Industry Big Shots Exchange Some Cheap Shots

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A war of words is raging between Santa Monica video game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. and its Redwood City competitor Electronic Arts.

In a recent interview with Edge, a computer and video game magazine published in Bath, England, Activision Chief Executive Robert Kotick criticized EA’s game developers, saying that they lacked identity.

“Great people don’t really want to work there,” he said in the Sept. 27 interview. “It’s like, if you have no other option, you might consider them.”

He added that EA, which publishes “Madden NFL” and “Sims,” has been struggling to make successful games.

“It’s lost its way,” he said. “And until it has success, and hits, and gets that enthusiasm back for the company, it’s going to have a struggle getting really talented people, which is going to translate into less-than-great games.”

Jeff Brown, EA’s vice president of corporate communications, shot back.

“Kotick’s relationship with studio talent is well-documented in litigation,” he told gaming news website Gamasutra the same day.

Brown was referring to Activision’s recent legal battle against the former heads of Infinity Ward, the Encino developer of the “Call of Duty” franchise. Activision ousted Infinity War co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella in March. The duo sued Activision for wrongful termination and started a studio in partnership with EA.

The EA-Activision trade of insults is the latest in a long-running rivalry between the two publishers. Neither company responded to requests for comment.

They will compete against each other this holiday season for dominance in first-person-shooter games – Activision with “Call of Duty: Black Ops” and EA with “Medal of Honor.”

Language Merger

Language Weaver, an L.A. developer of translation software, announced last week that it will merge with parent company SDL PLC’s language technologies division to form one business, SDL Language Technologies.

Mark Tapling, Language Weaver CEO, will be chief executive of the merged company.

SDL PLC Chief Executive Mark Lancaster said in a press release that combining the two companies will help SDL better merge its translation technologies.

“The integration of machine translation into the human translation process is crucial,” Lancaster said. “We consider that within five years more than 50 percent of all translated content will use machine translation as part of the translation process.”

Language Weaver, a USC spinout founded by Daniel Marcu and Kevin Knight to provide fast translations to the government, was acquired by the Maidenhead, England, language service company in July for $42.5 million. At the time, Tapling told the business journal that the sale would help fund the company’s expansion into the commercial translation market.

Language Weaver will remain headquartered at the Howard Hughes Center near Los Angeles International Airport.

Texting Team

A Marina del Rey company is betting its business on text messages.

GogII is the developer of an application for smart phones that lets people send text messages for free, unlike cell phone text-messaging plans that cost per text or offer unlimited texting at a fixed rate.

The app, called TextPlus, also has features that standard text messaging doesn’t. People who download TextPlus can organize their contacts by groups, such as a basketball team or study group, and send them group messages. People can also send longer messages than standard texts, up to 250 characters instead of 160.

GogII recently rolled out a feature that adds pictures to its application. Users who download the app to an iPhone can also activate a “photo booth” program that lets them snap pictures of themselves as they text to go along with the message.

Scott Lahman, GogII co-founder and chief executive, said the 35-person company wanted to make texting easier than it had been.

“We were struck by the lack of innovation,” Lahman said. “It was hard to send a group text out, and difficult to send pictures and media.”

The ad-supported TextPlus application is free to download. Since it hit the iTunes application store 15 months ago, it has been downloaded 9 million times.

Lahman estimated that the company sends more than 15 million messages a day. Most of its customers are teens and their parents.

“We looked at the younger generation as the target because they’ve chosen text messaging as their communication medium,” he said.

Staff reporter Natalie Jarvey can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225 ext. 230.

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