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. More than a million of the devices – representing a potential $80-million in losses – are still sitting in warehouses. Reduced pricing of those tablets that did sell accounted for an additional $20-million in unrealized expected sales, bringing the total shortfall attributed uDraw to a whopping $100-million.
THQ also announced that it would cut about 240 administrative jobs. None of its studios will be affected, but the publisher already closed or spun off several of its development houses – including Kaos, THQ Studio Australia, Blue Tongue, THQ Digital Warrington, and THQ Digital Phoenix – in 2011.
Add to these woes the embarrassment of having recently been notified by NASDAQ that if it doesn’t get its share price trading above a dollar it will be delisted in July, and its sad faces all around at the publisher’s Augora Hills, California headquarters.
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Wednesday, February 1, 2012 1:35 PM EST
Court date approaches for notorious Call of Duty lawsuit
Time to refresh our memories regarding the Call of Duty legal battle that began a couple of years ago.
At the beginning of March 2010 the big story on most gamers’ minds was the sudden departure of founders Vince Zampella and Jason West from Infinity Ward, the studio that gave birth to the blockbuster Call of Duty franchise. Activision, the company that purchased studio seven years earlier, terminated the pair, claiming breaches of contract and insubordination.
Less than a week later Mr. West and Mr. Zampella filed a lawsuit claiming wrongful dismissal, outstanding remuneration to the tune of $36-million, and certain rights to future Call of Duty games.
A month passed before Activision countersued the duo, stating that the co-heads had morphed from respectable game studio executives into “insubordinate and self-serving schemers who attempted to hijack Activision’s assets for their own personal gain.”
Days later, Mr. West and Mr. Zampella announced that they had founded a new studio dubbed Respawn Entertainment with intent to develop original projects, and that they would turn to Electronic Arts – Activision’s chief rival – for publishing services. Dozens of Infinity Ward employees – some who had already quit their jobs over the last few weeks, some who would resign in the days to come – were hired on by their former bosses.
Then, in the final weeks of 2010, Activision formally implicated EA in the legal mess. It produced an email sent by a senior EA executive that suggested the publishing giant unofficially requested Mr. Zampella hold back the release of a Call of Duty map pack so that EA’s own Battlefield: Bad Company 2 would have less competition upon its release. The court granted Activision’s request to add Electronic Arts as a cross defendant.
Then things quieted down.
Activision went about the work of replacing Infinity Ward’s lost talent and ensuring that 2011’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 would launch on schedule and make a billion dollars. (Mission accomplished!)
The former Infinity Warders, meanwhile, went about the daunting task of developing a brand new piece of intellectual property with the help of their gleeful new friends at EA. It’s been more than 20 months and we’ve yet to hear anything about what this new game might be (though, given the studio’s moniker and its staff’s area of expertise, it’s safe to assume it will involve shooting things).
But in the background the gears of legal machinery were still turning, and it was announced last September that the original lawsuit brought back in March 2010 had finally received a court date: May 7, 2012.
We’re still a few months away from watching both companies' legal eagles duke it out Mortal Kombat-stylz, but the folks over at Law of the Game – a blog devoted to covering legal matters concerning the game industry – are already licking their chops.
The site put up a post this week predicting the upcoming courtroom clash will be one of the biggest game stories of 2012, and their reasoning is sound. The future of what has become one of the most profitable brands in hardcore games is at stake. The forthcoming legal proceedings will decide who in the future will get rich(er) off the series and whether it will even be able to continue in its present form.
More than that, Law of the Game points out that the case will lance several ugly boils that have been slowly growing within the industry for years. It will draw attention to the financial conflicts that arise between studios and the big publishers that buy them, shine a spotlight on the battle to attract and retain creative talent in a highly competitive market, and potentially result in a spike in temperature in the cold war between Activision and Electronic Arts.
Of course, this is assuming that the suit continues along its current path. Could be Mr. Zampella, Mr. West, Electronic Arts, and Activision will settle out of court, like schoolyard rivals begrudgingly shaking hands in the principal’s office after a playground brawl.
Regardless, if you were wondering whatever happened with the Call of Duty legal battle, you’ll likely have an answer in the coming months.
Monday, January 30, 2012 12:44 PM EST
American activist rails against the notion of gay Jedi
So, you’re a young male Jedi trying to help a farmer rid his Tatooine moisture ranch of vicious sand people. After poking your lightsabre through a couple dozen goggle-eyed honkers, you head back to the farmer to let him know his spread is safe. He offers his gratitude. Among the small selection of responses at your disposal is the flirtatious “I can think of another way you can thank me…” Curious, you click it. A couple of spicy exchanges later, your Jedi and the farmer walk offscreen for some presumed hanky panky.
Wham! You’ve just been turned gay! Bet you never saw that coming.
This would seem to be the concern of Tony Perkins of the U.S.-based Christian activist group Family Research Council. He attacked BioWare’s new massively multiplayer online role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic in a radio commentary last week for allowing players to engage in homosexual relationships, lamenting that “kids will be exposed to this Star Warped way of thinking.”
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 2:35 PM EST
Minecraft gets physical via new Lego sets
Minecraft is coming to Lego!
Or maybe Lego is coming to Minecraft.
I’m not really sure which makes more sense, and I don’t know that it matters. I’m so jittery with schoolboy excitement right now that I can barely type.
Lego announced Tuesday via CUUSOO – a site where Lego fans share original model concepts and create petitions to see them become boxed Lego products – that it would develop official Lego sets based on the smash hit indie game, which has sold more than four million copies to date.
The winning concept was submitted by Mojang, the Swedish studio that developed Minecraft. Apparenty, it earned the required 10,000 votes in the space of just two days, a record for the site.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 1:40 PM EST
Canadian-made Indie Game: The Movie scores HBO deal at Sundance
Indie Game: The Movie has an HBO deal.
The independently produced and financed documentary feature, made by first-time Winnipeg filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky, details the creative, emotional, and financial struggles faced by aspiring game makers Edmund McMillen (of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac fame), Phil Fish (the fellow behind upcoming Xbox Live game FEZ), and others.
Confronted by a similar financial struggle, Ms. Pajot and Mr. Swirsky – who, prior to their movie-making odyssey, spent their days running a small video production company – were forced to bankroll their passion project in innovative ways, including a highly successful crowd funding campaign.
Their risk and effort looked like it would finally pay off when it was selected for screening at the prestigious 2012 Sundance Film Festival, a place where indie movie makers’ dreams can come true. And, sure enough, Deadline New York reported Sunday, just a day after Indie Game's Sundance screening, that American network HBO and heavyweight producer Scott Rudin (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, There Will Be Blood) have acquired remake rights for a fictional television series based on the film.
Friday, January 20, 2012 2:36 PM EST
Diablo III undergoes major pre-release modifications
The perfectionists at Blizzard announced a slew of major changes to the company’s hotly anticipated action role-playing game Diablo III on Thursday, suggesting that the long-in-the-making project – which has already slid past one vague launch window – is still several months from release.
Thousands of people have been playing the game in its beta test phase, and Blizzard’s developers are using their feedback to not just tweak the interface and balance difficulty – expected modifications resulting from any public testing – but also significanty alter core systems.
(Apologies in advance to my less nerdy readers if the following comes off as geeky gobbledygook.)
Thursday, January 19, 2012 7:53 AM EST
Indie game Q.U.B.E. recoups production budget in just four days
Our first indie game success story of 2012 concerns the hit first-person puzzler Q.U.B.E., made by fledgling, three-person U.K. studio Toxic Games. It’s already sold more than 12,000 copies since its release on Steam earlier this week, recouping the game’s full $90,000 development budget in just four days.
It’s the first game to be bankrolled by new investment group The Indie Game Fund. Founded by a faction of noteworthy independent game developers – including Jonathan Blow (Braid), Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler (World of Goo), Kellee Santiago (Flower), and Canada’s own Nathan Vella (Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP) – the firm provides the means for promising young game designers to realize their projects.
However, the question I’ve found myself mulling is whether Q.U.B.E.’s initial success is due to the quality of the experience it offers, or if it’s a result of the natural publicity that comes with being linked to an organization like The Indie Game Fund.
Monday, January 16, 2012 1:54 PM EST
Alleged spy faces death for ties with U.S. game company
CBC Radio ran a short documentary over the weekend on the slightly strange and potentially tragic case of Amir Mirza Hekmati, an American who was captured by Iranian authorities and labeled a C.I.A. spy this past December while supposedly visiting family. He now faces the death penalty.
Mr. Hekmati is a former U.S. Marine who received Arabic language training and did linguistic work for DARPA. These facts aren't in dispute.
The strange part of the story comes in his confession, which ran in Iranian media. It at least partially focuses on his involvement with a New York company called Kuma Games, a small developer of free, browser-based episodic games that often tie in with modern military conflicts (one of the company's 2011 titles allowed players to recreate the U.S. raid that ended with the death of Osama bin Laden).
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 2:51 PM EST
Controversial U.S. anti-piracy bill spurs protests among game makers
The Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill introduced in the United States House of Representatives last fall by Texas Republican Lamar Smith, is losing the support of many of the game industry companies it’s supposed to protect.
If passed, the bill would allow the American government and individual copyright holders to take legal action against websites that facilitate piracy, forcibly removing them from search engines and prohibiting payment processing companies from working with them. It would also criminalize and create prison sentences of up to five years for the act of streaming of copyrighted content.
While the proposed legislation would seem to act in favour of content creators and copyright holders, several members of the game industry are campaigning against it.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 4:04 PM EST
Razer takes wraps off Windows 8 gaming tablet at CES
I’m generally pretty happy whenever I get to stay home and avoid the city-sized crowds crammed into the chaotoic mess that is the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but there are always a few gadgets that make me wish I was there.
This year, the product that makes me think the 3,800-kilometre trek to Sin City might have been worthwhile is Razer USA Ltd.’s PC gaming tablet running under the code name Project Fiona. Tech blog Engadget put up a hands-on video Wednesday, and it's got my gaming neurons fired up.
Controller Freak Contributors
Chad Sapieha
Chad Sapieha has been covering the video game industry in print and broadcast since 1997. He began writing about games for The Globe and Mail in 2004.
