Kebo wrote:
I know, but I felt a general vibe in here (or in the general gaming community) that a company had to be "evil" to make good profit, as if being profitable in itself through business decisions was an evil thing. Activision has definitely treated Infinity Ward like dirt despite making a lot of money off of them. But there are many practices that might be seen as "evil" (cutting the number of employees or the development time for a game to make it more profitable, thus making the game lower quality) that are just part of the real world. Companies can't just release unprofitable games and sometimes quality has to be sacrificed or development abandoned.
Bobby Kotick on leaving Sierra properties like King's Quest to rot: "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."
Bobby Kotick on the high prices of many Activision games: "If it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further."
Bobby Kotick on how to treat developers: "We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." Kotick later stated he tries to promote an atmosphere of "skepticism, pessimism, and fear" in his company and, "We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."
Yeah... sorry that I see Activision as just a little bit less than Messianic. The fact of the matter is that Activision is run by an army of suits. Not only do they lack creativity, but they also lack the ability to think as a creative person might.
They firmly believe that the key to happy creative people is Money, Money and More Money (because this is what makes them happy), when in actuality it's Money, Autonomy and Variety.
Activision obviously gives their employees little autonomy - look at how they fought Modern Warfare when it was initially requested by Infinity Ward, their most successful studio. Look at how they forced Infinity Ward to make Modern Warfare 2 within a much-too-small timespan.
Activision also obviously gives their employees little variety. What has Infinity Ward made since they were founded? What has Neversoft made since Guitar Hero became Activision's property? They pretty much treat their studios like machines - and as a result, their franchises have been run straight into the ground. This is bad for the gamers. Bad for the employees. Bad for the industry.
