Another Day at Passivision

This is the second part of the satirical comedy gaming corporation story. You can read the first part here.

 

After few months, another board meeting took place at Passivision headquarters in Timbuktu. This time there major discussion topic was how they could manage to cope up with upcoming AAA games from Circuit Arts. Alarmed at huge lineup from CA, one of the staff members raised the issue, “Sir, our main competitor is going big this year. What should we do?” Another staff stood up, “I agree with him. The list is huge: Alive Space, Dinosaur Age, Crybaby 2, Out of Speed No Shift, Weight Effect 3 and it goes on and on! This is a serious issue sir, it seems that Circuit Arts may take the helm of the best publisher award of 2011. We need to do something real quick since we have nothing to show the customers.”

 

The CEO of Passivision, obviously irritated, shouted, “Shut up, you fools! Do you think I am worried about this crap. Not at all. In fact I am not worried about what CA tries so hard to take the spotlight. They will still have a hard time beating us in terms of revenue.”

 

The staff members naturally got stunned at his response, leaving them curious why the CEO is not taking any consideration about their point of view. The CEO added, “Think about this, do you really need to be concerned about this? After all our partner Cold Wave is bringing in unrealistic sum of revenues from their World of Witchcraft games and they will also release Satan III. Their efforts are enough to make our parent company Bibendi happy that the company is receiving profits at huge level. Do you really think we need to do something extraordinary, like make a new IP, or build any other AAA games in innovative way from our side? It’s just a waste of time and money from our side. In fact  let’s be laid back and just do our office, while partying all the time in 2011. Let our partner Cold Wave do the hard work. Let’s have hell lot of paid vacation in 2011. In fact I do really need a break myself. I am tired of this competition crap. Don’t worry, there won’t be any salary cuts, since the money is not coming from us, its coming from Bibendi.”

 

The whole boardroom jumped out with celebration, realizing that they will finally get some good vacation. However, one concerned staff member raised an issue, “But sir, we need to show Bibendi what we have done in 2011.” The whole staff paused their celebration and sat down to their respective seats. The CEO angrily replied, “Haven’t you learned anything from your experience how we work?” The staff member is clueless. The CEO went on, “I guess I have to defrag your fragmented mind. Tell me what Passivision focuses on? We are focused on Agile development and rely on COTS or commercial of the shelf products. We take a prototype of something and make improvements on it and release the products. You know we always do this for our Guitar Zero products. So we don’t have the hassle of listening to the need of customers and we can just upgrade the product and release it. The customers will buy them anyway because we were successful to turn them into blind loyals. We will release yet another Guitar Zero to the market and customer will buy them in masses. What is our benefit? We don’t have to waste so much money developing a new and innovative Guitar Zero game. We also save time, since we are not building from scratch. Similarly we will do this for other existing games that we have. Do we need to waste so much time finding ideas and taking feedbacks from consumers? So what do we get in return? Easy money and more time for vacation.

 

Everyone, sitting in front of the CEO, shouted with joy, “Bravo, Bravo!!!” However another staff member raised another issue, “But sir, forecasts tells that the sales of rhythm games, particularly our Guitar Zero franchise, is decreasing over time. We wont be able to reach the profit goal we are set by Bibendi.” The confident CEO replied, “Hehehe!!! You haven’t realized my master plan. We will release Guitar Zero at the same market price of $179. Come on, a lot customer are still fool enough buy the game regardless of how much differences it has with the previous games. Yes true that the sales are decreasing. So we will wait until the sales reaches a tolerable decline, then we will initiate our back up plan. The steep price is enough to get huge contirbution margin regardless of how mmany of them are sold. Then as back up we will release yet another version of Out of Duty using the same software development technique and mass produce them like how Toyota mass produces Toyota Corolla. The sale of Guitar Zero may decline, but it is practically impossible for an Out of Duty game to have bad sales. In the mean time we will look for movies that are going to be released in 2011 like the Green Wasp. We will obtain license and build those using the same COTS strategy, by extracting gameplay mechanics from the previous movie based games that we made. Also we should also release yet another Hannah Idaho game. You know teens idolize her and you should take the advantage of releasing a game with market segment dedicated solely on teens. So what do you think? Dint I fill out the things to do for 2011? Is it enough for you? At least it’s enough for Bibendi when it comes to revenue. Oh yes! You get more time for vacation.

 

The joyous staff members roared, “All hail our great CEO!!!!!”  The CEO finally put an icing on the cake, “Just look at this, Circuit Arts is planning to make games for FaceSpace. See how low they can go. We are Passivision and we are not bothered to make games for them. That is why hardcore gamers like us so much.”