GDC: Day Zero [Note]

To: Ash From: Crecente Re: I AM NOT DEAD…YET! Myself, Mike McWhertor and Stephen Totilo are all flying out to San Francisco tomorrow to start our GDC coverage. It will be fantastic, informative and, I hope, entertaining. The schedule is packed from breakfast to midnight snacks with interviews, gameplay sessions, hands-ons, lectures and parties. I’m still not sure if there will be any HUGE news coming out of the show, but I think it will be one that people should keep an eye on. And don’t forget, it’s on Saturday too and we’re all sticking around till the bitter, bitter end. Now, show me your gaming roots! What you missed: The Never-Ending Game: World of Warcraft’s Impact on Borderlands God of War III Review: Olympic Glory How to Use Psychological Warfare To Win at Video Games My Trash-80 Powered Gaming Roots Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal and Steam Coming to Mac in April Three-Year-Old Kills Herself With Game Controller-Shaped Gun Violent Video Games Now Getting You 3-5 Years In A Venezuelan Prison I Was An Xbox Live Celebrity, For One Night Only Why Modern Video Game Armies Lack Female Troops

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GDC: Day Zero [Note]

A-Ha! ESRB Outs Lips: I (Heart) the ’80s [Esrb]

Yes, yes, simmer down, I know you were all dying for another installment of konsole karaoke. Happily, the ESRB issued another of its fabulous spoiler alerts, letting us know we’ll be wailing along with one-hit wonders sometime soon. It’s rated T for “Lyrics, Mild Violence, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco,” but any objectionable content seems to come from the accompanying music videos. Let’s read the certificate and see if we can pick out the songs: “Music videos include depictions of men and women in revealing outfits performing provocative choreography; for example, women in negligees, black bras, panties dancing inside a classroom [Van Halen: "Hot for Teacher" or J. Geils Band "Centerfold"?] ; large amounts of exposed cleavage, some grinding dance moves; and background images of storefronts/signs reading “25 cent Peepshows,” “Live Sex Theatre,” and “Topless Girls Dancing.” [Madonna: "Open Your Heart?"] Some videos depict people smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol (beer, champagne, ale, etc.). A video depicts two claymation-style armies wielding swords, striking each other, losing limbs in battle; another video briefly shows a woman with a pistol shooting a man. [I should know both of these. They escape me.] Song lyrics may contain references to sexuality (e.g., “Ménage à trios,” “She’s a very kinky girl,” “I really love to taste her,” and “You don’t have to sell your body to the night”) [The last three are "Superfreak" by Rick James; "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman" by Bryan Adams, and "Roxanne" by The Police.] No clue when this releases, so you’re going to have to be satisified with wailing “Take on Me” in the shower a little while longer. Lips: I (Heart) the ’80s Rating Certificate [ESRB]

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A-Ha! ESRB Outs Lips: I (Heart) the ’80s [Esrb]

Top 10 Characters that Deserve Their Own Game

Heroes these days seem to have largely disregarded the notion of sidekicks. It might be the endless taunting that Robin received, or the eternal coolness of uttering that classic “I work alone� line before strolling off into the graceful shadow of the night. That being said, there are still plenty of team players and second fiddles who are deserving of their own game. We list the top 10 characters that deserve their own game:

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Top 10 Characters that Deserve Their Own Game

Where Have All The Zombies Gone? [The Crazies]

The Infected. Los Ganados. Majini. Parasite hosts. Some of the biggest “zombie” games in recent years don’t feature the undead. Why can’t we call a spade a spade, burying it in the neck of a good old-fashioned undead zombie? This is a conversation we’ve been having fairly often lately at Kotaku Tower, mainly due to the release of the film The Crazies, which we’ll be reviewing here next week. The Crazies (seen above) features a small town plagued by a mysterious toxin, which turns humans into violent maniacs before eventually killing them. While the Crazies aren’t technically zombies, they do share traits similar to other zombie-alikes found in recent games. What’s interesting here is that the 2010 film The Crazies is a remake of 1973’s The Crazies, written and directed by one George Romero, five years after the release of Night of the Living Dead. So if Romero, the king of zombie horror himself, strayed from the zombie formula so soon after Night of the Living Dead, perhaps it’s no wonder that our video game maker’s opt for other explanations for why people are shambling about eating each other. Take for instance: Resident Evil Didn’t Resident Evil originally have zombies in it? Sure, they were really just humans infected with various viruses, but I’m pretty sure they were still called zombies, up to a certain point. In Resident Evil 4 the zombies were no more, replaced with Los Ganados, Spanish for The Cattle. These non-zombies (nombies?) were faster and more intelligent than those in previous games in the series. In Resident Evil 5 they became the Majini, which is Swahili for not-zombies, or more accurately, evil spirit. They were smarter, faster, and still not zombies. Boo. Dead Rising Frank West has covered wars, you know, and he’s also covered hordes of non-zombies invading a mall in a small town. While the shambling hordes in Dead Rising were indeed dead, they weren’t really undead, their bodies controlled by a parasitic insect nesting in their brains, taking control after killing the hosts. Left 4 Dead Despite looking the part, the creatures in Valve’s Left 4 Dead series are victims of a rabies-like virus that causes psychosis. Perhaps they are more like the people in The Crazies than any other video game zombie-alikes. Dead Space No, not space zombies, as amazingly cool as that would be. Just Necromorphs, which sounds to me like the worst Power Ranger spinoff ever. So what qualifies as traditional zombies? In our eyes, there are two main types. Voodoo zombies, which have been seen in games like Akuji the Heartless and Shadow Man, and the mysterious, unexplained zombies. The latter are the sort of zombies you’d see in a George Romero film, the product of some mysterious plague that brings corpses back to life, or perhaps hell overflowing. The key is that we either don’t know why the zombies are back, or they are the product of voodoo. They also have to actually be the dead, brought back to life. None of this rabies, virus, iPhone app made them crazy nonsense. There are a few games that have done it right lately. For example: Call of Duty: World at War While it’s hardly a zombie video game, the zombies in Call of Duty: World at War’s zombie maps are never really explained. The dead have risen, you have to kill them, end of story. Considering it takes place in the middle of World War II, I’m going to assume hell is overflowing. War does that. Plants Vs. Zombies Indie developers don’t seem all that hesitant to throw about the word ‘zombies’ whenever possible. Perhaps they feel they are below the radar from the imaginary zombie police, or maybe you don’t really need to know where the undead in Plants Vs. Zombies come from in order to have a good time with it. With those criteria in mind, what are your favorite zombie video games, and do they actually contain zombies? Be wary! Even the most convincing shambling, brain-munching creature might simply be a guy with a really, really bad cold.

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Where Have All The Zombies Gone? [The Crazies]

Where Have All The Zombies Gone? [The Crazies]

The Infected. Los Ganados. Majini. Parasite hosts. Some of the biggest “zombie” games in recent years don’t feature the undead. Why can’t we call a spade a spade, burying it in the neck of a good old-fashioned undead zombie? This is a conversation we’ve been having fairly often lately at Kotaku Tower, mainly due to the release of the film The Crazies, which we’ll be reviewing here next week. The Crazies (seen above) features a small town plagued by a mysterious toxin, which turns humans into violent maniacs before eventually killing them. While the Crazies aren’t technically zombies, they do share traits similar to other zombie-alikes found in recent games. What’s interesting here is that the 2010 film The Crazies is a remake of 1973’s The Crazies, written and directed by one George Romero, five years after the release of Night of the Living Dead. So if Romero, the king of zombie horror himself, strayed from the zombie formula so soon after Night of the Living Dead, perhaps it’s no wonder that our video game maker’s opt for other explanations for why people are shambling about eating each other. Take for instance: Resident Evil Didn’t Resident Evil originally have zombies in it? Sure, they were really just humans infected with various viruses, but I’m pretty sure they were still called zombies, up to a certain point. In Resident Evil 4 the zombies were no more, replaced with Los Ganados, Spanish for The Cattle. These non-zombies (nombies?) were faster and more intelligent than those in previous games in the series. In Resident Evil 5 they became the Majini, which is Swahili for not-zombies, or more accurately, evil spirit. They were smarter, faster, and still not zombies. Boo. Dead Rising Frank West has covered wars, you know, and he’s also covered hordes of non-zombies invading a mall in a small town. While the shambling hordes in Dead Rising were indeed dead, they weren’t really undead, their bodies controlled by a parasitic insect nesting in their brains, taking control after killing the hosts. Left 4 Dead Despite looking the part, the creatures in Valve’s Left 4 Dead series are victims of a rabies-like virus that causes psychosis. Perhaps they are more like the people in The Crazies than any other video game zombie-alikes. Dead Space No, not space zombies, as amazingly cool as that would be. Just Necromorphs, which sounds to me like the worst Power Ranger spinoff ever. So what qualifies as traditional zombies? In our eyes, there are two main types. Voodoo zombies, which have been seen in games like Akuji the Heartless and Shadow Man, and the mysterious, unexplained zombies. The latter are the sort of zombies you’d see in a George Romero film, the product of some mysterious plague that brings corpses back to life, or perhaps hell overflowing. The key is that we either don’t know why the zombies are back, or they are the product of voodoo. They also have to actually be the dead, brought back to life. None of this rabies, virus, iPhone app made them crazy nonsense. There are a few games that have done it right lately. For example: Call of Duty: World at War While it’s hardly a zombie video game, the zombies in Call of Duty: World at War’s zombie maps are never really explained. The dead have risen, you have to kill them, end of story. Considering it takes place in the middle of World War II, I’m going to assume hell is overflowing. War does that. Plants Vs. Zombies Indie developers don’t seem all that hesitant to throw about the word ‘zombies’ whenever possible. Perhaps they feel they are below the radar from the imaginary zombie police, or maybe you don’t really need to know where the undead in Plants Vs. Zombies come from in order to have a good time with it. With those criteria in mind, what are your favorite zombie video games, and do they actually contain zombies? Be wary! Even the most convincing shambling, brain-munching creature might simply be a guy with a really, really bad cold.

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Where Have All The Zombies Gone? [The Crazies]

PlayStation Store Update: Greeks, Greed & Grandia [North America]

Hurry, get yourself to your PlayStation 3 and download the God of War III demo before everyone else starts putting a hurtin’ on the PlayStation Network. Actually, there’s a lot of new stuff on the PlayStation Store this week. The North American version of the store has the new PSone Classic Grandia, plus that Darksiders demo you were promised and plenty of PSP games, demos and other downloadable gems that will probably be occupying hard drive space later tonight. Don’t forget about the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Drake’s Fortune multiplayer content, which may be confusingly titled for some. Oh man, and the Borderlands Secret Armory of General Knoxx expansion is out too? Eesh! You better get some background downloading queued up. Here’s the full list. Games & Demos for PlayStation 3 Greed Corp. ($9.99) PSone Classics: Grandia ($9.99) God of War III Demo Darksiders Demo Digger HD Demo Games & Demos for PSP echoshift ($14.99) GTI Club Supermini Festa! ($29.99) PSP minis: Retro Cave Flyer ($4.99) PSP minis: The Terminator ($6.99) PSP minis: Age of Zombies ($4.99) The Eye of Judgment Legends Demo Expansions & Add-ons Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Drake’s Fortune MP Map Pack ($3.99) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Drake’s Fortune MP Skin Pack ($2.99) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Drake’s Fortune MP Pack (bundle) ($5.99) LittleBigPlanet White Knight Chronicles Costume Pack ($5.99) LittleBigPlanet White Knight Chronicles Black Knight Costume ($1.99) LittleBigPlanet White Knight Chronicles Dragon Knight Costume ($1.99) LittleBigPlanet White Knight Chronicles Leonard Costume ($1.99) LittleBigPlanet White Knight Chronicles White Knight Costume ($1.99) Borderlands Secret Armory of General Knoxx ($9.99) Dante’s Inferno Animated Film Dante Costume ($1.99) FIFA 10 Ultimate Team (English, Spanish, French) ($4.99 each) Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising Overwatch Pack ($4.99) Valkyria Chronicles Challenge of the Edy ($4.99) Guitar Hero 5 tracks “Can You Take Me” by Third Eye Blind ($1.99) “Losing a Whole Year” by Third Eye Blind ($1.99) “Never Let You Go” by Third Eye Blind ($1.99) Third Eye Blind Track Pack ($5.49) “Can You Take Me”, “Losing A Whole Year”, and “Never Let You Go” by Third Eye Blind Rock Band tracks “Distracted” by KSM ($1.99) “Walking on the Moon” by The Police ($1.99) “Heartkiller” by HIM ($1.99) “Ode to Solitude” by HIM ($1.99) “Wings of a Butterfly” by HIM ($1.99) “Just For Tonight” by One Night Only ($1.99) “The Dope Show” by Marilyn Manson ($1.99) HIM Pack 1 ($5.49) – “Heartkiller,” “Ode to Solitude,” and “Wings of a Butterfly” by HIM. Game Videos The Tester Episode 2 “Communication Breakdown” (free) PlayStation 3 TV Commercial – “Grandma” MLB 10: The Show Reveal Trailer SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 3 Launch Trailer MAG “Dear PlayStation” Spot MAG: How To – Leadership Overview MAG: How To – OIC MAG: How To – Platoon Leader MAG: How To – Squad Leader Yakuza 3 Dev Diary 1 Dragon Age: Origins Awakening Trailer War Machine Trailer Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing All-Star Moves Trailer Themes & Wallpapers MLB 10: The Show Themes (Diamondbacks, Orioles, Red Sox, Rockies, Dodgers, Yankees, Padres, Giants, Rays, and Blue Jays) (free) MAG SVER Dynamic Theme ($2.99) MAG Raven Dynamic Theme ($2.99) MAG Valor Dynamic Theme ($2.99) Abstracted Theme ($1.49) Irish Flags Theme ($1.99) Wallpaper (free) Madden NFL 11 Contest Wallpapers (x3) (Drew Brees, Jared Allen and Reggie Wayne)

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PlayStation Store Update: Greeks, Greed & Grandia [North America]

PlayStation Store Update: Greeks, Greed & Grandia [North America]

Hurry, get yourself to your PlayStation 3 and download the God of War III demo before everyone else starts putting a hurtin’ on the PlayStation Network. Actually, there’s a lot of new stuff on the PlayStation Store this week. The North American version of the store has the new PSone Classic Grandia, plus that Darksiders demo you were promised and plenty of PSP games, demos and other downloadable gems that will probably be occupying hard drive space later tonight. Don’t forget about the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Drake’s Fortune multiplayer content, which may be confusingly titled for some. Oh man, and the Borderlands Secret Armory of General Knoxx expansion is out too? Eesh! You better get some background downloading queued up. Here’s the full list. Games & Demos for PlayStation 3 Greed Corp. ($9.99) PSone Classics: Grandia ($9.99) God of War III Demo Darksiders Demo Digger HD Demo Games & Demos for PSP echoshift ($14.99) GTI Club Supermini Festa! ($29.99) PSP minis: Retro Cave Flyer ($4.99) PSP minis: The Terminator ($6.99) PSP minis: Age of Zombies ($4.99) The Eye of Judgment Legends Demo Expansions & Add-ons Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Drake’s Fortune MP Map Pack ($3.99) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Drake’s Fortune MP Skin Pack ($2.99) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Drake’s Fortune MP Pack (bundle) ($5.99) LittleBigPlanet White Knight Chronicles Costume Pack ($5.99) LittleBigPlanet White Knight Chronicles Black Knight Costume ($1.99) LittleBigPlanet White Knight Chronicles Dragon Knight Costume ($1.99) LittleBigPlanet White Knight Chronicles Leonard Costume ($1.99) LittleBigPlanet White Knight Chronicles White Knight Costume ($1.99) Borderlands Secret Armory of General Knoxx ($9.99) Dante’s Inferno Animated Film Dante Costume ($1.99) FIFA 10 Ultimate Team (English, Spanish, French) ($4.99 each) Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising Overwatch Pack ($4.99) Valkyria Chronicles Challenge of the Edy ($4.99) Guitar Hero 5 tracks “Can You Take Me” by Third Eye Blind ($1.99) “Losing a Whole Year” by Third Eye Blind ($1.99) “Never Let You Go” by Third Eye Blind ($1.99) Third Eye Blind Track Pack ($5.49) “Can You Take Me”, “Losing A Whole Year”, and “Never Let You Go” by Third Eye Blind Rock Band tracks “Distracted” by KSM ($1.99) “Walking on the Moon” by The Police ($1.99) “Heartkiller” by HIM ($1.99) “Ode to Solitude” by HIM ($1.99) “Wings of a Butterfly” by HIM ($1.99) “Just For Tonight” by One Night Only ($1.99) “The Dope Show” by Marilyn Manson ($1.99) HIM Pack 1 ($5.49) – “Heartkiller,” “Ode to Solitude,” and “Wings of a Butterfly” by HIM. Game Videos The Tester Episode 2 “Communication Breakdown” (free) PlayStation 3 TV Commercial – “Grandma” MLB 10: The Show Reveal Trailer SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 3 Launch Trailer MAG “Dear PlayStation” Spot MAG: How To – Leadership Overview MAG: How To – OIC MAG: How To – Platoon Leader MAG: How To – Squad Leader Yakuza 3 Dev Diary 1 Dragon Age: Origins Awakening Trailer War Machine Trailer Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing All-Star Moves Trailer Themes & Wallpapers MLB 10: The Show Themes (Diamondbacks, Orioles, Red Sox, Rockies, Dodgers, Yankees, Padres, Giants, Rays, and Blue Jays) (free) MAG SVER Dynamic Theme ($2.99) MAG Raven Dynamic Theme ($2.99) MAG Valor Dynamic Theme ($2.99) Abstracted Theme ($1.49) Irish Flags Theme ($1.99) Wallpaper (free) Madden NFL 11 Contest Wallpapers (x3) (Drew Brees, Jared Allen and Reggie Wayne)

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PlayStation Store Update: Greeks, Greed & Grandia [North America]

Kotaku Off-Topic: Obituary Edition [How Is This News?]

In upstate New York I worked with a guy who read the New York Times obituaries every day. “I learn more about the world in which we live by reading the obituaries rather than the news,” he told me. Inventor of the Easy Bake Oven dies – Ronald Howes Sr. taught a nation of ‘tweenage girls how to bake with a lightbulb. Mystery writer Dick Francis died last weekend . This guy was a staple of beach tote bags and bedside table. Dick Francis was a jockey leading Britain’s 1956 Grand National when his mount – owned by the Queen Mother – inexplicably fell, spread eagle. Francis later went on to publish nearly 50 crime thrillers. He had dropped out of school at age 15. Al Haig dies – Lots want to talk about how Haig, as secretary of state, presumed to overstep the line of succession with his “I am in control” remark during the Reagan assassination. More notably, Haig as Nixon’s chief of staff was the hatchet man during the Saturday Night Massacre . Haig probably also brokered the deal that put Ford in office in return for Nixon’s pardon, although this has never been confirmed. William E. Gordon , built the Arecibo Radio Telescope, dies. Gordon’s creation, which began operation in 1963, mapped Venus and discovered the first extrasolar planets. In 1974 it beamed this message into space at the M13 globular star cluster, in hopes that extraterrestrial life might receive and understand it.

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Kotaku Off-Topic: Obituary Edition [How Is This News?]

HIM, Marilyn Mason, and The Police Head to Rock Band DLC

Harmonix and MTV Games = announced that a three pack of songs from Finnish rockers HIM, as well as singles from KSM, Marilyn Manson, One Night Only and The Police, will be added next week to the Rock Band Music Store on Xbox 360.

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HIM, Marilyn Mason, and The Police Head to Rock Band DLC

Bobby Kotick, Warm and Fuzzy, Defends Notorious No-Fun Statements [Dice 2010]

Bobby Kotick, head of Activision, thought he was Luke, not Vader. And he didn’t mean that thing about wanting to make game-making no fun. “I don’t know how this happened, but all my life I was the rebel flying the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wing fighter and suddenly I wake up and I’m on board the Death Star.” That’s the second quip Activision’s oft-vilified CEO said to start his talk at the DICE gaming convention today. His first was a joke about the height of his microphone, set not for his height (he’s short) but for former EA chief Larry Probst. Mistakes, Kotick has made a few and he was ready to admit them today. Most notorious was a late 2009 comment he made that seemed to cement his position as more Vader thank Luke. No, he said today, he didn’t mean to sound like, his words, “a dick.” In September he had told a group of investors : “The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.” Today, he said, after describing Activision as a company striving for greatness, “Sometimes that commitment to excellence, well, you can come across as being like a dick. And when I say things like ‘taking the fun out of making video games,’ it was a line that has been often-quoted lately, but it was a line I used for investors. It was mainly because i wanted to somehow come across in a humorous way that we were responsible, in the way we made our games in that it wasn’t some wild west, lack of process exercise and that we really did give some thought to the capital being used to provide a return of investment to shareholders. So I say things like ‘taking the fun out of video games’ knowing full well that all we’re actually trying to do is keep the fun in the process because, as most of you know, when you’re getting into crunch time it becomes really difficult to meet those milestones or get things polished the way you would like, that isn’t a lot of fun. That is not what I meant by it.” The Kotick speech today was one of of putting on the good face of Activision and the man at the podium here at the Red Rock Casino. Kotick admitted that he’s sometimes been so much the businessman that he’s cost his shareholders money by not remembering to get close to game creators. “Sometime what winds up happening when you are 50,000 feet above is you can get insulated from that creative passion.” Blizzard? He should have bought them sooner. He had thought that a subscription version of World of Warcraft was “the silliest thing” he’d ever heard of. Maxis? “When Maxis was getting sold everyone was being sold on Sim City 2000 being this fantastic product that was incredibly late and wasn’t coming out.” Kotick went to visit some executives at the company. In another office, Will Wright was working on a game called Jefferson. Kotick didn’t meet with Wright. No one could explain the game to him. What Kotick missed was the game that would become the Sims. For a CEO who has been vilified as a business-first enemy of video game creativity, Kotick wanted to reveal that he has made mistakes staying too distant from passionate game creators. The most vivid example he gave was how he handled the purchase of the Guitar Hero brand and blew off the talented studio, Harmonix, that had built them, prioritizing the Guitar Hero franchise owner Red Octane and handing the development of the series to Activision-run Neversoft. “When we were buying Guitar Hero, or buying Red Octane, the makers of Guitar Hero, we knew about Harmonix,” Kotick said. “We had always known them as sort of somewhat a failed developer of music games.” Activision decided that their own studio, Neversoft, made good games, so they would make Guitar Hero from now on, not the Boston-based Harmonix. He said that had Activision met with Harmonix, things would have been very different. That’s Bobby Kotick saying sorry. Note that Harmonix, now owned by MTV Games and creating the Rock Band games, has been distributed by Activision rival EA since then. That distribution deal is set to expire next month. Kotick was warm and fuzzy, zip-up sweater over polo shirt, no suit and not much business talk. He was reminiscing in his 20s, the ex history of art major spending about $400,000 for a stake in Activision, a company he was worried was losing its soul. He wanted to explain that he was a gamer originally, then a businessman, one with apologies for some of the creators he may have ignored or insulted — and of course a company to brag about now. “I loved Zork,” he said of his gaming days. “I loved Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I loved the whole idea behind Activision.” That idea was that it was the anti-Atari, the company that rebelled against the corporate attitude of Atari and would champion creators. He recalled scheming in the late 80s with his friend who had started a hedge fund to try to buy Commodore. “I tried for a bout a year to acquire control of Commodore,” he said. He thought it could be turned into a great 16-bit console. The Commodore console could be better than the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System being sold in Japan at the time, he recalled himself thinking. Kotick went from gamer to game maker to businessman. Kotick said he’s not playing many games anymore. He’s a single dad with three daughters and is wary of the kind of developer he would become, knowing his addictive personality (He confessed he is “addicted to food”). Did he used to be an avid gamer? “I still have callouses from Defender. I still wake up in the middle of the night and see the words ‘Use key to open door.’” Does he play now? Not much: “If I was regularly playing Modern Warfare 2 I would not be able to stop and it would be at the expense of all my other responsibilities.” Kotick said that Activision is a company that supports creators and champions vision. He took barely-veiled shots at EA, comparing his interest and efforts in the past to help start companies such as Jamdat and Pandemic with the eventual fates of those companies now folded into EA and, in the case of Pandemic, shut down as an independent entity. “If you have a company and you want to protect your creative freedom and the integrity of the creative process, if you want to retain your identity and culture, if you want the support of the mothership and the resources of the mothership, we’re a really great mothership. But if you want to sell out and move on, there are definitely other companies to talk to.” Kotick made no mention of the deep cuts Activision announced earlier this week nor of the couple of hundred developers who were let go. He focused on projecting a game developer-friendly image and announced the start of a $500,000 independent games development contest.

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Bobby Kotick, Warm and Fuzzy, Defends Notorious No-Fun Statements [Dice 2010]

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