Bizarre Creations to be closed by Activision

metalangel · **Posted:** Wed Jan 19, 2011 16:43

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011- ... re-closure

Quote:

Activision has recommended that its Bizarre Creations subsidiary be closed, after no buyer came forward for the Liverpool-based studio behind Blur and James Bond 007: Blood Stone.

Back in November, Activision announced it was looking to offload the struggling developer, saying it was "exploring our options regarding the future of the studio, including a potential sale of the business."

Coddy Johnson, Activision Worldwide Studios' chief operating officer today told Develop, "I want to be clear, our first choice was to try and keep this group together and find a buyer for the studio."

Johnson insisted that it had, "explored a lot of leads – pretty much anyone you can imagine in the industry. But unfortunately, so far we've not been able to find any interested parties. So we've made as a last resort, a recommendation to the team for closure."

Apparently staff at Bizarre have indicated that they will accept the recommendation.

Bizarre started life in 1994, making its name with the Project Gotham Racing series for Microsoft Game Studios. Activision purchased the studio in September 2007 and set it to work on the poorly received James Bond 007: Blood Stone and excellent but under-performing racer Blur.

"Over the past three years since our purchase of Bizarre Creations, the fundamentals of the racing genre have changed significantly," explained an Activision spokesperson in November.

"Although we made a substantial investment in creating a new IP, Blur, it did not find a commercial audience."

I'm not as big a fan of them as some (I didn't like M:SR much, or Gash Wars. Blur was pants and I won't even mention The Club) but it looks like that's it. Run into the ground by Bobby Kuntick.

WTB · **Joined:** 27th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 14497

The Club was fucking excellent. Also, I have a mate at Bizarre and have known about their certain doom for some time. Seeing as he doesn't actually go in to work any more. Nobody does.

Wullie · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 6183

You have a mate at every game studio though...

WTB · **Joined:** 27th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 14497

I don't, just Bizarre. Oh, sorry - and one at Ruffian. That's it though!

Unless, hey wait... You cheeky bastard!

(NB: My Bizarre chum did not work on The Club, he joined after. Funnily enough I also have a different friend who worked at Bizarre BEFORE The Club as well - he only worked on the rubbish PGR 4.)

Wullie · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 6183

I still haven't played The Club, must be cheap as chips now as it was a fiver the day after it launched. It looked alright as well.

metalangel · **Posted:** Wed Jan 19, 2011 16:58

It's an interesting concept, and they pull it off about as well as you could ever hope to, really. PC Gamer in their review quite rightly said that it would make a jolly good bonus/minigame mode in another game, but doesn't really stand up on its own.

LewieP · **Joined:** 29th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 7600

I really like The Club.

and GeoWars.

Zio · **Joined:** 31st Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 6093

This is sad news to be sure. I haven't actually played Blur yet (though do have it on my PC courtesy of the Steam sale), but have heard loads of good things about it - which therefore makes it's failure strike me as a marketing fuck-up on the part of Activision. It was released at virtually the same time as the very similar looking Split Second, was it not?

And 007 Blood Stone wasn't too bad, as it goes. I wouldn't have liked to have paid full price for it, mind.

myp · **Posted:** Wed Jan 19, 2011 17:25

They've been living off PGR2 for far too long and haven't done a fantastic game in years --XBLA games aside-- just plodding along releasing solid, but unspectacular games.

Fingers crossed they'll form an indie company and continue to release brilliant downloadable content like Geo Wars. It sounds like they really did lose their way with Blur and 007 and I'm not surprised they're being closed down. Still a shame, though.

WTB · **Joined:** 27th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 14497

Blur is perfectly decent (amazing, I suppose, if you liked dull-as-dishwater PGR 4), it was just released at a spacktardedly stupid time (same week as Split/Second, its direct competition - both were decent, both saw half the sales they could've), and there was next to know marketing push from Activision.

The Bond game was just rubbish. Four hour campaign and tacked-on multiplayer. Has rush-job written all over it. Again, a publisher decision no doubt. They seemed destined to fail regardless. I never liked PGR either, but a lot of people did - they should've stuck with MS, assuming they had that option at the time. I got the impression that they said "fuck you" and jumped at the big Acti-bucks, but I suppose it's possible MS just got shot.

Trousers · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 3073

I've just gone back to finishing Blur after having a rather large hiatus from it. It's not that bad at all and the concept is pretty sound as is a lot of the execution - it just seems a bit sterile and misjudged on the presentation front with you up against Need for Speed rejects for the one-on-ones.

The achievements and their tracking is as good as any game I've played as are the goals to get to the one-on-ones, the driving model is sound, the rubber banding not too savage and the power ups pretty well balanced but there must be a reason for me dropping it for months and only just picking it back up as I try to leverage some more value out of my existing gaming catalogue.

It was also up against Split/Second which was fucking awesome (but also didn't sell well).

I quite liked their games and shall miss them.

metalangel · **Posted:** Wed Jan 19, 2011 18:50

Split/Second had a huge marketing push, a moreish demo, and ads during each and every break of the NBA and NHL playoffs.

Blur had that stupid Mario Kart pisstake ad that I saw only once.

Split/Second also had a fairly interesting game mechanic, of building up your power bar to trigger pyrotechnics during a race.

Blur was WipEout, but in cars, right down to the weapon icons.

While neither changed the world, Blur seemed far too confused in what it wanted to do (it had CoD style leveling and ranks, but Mario Kart weapons, but licenced cars?) and even as a concept it was a real 'meh', cars with guns, shooting during a race, again. Too much prerelease attention was given to Twatter/Arsebook integration too.

It was a brave attempt, but I have a feeling it was sorta doomed from the start. I don't think anyone expected it to 'fail' quite so spectacularly, but then I think Activision were expecting a runaway hit.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Wed Jan 19, 2011 18:53

Quote:

Liverpool-based

And that's probably why. The yank owners were probably cracking the whip expecting them to churn out games like my arse churns out shit and they probably didn't want to work 24 hours a day on American work ethics.

LewieP · **Joined:** 29th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 7600

I think a big problem for Blur was that it had a long running multiplayer beta, and after that I was basically done with the game. Had my fun, and had no need to get the full game.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Wed Jan 19, 2011 18:57

I thought Blur was a bit pants. Better off loading either a SNES or N64 emulator and playing Mariokart for free.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13384

I snapped up Blur in a Steam sale for £3.75p and I'm having a lot of fun with it.

Yes it's very much like Mario Kart but with real cars, but hey, that's no bad thing.

Pumping soundtrack, looks fab, cars handle well, power-ups are fun - nothing to complain about up to now.

Plissken · **Posted:** Mon Apr 16, 2012 22:14

I grabbed it from Game in their fire sale. It is good, but nothing that has made me fire it up on a regular basis.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13384

Plissken wrote:

I grabbed it from Game in their fire sale. It is good, but nothing that has made me fire it up on a regular basis.

It's kept me playing for a decent chunk of the evening.

I dunno, it's a nice FUN game in big old fashioned capital letters - and I love all the neon stuff too, it looks cool.

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Bizarre Creations to be closed by Activision
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