There was a wedding this year.  Immediately after that private ceremony, attended only by CEO’s and stockholders, the couple that came together to form this union immediately set to work trying to figure out what the hell to do with all of their kids.  The good ones would probably stay, but a lot of those little bastards would soon find themselves wearing red curly wigs and scrubbing the floors of the orphanage.

It doesn’t matter who you are.  If you are the biggest at what you do, people will hate on you.  Such was the case earlier this year when Activision and Blizzard (Vivendi) finally tied the knot, creatively renaming the company Activision Blizzard.  Suddenly the EA jokes died off.  I guess being #2 makes you a less appealing hate target.  It didn’t help matters that at almost the exact moment of acquisition, the news came that legendary developer Sierra was going to be one of the first heads to roll.  Numerous titles, like the long-anticipated release of World in Conflict for the 360, suddenly went the way of the Dodo.  Poof!  Gone.

With the merger also came a sort of sobriety in the gaming community, as the reality set in that the future of video games is truly being written by enormous corporations with one eye on creating the next big thing, and the other 21 eyes on their stock value.

The merger of Vivendi and Activision created the largest video game empire in history, and for that reason it checks in at number 54 in our Top 100 gaming moments of 2008.

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