Company Acquisition
polycounter lvl 18
I am hoping to tap the various knowledge base here for something I am curious about.
When it comes to company acquisition: One game company purchases and basically controls another.
When has this worked out (quite) well for both parties?
thanks
* I understand this can be taken from a lot of different viewpoints. I suppose i'm open to all so long as they have some inkling of a basis
When it comes to company acquisition: One game company purchases and basically controls another.
When has this worked out (quite) well for both parties?
thanks
* I understand this can be taken from a lot of different viewpoints. I suppose i'm open to all so long as they have some inkling of a basis
Replies
I think I would qualify this as more of a merger, I'm not sure you could say Activision has taken over blizzard.
how about bioware? they seem to be doing alright. didnt ea buy them awhile ago?
sony and naughty dog (but I'm not if sure sony owns the studio, or they're just working together really closely)
bungie bought themselves back.
http://www.seattlepi.com/default/article/Microsoft-lets-Bungie-go-but-holds-tight-to-1251708.php
Right, and both Microsoft and Bungie did quite well while MS owned them. Hell, you could say without MS, Bungie wouldn't have had 1% of the sales they did with them. I mean before MS, Bungie was making Mac games, lololol.
Bungie decided they didn't want to make halo games anymore, and had enough capital from the mutual success they enjoyed with MS, to buy their studio back. I cant see where any of this would mean it wasn't a successful relationship.
It has to do with a company having the majority power over another. I am trying to stay neutral and see what people say. But I honestly don't see it in many areas. I see a lot more in the opposite.
I think Bungie is a good example but like its been said. They were not really bought. And a lot of people may not realize this but Bungie said that Halo 3 was going to be their last! yes they did. They stated they couldn't wait to get away from Halo.
I ask for this info in hopes that people tell personal stories, but I know thats almost impossible on an open forum
I think some of the examples here are TBD. A good ammount of time is about 2-3 years. And a game more or less shipped. Nu FX / Ensemble / Irrational
Is Irrational owned by 2k and under their control now? From an outside perspective its had its ups and downs. But I'd need an internal perspective on it. If like 2K is soiling IPs or if theres lots of internal conflict (of interest).
I'm curious about this stuff because even thoguh its a "Biz world" its always personal. ALWAYS. and very psychological. It can be seen like a step-father situation. Especially if that step father was controlling you from far away with no real face
Yeah this sounds like a pretty good example. Thanks. Seems like both benefited in enough ways that you could say it was a pretty good setup. Seems like even if the original owners of Bungie hated making Halo 3 or something... it had no real negative effect on things at large.
I do feel like a lot of Halos success comes from (shooting from the hip here) what I guess I would call "babies-first-FPS" syndrome. Where mine would be Doom/Wolf. But that does not soil nor change what your saying at all. It still stands that it was ostensibly a solid relationship.
I got that information from earlier posts in this thread. So I was mis-informed.
"MS didn't buy Bungie." by adam
But now I know they were bought. So that message of mine is already dated
simple mis-understanding/mis-information dude.
If MS had never come along and gobbled Bungie up, Halo would have been, most likely, a moderately successful Mac/PC game, which is to say not even in the same stratosphere as what we know the series to be on console.
Edit: yeah I saw your last reply shortly after mine, no worries.
Again they weren't a company before, but they were teams of people who made a unique creative product that were acquired and retained creative freedom and loose deadlines. It's worked pretty damned good for all parties involved.
Yeah I agree. I don't want this thread to turn into a "why is halo popular" thread. ITs fruitless. I've already stopped posting over at GA.org because of what happens with all of my threads over there.
I agree. Accessability is a huge thing. All the personal stories I have of hardcore halo fans are all non-pc gamers. They love halo and when they look at me and talk to me about it I can see a look in their eye that is exactly the one I had with Doom.
Anyways i'll leave that at that. Just a personal story on a lot of friends love for the game.
Yes, original game was going to be as big as Tribes
So anyways, MS/Bungie. Thats a good one. The relationship was pretty long running as well.
Looking forward to more examples. Especially anything of that magnitude!
Counterstrike as well. I think this qualifies, even though it may not be Company A ate Company B, its clearly Company A ate Little Guys B, and with much success in every instance that they've done it. Has Valved picked up an Indy Team/Mod team and not gotten gold out of it? We'll try to forget the fact that TF2 was in development for like 10 years. =P
Yeah yeah totaly. But this isn't really what I was looking for
They were brought into the fold. They ARE Valve. You can walk down the hallway and smile and say hi. Or you can walk down the hallway and fire somebody. There isn't typically somebody who is concidered an ACTUAL leader in the origianl group and thus there are no real employees of that group either. In this case Valve is f'ing smart!!! obviously they are. If they never took in the Portal team and that team went on to be funded and make Portal 1 on their own and become big in 2 years. THEN Valve bought them.. That would probably be a bit different.
Are they really made by outside teams? Never really seemed outside to me. I have heard from the portal poeple. They are brought into the fold. I know stories from those people by being at the GDC. They concider themselves a part of valve. There are other situations like this. Like a gorup of people who just do the multiplayer for a company (but are internal) or the people who just do the "2d spin off" but are internal.
Usually when you buy somebody they are external. They have their own Creative Director and opporators. They do their own hiring!!!! The relationship is strange - hence why I am asking about this stuff in the first place.
Counter-STrike is Gooseman and he went to work at Valve. He is a Valve employee.
Lots of these sucked-in mod teams probably have people who leave if they are unhappy. People who leave early. And then the raw talent that is happy stays and is so in-the-fold that its like the same company doing more than 1 game. Gooseman can probably be fired by valve (i dont want to step out of line, but i assume so)... and Valve can also tell Goos to do programming on Half Life 6
Microsoft Bungie
or Microsoft Ensemble
Etc.....
If Portal is an external team, then what is their name? Valve West? Valve North? Portal Corporation? Portal Entertainment?
Is it counter-strike STudios (Valve).. or Valve-North-CS division LTD.
Is it Day of Defeat Entertainment lead by CEO Brad Bucklbee in Texas? Or is it just Valve. I think its more or less "VALVE"
Valve is smart.
Not in any way the same thing as your standard hostile takeover, but I think relevant in this discussion none the less.
quote from my original post
L4D guys are an actual company originally. That did stuff for other valve stuff as well. *shrug*
But
Its kinda hard to even state the company aquired for most of these!!! to fit whats not really an argument, but more of a list.
I WILL PUT YOU ON THE LIST!
People should feel free to start their own thread if they want.
This post, and many others are just detouring and obscuring the focus. This is so bad on GA.ORG that I can no longer post on there. And i'm kinda close to not posting around here much anymore either. Its not as bad. But when somebody says "What companies, in your oppinion, do you think are still making highly stylized games" it does not mean they need a 25 post discussion about how somebody mentioned a game that somebody else thinks isnt' stylized at all.
I guess I have a different way of looking at forums. If somebody models Kurt Cobaine and asks for crits, do I have to talk about how his "music is shit".
Another I can think of was condor, or "blizzard north" they got up to diablo 2 before things went south and broke off to do torchlight. Selling millions in the diablo franchise. For what its worth they also brought on a lot of talent from SOE I believe to create WOW, though again they did not actually acquire SOE, simply took on much of their talent.
I mean, do you want to have a discussion, or do you want someone to write an essay for your and cite their sources, for academic review? One of these is reasonable, the other is not.
You say this:
But then complain as soon as someone has a minor difference of opinion with you. Again like I said with the Vavle thing, I agreed entirely that it wasn't the perfect example, but it is far from off topic.
Your taking that out of context. The context it is in is that its directly under my previous quote. Earthquake, you are taking that out of context. Re-read my original post.
I will entertain different perspectives ON COMPANY AQUISITIONS. These can include but are not limited to.
----ROI - Return on Investment
----Personal Experience (i.e. people who worked at an aquired place who say its really bad there even though the public thinks its all godo)
----Personal Experience being on the aquiring end, same thing.
----Quality of life
----
I dont see how my original posts entails entertaining wordy oppinionated paragraphs about mod teams.
Perhaps I should have been more clean in my original post. I'm looking for relationships between one game company buying out another and controlling them. I am not looking for games and a handful of people brought internally. and then WITHIN those parameters I would love to hear different perspectives such as "this one is a success because both got rich" or "This one is not a success because everybody involved is pissed off all the time, despite money" or "This one is a success because in the long run" or "this one was a success because short run"
The subjective matter is : What YOU think is a success
The non-subjetive matter is: What is a company. What is an aquisition.
So taking my statement out of context, you are correct sir. But if you put it back under the damn title of the thread!!! "Company Acquisition" then you can see why thread-after-thread of shit about Portal and Counter-Strike is starting to grate on me.
Portal was kids out of school. The complaint has to do with oversaturating a thread with something that isn't all too on-base. The discussion about Bungie was much better.
Also this IS my research on the internet. There is not good informaiton out there Earthquake. Its not like theres an article that actually lists out this info, and if it did it would have oppinions in it.
I ask the poeple here becaue they have HANDS ON experience! And there IS oppinions. I said it, and i'll say it again... WHAT IS A SUCCESS!!! That is the oppinon. So people have oppinions about Bungies relationship and if its a succes.. GREAT! when did I complain about that? I am not. I said its a good example and I welcome somebody saying "Bungies was not a success because I worked there for a while and everybody was being fucked over.."
The internet is not going to tell me that. Theres already good examples on here that show my post is worth-while.
So don't say its a random list with out oppinions. Thers always oppinions. And a common one is that derailing threads only creates problems.
The Valve thing is happening all over the place.
The "list" in my mind is not worthless. It helps me understand acquisitions from different stand points. I get to see what people think is a successful one and what is not. I get to see what is and what is not. Then I can be better informed on Aquisitions and MAKE UP MY OWN MIND.
Or so wikipedia says.
What is your favorite SNES game. When somebody says "I really love X because of its gameplay AND art" do you simply respond "game X is for fucking idiots". Jesus H christ.
I don't come to forums to not get opinions. But I also don't come here to get worthless information.
People should feel free to ask simple questions like "How long does it take you to model a character" and not have to worry about getting 2 answers and then the entire thread turns into "It doesn't matter about time, it matters about quality" or some shit. But that happens EVERY TIME.
Cultural Ghetto.
I speak for MY thread. You speak for "the internet forums". Which one is more unrealistic?
From what I hear its a pretty good relationship. If they are actually acquired (meaning Activision has the majority of share/control) then yeah. I've heard pretty good things. This one I know because I know a lot of people who work there. It seems both benefit. Some would probably argue Activision more than Blizzard(?) But i'm not sure.
Cool.
Then don't say anything. Its possible the thread would have very little information in it. People might just say "Bungie is definitly one!" or whatever.
Nobody has to say anything. I'm not looking for heavy information, and also your assuming the negative
See
So yeah its a bit off topic. My bringing up people speaking from personal experience is a non-issue. I just like real info from real artists if/when I can. I don't like internet articles or published stuff. Its always lies. they say "merger" instead of "acuisition" when its 2 totaly different things.
So its not really inside information. Nothing bad.... And the question was about ones doing well!!
Chair is doing really well. Wow. I said it.
If i had more information I would speak it. But if I had much more information I wouldn't be asking for it
Bioware was purchased by EA and has done well so far.
ID Software by Zenimax although I think they need to release a game before making a final call.
Epic bought People can fly, so far so good.
Add arkane studios to the bethesda list, they seem pretty happy about it.
you seem to have forgotten about pandemic then, the other half of the bioware deal.
in short, i think it's kinda impossible to say from the outside where an aquisition worked out well and where it didn't. and if you're on the inside, you'll naturally better keep your mouth shut.
Its a thread about posting a great tool you use in your favorite app. The creators name seems familiar
What I should have done was this.
Rules:
1. Post ONE company acquisition that you feel does well, per day.
2. Do not tell us how this is done when its not a company acquisition, simply explain the acquisition based on its own merits.
DICE
Bioware
Irrational
Arenanet
Relic
Naughty Dog
Mythic was certainly better off than it would have been otherwise.
Doc Rob. I do not understand why you are being so harsh. I think you should read through my post again and see that you may be projecting. Your message is very scathing.. "happy happy joy joy developer utopia"???
I'm getting tired of re quoting myself but I will do it again to help stop this.
So right here in the first post I simply state "working out for both parties" and that i'm open to what people think... I would lean towards ROI myself obviously. Success as in economic and business success more than peopel being unhappy. But as you've probably read I stated that I am open to other interpretations because I think it would be lame to set a rule that people can't post about how they were a part of a company that was not financially successful, but eveyrbody was still happy.. I mean its totaly cool for somebody to post that and say they felt it was a success. Thats the only reason why thats in there.
Heres how you can easily tell I'm not leaning towards "happy happy joy joy"
As you can see here I listed ROI first. and then Personal Experiences. I did not want to list these things up front as to
1. not be so limiting on success
2. not incourage people to speak about "happy happy joy joy" experiences. I would much rather hear what you, doc, are talking about. The financial more long term stuff. The non subjective stuff. Business. ROI. Money. Game sales. > "subjective happiness".
So again. I don't really see where your getting that happy happy joy joy from. But i assure you doc it is not my intention at all. It is not what I am leaning towards or looking for.
But no really. I'm looking back through my posts. Where did I actually define success anywhere? Where did I limit it to only "happyness"!?..... speaking of pointless!!! yeeesh!
what happens thereafter isnt worth discussing, because it can be good or bad, but all of the observations that are made after the fact are done with hindsight but the actual point of transaction nobody knows. So to try and categorise acquisitions as good bad or whatever is pointless, it can be any of those..
Just calm down a little ;-)
Search again Justin. Because I still don't see it.
I get the feeling that a lot of people are not actually reading the whole thread and are instead responding to parts and pieces, completely mis-informed on intentions.