If there’s one thing that really spoils the gaming industry for everybody, it’s probably the pointless, stupid rivalries that seem to blow up every five minutes – this console versus that console, this game versus that game, this other thing versus that other thing. Because, you know, that’s important or something, except it’s really not.
“Competition is of course a good thing,” Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg said during his keynote presentation at Gamescom yesterday.
“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.
“Recently a competitor of ours [EA’s John Riccitiello] 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.
“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?
“This isn’t politics. In order for one to win, the other doesn’t have to lose,” he added. “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.”
The man has a point, and it’s a good one. By all means, play the games you want to play, but don’t be a fun-hater. Nobody likes fun-haters.
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