Treyarch, developer of the seventh Call Of Duty game Black Ops, has claimed that "angry fans" could stunt creativity in games development.

The studio's first map pack for CoD: Black Ops, First Strike, was released earlier on Xbox Live - and early fan feedback seems to be largely positive.


However, things don't always run so smoothly according to Treyarch community boss Josh Olin - particularly when developers try something new.

"Personally, as a community manager who lives in the media or social media world every day, I think the social culture of video games is moving in a more negative direction as technology and social media continues to grow," he told NowGamer.

"Rather than growing with it, the trend seems to be devolving. More and more gamers seem to forget what this industry is all about.

"It's a creative industry - the most creative form of entertainment in existence. Too many developers who try new things are getting burned by "pundits" and angry entitled fans who look to be contrarian, sometimes simply for the sake of being contrarian.

"The only thing this attitude aims to achieve is stunt that creativity and innovation even further, which is something that no rational gamer looking to be entertained would want to do."

UK consumer action group Gamers' Voice has reported Activision to the Office Of Fair Trading for the PS3 and PC version of Black Ops, which it perceives as inferior ports of the Xbox 360 version.

The Black Ops: First Strike DLC is available now for 1200MP.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/28 ... nnovation/

Is it April 1st already?

The problem isn't to do with the "creativity" or "innovation" of the game. It's the fact that the frikkin thing doesn't work.

I'd call Heavy Rain an innovative game but at least the thing didn't crash your PS3 every ten minutes. The huge number of bugs is ridiculous. Slowly it's improving, but why not test the game beforehand?

+1, I traded my copy in and luckily got more than I paid for it in credit - I've no idea how it would be done, but I'd like to see some sort of standards for game testing... Let's face it, most of the hard work for the game's structure and it's online service should already have been completed with the previous entries in the series.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/28 ... elections/

Sorry, that just made me laugh, and you know, a few Top Gear jobs might be up for grabs soon

I would tend to agree. There are genres I would not play but of those that I do buy I do expect them to be finished and bug free. Heck they can get as many people as they like as bug testers, if kids get the opportunity to get free copies for finding bugs many would do it.