Thursday, November 22, 2012


How Activision celebrated Black Ops II’s launch



A major release like Call of Duty: Black Ops II is a major event worldwide, not least of which is the Activision main office in Santa Monica. Kat came over to take some nice photos of the things happening in and around the office.
~oneofswords.com















The side parking lot started being rebuilt into party central a full day before. That included some familiar shipping containers.

Treyarch was nice enough to loan us a few zombies from the Zombie Labs. They were…surprisingly social.

Social enough to pose for photos with handguns.















    

In the lobby, visitors were greeted with this combination lawnmower and shotgun, along with lots of other zombie repellents.

Among the awesome zombie bunker, I found a Variac — and that thrilled me, as it’s what Eddie Van Halen used to get his famous guitar tone at lower voltages. I’m a guitar nerd. Let’s move on.

Outside, an all-terrain buggy with the Black Ops II logo on its hood appeared. I did not get to take it for a spin.















I did try one of these. Midori Sour, grenadine, and some other form of booze that I don’t remember — viola, a Pool of Blood! Yeah.

The zombies were invited, of course, and they latched on to none other than Treyarch’s lead zombies designer, Jimmy Zelinski.

Inside the massive tent, employees found food, drink, and not as much room as they probably expected.















It’s not a party without the game itself — mutli-team deathmatch, anyone?















A special celebrity guest: Charlene the quadrotor!















See, now you can’t picture the party without the shipping containers. Or the double-decker bus with the game logo on it.















The employee costume contests — one for soldiers, one for zombies — did make the workday a little more surreal than usual.















Eric Hirshberg and Mark Lamia spoke to the crowd, grateful for everybody’s support and even reading a few choice phrases from positive reviews. After two years of development, it was certainly good news.

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