Why Closing Bizarre Creations Is The Right Decision
And so another studio potentially closes and the gaming public throw their arms up in the air, ready to blame the supposed evil penny-pinching attitude of the world’s biggest publisher.
Sometimes, working in this job puts me on a difficult knife-edge. By putting my honest opinion into words here, I may seem callous, but I always feel there’s room for debate, no matter how touchy the subject matter. On the one hand, I can understand the indignation from long-time fans of the studio – I am one of them and will be sorry to see it dissolved if that is its fate. Should Activision close it – or ‘restructure’ it – it will be missed, but will any of us really be missing them for Blur or 007: Blood Stone? It’s this question we need to ask ourselves before poking the finger at Activision.
I don’t feel I need to tell you that videogames are a business, and the studio has put out two lukewarm received games on the trot. If you place yourself for one minute in the big chair at Activision, could you honestly justify charitably sponsoring a loss-making arm of your business? What about the other arms? The ones that through their own innovation, foresight and talent are just about breaking even, or the ones which are thriving? Is it fair that they should suffer because of one part of the business making bad decisions? No, I don’t think so.
Whichever way you slice it, there are reasons to call unfair on both sides. Sure Bizarre is a towering talent, it has proved that in the past, but Blur showed us that there is a lot more to making successful, profit-making games than simply ensuring that they’re very good. Just take a look at Enslaved, Vanquish and others; fantastic games which have sold naff-all. Part of being a successful studio is having good horse sense. It’s about starting a two-year project at a time when you’re sure it will score a bullseye with the gaming public upon release. Bizarre, despite making good games, has proven that this is not something it is particularly good at, so why should Activision continue to fund the – at least two – projects the studio is now working on? It would be throwing good money after bad.
I’m sick and tired of reading all this negativity about Activision when for the most part, it is not to blame. It’s like blaming the apathetic gamers who didn’t buy Blur, yet are now “Up in arms” over the studio’s closure. Ultimately, if you don’t support something, it will die, but why should you buy something you don’t want to play? Activision has supported Bizarre unequivocally over the last couple of years, throwing the entire weight of its primetime TV-consuming marketing budget at Blur, and appears to have allowed the studio a large amount of creative autonomy. They too have the right not to support something that no one wants to play.
Of course, my heart goes out to its employees should Bizarre close, but going on Activision’s previous form – you may remember it came to the aid of Realtime Worlds – there most likely won’t be a lot of people out of work as a result. Activision recognises that there is talent there and won’t be keen to see it jump ship.
Bizarre Creations didn’t cut the mustard and Activision will do what it has to. So I implore the public to stop labelling the giant as some green-eyed monster. In a market where even the biggest publishers are announcing staggering losses (Ubisoft some 90m Euros reportedly, as of yesterday), publishers need to nip them in the bud or slowly drown. Believe it or not, that is for the benefit of us all.
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Blur was a good game. That is all.
It’s not a question of the business sense in closing Bizarre down – if Activision can’t make money from the studio, then it has to do what it has to do.
That’s not the reason why people are angry, and as such, I think your frustration here is somewhat misdirected.
As you state, Bizarre Creations is a studio of obvious talent. The majority of its output through the years has shown undeniable quality, and this is something that continued under Activision – Blur the obvious highlight.
As such, if the failure for Bizarre’s titles to sell isn’t a question of them being poor, you have to look at what else might be behind their respective flops. Doing so leaves us with two options; either Activision didn’t push the games appropriately, or they were the wrong games to push in the first place.
The former is most certainly true. Yes, Blur had TV ads all over the place, but they were ill thought out, sloppy ads that completely mismanaged the image of the game. Bizarre had said throughout they didn’t want people to see Blur as Mario Kart for adults, yet that’s exactly how Activision attempted to sell it.
If Activision had gone to any market research firm in the country, they’d have been able to tell them in quick fashion that no-one was looking for an adult version of Mario Kart – Mario Kart does the job just fine.
Successful marketing has to start when the game is in conception, and any adverts an agency comes up with has to tap into the core values that were behind the game in the first place; why does this game exist, who is it aimed at, etc.
Activision, therefore, threw a whole lot of bad money at Blur, with Bizarre seemingly taking the blame for its failure.
The other element is whether gamers wanted a racer in the first place. It’s no secret that, Need for Speed at Christmas aside, they’ve largely fallen out of fashion. Even the Burnout series, brilliant as it was, never exactly set the charts alight. Selling Blur was always going to be a challenge.
Yet, Bizarre has almost always been a racing studio. When Activision picked it up, it knew that’s what it did, and did very well. So, if racing games are out of favour and the publisher had no idea how to market a racing game anyway – as is evident – why, exactly, buy a racing studio?
Those two reasons are why people are angry – Activision seemingly picked up a studio, and then hung it out to dry, tainting its releases with a combination of shockingly bad promo or no promo at all.
So yes, if I were now in Activision’s shoes, I may well consider shutting Bizarre to be the only option. But as the world’s biggest games publisher, they should also take a stark look at how things ended up this way, because for us to simply dismiss it and say “that’s how things work” means there’s every chance that Bizarre will be one in a succession of studios Activision and other major publishers end up closing.
Can I just point out that the game’s name is ‘blur’, not ‘Blur’?
I know it’s picky, but it’s the game’s name, so I’d expect at least one person here to get it right.
Ahem. It’s ‘blur’ on the cover, but that’s just the logo.
It’s even listed as ‘Blur’ on the game’s website. See top banner for details – http://www.blurgame.com/home?brocklee
Also, does it really matter? :)
The author of this article seems to be of the opinion that game studios that are owned by their publisher get to pick and choose the games they want to make.
Do you think Bizarre really chose to make Blood Stone? I’m not even sure that blur was a title they were really interested in, although they did a sterling job with it. I’d say that “throwing your weight” into a marketing campaign is nowhere near as effective as a *good* marketing campaign.
I also don’t call lumping the Bond license on a studio’s lap “creative autonomy” – I’ve seen that happen to teams in the past and it nearly ruined them too.
Either way, I hope this has a happy ending and all the boys and girls land a new publisher – Microsoft looks likely.
Nowhere in the article do I imply that making Blood Stone was Bizarre’s choice. You are inferring that yourself. Apologies if it reads that way, but I can’t see it and would have gladly edited it if need be.
Cheers for the feedback.
@Guest
Indeed. If Microsoft don’t pick up Bizarre in some form, then they’re missing a trick – especially considering the rumours that they’re looking for a developer to fly the PGR flag.
No other studio will do (that most amazing) franchise the justice Bizarre can. Get on the blower, Microsoft!
Why is this sad? Because Bizarre made quality games, and this brings with it more insinuations than most give it credit for.
What does it say about us as gaming consumers when a developer can make good games, and still not escape the ax? What does it say about us when Activision announces it will be broadening the Call of Duty brand even further in the coming years, as it is pulling a lot of their weight, and no one seems to care? What does it say about us, the gamers, when a week later a good quality studio within Activision gets shut down based entirely on sales?
Activision isn’t to blame, I agree with that much, because we are to blame. Us, the gamers, who go out of our way to hop on the popular bandwagons and allow countless great titles to fall through the cracks. We’re to blame for the sorry state of the industry as much as big publishing is, as publishers become more and more open in talking about their need to be rid of anything that doesn’t appeal to the mainstream.
We sit back and complain, but we go out and buy all the superhyped games as though we’re not the problem. You sad another great developer has met the gallows? Maybe you should have thought of that when you were buying 4 Call of Duty map packs a year. Activision may be orchestrating the complete mainstreaming of all games, but we’re the ones buying it wholesale.
@Red
Well said, sir.
“Part of being a successful studio is having good horse sense. It’s about starting a two-year project at a time when you’re sure it will score a bullseye with the gaming public upon release.”
I read this as though it was the studio’s decision to decide project length and release date. I’m not sure what kind of “horse sense” a studio like Bizarre has ever been given the freedom to command.
I do agree that Activision is the studio people love to hate right now and people are definitely expressing themselves a little too passionately. But judging from the projects that Bizarre have been lumped with and the way Raven Software’s games have been marketed – perhaps the uproar isn’t totally unfounded.
@Red
People buy the games they want to play. Do people want to play Bond games, or Mario Kart-style games with real cars?
Apparently not.
So you have to look for who is responsible that the studio ended up shipping those games. Do you believe that Bizarre chose those titles for themselves?
blur/Blur is a great game.
Activision can be to blame as they did the marketing not Bizarre.
The marketing angle was awful and killed the game stone dead.
Blur is more like Wip3out with cars rather than Mario Kart for grown ups.
The marketing should have gone the cool and desirable angle not the cheesey Mario Kart skit. That is why it died.
The Bond game was a good idea in principle but both it and blur were launched at foolish times when other similar products were coming out.
I cannot believe that Activision launched Black Ops at the same time as their Bond game. Commerical Suicide x 10000.
The whole think stinks of utter stupidity and seems almost deliberate so that they did not have to pay Bizarre the extra £40M they owed them if things went well!
Ridicuous, bring out Blur 2 and market it as a super cool racing game instead of ‘like mario kart’.
Then bring out PGR 5 and i’ll buy both just like i bought PGR3,4 and Blur (twice).
Also Geometry Wars 3, which i won’t buy but someone will :P
We actually don’t know whether Activision was to blame or not. Blur was potentially a really good game – BUT – it lacked polish (it’s difficulty curve was all over the shop), and it was released in the same week as Split Second – there weren’t that many arcade racing games released in the last year, and releasing head-to-head with an almost direct competitor is just foolish. The first issue could well have been Activision forcing deadlines on Bizarre, and not giving them the time they needed to polish. It may have been up to Bizarre, but generally these polishing issues are budget or deadline driven, and that’s up to the publisher. And the second issue is entirely in the hands of the publisher (they generally choose when to go to retail).
Activision is also behind the insanely poorly marketed ‘Apache Air Assault’ Gaijin games published through 505 Games for their first next-gen outing (IL-2 Sturmovik:Birds of Prey) and it had both better advertising (websites and online ads) and better presence at retail (there’s not a store in my area that will let me pre-order it, they’re just not getting it in….).
And then there’s Activision rushing both CoD:MW2 and CoD:BO to market with bugs in ‘em to burn.
This is _not_ the behaviour of a good publisher or a good business. Bizarre may have had issues as well, but Activision is a bad business living off of a few good products (Starcraft, WoW, CoD) while making a complete mess of a bunch of others (Tony Hawk games, Guitar Hero) and poorly marketing it’s third-party stuff (Apache Air Assault, 007:Bloodstone) and, I suspect, not giving its devs the time or money they need to get the proper return on investment they should be.
blur was a bad/boring game and msr/pgr were always pulled down with bullshit cone events and atleast the xbox versions of all there games have the most time consuming bs achievements. bc made racing boring and repetitive and not exciting so i dont care if they die.
It would be a tragedy for a great development company that is Bizarre Creations to just be closed like that. I was gutted to hear when Activision bought BC, astounded why Microsoft never went in years ago.
Blur is the most addictive blast em road race game there is. Remember Rollcage on the playstation? brilliant gameplay and addictiveness that the next gen consoles have been waiting for…..go and buy it now
This is another company that has been bought by activision and closed down due to ‘lack of sales.’
It was a bad move by Activision to buy Bizarre Creations. Infact i thought it was a bizarre move. Had Microsoft bought them i’m sure they’d still be here today, and i bet BC would have had much more creative freedom!
Lucid for a revamped PGR5 ?