Developer talks to us about working for Activision and the Xbox acquisition.

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We recently caught up with Paul Norris, the creative director of Mad Fellows during our Aaero 2 interview and Paul kindly agreed to answer some questions on his time at Activision as well as that big acquisition everyone is talking about.

Hi Paul,

With working for Activision on Guitar Hero and DJ hero, I wanted to get a few opinions from you, especially around the Microsoft acquisition…

Firstly, while I’m aware you’ve been pretty open about this in the past, for anyone who
hasn’t seen your previous comments, did you enjoy your time with Activision, and were
there any nefarious reasons for your departure, or was it just the want to head in a new
direction and create your own work.

Paul:
I left Codemasters to join FreeStyleGames shortly after it was founded
by ex-Rare and Codemasters employees.
They’d formed this independent studio as a reaction to what they felt
was wrong with bigger teams. It was a really great for a while.
After a few years we were making a game called ‘Superstar DJ’
that would eventually become DJ Hero.
Neversoft were looking for help creating Guitar Hero content
and were having no luck finding a team that could produce gameplay
and visuals that they felt were up to standard.

I was approached, did some test tracks which they really liked
and I ended up getting on really well with the guys at Neversoft.
I was then tasked with hiring and heading up a team at FreeStyleGames
to produce DLC packs for Guitar Hero.

This was an absolute highlight of my career.
I’d not been getting on well with the directors at FreeStyleGames
and was discussing opportunities with other studios.
This Guitar Hero opportunity meant I’d have my own room,
a team I’d hired myself and we’d deliver directly to Neversoft.
Everyone was happy.

Activision acquired FreeStyleGames.
As we all know, the bubble burst
and no one wanted plastic instruments anymore.
When the decision was made to try to revive Guitar Hero,
FreeStyleGames were an obvious choice of studio to do it.
Unfortunately, my relationship with the directors hadn’t improved.
I pitched plans which I believed would successfully revive the series, but became clear that I wasn’t going to be a key player
in direction of the new game.

In my opinion, Guitar Hero: Live addressed and changed all the things
that should’ve remained the same while keeping and adding to all
the things that needing throwing out. It was time for me to leave.

I’ll obviously never know if my ideas for GH would’ve done any better.
Dan and I had been talking about how we thought things
should be done for a long time at this point.
We decided to stop talking about it and start a studio.
We were either both crazy or we were onto something.
(This is why we’re called ‘Mad Fellows’.)
In a way, we’d come full circle from FreeStyleGames being formed
as a reaction to issues with the bigger studios that spawned them.
The difference is, we’re very careful about not continuing that cycle.

It has to be asked, but did you know Bobby Kotick, and if so, what were your
opinions of him and the overall working environment within Activision.

Paul: I remember Bobby Kotick visiting once. We were in the UK,
so it was a big trip for people from Santa Monica to take.
I would have been on the list of people our directors
wouldn’t want him talking to.

He was shown my Guitar Hero team through a glass dividing wall.
I never spoke to him personally.

After the acquisition,
as far as I was concerned, any of the ethos and character of the studio
that had drawn me in at the beginning wasn’t there anymore.
To be fair, this was probably as much to do with
my own issues with the leadership as it was Activision.
It had become all the things I wasn’t interested in
about making video games.
I’m not saying they were wrong or bad…
it’s just not what I signed up for.

Moving on to the Xbox acquisition, could you share your opinions on that?

Paul: As I said in our last chat,
Microsoft have always been really good to us.
They’ve supported us from when we first started
Mad Fellows in 2013 right up until now.
heard that the wave of indie devs before us had some complaints,
perhaps Microsoft were in the process of rectifying that
when we came along.

I think Xbox do a good job of listening to the community.
When I say this to other gamers, I’m often told that this is because
they were always in the shadow of PlayStation and they had to make more
effort to compete.

It might be naïve, but I’d like to believe that,
as Xbox has defied all the cynics and critics and is still going
from strength to strength after 20 years,
that they will have recognised that this success is at least partly
due to a good attitude towards their player base.

Indie studios working with Microsoft/Xbox are afforded all sorts
of mentorship, funding, tools and software.

They never asked us for any exclusivity.
The opposite, in fact.
They encouraged us to release Aaero on all platforms
so we’d have the best chance of becoming a
sustainable and profitable company.

So, you asked about the acquisition. Well, obviously
if you take the best elements of Xbox and the best elements of Activision,
it could be combined into something truly great.
On the other hand,
If the Sony fans are right and once the competition is either destroyed or assimilated,
Microsoft roll back their good work and start to recoup what they spent in the endeavour…
That’s obviously less good.
The worst elements of Microsoft and Activision combined is
too awful to even consider.

Honestly, I think most of the comments I read about this online
are just extensions of console wars.

Like, there’s loads of people that will comment how unfair it would be
for Microsoft to merge with Activision that are the same people
that would be celebrating if it was Sony doing it.

Ultimately, the fate of the games industry
and what it might look like in 10 – 15 years
isn’t actually decided by these mega corporations.
It’s up to the gamers.

If Call of Duty start charging for each grenade and people pay up,
you’d be a fool to think you won’t be expected to pay for each bullet next.

Thankyou very much Paul, it’s great to hear in so much detail,
and just like our chat about Aaero 2, it’s been an absolute pleasure.

Thanks for this, mate. It’s been fun. 🙂

We’d further like to thank Paul for his openness and honesty, and wish both him and Dan (Mad Fellows) the very best going forward, especially for the awesome Aaero 2.
Remember you can grab the free demo of Aaero 2 on your Xbox right now!

_{The content of this interview has been posted direct from Paul and has not been edited.}