First, you had this, from game designer Tim Schafer about Activision boss Bobby Kotick:
“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.
He [Kotick] makes a big deal about not liking games, and I just don’t think that attitude is good for games in general. I just don’t think we’re an industry of widgets…We can approach it like we approach bars of soap, where you’re just trying to make the cheapest bar of soap. He definitely has that that kind of widget-maker attitude. I don’t think he’s great for the industry, overall. You can’t just latch onto something when it’s popular and then squeeze the life out of it and then move on to the next one. You have to at some point create something, build something.
Hopefully he’ll go back to another industry scene. He could go to an industry that makes more money. Ball bearings something that suits his passions more. Weapons manufacturing?”
Activision then responded by stating “Bobby has always been passionate about games, and loves the video game industry. But as CEO of a company that makes games enjoyed by millions of people worldwide, the demands on his time now make it difficult to play games as often as he’d like to or as much as he once did.”
*snort*
And then it becomes priceless. “That was an accident,” Schafer told website Eurogamer. “I was going to change the title of my talk to ‘how to give interviews and remember to check the microphone is off.'”
I can’t tell you how much this interchange has cheered me up. I think I want to have Schafer’s babies or something.
And in case you forgot the quote that Bobby Kotick is most famous for, it is this:
Speaking at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco, Kotick said “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.”
Sounds an awful lot like a prick to me, actually.
I have to deal with someone at a game company fairly regularly as part of my job. Every time we talk, and I mean every single time, he makes it a point to let me know he doesn’t play video games.
I just want to smack him. Way to make sure I have zero confidence in your company’s ability to produce a fun, enjoyable game for this licensed property, you ass hat.
I may hate country music (I do), but when I worked as an ad salesman for a country music station, I managed to deal with clients without ever mentioning that fact.