44 People Left Infinity Ward (57% Of IW)

[shio]

Killiana1a said:

shio said:

Everyone stopped counting, but this website didn't. 44 People left Infinity Ward amid broken promises, bad environment and stress caused by Activision. Almost 60% of Infinity Ward's Developers left, and rumors of IW's death is stronger than ever.

(3 of 10) 30% of animators/technical animators/mocap people are gone
(7 of 22) 32% of artists/concept artists are gone
(16 of 23) 69% of designers and scripters are gone
(11 of 15) 73% of engineers are gone
(5 of 5) 100% of writers are gone
(13 of 16) 82% of leads/directors from these departments combined are gone

 

In a recession, you can fill all those back up quite quickly. There is no shortage of unemployed technocrats.

Infinity Ward and Activision Blizzard will thrive due to COD: Black Ops selling at least 3 to 5 million, StarCraft 2 selling in the tens of millions, and Diablo 3 selling in the tens of millions. It is harder to gauge how WoW: Cataclysm will sell due to WoW entering it's 6th year.

As for the Infinity Ward founders, West and Zampella, who left and founded Respawn with EA as their publisher, I don't ever see them releasing a game that will come close to the magic of the COD series.

In a recession, you won't find people with the experience and leadership as the top guys that left IW. Companies hold on to those guys as much as possible in a recession.

Without those guys, Acitivision will be forced to get guys with little experience/leadership into a studio plagued by stress, bad environment, and being restrained creatively by Activision.

Respawn may very well do a better, creative and innovative game, because EA won't try to kill their creative freedom.