Activision has a little game called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 coming out this fall - you may have heard of it. Rival EA is desperately trying to dethrone Call of Duty in the shooter market, and the company has very high hopes for Battlefield 3. EA CEO John Riccitiello ratcheted the rivalry up another notch earlier this year when he told IndustryGamers that he really wants to see Call of Duty "rot from the core."
This kind of attack on the competition is simply bad for the industry, argued Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg in his Gamescom presentation. "Competition is of course a good thing. It keeps us all on our toes and ultimately makes the games better. It's healthy. But it's one thing to want your game to succeed and another thing to actively, publicly say you want other games to fail," he said.
"We shouldn't be tearing each other apart fighting for a bigger piece of the pie – we should all be focused on trying to grow a bigger pie."
"Recently a competitor of ours was quoted as saying that he wants to see Call of Duty 'rot from the core'. I've been asked countless times to respond to this comment and I've generally chosen not to. My job is to help our incredibly talented, passionate teams to make the best games they can, not to throw insults around at others. But I actually feel this kind of rhetoric is bad for our industry," Hirshberg continued. "Can you imagine the head of Dreamworks animation coming out with a new movie and going to the press and saying that he wants Toy Story to 'rot from the core.' It's kind of hard to imagine, right?"
Ulitmately, Hirshberg, believe it or not, would actually want Battlefield 3 to succeed this fall. He believes that if more games succeed then the industry will continue to grow and thrive. There's no point in wishing for the demise of a competitor or its products.
"As someone who runs one of the biggest publishers in this business I can tell you that I want as many games as possible to succeed, whether we created them or not, because I want this industry to keep growing and bringing in new people." Hirshberg explained.
While the industry on the retail side is becoming an increasingly hits-driven business, as long as the games are really good, people will keep buying them, Hirshberg said. "I believe that as many great games as this industry can make, that's how many people will buy. I say that not only as the CEO of Activision but also as a gamer," he noted. "This isn't politics. In order for one to win, the other doesn't have to lose. This is an entertainment industry, it's an innovation industry and, at best, it's an art form. But we're still a young art form. If we were the movie industry the movies wouldn't even be talking yet."
"We all still have a lot to prove in our position in the pop cultural landscape. We still need to stand the test of time. We need to show we can withstand the kind of disruptive change and new competition that we're facing now."
He concluded, "The only way to do that is to continue to make great games. We shouldn't be tearing each other apart fighting for a bigger piece of the pie – we should all be focused on trying to grow a bigger pie. If we as an industry act like there's a finite number of games in the world, then there will be."
It's definitely food for thought. What do you think? Is he right? Is the pie big enough for everyone, and is EA's mudslinging a bad idea?
[Thanks to Eurogamer]
