Ümloud! One of my favorite events from 2009 returned for 2010 and it was better than ever. I'm confident in saying "better" because this year my friends and I took the stage as Supercollider. The experience was well worth it. We all had a blast, and the event raised more than $11,000 for the Child's Play Charity. Supercollider is myself, James, Rick, Mario, and Alice. Bask for a moment in our awsomeness. Big thanks to Tyler Winegarner photography for the images.
Full disclosure: I'm a huge Rock Band fanboy. More to the point, a huge Harmonix fanboy. I greatly enjoyed the first two Guitar Hero games, as well as the third, but GH3's transition to Activision's own Neversoft team brought noticeable differences. Since then, the multiple annual additions to the franchise have lost my favor, and the man ultimately responsible, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, has been penned onto my shitlist.
His recent comments at the Deutsche Bank conference in San Francisco (story from Gamespot) has added to his demerits. I feel his desire for a Guitar Hero game not tethered to a major console is natural, and a predictable evolution of the technology, but maybe a little further ahead of the market. What Bobby wants is cloud gaming, of which I have also sung many praises. But retailers are already miffed at having to carry huge instrument-laden boxes on their shelves, so are they really going to be thrilled about carrying ones that are practically guaranteed to never be supported with disc software? Multiple versions per year? I doubt it. Guitar Hero owes much of its success to that of the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360. Kotick is basically making a weak pitch at a new, extremely specific gaming platform. While Activision is a formidable gaming company, I wouldn't dare put them in the same category as Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, or Apple. This threat to go solo with their music games rings as hollow as the one to drop support from the PS3 (Giant Bomb article.)
But this corporate posturing is nothing compared to his statements about his business philosophy when coming on to Activision. It's not surprising considering that this douche-lord has consistently driven their perennial franchises into the ground, but it still breaks my heart. I'll let the man's words stand on their own:
"We have a real culture of thrift. 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...We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."
Stay classy, Bob. Stay classy.
One point I can stand behind is the idea that better mouth animation will lead to more realistic graphics. I'm sure that Masanori Takashima, facial animator for Bayonetta would agree (blog from Platinum Games.) I hope Bobby plays it.
