Activision calls for calm in EA feud

GAMESCOM: The games industry is no stranger to public bickering. And as much as the media (secretly) loves it, Activision publishing boss Eric Hirshberg has called for calm.

It’s one thing to want your game to succeed and another thing to actively, publicly say you want other games to fail," he told a Gamescom audience, as reported by Eurogamer.

"Recently a competitor of ours was quoted as saying that he wants to see Call of Duty ‘rot from the core’. Can you imagine the head of Dreamworks animation coming out with a new movie and going to the press and saying that he wants Toy Story to ‘rot from the core’?.

"As someone who runs one of the biggest publishers in this business I can tell you that I want as many games as possible to succeed, whether we created them or not because I want this industry to keep growing and bringing in new people.”

Hirshberg also admitted that the games industry has plenty of work to do regarding its wider outside image.

"This isn’t politics. In order for one to win, the other doesn’t have to lose. This is an entertainment industry, it’s an innovation industry and, at best, it’s an art form,” he added.

But we’re still a young art form. If we were the movie industry the movies wouldn’t even be talking yet. We all still have a lot to prove in our position in the pop cultural landscape. We shouldn’t be tearing each other apart fighting for a bigger piece of the pie – we should all be focused on trying to grow a bigger pie.”