A couple of items in the news this morning had a quote from the old Marlon Brando movie popping right into our collective heads – “I could have been a contender.” The reason for this, is that both stories seem to place at least someone involved as a serious contender for the Darwin Awards. The current purveyor of the Darwin Awards can be found here: . Now we are aware that there are many places that have awarded “Darwin Awards” and we don’t know if this site originated the concept. However their description of the award is apt:
‘The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who
accidentally remove themselves from it…” – www.darwinawards.com
The first contender nearly did remove themselves from the human genome. The second contender, as you will see, may not be in danger of removing themselves from the human genome, but depending on the outcome, one of the parties involved in serious danger of finding themselves in the lower end of said gene pool.
A very serious contender…
While Ubi Soft, publisher of games with what we call the “posterior push” digital rights management (always connected or the game won’t work) tries to recover its reputation with a “Green Movement” (read no paper game manuals and recycled game “boxes” their New Zeland distributor is busy undoing all there good work by proving they are in serious running for the next Darwin Awards: .
“According to the New Zealand Herald, a man dressed as Fisher, with bandages wrapped around his hands and a fake gun, pointed his weapon at bar goers in Auckland’s Viaduct Basin. Someone thought the weapon was real and yelled a warning, causing the people in the bar to take cover. Police were called, and even though they thought the gun was real, they managed to diffuse the situation without hurting anyone.” – Gamepolitics.com
Whoever the person they convinced blackmailed or got stoned enough to run into a bar somewhere with a fake gun, we can only point out that he should “thank his lucky stars” as grandmother used to say, that he did so in a place like New Zealand. If the same incident had taken place in Chicago (where there have been times in the city’s history where the only way to tell the cops from the robbers is with a program) the distributor would have been planning the actor’s funeral. On a positive note, no matter what impetus, we are happy that the result was Ubisoft doing something for the environment. After all, in our home, we are so conscious about recycling that Fran makes the dogs use the same bark twice.
Someone here is in the low end of the gene pool…
…We just aren’t certain who.
Meanwhile the “good” folks at Activision (no doubt worried that they are also in running for the Darwin Awards) are trying to recover their reputation via COO Thomas Tippl by telling the LA times” We treat our developers extremely well” in an interview here:
On a personal note, we here at No Prisoners No Mercy wonder when interviews that are reported to have been more like interrogating prisoners, interrogating employees for six hours over a holiday weekend in a windowless room and attempting to seize personal computers, all the while bringing employees to tears become the definition of “treat our developers extremely well”. We are thinking that perhaps Activision COO Tippl should have qualified his statement by saying “We treat our developers extremely well NOW”. The employees themselves, however, seem to be painting a picture with a somewhat different brush, as related by Edge Online :
“They’re scared shitless,” the source said of Activision management. “They never saw this coming. They can’t believe what’s going on. At first they gave us some bullshit about moving up payments of all the money they owe us to sooner increments. That was when [designer] Todd [Alderman] and [engineer] Frank [Gigliotti] left. But with the announcement of Respawn and all the people leaving, they just got their heads in their hands.
“They fired the two most amazing leaders we’ve ever seen, and then shafted us all out of a lot of money that was promised to us… there is nothing they can do to gain our trust or respect. And I’m pretty sure they know it now… I w as you know it is dead… and it will continue to crumble. There are a lot more veterans who are definitely going to leave.”
It seems that the COO of Activision and some of the employees are not only painting different pictures, but Activision seems to be using some sort of magical paint box where everything is rose colored and the general public are all imbeciles. Time will tell, and as they used to say on the old Perry Mason show, “The truth will out”.