Thread: Kotick is a used tampon

http://www.geeks.co.uk/7282-activisi...heap-games-you

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6226758...dlines;title;1

Statements made by Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard:

In the last cycle of videogames you spent $50 on a game, played it and took it back to the shop for credit. Today, we’ll (charge) $100 for a guitar. You might add a microphone or drums; you might buy two or three expansions packs, different types of music. Over the life of your ownership you’ll probably buy around 25 additional song packs in digital downloads. So, what used to be a $50 sale is a $500 sale today.

This echoes a statement Kotick made last year when he explained the company’s lack of support for some new games, specifically ones that don’t lend themselves to sequels. Activision, Kotick said, has no interest in games that “don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million franchises.”

And he’s not just setting his sights on Guitar Hero and WoW fans. Talking about upcoming and expensive Activision titles such as Modern Warfare 2, Kotick said: “if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further.”

When he wasn't promoting the company's games or technology, Kotick was celebrating its laserlike focus on the bottom line. He pointed to changes he implemented in the past as being particularly beneficial, such as designing the employee incentive program so it "really rewards profit and nothing else."

Jeetil Patel, Deutsche Bank Securities - Analyst
"What do you think the retailers' willingness these days is to hold inventory on the video game side? Are they building positions today or are they still very reluctant and very careful of how they are buying?"

Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard, Inc. - President and CEO
"I don't think it is specific to video games. I think that if you look at how much volatility there is in the economy and, dependent upon your view about macroeconomic picture and I think we have a real culture of thrift. And I think the goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks that we brought in to Activision 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."

"I think we definitely have been able to instill the culture, the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we are in today. And so, while generally people talk about the recession, we are pretty good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."

Consider the statement directly above in the context of the following, in which they talk about improving facial movements to make a stronger visceral "emotional connection" with the gamer:

The executive said game makers just haven't reached a point yet where the mouth movement and facial animation of game characters is good enough to establish a compelling emotional attachment from the player.

To remedy that, Kotick noted a real-time rendering and mouth movement technology Activision has been working on. He showed a clip of the technology, saying it could represent nothing less than a transformation of the medium. While Kotick said the technology wouldn't surface until the next generation of games, he did say it would be ready before the next generation of hardware.

It's hard to fathom how the CEO of a company can get away with openly exhibiting such unabashed disdain for the people who make their product and buy their product. When other companies talk about micorpurchases or accesories, at least they only publically dicuss them as "optional content" that the consumer is being offered. Even if they have the same philosophy they don't expect to be able to get away with flaunting it. And who would brag about the culture of "fear and skepticism and pessimism" among its workstaff?

Yes, video game making is a business, and it should stay a business whose goal is to make profit. But when you speak of taking all the fun out of making video games along with hiring "packaged good folks," you're talking about taking the life out of the finished products themselves and forcing gamers to subsist on safe bland derivative conventional titles that bring nothing truly new while being bled dry by paying high prices for scraps of DLC at a time. And then they talk about making them more appealing by adding more realistic graphics that enahance the emotional connection to the game, as though that will be enough to distract gamers from conventional drab gameplay.


I can't see myself spending any money on Diablo III or Starcraft II upon initial release, I'm not intereted in Modern Warfare II, and I'm definitely cancelling my subscription to WoW, with which I have lost interest anyway. Though I know it will make little difference if I don't contribute to the company's profit, it is all that I can do as a consumer to voice dissent.

Thankfully there are other slightly less evil companies (or companies with enough respect for their customers that they disguise their evilness) that also publishing games that capture my fancy, like *gasp* EA.

The only thing that scares me is that Bobby Koteck's strategy will be profitable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is people's willingness to stay faithful to a gaming franchise even when its sequels are lackluter. Also, a company as enormous with as many big-name franchises as Acitivision Blizzard can potentially set gamers' expectations rather than meet them.

Originally Posted by Darth Vader

i mean jesus christ how many rich gaming nerds are willing to pay their life savings to off this guy?

more like fat unattractive men in their mid-30's with no social lives that are "saving money" by living in their mom's basement.

...that will be me, except i will be upstairs in my room since the basement is unfinished

Originally Posted by hydro

I have lots of opinions about this man and suddenly I cannot phrase any of them

I think I am quite annoyed at him, but I do not know how to express it

yes, use your anger, use your fear. let it consume you, fill you with power...

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

I'm hardly outraged, here, but I don't think his ideas make a whole lot of sense, either. Perhaps it's because I was never married to any of their franchises (as much as I foresee myself playing MW2, I could still easily live without it and have bought a different game.)

At some point, they are going to be unable to attract top talent with policies that undermine the happiness of his developers. The products, in large part, are already starting to degrade (WoW for certain, though I am of the opinion that D3 and SC2 are going to be pretty bad.) Franchises like Guitar Hero are losing their luster, especially now that there are direct competitors. While his policies are boosting the bottom line now, I'd have to be concerned with longterm effects on the business (of course, Kotick shouldn't be--he'll be gone long before that time.)

I'm not saying that Activision is going to disappear, but those policies aren't the way you secure long-term marketshare.

I wouldn't be incensed by this if I didn't think his strategy wasn't viable. Perhaps, however, you are right, and I am over-estimating how indiscriminate gamers are. I think that gamers will voraciously eat up any slop they are served as long as it looks pretty, is being released by a large enough company with the clout and the resources to be able to sufficiently hype it up, and is either a title in an established IP or by a well-known game designer (consider Red Alert 3 or Spore, for example, both of which probably received better reviews than they deserved and also performed better in the market than their quality alone should have merited). Granted, the only way an IP or a game designer can make be well-received is if its initial releases are impressive, so I suppose that limits how long Kotick's strategies will work.

That said, I really don't feel as though WoW is starting to degrade. Degrade in quality? Perhaps, but the subscriptions are still there. Unfortunately, I do not have evidence, as the only chart I can find plotting out active subscriptions vs. time only goes up to January 2008 (http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart11.html). That's only 6 months after the take over of Blizzard, so it's not really relevant.

Like you, I'm not really a huge fan of any of Blizzard Activision's franchises either, so it makes little difference to me if the quality of new releases suffer. I hope you're right that such a business model is not sustainable in the long term, and that long term viability is only possible through releasing well-designed games.

Originally Posted by MalReynolds

I'm not saving any money by still living at home. I pay $600 a month in rent - that's a cheap apartment in Richmond - for a 10x10 windowless room at my mother's house.

Why?

A: It's close to work.
B: It's in a nice neighborhood.
C: 60% of my friends have gotten robbed. Those who haven't are living in the $1,100 a month apartments.

EDIT:

I also buy all my own groceries, cover all my bills, financed a laptop, etc. I'm not a titty babby.

heeheehee

no but seriously i know we live in hard economic times


...still won't get laid tho...

Originally Posted by MalReynolds

The downside to renting a room in my childhood house is that I was having sex with my girlfriend and my mom could hear through the wall and yelled at me to knock it off.

it couild be worse

when i live at my parents' house after i fail at life i will not be able to have sex with anyone unless it's a female i'm married to cause they are "moral" people.

Originally Posted by coqauvin

yes yes many of us have parents who would frown on sex, even with women, in their house, which is why we do it anyways in secret, like first thing in the morning when they're all getting ready for work

alternatively there is, you know, your partner's place

hmm interesting, err, idea... how do you sneak them in when mom and dad are getting ready for work cause i might need to know this

also, a guy i knew biblicaly has just come back from a year of working around the world. he is temporarily staying at his parents' house until he can find a place, and they live nearby my hometown. also my parents will be out of the house on saturday evening so i am trying to see if he wants to "hang out" on saturday.


as for doing it at my partner's place, um if i'm living with mommy and daddy there's a good chance that my partner would be too. and there's a good chance that they suck in a bad way.

Originally Posted by coqauvin

wait are you actually making a comparison of whether or not your partners live with their parents based on the fact that you live with your parents? Admittedly, it's not much of a turn on for anyone, but why would it stop you from finding someone who lives on their own?

well either they gonna live with their parents or they gonna be fat and ugly. i mean there has to be a compromise somewhere if i'm living with mommy and daddy. i'm not so great that

also i am not interested in your sexytime plans

that's not very sex-positive of you, as someone or another once said in some rather unrelated context.

and the secret is i snuck them in the night before, slept on a couch then went to my room in the morning as though nothing was awry.

you must live in a big house and/or your parents must sleep like logs. if i did that there'd be a good chance that my parents would find us.

Originally Posted by coqauvin

oh man i feel gayer just for saying that

nvr fggt

but seriously sycld you've had so many balls in your mouth you must have picked up one or two by now find out what you want, plan how to do it and fucking do it don't be a pansy faggot

so i'm only an true hero if i have sex in the house when mommy and daddy are home? it's not enough to have guys over when they are out of the house?

oh, i see. damn, that'll be hard













(IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE!)

Originally Posted by coqauvin

why let things like respect or rules stand in the way of sexual gratification?

amen

while i'm at it i'll just pull my pants down and jack off right in front of my parents.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

sycld your parents are way better than you are.

uh yeah they might be but i dunno what that has to do with anything.



coqauvin still implied that i should jack off in their faeces

Originally Posted by coqauvin

i also implied that you should fuck the person of your desire at work in front of your boss, wearing a cowboy hat and high fiving your grandmother

but my grandmas are dead. can i substitute a great-aunt instead?

also, how about i wear a saucy bandanna too?