Kotaku 
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Denver, 2:52 PM
Sat Nov 7
46 posts in the last 24 hours
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Editor-In-Chief:
Brian Crecente
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Deputy Editor:
Stephen Totilo
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Senior Editor:
Michael McWhertor
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Senior Contributing Editor, Japan:
Brian Ashcraft
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Contributing Editor, East Coast:
Michael Fahey
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Contributing Editor, Oceania:
Luke Plunkett
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Contributing Editor, Weekends:
Owen Good
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Correspondent, San Francisco:
AJ Glasser
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Columnist:
Leigh Alexander
Columnist:
Tim Rogers
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/06/09
Theres nothing better than making money off of video games. #activision
11/05/09
11/05/09
11/05/09
11/05/09
I bet Infinity Ward and Blizzard would prefer that Bobby Kotick and his cronies only make $300 million this year, if it meant they could create the games they wanted, instead of the watered down, overpriced and nickel-and-diming bullshit they're being forced to produce. #activision
11/05/09
11/05/09
10/01/09
...as an aside? everyone hating on kotick but buying MW2 new and/or playing WoW is just running their mouth.
10/01/09
I'd more equate it to people who voted for McCain but still pay taxes, because hey, it's better than moving to Canada.
10/02/09
Don't get me wrong Infinity Ward is a great developer and I would love to buy their games, but I am wholly against the way Activision operates, and so I'll play it if somebody I know has it but won't buy it myself.
10/02/09
10/02/09
I think this kind of issue is a little more grey than you are making it out to be. As far as I can tell Kotick hasn't been influencing WoW (yet), and I don't think people should feel forced to uproot themselves because they don't like Kotick.
Surely they should be allowed to bitch and purchase products where his infamous "tactics" aren't having an influence and force Activision to change like the consumers forced EA to change.
10/04/09
but i cant agree with your analogy: its every american's right to complain about their elected official, whether they voted him in or not. when dealing with a non-public entity - such as a for-profit business like activision - i dont think it flows to knock their business practices & affects on the industry in one breath and continue supporting their & the efforts of the subdisides by directly paying them with the next.
dont get me wrong, you have plenty of other reasons to feel guilty for playing WoW, heh. but from my personal stance - and that of so many on here boldly talking about "voting with their wallets" i just cant abide.
10/01/09
My problem with Kotick, however, is a different one: as one of the games industry's most profitable companies, Activision is bound to be looked upon as a role-model for any company wishing to diversify into games-making.
That means that for anyone trying to get into making games from a non-gamer background, the most successful and therefore "best" approach to games development is to treat your customers like the scum of the Earth and try to milk them for as much money as you can get out of them.
This makes me sceptical, pessimistic and fearful (...sorry) for the future of gaming. Considering that we're at what is possibly a crossroads in the popularity and mainstream acceptance of video games (courtesy of the Wii and DS' outreach), do we really want the world to think it's acceptable to repackage the same product annually while increasing prices and treating gamers like cattle? These are already common business practices in almost every other industry, but gaming is a relatively new one - do we really want the big names of business to treat the games industry like every other industry when we might have a chance to change things for the better?
Call me an idealist and an alarmist, but I think it's a bit of a shame.
10/01/09
I agree that his business ethics are way off though and that his attitude and the way he handles his company is likely to have very very negative impacts on the industry. I just hope that history repeats itself in the way that this milking of franchises and lack of diversification leads to his downfall.
09/30/09
10/01/09
09/30/09
The problem here is that Bobby Kotick talks about it all the TIME, in PUBLIC.
It's like Disney with Michael Eisner and with Bob Iger. Eisner enjoyed being in the spotlight, but when the press turned against him it got ugly. Iger has the sense to stay OUT of the spotlight while running the company.
Other than Kotick's motor mouth, things seem to be going pretty well at Activision.
09/30/09
Maybe Kotick has realised this. Maybe he's just as smart as Lane Kiffin. Maybe he's a genius-- an EVIL genius, it'd be, and sure-- but a genius whatever.
10/13/09
By the by: Where the f(*& are you?!
09/30/09
My most desired titles all come out in October:
Uncharted 2, Brutal Legend, Demon's Souls, Borderlands, even Alpha Protocol
Then there's Dragon Age on 11/3, Left 4 Dead 2 on 11/17, Saboteur on 12/8.
If there was ever an easy time to boycott Kotick's little Napoleonic empire, this is it.
09/30/09
09/30/09
That, my fellow consumers, is his job.
His attitude looks terrible, and there's almost something Machiavellian about it, but it's working for Activision, at least, for now.
Guitar Hero is a franchise they can only exploit so far. Once peripherals stop selling (how many people do you think were sufficiently enthralled by the plastic wood of the new Beatles Rock Band instruments to buy them?) it'll switch over to focusing on song releases (which has already started).
If they don't like the profits off of that, Activision will find (read: buy) something new.
And lastly, we seem to be forgetting that this corporate entity is not one man but an entire hierarchy of directors, board members, and department heads. What he says doesn't just go. He makes an off comment about making his own console and the internet burns the ground under his feet, but it's not going to change that Activision is not making a console. They probably make a higher profit mark on their plastic toys that only work with two games anyway.
And before I forget, yes, I am buying MW2. It's not all about Kotick. There are human beings at Infinityward that put their pixelated blood and sweat into this title too. Which, in retrospect, is actually pretty gross.
09/30/09
They don't mistreat employees, they regularly release products that we apparently like. . . I don't get it.
What is wrong with the CEO of a company admitting that they are out to make money? Of course they are, any company that says otherwise is the sort of company that I wouldn't support.
Annual releases? If the game is able to stand on its own as an individual title (ie, you can buy and enjoy GH:WT without needing GH3 or GH5) then I don't see a problem. There's a lot of worse games out there than the games we see with annual releases.
Especially when you look at EA Sports and realise they still do it too, yet nobody seems to bitch about that any more.
The legal stuff is definitely a bit of a dick move, but all in all, if they're going to put out a product that is worth my money, they're going to get my money. I don't care if they're some corporate giant or a company made entirely of two men and a dog working from their garage.
09/30/09
That said, I think that their CEO is just misinterpreted by a press that partially doesn't get him and partially just doesn't want to understand him. Don't get me wrong, his points of view aren't the most consumer friendly and he is quite arrogant, but not really wrong.
E.g. the culture of skepticism, pessimism and fear". What does that mean? Did anybody ask?
E.g. if you ever planned a project you know that skepticism and pessimism and fear are the only things that will lead to a project plan that will stay on date. If you plan optimistically, you will be screwed before you even started, because things ALWAYS go wrong.
It is ridiculous how the gaming press just repeats these quotes and makes up their own meaning.
Finally, if the job really sucks that badly (e.g. see EA spouse controversy), why do people not just leave it? Hey, IT engineers are in the wonderful situation that there are more than average opportunities out there - if working in games sucks, get another job.
09/30/09
Lack of innovation? You really want to cite that as a reason why Activision is bad?
Everyone seems to think innovation is a must but really, I think that it's just an excuse to hate a company.
So very few titles we see are actually innovative, even fewer of the innovative titles are actually good. On the other hand, there are plenty of titles that follow formulas, Activision has plenty of those titles but so do EA Sports, Ubisoft and even Nintendo.
The thing is that a game can be good without being innovative because it is a refinement of earlier innovations.
Pokemon was a great idea back in the RBY era, but go back and play it now, the games are glitchy and unbalanced. Now compare with SGC, notice how there is not a huge amount of innovation compared to the previous generation but they've taken the same principles and made the game better. Follw that through to the current generation and you can see quite clearly that despite any real innovation since the original title, there is a marked improvement in each title through refinement.
Sorry, but the "innovation" argument is just something that bugs the hell out of me. It's a marketing buzzword, nothing more.
09/30/09
Screw that. Refinement is fine, but after a while, making a better gold watch gets boring. Do something interesting with the watch rather then trying to make it rounder and shinier. The balance of these two principals in my eyes make a good company.
Grasshopper is a innovative company, they churn out innovative games, but can attempt to refine certain ideas too. There is a No More Heroes 2 coming from then, as well as new original titles.
But I digress, I must love every company that tries to make a circle rounder for 12 years, and nothing else.
Also, to address your original comment, the GH thing is bad because they are saturating a market.
And it's the practices. Gabe Newell came out and said "I want your money, so to get it I'm going to attempt to give you a better service then piracy." I wanted to throw cash at him afterwords. This guy comes out and say "I want your money, to do that I'm going to milk every genre and ever game for all I can until it's some dead whore on the corner." Yeah, there's a difference.
09/30/09
I never said innovation was bad, jsut that it didn't automatically make something good. Although I probably wasn't clear on that because I was approaching it more from the "lack of innovations =/= bad" angle.
As far as I'm concerned, if the product is good, I will buy it. It's that simple. If it's good because it has an innovative new concept, awesome. If it's good because it's something old and familiar but done exceptionally well, also awesome.
By no means am I saying that Activision is perfect, but to avoid their perfectly good products because they take the same approach as other non-gaming companies towards getting people to buy their product? Hiding behind excuses like "they lack innovation"? That just seems pointless.
Sure, if they funded their activities by something truly evil I could understand this attitude, but they aren't using 5 year olds to work 12 hours shifts in horrible conditions to make their games. All they're doing is admitting to being a business and looking to improve as a business. Making a product people actually want is a cornerstone of that.
09/30/09
It's just a shame most gamers are so fucking braindead that they'll not bother to read the article, and have stubbornly made up their minds that he should be an object of hate.
09/30/09
I was also thinking... wow this Leigh person should totally write for Kotaku more often, but I can just go and read her stuff where it lives now that I know about it.
And, finally, I thought: Gee.. there are THAT many Leigh Alexanders out there that she had to add numbers after her name on gmail?