Bobby Kotick is a great CEO, Activision should be proud. The only thing on his mind is how to squeeze the last bit of money out of every franchise in his company's possession. In fact if he had a tagline, it would be "milk it". In doing this, however, he sucks the enjoyment out of video games. It seems like every next version of whatever franchise they're pimping doesn't really get enough gestation time and the products end up being half-baked ideas of something that will most likely finally be completed next year, in the next iteration. Oh and he himself confesses, he does not play video games. Why should he play video games? This is the world of video games now. You need to have a franchise, something you can make lots of different versions of and charge lots of money for each version, and launch a different version every year. You dont need to play it to sell it. You just need to see what the trend is, get one of those games, and turn on the milking machine. This is what he did with Guitar Hero, and with Call of Duty. This is also what he couldn't do with Tim Schafer's Brütal Legend, a game Activision got after they merged with Vivendi. Last July, almost a year after Activision had dropped Tim's game from their lineup Schafer said this:
"His obligation is to his shareholders," Schafer tells Eurogamer. "Well, he doesn't have to be as much of a dick about it, does he? I think there is a way he can do it without being a total prick. It seems like it would be possible. It's not something he's interested in." (source)I think that this is a totally understandable thing to say. Specially since after Kotick dropped your game, they then went after EA to try and stop them from publishing at all. It really is a dick move. Well that's Bobby Kotick for you. He then goes on to say that he's never met Tim Schafer, that the decision to cut the game was because Double Fine (Schafer's company) was always late, over budget and because "it doesnt seem like a good game". If Kotick had said, "Well, the project didn't have the franchise power that we like our games to have", that would be one thing. He instead, comes out and says that the game was not very good? According to who? Sales? It must be sales. Because the game was excellent. Good things take time, and when you're creating a world from scratch you cant really just rush through it. Thats why Guitar Hero's metacritic scores have hurt so much. Starting with a 91 in Guitar Hero, the latest game in the series dubbed "Warriors of Rock" (it would be #6 if numbered) scores a 73. There have been 11 Hero games (not counting portable consoles) between 2005 and 2010 and the average score is 79%. For comparison Rock Band, the main rival has had 5 games for the mayor consoles, including a Lego version for younger players with an average score of 84%. With the sixth game being released later this year which includes a keyboard and a "learn to play music" Pro mode. Tired of music games? Well good, because now we're going to talk about first person shooters. Call of Duty was making Activision tons and tons of money, in fact, they had two developers working on it at the same time. They had Infinity Ward doing most of the development work for the engine and then they had Treyarch doing the 'hold-over' game in the off-year. This setup worked well, Call of Duty 4 was released (IW), then 5 (Treyarch), then Modern Warfare 2 (IW) and finally 6 is coming later this year (Treyarch). Sadly Infinity Ward seemed to be tired of doing just Call of Duty and they thought they could expand and do something different. Well they got their wish, since the leads at IW were fired for insubordination and half the IW team defected to the newly formed Respawn Entertainment over at Electronic Arts. I mean, Infinity Ward has made you so much money, all they wanted was a little artistic freedom. A development cycle off the treadmill. It ends up in drama. Everybody knew it would. Its the way Bobby Kotick does business. This is why Activision has replaced EA as the "evil" company in the last few years. While EA has spent money creating and publishing new exciting franchises like Dead Space and Mirror's Edge. Allowing some developers to just build a big playground like Burnout Paradise, and even taking risks in some games that, while they may lack universal appeal, are too good to never be published like Brütal Legend. Activision has spent their time trying to make Guitar Hero formula (game + cheap accessory) work in other ways, like with DJ Hero and Band Hero (not counted in the above tally of Hero games) and with Tony Hawk (now with $100 skateboard!). Now, before you tell me that Activision is just trying to survive, just remember that Activision's name is actually Activision-Blizzard. Blizzard is operated quite differently than Activision though. Blizzard still concentrates on its own properties like StarCraft, WarCraft and Diablo. Games that dont have many iterations yet make the company staggering amounts of money because of how addictive, polished and entertaining they are and their ridiculously long shelf life (Diablo II was released in 2000, its last patch was in March 2010). This is why I separate Activision from Blizzard whenever I talk about the company. There is no better proof that you dont need to churn out crappy versions of games just to make a buck better than... Activision itself! With all this being said. How they are not aching for money, how they can take risks and decide not to, and how they just decide to try and sell you plastic crap I will leave you with this. This is a quote from Bobby Kotick a few weeks ago about Respawn Entertainment, the people from Infinity Ward that he let go:
"That's one of those really difficult decisions as the CEO of a company, where you step back and say, 'No good is going to come of this. They're going to leave and probably have a really hard time ever being productive or successful ever again, and we're going to lose some talented people, and there's nothing we can do about it.' And there wasn't." (source)What a total prick.