Will Activision take casual games more seriously?
It’s no secret that Activision has pushed many movie-licensed games for millions of parents to buy for their kids. Now that the contract between Activision and Dreamworks is over, they no longer have that resource for publishing family games. Activision continues to publish other properties such as Transformers and Spider-Man.
A while ago, Blizzard Entertainment announced Project Titan, a MMO game that is not related to World of Warcraft or any of their other titles. Not many details have been given regarding the game’s genre or style of gameplay. The most recent rumor is that it will be a much more more casual MMO compared to World of Warcraft and Diablo.
What about TFB? They have been working on Skylanders for over 2 years and during development, they were given extra time to make more improvements and additions to it. While it is geared towards children, the technology behind the game itself is very fascinating to most gamers. In one of the Skylanders interviews, Paul Reiche did mention that there will be RPG elements in it. In addition, Jeff Poffenbarger mentioned that TFB had lots of creative control and many of the ideas such as the toys and portal spawner was their idea.
TFB probably will not be working on a new Star Control as their next project after Skylanders. If their next project gives them as much creative control like they had with Skylanders, their next project will be just as fascinating if not more.
I think Activision will address other casual games. They might have games that will compete directly against games such as Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart, The Sims and LittleBigPlanet. It would fit their trend of a low investment, high return.
In conclusion, Titan remains a mystery. I think the success of Skylanders will be the deciding factor for future games for both casual and younger gamers. With their strong creative control and company growth, they can definitely add their own twist to any genre.
What do you think about the idea of Activision taking casual games more seriously? Do you think they’ll go head-to-head against other publishers such as Nintendo?
