Toys for Bob(by)

Oh, that wacky Bobby Kotick. He's pulled Activision's internal development team Toys for Bob away from the Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot series and assigned them to Call of Duty, because heaven forbid there be the slightest bit of carefree whimsy in this industry that doesn't come directly from Nintendo. On the plus side, the ashtray-filching, subsidiary-shuttering CEO is getting his comeuppance in the form of a significant pay cut. On the down side... he can make all that back and more with bonuses. So much for karma. 

This situation irritates me, because Toys for Bob has been around for a long, long time, first creating the Archon series for the Commodore 64 as Free Fall Associates, and then moving on to the doomed 3DO, developing games like Star Control II and The Horde. For those who missed it, that was the wonderfully weird hybrid of hack and slash action and town building strategy which featured Kirk Cameron's declaration that he was "raised by a kind herd of wild cows." 

(Fun fact: I was one of the voice actors for the fan translation of Ys IV: Dawn of Ys, and my portrayal of the hapless villager turned spider Lemneth was heavily influenced by Cameron's performance as Chauncey. Lemneth was a weenie, Chauncey was a weenie... it just seemed to fit.)

I hadn't been paying too much attention to Toys for Bob's latest efforts, including the Skylanders series and the recent revival of Crash Bandicoot, but it nevertheless seems incongruent to put this team to work on the blood-soaked and seemingly endless Call of Duty series. It's like, exactly the opposite of what they've been making for the last twenty five years. 

Activision's used a hammer to fit a square peg into a round hole before, taking Vicarious Visions out of its natural element as a successful developer of handheld games to work on the PC and console title Diablo. It makes absolutely no sense, but then again, neither does paying Bobby Kotick kajillions to set fire to the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Guitar Hero franchises. I wouldn't pay this guy minimum wage to sell Pro subscriptions and creepy latex figurines at GameStop, but what the hell do I know?