Beyond Infinity

It goes without saying that that's almost a uniquely charmed situation. I can think of a fairly small number of studios who have enjoyed similar freedoms, but they are usually studios that require little management oversight in the first place - those committed to regular release schedules by the nature of their franchises, for example.

In the case of Blizzard, what's unique is that the firm is left untouched in spite of the kind of activities that normally cause publishing executives to have kittens on the boardroom table - years-long slippages, late-stage cancellation of projects that aren't up to scratch, and all the rest of it. Consumers trust that this is down to an obsessive and much respected pursuit of quality. Publishers, on the whole, are less understanding of such traits, but they all seem to understand one simple mantra - you don't mess with Blizzard.

And so, we come back to Infinity Ward. In dollar terms, Infinity Ward is similarly important to Activision, Modern Warfare a franchise on equal footing with Warcraft. Yet the differences in approach are apparent.

Short of deciding on a whim to shut down World of Warcraft abruptly and turning its development studios into hydroponic cannabis farms, it's hard to think of anything Blizzard could do that would lead to security storming its campus in Irvine and key figures such as Mike Morhaime being given their marching orders. Thus, as soon as the word "insubordination" floated to the top of this debate, it seemed hard to disassociate anything IW's principals had done from the freedom Blizzard enjoys.

Of course, there are vital differences. Blizzard has decades of track record behind it, three enormous franchises which may be slow to update but deliver guaranteed hits when they do, and an ongoing monthly revenue stream that's the envy of the entire industry. Infinity Ward has created one franchise (and a spin-off) and a number of solid hits, but it's a stretch to think of it as being remotely as proven or as mature a studio as Blizzard.

However, even given those factors, this feels like a major twist in an ongoing debate over the status of publisher-owned studios as much as it is an isolated corporate spat. Blizzard's enormous freedom, Microsoft's eyebrow-raising decision to allow Bungie to buy itself back out of Microsoft Game Studios (paid back in droves, it seems, by the continuing healthy relationship between the two), even the legendary studio-crushing EA's treating of BioWare with kid gloves - all of these are events that are changing the perception of the celebrity game studio, the golden egg laying geese upon which publishers dare not lay too harsh a finger.

Whatever the details of the Infinity Ward case, it seems sure that what happened, at heart, was that the studio pushed too hard, too soon, for the kind of control and privileges which its peers elsewhere enjoy - and perhaps Activision, fretting over its inability to exert real control over Blizzard, pushed back far too hard, fearing ending up with two Blizzards rather than just one under its roof.

As top developers become more and more aware of their growing market power, even once acquired by a publisher, this situation is likely to be one that repeats itself. An acquaintance from the film business once remarked to me that he was surprised how docile the creative side of the games business seemed to be, with remarkably little fire in their bellies for fighting over control and revenues with the publishing side.

While I suspect he romantically overstates the case of film, there's some truth in that - but as the Infinity Ward case demonstrates, that docility is no longer something publishers can always assume.