I don’t care, but I just felt I should say something about it.
Genj, comments?
Edit: Actually, I guess I do have a observation: Aside from making shag rugs from hundred dollar bills, life at Blizzard must be pretty tough. What the heck do you do for a second act? Their next MMO has to do better than World of Warcraft, or it will be seen as a failure. Ten million subscribers in the first week, or blogs and game sites around the world will have “Blizzard has LOST IT! HA HA!” as their headlines.
Any other MMO company can get subscription numbers in the 500,000 range and be seen as very successful. If Blizzard launches a Starcraft (let’s say) MMO and only gets 500,000, heads will roll, layoffs will commence, red-faced executives will be paraded in front of the shareholders to try and explain themselves.
They had to find a way out of that trap. Perhaps this merger gives them a way to release new games with more realistic expectations.
17 thoughts on “OMG Blizzard merged with Activision!”
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Wow! That’s ridiculous! I wonder what this means in the long run?
*snickers* How dare you clutter up my rss feed with another Activizzard post.
Grats on your new dev gig, Aaron. I meant to comment on your one blog, but couldn’t.
*sigh* made three posts yesterday and which gets comments? The one I made because my RSS feed was clogged with this announcement…
If I knew what blizzard and activision were – I’m sure I’d be very upset!
Blizzard wrote a somewhat popular game called “Diablo” a few years back. Activision published this cool game called “River Raid” that I spent hours and hours playing on my Atari 2600. I think they also did “Yar’s Revenge”.
Damn you are old school. *ducks* 😀 mhmm. I’m hungry. must make waffles. this no-nonsense post was brought to you by Krones, who is literally insane at the moment.
Speaking of old school gamers – Discovery Times channel is going to be having a show mid-december about how video games have progressed from Pong to the present games and the development of the gaming culture. Might be worth watching – for those not too cheap to have that channel in their cable package. ::coughs::Tipa::coughs::
I’ve seen a review of that show, it’s supposed to be pretty good.
Cox Cable should be happy I pay them at all. Viva la liberté de choix! I only watch like five of the 200 channels we get.
Eighth of an inch of ice on the car this morning. Was hoping for snow, but all we got was an ice storm.
Thanks, Krones. I’m not sure what the problem was with my site, but sorry about that.
Vivendizzard makes me wonder what Blizzard’s getting out of the deal. My two best guesses are 1) better marketing in the European market, and 2) Blizzard has been wishing they could work on one of Activision’s IPs.
No matter how successful a company gets, they can always get bigger and better. I’m sure even a juggernaut like Blizzard can benefit from cooperation, but I’m wondering how.
Tipa…… I bet California is looking better and better each day. Is it spring yet? brrrr
I go back to beautiful, warm(er) San Diego next Thursday 🙂
Maybe I’ll come back. MAYBE.
They get to abuse and blame Activizzard employees if their next MMO fails? Sounds like a win-win to me!
San Diego, sounds warm and fuzzy. Enjoy your trip! Is it SOE related?
I wish! I sent SOE resume after resume and never once received any sort of reply. It’s been a dream for many many many years to work for them and never had that opportunity.
I used to live in San Diego, and am just going back to visit some family before Christmas 🙂
Have you ever been to SOE Fan Faire? This year there was a significant emphasis on recruiting. If you plan to go, see if you can contact Ashlanne for a VIP pass.
Gosh, Ashlanne was server GM when I was a guide on Morrel Thule 🙂 Look, if four years of applying for every job for which I felt I was qualified and also being the world’s biggest SOE fan couldn’t even get me an interview, I doubt pestering devs would do any better. I’m even an ex-Sony employee (though not the SOE division).
If I’d known they were recruiting, though, for a real position — I might have gone. I don’t like traveling though, and whenever I go to that kind of event, I just get to thinking how much I would rather be back home. Plus, I don’t drink, smoke, or gamble, and from what I’ve seen, if you don’t smoke, drink or gamble, there’s not much to do there.
I *did* go to Fanguard, Sigil’s fan faire, because heck, I already worked in Carlsbad. For the record, they ignored my resume, too, which in the end, was probably just as well. I also sent my resume to Blizzard/Irvine just for fun, but, same result. I did get an interview with Areae, but even crunching out a TurboGears demo of a web portal in a couple of hours — and making a ten minute video explaining it — couldn’t convince them I was serious about the job. And now they’re looking for a LAMP developer again :/
Well, while sitting in the “Breaking into the Industry” seminar it was pointed out that it is not just what you know but who you know that can helps you land that dream job. My impression of their HR department was no different from any other IT HR department. You’d be surprised what talking to the right people can get you. Then again, I haven’t gotten much farther than you have.
I figure they get about ten thousand resumes for every open position, and are looking for people just out of college with Master’s degrees who will work for $15K, and just reject me out of hand. I do get the feeling that those little website application forms are a black hole, but I never felt right about actually contacting a SOE employee about a job when my last shipped games were in the mid nineties — FOR SONY (I wrote some games for their handheld computer, the Magic Link PIC-1000, and yes people bought and played them).