http://www.gamespot.com/news/6226758.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=topstory&tag=topstory;title
He almost sounds like he wants to be like the top management in the comic strip Dilbert or worse. Maybe he’s using a nice big book of Dilbert strips as a tutorial on how to run a business?
Interpret how you want but the comments will surely give you an idea.:eek:
goodness me. :I
Here’s a clue regarding emotional attachment, Mr. $5-million-dollar-richer-CEO: running around shooting and killing is not fun. Even if it is exciting for an hour, it gets old…especially if you use up your hour quota on the previous edition.
If this guy sounds like a Dilbert cartoon, well, it’s because this attitude is not rare in management circles. Management by fear is a time-honored method of getting the most out of your employees, if you’re not competent enough to do it any other way.
I bet Activision’s stocks went down just a bit today…
It’s sad how he is openly promoting this crap. On guy comments: Break away now blizzard! I would definitely like to see that. It would be nice to see open collaboration,artists being rewarded more , and more input from fans in both the gaming and film industry.
JF
Good spotting CD! We need to have CEO’s of this mentality out in the open. No very popular this one.
Activision: The New EA
I think game companies need to be careful when watching the bottom line. While it is great to sell many versions of games with plenty of expansions, the gamer market will loose interest. As a general rule I don’t purchase games from EA, and now Activision, because I do not agree with their development philosophy. I think a completed product is far more important than a holiday release date.
Releasing a new version of a series every year is great, but there better be a reason to purchase the new game. I know they are banking on Guitar Hero, but eventually people’s fascination with pretend instruments will go away. I’m getting really tired of the same games being released every year. I understand that there are only so many game mechanics out there, but I really don’t need the same setting, too.
As a note to anybody who wants to run a company: employee happiness is very import. The happier the employee is, the more productive they are. For software development, this means better code. The happier employee is more willing to put forth effort into their work. For video games it is even more important for the employees to be happy and love what they do. Once you turn that love into just a job, the game turns into just a pile of code and art assets. While it may make money, it won’t make the type of money that a truly great game will make.
Hmm… I think my copy of Modern Warfare 2 will be a used one. I believe Dante placed men of this persuasion in the seventh circle of hell. (Violence against art.)
Letting guys like him take the decisions has been my main reason for not spending any more money on mainstream “AAA” titles in the past year.
IMHO, quality on games has been in a downfall since the last generation, and now 70% of the games in the market are recycled concepts under bloated graphics.
Couldnt agree more, I’m finding myself playing old games from the N64 (and still finding them genius) rather than going all out in Crysis or something else like that from the current generation of games. I haven’t bought a new game lately thats anywhere near satisfying. As mentioned above “70% of the games in the market are recycled concepts under bloated graphics”
And what an idiot! That CEO has no clue, for a start hes basing future business plans on facebook??? Its a fad, it will be dead within 1-2 years at most (as myspace is dead/dieing now)
What an idiot…
He won’t be laughing so much when the employees start realizing that working at activision/blizzard is a nightmare and they all either run off to start their own startups or they defect to other, less ‘thrifty’ studios.
But the big studios I think are all going to be like this now. They all focus on the newest tech and gizmos and gadgets and not on the gameplay. Games have been totally stagnant since about the second or third year of the PS2. What new and truly innovative games have come out since GTA3 on the PS2? Not many. Most of the current franchises are basically old old gameplay paradigms with the newest fancy graphics buzzwords tacked onto the boxes. Was Farcry really that amazing? It was basically GTA in a wilderness and devolved into a runny-gunny stupid action game pretty quickly. The graphics made it “awesome” and everyone had to run out and buy it, but it’s not a really amazing game. It’s a game they could have made on the PS2 if they hadn’t focused their entire dev cycle on the graphics garbage.
This guy basically wants that to continue. He’s effectively saying “we’re going to keep making the exact same shit as we’ve made for the last five or ten years, but now it’s going to have better facial animation and higher-poly characters. People will really connect with their on-screen character if they can more clearly see their tonsils when they scream.” Do people actually look at the characters while playing Guitar Hero? I thought you were supposed to look at the game part.
This guy sounds like a world-class moron who just happens to be lucky enough to be running his company at a time when it’s full of smart people. I will guarantee you that those smart people will leave when they start crashing up against his garbage philosophies and they’ll be replaced by marketing stooges who will just do what they’re told and not even attempt to innovate.
Sad to say it, but Blizzard might be in some serious trouble if they spread their crap through that studio as well.
Christ, I didn’t know the CEO of Blizzard was such a douche. I hereby refuse to purchase any Activision games, just because I know that my money goes to him in the end.
nasdaq:atvi
11.74 -0.09 (-0.76%)
Ha no wonder blizzard decided to scrap LAN in SC2 and Diablo 3… wtf?! Well if he can get away with saying that, he sure is fast on his way to establish the new and improved Digital Reich. Hopefully the good game designers at Act and Bliz will come together, viva la revolucion and one or two decapitations later we can get on with making some GOOD decent games for a change. Sheesh.
And btw, doesn’t he look like the f*cking Joker. I mean just splash a few clashing colours on his face and, voila… instant Bouffon
Lol ouch…
This repulsive news comes on the same day as news that wall street is back to it’s high risk , bleed it as it dies behavior. I think that people will wake up slowly and adopt healthier behavior in small numbers. It’s up to the smaller numbers to find each other and find ways to live that don’t breed fear.
JF
I’ve bought only 2 new games in the last 3 years. This is saying a lot for my attitude to corporate perversion of an entertainment medium since my stack of second hand games, purchased in the same time period, is about 2m high.
They might be profitable games, they might be released on schedule, they might have cost millions of dollars to develop, but are they really worth the cover price when bought new? It’s easy to tell when the artists/developers enjoyed making the game. The game has a touch of finesse and fluidity that can’t be faked by raw, bare-naked profitability.