Email: Modern Warfare 2

Hey Malstrom, I know you have mentioned in the past that one is better off reading user reviews than professional reviews; something I tend to agree with.

If you go to Metacritic and compare the critic average to the user rating average for any game, and you will usually see they are pretty close.  Maybe a .5-1 point difference at most.  A lot of the recent, big hyped releases like Dragon Age, Borderlands, and Arkham Asylum show this trend.

But what about Modern Warfare 2?  The critic score is 9.5, hardly surprising, but the average user score is 5.5!  That’s a huge discrepancy.  And it’s not just some random cranks lowering the score, it has nearly 1000 ratings already in less than a week.

Seems like Activision is suffering some massive hype backlash.  People have been suckered in and they’re pissed about it.  The sales numbers will no doubt make Activision think it has no lesson to learn, but they’re squandering the reputation of the Infinity Ward brand and soon there will be none left.

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I don’t think Activision cares. From our context, we naturally believe that a company wants to satisfy customers and all. But this isn’t always the case.

Or look at it from the employee side. Many employees want to work hard and do good work for the company. But many employees are just padding their resume or are at the company solely for the benefits and do not truly care about the overall mission of the company. So if there is that wide of range between employees, we should also assume there is a wide range within the heads of companies.

Kotick may not care if Activision destroys all its franchises as well as destroying Blizzard. He knows he will be retiring as a billionaire. He’s clearly in it for the money, not to make gaming a better place. People like him are probably in glee that consumers are very angry.

I know it sounds preposterous that someone can run a company and not care about customers, and even detest them, but it does happen.

With such steep declines in franchise performances as Activision is undergoing (from Modern Warfare 2 to the music games and more to come), there are only two conclusions as to how this is going on. It is either based on stupidity, and there is much stupid in the upper crust of business guys. The other, more stunning conclusion, is that it is intentional. What if these Activision guys just want to get their money and burn down the bridge behind them?