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Robert Bowling (of @fourzerotwo) resigns from Activision

Lingitiz

Member
Didnt Frank O Connor go from Community manager at Bungie to being the head of franchise development for Halo?

Why are people hating on Robert cause he got a small raise/promotion?

Frankie went from writer at OXM to CM at Bungie to writer on Halo Reach and then finally franchise director at 343i. Frankie was also pretty big in giving Bungie a face and personality at the time. He seems more invested on the story aspect so it makes sense that he ended up moving up in that direction of the company.

Robert on the other hand was CM for a franchise with almost no story, so his job basically entailed curtailing bitching and giving updates for patches, dlc, etc. To move up to creative strategist at that point is a much bigger jump considering he's not a programmer. I do feel bad for the guy having to deal with that community, they are downright viscous.

BTW I don't really play COD anymore, but El Presador needs to become community manager asap.
 

Nizz

Member
Some more words of wisdom from the CoD crowd...

Imagine getting tweets like this for the past five years. Being community manager of Call of Duty sure seems like fun!
Jesus. These twitter posts. Just damn...
 

itsgreen

Member
Didnt Frank O Connor go from Community manager at Bungie to being the head of franchise development for Halo?

Why are people hating on Robert cause he got a small raise/promotion?

I would guess it's because he stayed with the dark side and didn't follow all major player to respawn.

He got the promotion because the slots opened up because the respawn folks left.
 

ZeroRay

Member
I think he got the Creative Strategist title before MW2 came out.

Most people have beef with him due to the whole MW2 PC fuckup.
 
Frankie went from writer at OXM to CM at Bungie to writer on Halo Reach and then finally franchise director at 343i. Frankie was also pretty big in giving Bungie a face and personality at the time. He seems more invested on the story aspect so it makes sense that he ended up moving up in that direction of the company.

Robert on the other hand was CM for a franchise with almost no story, so his job basically entailed curtailing bitching and giving updates for patches, dlc, etc. To move up to creative strategist at that point is a much bigger jump considering he's not a programmer. I do feel bad for the guy having to deal with that community, they are downright viscous.

BTW I don't really play COD anymore, but El Presador needs to become community manager asap.

That would be one way to kill CoD Popularity.

"I will tackle a tree for every unsold copy of CoD"
 

Sean

Banned
Were are you getting these from?Link please?

Most Twitter apps will allow you to see a persons "mentions" which is stuff being tweeted directly to them. I'm using the official Twitter Mac app, you just go to that user and click on the @ symbol/button:

Screen%20Shot%202012-03-26%20at%208.02.37%20PM.png


I'm sure if you put "fourzerotwo" into the Twitter search you'll see a lot of the hate tweets too.
 

Riggs

Banned
Know what? Fuck CoD, been ruined since MW2. Hope this guy finds some solace and a job he can be proud of. I am sure he hated working for IW the past few years, know I would.
 
I lost all respect for this guy when he stood on a stage at Call of Duty XP and announced "NO MORE LAST STAND!" to a screaming crowd of approval when he damn well knew Final Stand, which is much worse, was going to be kept in the game. Not to mention all the other lies he's fed the community since CoD4.

GTFO.

Indeed. The man was useless and ineffectual as a community representative.
 

Yagharek

Member
Some more words of wisdom from the CoD crowd...

<offensive tweets>

Imagine getting tweets like this for the past five years. Being community manager of Call of Duty sure seems like fun!

That's not a community. That's an asylum full of sociopaths.
 

NHale

Member
It's amazing he stuck around this long with all the vitriol that gets thrown his way on a daily basis.

I always thought the guy was an asshole because of the Treyarch-IW debacle during COD:WaW development, but I admire him for not replying to people threatening to kill his daughter on twitter if he didn't fix the lag, unbalance perks or guns, etc.
 

Yagharek

Member
I always thought the guy was an asshole because of the Treyarch-IW debacle during COD:WaW development, but I admire him for not replying to people threatening to kill his daughter on twitter if he didn't fix the lag, unbalance perks or guns, etc.

What the hell? Hopefully this guy gets a job that's not quite so high profile/public next time around so he doesnt have to put up with that shit. Or at least if he does the CM stuff again maybe he can do it with a nicer fanbase.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
I just remember disliking the guy from his arrogant comments toward the PC platform in regards to the MW2 debacle.
 

Pyccko

Member
Hey, this guy was the basis for one of the best Idle Thumbs songs, so he's alright by me.
Good luck to him, wherever he ends up.
 

vatstep

This poster pulses with an appeal so broad the typical restraints of our societies fall by the wayside.
Not too surprised that it would eventually come to this for him. He was kind of douchey, but I didn't have anything against him, really — he was doing a pretty thankless job. Hopefully he finds something a bit less stressful.
 

Wthermans

Banned
He's a shill. Glad to see him go even if the damage has already been done. Guess Activision doesn't need their Dancing Monkey anymore.
 

domstah

Member
He's definitely not going to Respawn. iirc, the court papers from the Activision lawsuit revealed that Robert Bowling was responsible for letting Activision leadership know about what West and Zampella were doing.

It seemed like he ratted them out for a pay bump from Activision. Apparently didn't work out so well for him.

Going need to see some proof of this. I think you are misremembering some facts there.

I always liked Bowling, he posted the news the COD4 beta was live on GAF himself and I got in via a competition he ran in the thread.

Good luck, 402 with whatever you do next. It would be funny if he showed up as the creative strategist for 343.
 

legacyzero

Banned
I completely lost respect for him (or mainly COD) when he called Quickscoping a "legitimate tactic" and defended the decision to leave it in MW3, regardless of what it did to the flow of the game. Also where he said that he'd be going back to supporting (and fixing) COD4 but obviously never did.

I've played quite a few time with Fourzerotwo (mainly on COD4 and COD2) and he really is a great guy though. I hope he moves on to Respawn.
 

eek5

Member
He's a shill. Glad to see him go even if the damage has already been done. Guess Activision doesn't need their Dancing Monkey anymore.

I don't think you understand what shill means. He never hid the fact that he worked for activision
 

soultron

Banned
I think its hilarious that people hate on Bowling for doing his job. He was always a guy with good intentions (I remember him passionately describe how he loved Stalingrad in COD2), he just had a job in PR that came with a company line he needed to toe. With the increasing amount of decisions players were bound to take offense to, he simply became a point upon which players focused their frustrations. They often thought it was him lying to them, but it was always a publisher or marketing campaign that he had to stay in line with to do his job.

Again, best of luck to him. Hopefully the next position he holds won't be associated with a publisher that forces him to deliver such bitter PR pills.
 

Loxley

Member
I feel bad for him, too many idiots in the CoD community single-handedly blame him for everything wrong with MW2 and MW3. I guess that's what he gets for basically becoming the face of IW after West and Zampella were fired.

Good luck to him, it has to be relieving to wake up in the morning and, for the first time in years, not have to worry about people shitting on you on constant basis because DIS PERK IZ OVRPOWERD FUCK U >:[
 

magenta

Member
I don't really think that is your typical CoD player, just a vocal minority. Still, I would have left much earlier than him if that was what I received from the player base.
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
The end of an era. Other than a potential COD Vita, Black Ops 2 is the last Call of Duty this console generation. In 2013 Infinity Ward will either have no annual title or it will be on the 720. Probably the latter. And even if there is no annual CoD there will be a spinoff or some such.
 
He's a shill. Glad to see him go even if the damage has already been done. Guess Activision doesn't need their Dancing Monkey anymore.

That was his job. A real shill is if he didn't work for activision and was hyping COD left and right here.

I can't really hate, he was just doing his assigned job all these years. We all have jobs to do.
 
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