{"id":10091,"date":"2011-02-16T09:53:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-16T07:53:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T22:00:00","slug":"kotick-shareholder-darling-or-gaming-bogeyman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/10091-kotick-shareholder-darling-or-gaming-bogeyman","title":{"rendered":"Kotick: shareholder darling or gaming bogeyman?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kotick comes to power<\/strong><\/p>\n

On July 9th, 2008, Activision merged with Blizzard to form a new company, Activision Blizzard, appointing Robert A. Kotick as the new Chief Executive Officer of the holding company. After a pre-merger meeting with Kotick, Mike Morhaime, then Chief Executive of Blizzard, described Kotick as “exceptionally quick”, “very smart”, and a “unique guy when it came to business strategy.”<\/p>\n

On March 6th, 2008, Kotick had already begun discussing how he could maximize profit from Blizzard’s upcoming Starcraft 2; with talks of in-game advertising and sponsorship. As far as the video game industry is concerned, the writing was on the wall.<\/p>\n

The exploitation begins<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blizzard also starts to implement more “pay features” into World of Warcraft, a practice continuing into 2011, such as a name change for $10, Character re-Customization for $15, Character Transfer for $25, and the list goes on. Blizzard also releases the “Blizzard Authenticator”, so you can pay $6.50 for protection from hackers, something many would argue should be free.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of June, 2008, it is announced that Starcraft 2 will no longer have LAN support, forcing people who want to play together to each buy full copies of the game. Kotick also discusses plans for Starcraft 2 “micro-transactions” and a “map marketplace”, where map creators could sell their maps, with a portion of the revenue going to the creator.<\/p>\n

Only a few months later, on October 10th, 2008, Blizzard announces that Starcraft 2 will in fact be a trilogy, with each race’s campaign forming a separate game, and being sold separately.<\/p>\n

\"Celestial<\/p>\n

Want to ride around on a shiny blue pony? Yours for only 25 dollars!<\/em><\/p>\n

Changes in corporate policy<\/strong><\/p>\n

This began as early as November 6th, 2008, when Activision Blizzard dropped Vivendi titles such as Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters, because they did not fit the new business model. When asked to explain the decision to drop these titles, Kotick made this now infamous statement, “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.”<\/p>\n

This statement paved the way for Kotick to be gamers’ Public Enemy No.1, as he ruthlessly prioritized sheer profit potential over creativity or innovation. It was around this same time that Activision closed down Sierra Entertainment.<\/p>\n

If he still had any fans left, he made sure he weeded them with his public speeches; Bobby has never been once to mince his words. He is extremely candid about his business strategies, so much so that it left many puzzled as to how he can even be allowed to say the things he does. One would think Activision has some semblance of a PR division; I constantly find myself half-expecting to hear news of a wild-eyed PR manager tackling Kotick off the stage, muzzle in hand.<\/p>\n

His personal best was on 15th September, 2009, at the Deutsche Bank Security Technology Conference, where he proudly proclaimed that his goal, coming in to Activision 10 years ago, was to “take all the fun out of making video games.” It was here that he outlined his business model in all its creativity-stifling glory, boasting how he changed the employee incentive program to “really rewards profit and nothing else,” going on to add that his employees “should always be aware of skepticism, pessimism, and fear,” adding finally that Activision is “very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression.” On a related note, Activision is currently accepting applications, if you’re interested. Sign your name in blood on the dotted line, and please check your soul at the door.<\/p>\n

On October 18, 2009, Activision confirmed that Modern Warfare 2 for PC will have no dedicated servers or support for modding, and will require Steam. While Activision assured customers that this was for a better online experience, this is more likely due to the fact that Activision can control all aspects of the game, maximizing profit by charging for downloadable map packs, as opposed to gamers playing freely distributed maps created by modders.<\/p>\n

\"Modern<\/p>\n

Despairing Modern Warfare 2 players often spent more time in the menu screen than in game…
<\/em>
Arrogance, Greed and Litigation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kotick doesn’t make enemies simply though his business models alone, it is his disregard of the community’s input, his arrogant air and his rampant greed which sends gamers (and often business partners and employees) into a fury.<\/p>\n

In September 2008, Kotick claimed that Activision’s size would now allow them to dictate hardware design. In June 2009, he followed this up with a threat to Sony, saying, “”I’m getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the platform.”<\/p>\n

In April 2009, Valve sues Activision for shorting them $1 million on royalties. Shortly after this, Activision sued Double Fine, developers of Brutal Legend, the game they dropped, in order to prevent its release after it was well-received at E3.<\/p>\n

In August, 2009, Activision announces they will be raising the prices of their games, with Kotick inexplicably stating publicly that he would raise the prices even higher if it were up to him.<\/p>\n

In February, 2010, in an unprecedented d*ck-move, Activision forced creators of fan project King’s Quest 9 – The Silver Lining to abandon the project they had been working on for 8 years, shortly before release. They had already negotiated a deal with Vivendi in 2005, were releasing the game at no profit to them, and the rights of the game belonged to Activision anyway. Decisions such as this one are what really make Activision the despised company it is. To a certain extent, everyone can understand decisions motivated by money, whether they agree with them or not. Decisions such as this one though, are very hard to defend.<\/p>\n

March, 2010 brought the much-publicised Infinity Ward scandal, when some security heavies walked into the Infinity Ward offices and removed heads Vince Zampella and Jason West, both from the building and from their position. Seems Kotick isn’t without a taste for the dramatic. Following this were accusations from West and Zampella, and an accompanying lawsuit, that Activision had not paid them their dues for Modern Warfare 2.<\/p>\n

Activision has become the most hated company in the video game industry, but as Kotick keeps reminding everyone, people are still buying their games. As much as Kotick may be the gamers’ bogeyman, when it comes to making money, he is very, very good at what he does. He may give Activision a bad name amongst certain informed segments of the gaming community, but as long as he keeps extending their profit margins, they’re simply not going to care.<\/p>\n

Do you think Kotick is just misunderstood? Do you think he’s just a business-savvy leader or is he the worst thing to ever happen to gaming? Let us know in the forums.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A look at Bobby Kotick\u2019s history at Activision Blizzard\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}