Achievement Unlocked 11.19.09: Milk Magnet

Posted by Rod Oracheski on 11.19.2009

Can Activision avoid milking Call of Duty into the same decline the music game genre is in? Plus some HD video of Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer, including the latest 411 outing! Can Ramon get a kill this time?

Splinter Cell?

There's just no need for this!

Gamers love our games, some a little more than others - and I'm looking at you, people who dress up as video game characters any day OTHER than Halloween. As discussed in an earlier Achievement Unlocked, we love our games even more as franchises - repeated releases of the same basic formula that tweak and polish.

There's a breaking point, of course. Fans, even the most devoted, know when a franchise has gone from being appreciated by the publisher to being exploited or "milked" for all it's worth.

We saw it when Nintendo started putting Mario into seemingly random games. Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mario Kart, etc... It's not to say that these weren't quality games on their own, but there's no denying Nintendo used the cachet granted by it's biggest character in order to sell additional copies of what might otherwise have been small-scale games.

Milking a franchise (or its star) isn't a phenomenon confined to video games, however. Look at what Marvel Comics has done in the past when a character takes off in popularity. The Punisher, for example, was suddenly appearing in multiple comics and had his own suite of titles start up. The whoring out of Wolverine was even more blatant.

It's difficult to quantify exactly where the point is that tips a franchise from being utilized by the publisher effectively over into the realm of exploitation.

Take Ubisoft's Splinter Cell series, for example. It was pushed into a yearly release schedule, with Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory, and Double Agent released in the span from 2004-2006. Activision's Call of Duty franchise is another annual release series, with games hitting shelves every year since 2005 when Call of Duty 2 arrived.

In both cases, however, it's difficult to claim the series is (or was, in the case of Splinter Cell - the latest release was delayed for quality reasons, which never happens to a milked franchise) being exploited by the respective publishers.

Both publishers use alternating teams to create games, effectively giving each title a two-year development cycle. Call of Duty has also seen an effective splitting off of one team's release, with Infinity Ward's offering gaining the Modern Warfare tag along with a different field of battle. Treyarch is still seen as the weak sister in the development tag team, though it's perhaps an unfair label given the exceptional multiplayer offered up by 2008's World At War, but are hardly turning in a half-hearted effort in terms of quality.

The Call of Duty series, while I wouldn't quantify it as being 'milked' currently, is certainly in danger though. The voice actor who played 'Ghost' in Modern Warfare 2 let slip that a new game featuring his character is in the works, while Activision has expressed considerable interest in turning the Call of Duty franchise into an MMO of some kind - perhaps something similar to Planetside's land battles?


There's also a new comic, also featuring the 'Ghost' character, talk of a movie hittting the big screen at some point in the future, and word of a third developer coming in to handle development of something Call of Duty-related - perhaps that Ghost game?

Activision knows how to milk a franchise to death. Just ask fans of the music genre, where they've released over 20 Guitar Hero and other 'Hero' games in the last three years. With sales of the music genre plummeting, could Activision possibly be dumb enough to switch off to oversaturating a different - currently profitable - market to make up the difference?

Surely they can't be that shortsighted, right?


Bobby Kotick continues to profit from Activision's strong performance, EA closes Pandemic Studios, voice commands come under patent fire, and the Army's game seems to be working - this week on The Business.

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Kotick Sells More Stock

Occasionally controversial Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has once again cashed in, selling off Activision stock and making a tidy sum. Kotick sold 1.68 million shares, netting approximately $17 million in the process.

Kotick has sold off shares of the company several times in the last year, most recently just last week when he sold off 20 million dollars worth of the stock. Prior to that, Kotick raised $25 million in August with the sell off of two million shares.

Credit: Gamasutra

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EA Closes Pandemic Studios, Rolls Staff Into EALA

Long the target of closure rumours, the shoe finally dropped for Pandemic Studios (developers of Mercenaries, Full Spectrum Warrior, and Battlefront, among others) as EA confirmed the studio has been shuttered and staffers have been rolled into the EA Los Angeles (EALA) studio.

Not all staffers will make the switch, with founders Josh Resnick, Andrew Goldman, and Greg Borrud all leaving the company. In addition, EA has confirmed a reduction in the Pandemic staff roster - though the number affected has not been confirmed.

EA's move is another reaction to their recent financial woes. Streamlining production and cutting costs will be a big part of any resurgence for the giant software publisher. In that vein, these may not be the end of the changes for those at EALA. The studio has had a recent cancellation in Tiberium (a first-person shooter adaptation of Command & Conquer) as well as high-profile disappointment in Medal of Honor: Airborne.

Credit: Gamasutra

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Vocal Recognition Patent Targets Sony, EA, And Others

This week's blatant cash-grab patent lawsuit is in the realm of voice recognition and targets a number of companies including Sony, EA, Disney, and Ubisoft.

The patent, which can be found here, seems to cover a wide range of potential applications - anything from voice-dialing on cellphones to voice-recognition for MP3 players. One thing it doesn't seem to cover specifically are video game-related applications like ordering troops from location to location.

Hopefully this claim will be dumped from the courts unceremoniously, but it seems unlikely.

Credit: Industry Gamers

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America's Army Tops Recruitment Methods

When it first launched, the America's Army game was considered controversial by some, who argued the game was targeting impressionable youngsters as an indoctrination tool for the military.

According to Congressional testimony, the Army believes the game has not only been an indoctrination tool, but it has also been their most successful of all time. A 2008 study was cited as having had more of an impact on recruits than all other advertising combined.

Credit: Game Politics

Modern Warfare 2

Current song: Ride of the Valkyries

I feel bad for neglecting Dragon Age: Origins this week, just as I feel bad for still not playing the copy of Left 4 Dead 2 that I have sitting on my desk. Assassin's Creed 2? Sorry, no time for you just yet.

It's still all about the Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer.

The new Perks and Killstreaks system is top drawer stuff, adding in a ton of replay value and variety to the conflicts. One match you'll run into a group of campers snipers and it's a cat and mouse game of seeing who exposes themselves (not that way, perverts) to enemy fire first. The next game you're in a total run-and-gun battle despite facing the same team. Different tactics for different maps.

I've been mixing it up with a stealth build lately, using Coldblooded and Ninja to stay hidden from enemy equipment and using claymores to set traps behind enemy lines - and occasionally in random places. I also switched my Killstreaks off the random care packages. They offer a lot of power (or a UAV) but don't count towards your current killstreak, and make unlocking further rewards much harder. Something to keep in mind.

411 is trying to get a team together for some Team Deathmatch, so watch for the 411 tags.


Once again it's all about Modern Warfare 2 - this time it's multiplayer, however, including a brief glimpse into the pain that is the 'official' 411mania team deathmatch game.








If you have any questions or want to request any videos, leave a comment below. Until next week, I'm out.