Why I hate Activision

57 here---

I'm going to discuss something that has been on my mind lately, Activision. Now, I am not a casual gamer, nor a hardcore gamer, I'm in between those, and I do care about the industry and the games I play, because really who doesn't like playing a good game? There are many publishers and developers I enjoy rather a lot, and I used to like Activision a lot. Then they started trying to wring as much money from consumers as they can.
How do they do this you ask? Simple, let's take a look at some of their past products. First, the first game I played ever, the Tony Hawk series. Now the first few games in the series were pretty good, and there's a good reason for that: they were the same game this a new number on it. Sure, they looked better and they all controlled differently, but largely they were the same damn game. Now this was ok, this was on the N64, so repeats of the same game were ok I suppose. But that was then, this is now.
Now a days if you keep putting out the same game over and over again people aren't really going to like it. Now I know what you're thinking, "57, if you hate publishers that put out the same game over and over again, why do you love EA so much?" Good question, and there's a simple answer. EA has variety, if you look carefully at EA the only real games they repeat are sports games and "The Sims," if you look at the rest of they're productions you see a huge variety, and the sequels to those games are generally badass and add to the game play, even they're sports and Sims games can say this. Activision doesn't do this for the most part, and I'd recon that about 95% of their games don't do this.
Now let's look at some more modern titles, more specifically the Guitar-, Band-, and DJ-Hero games. It's easy to hit Guitar Hero for repetition, because there's not much you can do to change skittles coming down the screen at you. Yeah, they added boss fights and some other garbage, but other than that it's the same damn game. Why is this a problem? Last year about five or so -Hero games were released. Now, I'm not saying I hate Guitar Hero, I really enjoyed the game. It's just after the fifth or so Guitar Hero game to come at me, I got a little tired of it. Now, what gets me angry is that they're not going to stop anytime soon, because Activision will milk any -Hero franchise for as long as they can fill their pockets. And you know what's even more aggravating? They know they'll get a shit-ton of money from them.
Now let's hit the Juggernaut of them all, Call of Duty. Now, this is a venerable franchise, I've played all of them, and generally pretty good. The thing that's pissing me off, is that Activision is now about to give CoD the Guitar Hero treatment. What do I mean by this? It hasn't been a year since Modern Warfare 2 hit and we already have another CoD game being shoved down our throats, by the second place developer Treyarch. Now, this is going to sell. A lot. Why? Because when all of the CoD fanboys see a game that has "Call of Duty" in the name, they HAVE to go and buy eight copies. They won't care how much it costs because CoD, like Halo, is now CoD-Jesus praise be thy name.
But let's go back to Modern Warfare 2 for a second. Let's start with the obvious, this is one of the best selling games in history. In it's first week alone, it probably sold a few million copies; Gamestop reported it was the most pre-ordered game in their history. So what's the first thing Activision do? See the dollar signs. Millions of people, tens of millions in the states alone, were playing this game non-stop. So what do they do? Charge fifteen bucks(Twice!) for five maps, which only two or three were new. And the first five maps, for about the first week did even work properly. First you over-price your product, then when we get your product it doesn't even work! You are brilliant Activision.
Generally, for the most I see within other companies the people who are making the game care about the story and/or the game. At Activision it's about making as much money as you can from the game, now matter how badly it sucks because whatever game they put out people will buy. I like games, I have my favorite developers and favorite games. And if a developer is going to try and exploit that for their own pockets, well fuck that.