A FORMER employee of Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard claims the stories we’ve heard about the company are “true”.
Jörg Tittel is best known for working in film, but recently has started developing games independently.
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As he prepares to release his upcoming game, The Last Worker, he has been speaking about his start in the gaming industry.
Prior to 2002, Tittel was working at Activision on a game to tie in to the release of blockbuster film The Minority Report.
Minority Report: Everybody Runs was a combat-oriented title that got poor to average reviews.
In an interview, Tittel said: “I worked at Activision 20 years ago on a not-very-good game called Minority Report. It’s a terrible game.”
However, Tittel had some insight into the work culture that Activision promotes.
Activision Blizzard has faced a number of lawsuits over the past few years, including accusations of gender discrimination and of promoting a ‘toxic workplace culture’.
Tittel continues: “All the stories you’ve heard about Activision? That’s true.”
When asking him to explain what ‘stories’ he was referring to, Tittel replies: “I’m talking more about the general spirit of it all.
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“You have people like Bobby the Hutt [CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick] running the show and then talking about how the UK [will] become ‘Death Valley’ because someone doesn’t want to shove his military entertainment down all the kids’ throats.
“We do not all need to play Call of Duty, and I’d be perfectly happy for it not to be on PlayStation.
“If it’s going to be, that’s fine too. It’s not an essential thing of nutritional value that we all need in our life.”
Tittel explained how the experience turned him off from developing video games, and he has only recently returned to development.
After his time at Activision he believed that games were “created in a cubicle hell, run by middle managers.”
His upcoming game plays on this theme, showing a dystopian future where humans aid the AI at the office.
Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
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