Warner who?

· by · in MMO. ·

I just caught this on the G&G blog. Which in itself is odd, because somehow I’d expect a bolt of lightning to come out and hit me over the head, along with a (James Masony) Jehovah voice bellowing

TURBINE HAS BEEN BOUGHT BY WARNER BROTHERS!

LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!

This is Big News. Also Turbine was the first games company I ever knew about (not counting the people who made King’s Quest and Leisure Suit Larry) — okay, the first MMO company I ever knew about, because my first online game was Asheron’s Call. I’m not even sure I’d heard about EverQuest at the time.

Have I ever mentioned I live under a rock?

The problem with news feeds, too, is that if you want to catch the one mighty nugget you have to sift through a metric freaking crapton of… lesser stuff. Value-judgement wise, I mean. It might be fascinating to some that Asian Game Studio X has decided to use mokeypokey sprites instead of sminkypinky ones, but it ain’t to me. And the less time I have in real life — I do occasionally have to work, until someone chooses to fund my life of witty dilettante leisure — the quicker I hit that “Mark All As Read” button when I see 110010 articles in my Google reader box. All right, it’s typically more like 80, but that’s a lot of articles. So I read my blogging buddies more than I do the news, because for the most part I find them more interesting.

Hey, and they eventually carry the news anyway. Thanks Victor!

As for the acquisition itself… “Yay!” says Turbine talking head. “More money for us! Woohoo!”

They all say that. Mythic ++ EA, and all that.

Me, I dunno. I’m odd and ageing and hippyish and the larger a company gets, the less I trust it. Yeah, I do say “the Man” sometimes. I hope it’s a good thing for Turbine and that they don’t suddenly lose 75% of their staff next year when something fails to provide WB with the expected 0.0021% quarterly income growth.

11 responses to “Warner who?”

  2. I have my eye on this. I’m not sure if it is good or bad. I’m sure Legos LotR is in the future. I don’t know what that has to do with the LotR lisence, but in my mind it does. Oooh, maybe we will see Lego guys in LotRO??

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  3. If it’s any consolation being taken over did not turn Blizzard into a rubbish company.

    I think this move is more inspired by a desire from Warner to acquire people who know how to sell things online than by some desire to mess with lotro and ddo.

    Of course, if true, this makes the timing of the offerwall fiasco utterly hilarious. “You paid how much for these web marketing geniuses???”

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  4. The only way I could really see it as a positive thing is if Turbine were struggling on their own. So far as I know they were doing just fine.

    The devs have effectively just gained several more tiers of management, and that isn’t usually very helpful.

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  5. You’re welcome Ysh! 😀

    I’m cautiously optimistic for the whole thing of course… but here’s to hoping a lot of good comes out of it.

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  6. If we can get an Animaniacs pet in DDO, I’ll be happy about this. Otherwise, my anti-“Big Business” libertarian Spidey-sense is tingling…

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  7. Gah! That’s an exact quote of what I said when I saw this. I love Turbine and I just don’t see how acquisition by Time Warner could be a good thing… We’ll see.

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