Gawker: valleywag, activision

Valleywag spots secret Yahoo conclave at D6

Owen Thomas — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:20:00 EDT

CARLSBAD, CA — On stage at D6, Sue Decker couldn't offer any explanation why she was qualified to be president of Yahoo. But if you ask Valleywag, she's doing a bang-up job of pursuing Yahoo's strategy of embracing openness. For example, by holding a meeting within camera-lens length of Valleywag in the Four Seasons Lobby Lounge. Our eye was first drawn by Yahoo Media Group chief Scott Moore's blindingly colorful Madras shirt; we then saw he was sitting with Decker. Two of the other participants: Gordon McLeod and Matthew Goldberg, business-side executives at Dow Jones, which means they were likely discussing some kind of news-content partnership between Yahoo and the Wall Street Journal. I'd thought I spooted Brad Garlinghouse, the Yahoo executive who wrote the famous "Peanut Butter Memo," in the group, but I'm told he wasn't there. I later spotted him strolling down the halls with Yahoo board member Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision. More pictures of the meeting:

Paula Abdul to get her game on at D6 conference

Owen Thomas — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

CARLSBAD, CA — The hot gossip this morning at the Wall Street Journal's D6 conference: American Idol judge Paula Abdul, seen here in the video for "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow," is in the building. My bet: something to do with Activision CEO Bobby Kotick's appearance, since his company's music game, Guitar Hero, was advertised heavily on the show's final week. Could a new American Idol videogame — one that's not utterly horrible, like the one released last year — be on deck? Update: A tipster inside the ballroom reports:

Lame lame lame Guitar Hero world tour demo ... Paula Abdul is judge

So much for that theory!

Robert Kotick clueless about online games

Mary Jane Irwin — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:00:51 EST

The merger between Vivendi's games division and Activision is a big deal in the videogame business. The industry's Davids now have not one but two Goliaths to sling stones at. More importantly, console makers have two equal-sized publishers to play against each other. But it wasn't Activision CEO Robert Kotick's dream of forming a company to rival Electronic Arts that convinced him to form Activision Blizzard with Vivendi — it was World of Warcraft. According to accounts in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Kotick was "eager" to get into online games — multiplayer online worlds are all the rage right now.

"We looked every which way to figure out how to participate in what Blizzard had created," said Kotick, "We couldn't find a way to duplicate it, but we could acquire the expertise." That would usually mean finding young talent that's successfully run a few massively multiplayer online games, like Three Rings. Instead Kotick turned to Blizzard, with its one-trick pony — hopefully for Kotick, it won't be going out to pasture any time soon.

Vivendi, Activision form videogame conglomerate

Mary Jane Irwin — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:10:17 EST

Vivendi is forking over $1.7 billion to take a controlling stake in videogame publisher Activision. With their powers combined, they'll create a new game-publishing goliath, Activision Blizzard, ostensibly worth $18.9 billion. In size, it will rival longstanding industry leader Electronic Arts. The deal pairs Vivendi-owned Vivendi Games and Blizzard, the folks behind online multiplayer game World of Warcraft, with Activision's portfolio of Tony Hawk-licensed skateboarding games and Guitar Hero.

Mark Cuban's dancing feet sidestep Wii, PlayStation

Mary Jane Irwin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:13:15 EDT

Despite Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban's tenacity on Dancing With the Stars and his status as Silicon Valley demigod, he is not considered a "who's who" by Activision. He's been left out of the videogame publisher's Wii and PlayStation 2 titles based on the ABC show, which allows you to fulfill your most nerdly ballroom-dancing fantasies in the privacy of your own living room. But sadly, Cuban's hot-trotting shoes and puppeteer-spontaneous jazz-finger outbursts are not part of the package. Instead the adaptations stick you with the likes of Emmitt Smith and Joey Lawrence.

The Pirate Bay takes on corporate raiders

Mary Jane Irwin — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:22:11 EDT

Amidst all the hubbub about MediaDefender — the file-sharing policing agency whose private email files were recently spewed across the Internet, revealing unsavory antipiracy plans — one particularly interesting tidbit has bubbled to the surface. The Pirate Bay, a major file-sharing site, says it now has proof from those files that the music and movie industries have been paying hackers to attack the site. It is now taking this information to the police and charging the Swedish arms of Fox, EMI Music, Universal, Paramount, Atari, Activision, Ubisoft and Sony with technical sabotage, denial-of-service attacks, hacking, and spamming.

Activision Goofs Up Spider-Man 3

confonz — Thu, 03 May 2007 14:30:13 EDT

CONFONZ — When it comes to making software, it's Q/A that really sucks. The job is totally thankless. As if this weren't bad enough, there is a distinctly finite amount of actual programmers in the games industry, and they all know each other. And, more importantly, they all know the ones that stink. Those stinky programmers still get jobs, though, and it looks like Activision managed to hand off the engine development duties for its Spider-Man 3 movie game to some numbskulls that didn't understand the RAM constraints of the various consoles. After the jump, the gory details, as told to the ConFonz over web-covered beverages.
The initial intention of Activision was to have the Spider-Man 3 movie tie-in game out a month ahead of the movie's release, evidently. But when it turned out that, one month before ship date, the game was still gobbling up RAM as though every console was an Xbox 360, the company panicked. According to the Conference Fonz's inside source, Activision had to halt all other publisher-side Q/A work in order to get this turd ready for market before the movie arrives tomorrow.
Thus, nothing else could get through the company's Q/A department in April. Of course, the company was still able to ship "Pimp My Ride" for PSP, but that chunk of plastic probably doesn't include anything that can be tested, beyond the standard questions of "Is this game completely stupid? Does it have an IP tie-in? Will we make oodles of money from idiots?"
So, when you wake up and run to EBX, er.... GameStop, tomorrow morning to get your copy of Spider-Man 3 for Nintendo DS, Xbox, et al, just remember that the Q/A department died for your sins. And your games.