In a time not so long ago, there was a monstrous entity. A corporation made up of soulless, faceless sycophants bent on nothing short of total world domination. These brigands were in the business of developing and publishing video games and they began to suck the industry dry by purchasing up the best and brightest developers and harnessing them to their computers to churn out substandard software on rushed schedules to rake in precious holiday money. Swatting away multiple lawsuits this giant raged on and signed dark accords so that other developers could no longer make the games they wanted and the consumers were made to suffer as a result. This dark lord was known as Electronic Arts and they were feared.

Somewhere along the line though, EA's heart grew 3 sizes bigger and they began taking risks and putting effort into previously stale franchises. Original IP's began to spring up like wildflowers on the highway. EA remembered its customers and managed to make a pretty penny at the same time. As of today, they're still doing fairly well for themselves, but in the absence of a malevolent ruler, another company has stepped in to assert their dominion over the videogame industry.

Activision has been around for a long time, but they didn't really strike gold until they purchased Red Octane and merged with Vivendi. This merger led to the formation of the beast that was foretold in prophecy: Activision Blizzard. With some of videogames' premier developers in their stable, Activision began focusing exclusively on business decisions aimed at making money. While making money is the main concern of any corporation, Activision participated in activities that exploited their loyal customers. In fact, there is a pretty famous quote and subsequent Penny-Arcade strip dealing with that smashing choice of vocabulary from Activision's CEO:

"With respect to the franchises that don’t have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of over time becoming $100 million plus franchises, that’s a strategy that has worked very well for us. "

Now the two titans are set to square off over one of the most exciting new games of the last thousand years: Brutal Legend. I'm sure you all know the basic story by now, but in case you don't know already I can sum it up in 5 words: Activision hates rock and roll. Actually, that's not fair, they just want the money that they put into Brutal Legend to count for something. They have put millions into the production of Brutal Legend and although they chose to drop it, they would like to see some return on their investment.

In reality though, this is not sound logic. By dropping the game, they were already counting it as a loss financially. If the game remained dropped, they simply would've lost the money they put in. Now that the game has been finished and picked up for publishing though (and appears like it will be a great success) they want a piece of the proverbial pie.

I find history's twisted sense of irony amusing, as it now seems that EA, the former villain twiddling his mustache is now the savior of the girl on the train tracks. In this case the girl is Tim Schafer and Activision now has the mustache. Who will ultimately prevail? Will we still experience the Rocktober that Double Fine is promising? Will we ever find out who shot J.R.?

Only time will tell.