In this corner, we have scam-factory Zynga. No longer allowed to scam its customers (much), they have moved on to bullying their employees. Be sure to friend them!
In the other corner, we have the titanic titan (see what I did there?) that is Blizzard, who as I write this just lost another million subs and had people “walk away”. And while Bobby has (yet) to aggressively threaten his employees Zynga-style, he did reward the makers of his cash-cow, CoD, by robbing them of their bonuses and kicking them out.
The really sad part of all of this is that both companies make such great MMOs, and I just don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t continue to play such wonderfully creative, entertaining products that push the genre forward every month.
Hardcore Casual 
But you’ll miss Zynga. They push out a craptastic new version of FarmVille, with minor tweaks, about once a month it seems. Thus they are totally delivering new content all the time, right?
We have different definitions of “new content” it seems.
I think we’ve had that discussion before. For you giving somebody a new shovel in a sandbox is practically infinite content, but a new version of a game is now no content at all?
Yes?
Reskinning Mafia Wars as Ninja Wars is not new content. It’s a reskin of a crappy ‘game’.
Adding Farmville to EVE opens up a lot of new content.
The problem with nitpicking this point with you is that I cannot stop making fun of Zynga long enough to effectively argue with you.
/win
/gloat
(Any time you argue for Zynga, even if your stance is that the company’s name starts with a Z, you lose)
While I am all for taking pokes at Blizzard, please keep them sensible. Blizzard has nothing to do with Call of Duty, that’s the purview of their taskmaster, Activision. Call Blizzard to task for something they actually did( no lack of things to choose from), or make it Zynga vs Activision.
The company is called Activision Blizzard. There is no Blizzard, just like there is no Activision (in terms of companies)
I don’t know what ” (in terms of companies) ” really means.
I do know that often, we see 4-5 years after one of these mergers where the two companies are now one “XXXXXXXXXX YYYYYYYY” company and one simply can’t make a distinction between them; they then decide to split up again and while the merger was supposed to take years and years as they fully integrated each other, the sale is accomplished within weeks, everyone goes back to working for their old company, and we realize that they were basically still completely separate the entire time. Am I saying that Blizzard is, in all likelihood, still a very separate subdivision of Activision, and that if Activision were to spin Blizzard off the process would be extremely simple and with no hint of confusion? Yes, of course. I don’t really have any evidence that this is true, and I still think that being bought by Activision had a negative effect on Blizzard, but that is my default opinion of these kinds of mergers until I see some evidence otherwise.
For the most part I agree, although I would not put it past Bobby’s idiocy to screw with the golden goose. We are talking about the guy who screwed the makers of his OTHER golden goose after all.
Either way, not the real point of the post now is it? I could change the title to Activision-Blizzard to clarify I guess, but eh.
Yea, there’s enough gray area and lack of concrete information that the only time it’s even semi-interesting for me to ponder how the two are connected is when a disgruntled employee posts a long rant about it and dishes some real dirt, like with that one guy and Warhammer online some months back. If some former Blizz employee spills the beans on how Kotick ruined Cata/MoP, I think that would top that easily though.
E.g. DaimlerChrysler, Disney buying Pixar and Pixar basically becoming Disney’s new chief animation studio without changing its internal leadership, etc.
+10. In fine form today, good sir.
Wow. Not even a H/T shoutout for the Zynga link. Bad internet form, sir. A total slap in the face.
/hat-tip sir, thanks for the link. Want an EVE buddy invite?