NO.

(In case you haven’t kept up with gaming soap operas over the years, David Allen, before his tenure on Alganon, was the original lead designer of Horizons, which had a…. somewhat troubled past. Derek Smart, before his tenure on Alganon, was Derek Smart.)

This just in: Smart introduces himself to the Alganon community in his usual measured, moderate style.

Dave Allen didn’t “depart”. I fired him back in February for insurbordination and for acting against the best interests of the company. Shortly after the investors of the LLC unanimously voted him off the LLC. So yeah, he has been gone since Feb 22, 2010. I am not at liberty to go into any further details at this time but only to say that eventually everything we do can and will catch up with us. It is only a matter of time. I also fired Jason Blood – his long time buddy – shortly after that and for the same reason.

The Dec 1st launch of the game should never have happened. It was a mistake that has not only cost the company money but has also cost people their jobs and put an otherwise exceptional product at risk. As a game developer, I know all too well that if your game is not finished and you release it, thats just asking for trouble. No matter how great the game and technology are, it can and will fail. Especially in this industry climate. The average gamer is as finnicky as a hummingbird on acid, with a very short attention span and a penchant for being largely unforgiving. In other words, pulling a stunt like that is the death knell for many a game and company.

This whole “WoW look-a-like” rubbish, is gone. I’ve essentially asked them to throw it all out and for the artists to come up with the game’s own unique look and feel for for both the web UI as well as the game UI itself. You don’t go competiting with WoW when you don’t have a WoW sized budget or the manpower to match. But thats what David wanted to do and I’ve pretty much tossed it all. The team was unable to actually do this previously due to David wanting it that way, even though they knew it was a terrible decision.

You know, I’m tempted to subscribe just to keep reading these posts. Oh wait. I don’t have to!

We’re also getting rid of the monthly subscriptions. They are currently suspended, but will be gone for good. I put that plan into place since Dec 2009 with a view to making the game “subscription free” but supported via sales (I was the one who had the client price reduced to $19.95 as well btw) of the client as well as micro-transactions. It is not a traditional F2P game, but if thats what we have to do in the long run, then so be it. For now, we’re taking baby steps.

Derek Smart: the last community manager you’ll ever desire.

I am going to be at SXSW, though, where I am giving a talk on social gaming with Wagner James Au. Be there or be, well, not there.

(If you have any cool SXSW parties that don’t have a trendiness requirement, let me know, that’d be spiffy!)

Today West and Zampella, the two studio heads unceremoniously escorted out of the studio they created by, apparently, rented goons, had their say, through the filter of lawyers. Except… well… it wasn’t that filtered.

Activision conducted the investigation in a manner to maximize the inconvenience and anxiety it would cause West and Zampella. On little notice, Activision insisted on conducting interviews over the President’s Day holiday weekend; West and Zampella were interrogated for over six hours in a windowless conference room; Activision investigators brought other Infinity Ward employees to tears in their questioning and accusations and threatened West and Zampella with “insubordination” if they attempted to console them; Activision’s outside counsel demanded that West and Zampella surrender their personal computers, phones, and communication devices to Activison for review by Activision’s outside counsel and, when West and Zampella asserted their legally protected privacy rights, Activisions counsel said that doing so constituted further acts of insubordination.

If Activision’s executives, on-staff lawyers and rented goons wanted to, say, LARP being the caricature of the most brutal power-mad clueless management possible, this would be a really good way to do it.

Except that – they really did that. (You know, assuming that West and Zampella, through their lawyers, aren’t outright lying. Which I kind of doubt. Too much detail and all that.) Let that sink in a moment. Activision took one of the linchpins of their company, the studio that produced one of the best selling games of all time, and strongarmed them like a bunch of Mafia punks shaking down the local grocer for protection money. This is how they rewarded people who earned them over a billion dollars.

I’ve already said in a column for MMORPG.com how this affair shows the dysfunctional nature of the relationship between publishers and developers, and how setting them up as mutual antagonists ensures that no one is effective. I wrote this before the documents that West and Zampella filed came out. At that time, I was willing to assume that Activision wasn’t evil, merely part of – and a key component in – a system that was failing.

I’m not willing to make that assumption any more. That sort of fascist hardball isn’t done by people with a moral compass. And given the lack of ethics that sort of conduct broadcasts, it makes it easier for me to believe West and Zampella’s core argument – that Activision’s hostile takeover of Infinity Ward (and that’s what it is, with an efficiency that would make the expropriators of Yukos Oil blush) was motivated simply by a desire to not pay the makers of Modern Warfare the money they were owed. Apparently, Activision decided it was cheaper to destroy the studio and entangle its founders in legal tar. Something they anticipated in their 10-K SEC filing:

The Company is concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward. This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation. At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company.

Which, it is important to note, was written and filed before West and Zampella were fired.

Bobby Kotick, Activision’s CEO, a man with no interest in games save as methods of exploiting profit, who began his career as someone who rented out nightclubs, and couldn’t understand why anyone would go to them, is already on record as saying:

“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.”

The games Activision Blizzard didn’t pick up, he said, “don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises.”

Surprisingly, this does not engender a lot of loyalty among people who, you know, don’t see gaming as a packaged good created by frightened line workers so that it can be exploited on a yearly basis. So I guess that would explain the whole lawyers, goons, and lack of money thing.

And this is where the recession comes in – it works in Kotick’s and Activision’s favor, at least until now. When jobs are scarce and companies closing their doors regularly (EA laying off workers the day Activision shot Infinity Ward in the head, coincidentally enough), you don’t have the luxury, often, of having the courage of your convictions.

Yet, I have to believe that given two founders, who while everyone would admit are wildly egotistical, still have every reason to be and have worked for the interests of their team members, unceremoniously ejected and replaced by “packaged goods” functionaries so that the studio could be overseen by a “business unit” – at some point, the people in the trenches have to realize that no amount of job security is worth that.

Or maybe we really are just packaged goods, waiting to be exploited on a yearly basis.

For more notes on the situation see Dave Taylor and Jake Simpson. I’m sure there will be more. I can’t think of any developer who isn’t violently outraged at how this is developing.

* Adding me to your RSS reader so it’ll politely notify you at some point in the future when I decide to blather at length
* I’ve recently been posting to Twitter, because 140 characters is about my speed lately.

How do I register for this event?
Visit the event page Historian’s Social Media Party and click on Attending. If you’re not a Facebook member, join Facebook first.
I don’t want to use Facebook, now what?
Post a comment here, or send me a message via twitter just use #SocMeParty so I know it is about this.
In what ways can I participate?
You can post a link to your blog or website with a brief non-hypey introduction. You can network (see below) with other people and check out their links. You can even be a fly on the wall (no pun intended) and just chill.

Left undefined is how this is different from the Internet in general. Well, aside from the fact that the Internet was not dedicated to this one guy. Until now. That’s right, if you use the Internet for the next three days, you’re part of his party.

And here on Broken Toys, we party hearty.

This has not been terribly useful to me.

Why? Because, apparently, everyone who shares my first initial and last name thinks it’s their Gmail address. Thus, at any given point, I can pop this email account open and read job offers, requests for insurance seminars, Facebook status updates, and notes from their husbands that they are working late this evening.

I am apparently the Gmail vector for everyone s and jennings.

So Shaun, Suzie, Steve, Sara, Shane, Shay, Sue, Sheila? Would it be too much to actually figure out which email address you have before giving it out to people? Sheila, I’m glad you’re getting married but I don’t really want to see pictures of your dress or the approximately 500 bridal magazines you’ve signed up for. Stephen, I’m pretty sure buying her chocolate isn’t going to help. Shakira, did you really need to sign up for InterRacialDating.com using the wrong email address? And Steve, all the newsletters for ammunition are kind of creeping me out here. Plus, your wife Ellen wants you to know the meeting with the therapist is at 4:00 PM. You should probably go.

I’m pretty sure that checking this email account every so often makes me a bad person.