I’m not sure I’ll ever really understand the hate for Bobby Kotick. I can understand why people are unhappy about the rising cost of gaming, but the way people act makes it seems like Bobby Kotick is the only person making decisions at Activision. He is the man ultimately responsible, but I doubt very much that he sat down one day and decided to change the price of some games the company are releasing on a whim. He’s not the only guy working at Activision.
As the gaming community are so keen to remind everyone gaming is big business. That’s very true, it’s now the highest grossing entertainment medium and receives regular coverage from major media outlets. The issue is you can’t promote gaming as big business and then complain when publishers make a business decision.
Of course it’s valid to complain as a customer if the cost of something you buy goes up, but attacking any one individual just seems odd. There are always business decisions that customers aren’t going to like, but companies don’t make these without putting a lot of analysis in. I would imagine that there was an entire team dedicated to looking at the price of products at Activision, in fact I’d be surprised if most publishers don’t have teams looking at the same thing.
That seems the oddest part, how everything in the gaming industry becomes personal. If Tesco puts up the price of bread or cheese you don’t see complaints directed towards their CEO. You may see complaints about Tesco as a whole, but you don’t see them directed towards any individual at the company. Why is it so different in gaming?
The other issue that I rarely see mentioned is inflation. Games, and in fact entertainment media in general, seem to have stayed around the same price for as long as I can remember. They do increase or decrease on occasion, and of course you have the price rise associated with new forms of storage, but games, DVDs, CDs and books don’t really seem to rise in line with inflation in the same way that other products do. Is it really that surprising that some companies are attempting to rectify that?
Unfortunately the fact that prices have been so similar for such a long time is probably the largest reason that there’s a huge backlash any time anyone even hints that there might be a question over price. If prices had risen in line with inflation, perhaps a pound every few years, I find it unlikely that you’d see the same kind of complaints being made. Perhaps the entertainment has missed a trick by keeping prices steady, prices inflate for a reason and they may being to regret not moving with it sooner rather than later.
By no means am I saying I like price hikes, but I understand it from a business perspective. I don’t blame Bobby Kotick for what Activision as a whole is doing, in all likelihood there are good reasons behind every decision they’re making. The way that Kotick personally and Activision are a company is called money grabbing doesn’t exactly make sense either. Of course they’re trying to get your money, they’re a company in a capitalist society. That’s pretty much the central aim of any business, to make cold hard cash.
That’s what it all boils down to really. For gamers gaming is a passion or a hobby, something we do to unwind after we’ve made money at our jobs or sat in a classroom all day. For publishers and developers it may well be a passion as well, but if you want to do it as a job it has to be about money to some extent.
jayjay119
Of course it is about money, every business is, but I think the way some production companies are going about earning money is a bit… well crap really. We all know gaming is and always has been expensive, it’s our passion/hobby whatever you want to call it but anyone who has ever bought a console and a game knows this is an expensive past time, and we deal with this because that is the way it is.
But when companies decide to complain about the preowned markets and that they are not making money, I fail to see why they see raising prices as a viable option. With the preowned market this is not going to improve their income, but then again neither is waging war on the preowned market and abolishing it if they are still not going to lower and even rise their pricing, people will just stop buying!
BalramRules
actually, money is one perspective of businesses, but some businesses aren’t about the money, but rather about the service it can do to the public, such as Cancer Research UK etc.
jayjay119
Cancer research UK isn’t strictly a business though, it is a charitable organization so it relies not on trading for income but the generosity of donations from the public.
moshi
Shouldn’t that be Bizznezzez Balram
DrNate86
Ha-ha poor guy can’t win! Just be pleased it was written correctly! I would say though that some of the bigger charity organisations are definitely turning profit at the sake of what they do. In my opinion of course.
solidsteven
he writting correctly he can’t do that or he cause time parodox
TSBonyman
In fairness, Activision say they won’t charge for online for pre-owned games, for the time being at least. All the same, i thought the pic of Bobby wielding the guitar like an axe was amusing.
Yes game prices have stayed the same, but sometimes it feels like you aren’t getting the full game anymore with all the subsequent DLC. Publishers have it good now with many new ways to squeeze a few quid out of us.
solidsteven
they won’t charge for online on 2nd hand because they know they can charge £12 for 5 maps
aphex187
It his attitude that pisses people off.
randomuser
in the early days of gaming the people that made and released games were actually gamers themselves, as it was such a minority interest you always had the impression that what was made/released had the gamers best interest at heart.
It’s people like Bobby that turned this ethos on it’s head and as a result what gamers get nowadays are games that are made based purely on how well the marketing teams thinks certain genres, type of games will sell. A lot of genres and innovation within games suffered as a result of greedy companies that are only motivated purely by money. That is why Bobby Kotick sucks hard imho.
heedbaw
The problem, I think, is when it goes from running a business to maximising profits. Pretty sure most publishers will be turning a profit already, it’s those that seem to be wanting a larger profit that rile me. Upping prices, charging silly prices for DLC etc, on one of the highest grossing franchises seems like money grabbing to me.
And Kotick gets stick because he’s not shy in saying so. Most other CEO’s would probably leave the crap he spouts for shareholder meetings rather than go public with it.
Shareholders being another problem that ties into maximising profits.
gazzagb
I respect Kotick in the sense that he’s a brilliant businessman, look at the millions and billions that were made from MW2. The game itself wasn’t miles better than any other game, but it was the marketing and hype that Activision made, as-well as boosting up the price to generate more income.
People hate him because of his attitude, or what his attitude appears to be. He’s probably mis-quoted on everything he says, the gaming press distort his words to make him sound like a monster.
cc_star
Most of the things Kotick has said has been taken out of context, or just plain old lied about on some crappy blog with an agenda.
It then does the rounds and people believe he actually said it or meant it as it was reported on.
The internetz hive mind is the enemy, not people making a product which people buy in their millions.
DJ-Katy
“The internetz hive mind is the enemy, not people making a product which people buy in their millions.”
A more dangerously submissive sentence I have rarely if ever heard.
cc_star
People have the choice of whether to buy stuff or not, sure you can fool some people some of time and maybe con a purchase out of people, like Naughty Bear did with its limited success based on a fun looking trailer, but unless there was some goodness in CoD or whatever, you’re not going to fool all of the people all of time, people just wouldn’t but in their millions year after year if there wasn’t something in it.
Now I’m writing this I forgot what relevance it was but anyway, people who can’t think for themselves and lap up stuff up just because of how other people feel, because of something someone else read, and consequently become part of the hivemind themselves – should be put down, or at least neutered with a blunt knife.
hazelam
are you actually making excuses for bobby kotick?
wow!
cc_star
No, I just detest the feckin internet and its ‘me too’ hivemind.
Everyone believes what other people believe without ever seeing proof for themselves, or having the intelligence to form their own opinion.
In a comment below, I have written what I believe happens to Kotick reporting
http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2010/09/26/sunday-thoughts-business/comment-page-1/#comment-244669
jacklum
The business side of things is the last topic I want to read about when I check out gaming sites. NPD numbers, analyst predictions, CEO’s market strategies etc… When did this become such a big deal? I don’t remember people caring this much in the past. Now, when the new NPD figures are released, you’ll get a NeoGAF thread with 2,000 comments in the space of a couple of days. Now a video game series is erroneously referred to as a ‘franchise’, a price is a ‘price point’ and everyone acts like they know how multi-million dollar global corporations like Microsoft, Sony or Activision should be run. It makes games seem like just another product rather than a form of art or entertainment and sucks the fun out of it.
BlackWidowShirt
I whole heartedly agree with everything you’ve just said. But get ready for waves of idiots saying ‘dEn y R u ReEdInG dIs ThEn!!11!’
ico
Re: Bobby K – Ultimately he is one of the heads of a major corp and as such his remit is pretty simple. Make as much money as possibe for the shareholders and pretty much no-one can deny he’s very good at this. Yes he seems to be lacking in tact now and again but this is probably a by-product of his hard-nosed business approach.
I feel a large proportion (though not all of course) of TSAs readers are likely like me in their early 30s who grew up with gaming and have seen in their gaming lifestyle the huge companies start to take over the gaming world. However while on one hand it’s a shame that there are only several companies effectively controlling the gaming world I’m also quite sure without these big hitters then there wouldn’t be enough money kicking around to spend millions on marketing some of these triple A titles so it’s a vicious circle in that respect.
I take a very simplistic view of the matter in summary. Are there too many quality games released during the year at a reasonable cost (provided you don’t want to buy all the big titles on Day 1 and let’s face it most come down to sub £20 reasonably quickly)? Yes. Is this a bad thing? No and is it almost certainly (when all factors are taken into consideration) down to the huge companies that can afford to put considerable money into the industry? Yes.
If you don’t like a publisher / developer then don’t buy their games. It’s as simple as that.
aerobes
I agree, Raen. I mean … the guy wouldn’t be there if he wasn’t into making money right? Seems funny that Activision have given themselves a target to shoot at whereas EA and Ubisoft deny all reckoning thus-far.
ico
I think this is in part to do with the fact that people see EA as going from that sort of mentality before (what with constant updates to their stock franchises) to branching out and investing in new ideas heavily (with EA Partners etc) whilst still churing out the usual Insert-Sport-Here-Followed-by-Year titles. Ubisoft also seem to have their creativity and I guess business brains spread over several international studios. THQ are similar to EA in that they seem to be more recently investing in new properties etc.
cc_star
Just trying to think where EA get this creativity image from, to my knowledge it comes from allowing DICE to do Mirrors Edge… one solitary game in five years of this console generation?
Sure, there’s Dead Space, but that’s just the setting up of a new franchise… which after DS2 is out will probably just receive the sort of incremental upgrades that their sports titles normally get.
Dead Space1 was awesome (& DS2 looks it too) which appears to have bought EA a lot of public goodwill, but launching new IP like that, is something Acti themselves are no strangers to.
All that was missing with stuff from them, like PROTOTYPE or Singularity & others, was that certain something which turns a good title into a great one, maybe their sequels will hit ‘it’ like Ubi appears to have done with AC2.
EA’s partners program isn’t really any different to Acti’s partners program which now counts Bungie amongst its members and Sledgehammer (a studio set up by the head honchos who created Dead Space)
The way I see it, is that they’re different sides of the same coin, it just so happens that Acti have temporarily replaced EA as everyone’s favourite pantomine villian, next year it will probably be someone else, maybe.
Severn2j
I suppose you could add Need for Speeds reincarnation to that as well, but yeah, there was a lot of talk about EA’s “enlightenment” but after a good start, there’s not much else to show from them..
tantalus_blank
By the same logic, Michael Bay is an brilliant director. I’m sure Kotick has been misquoted many times, but when you enter an entertainment medium you have to treat it with respect, otherwise people will begin to hate you.
cc_star
I’m yet to see any actual evidence other than selective quoting that he hasn’t treated it with respect.
Selective quoting is interesting because from your comment i could say
Speaking on TheSixthAxis Tantulus_Blank said “Michael Bay was a brilliant director”
This could then be reported on other sites, which as no one checks the source will be twisted to say “Michael Bay is the best director ever” or Tantulus_Blank thinks “every other director is shit”
Anybody reading these comments will think you were crazy, but thats no different to what happens to Kotick when he gives a speech at the Duetsch Bank Investments conference, or wherever, when some crappy blog has a look through a transcript and writes an article out of context based on half a sentence.
This then gets copied & pasted around the web with different websites twisting it or altering the words as I have done above and before you know it, it’s on something like C&VG (or somewhere large) being reported as fact, and everyone hates the guy for no reason other than everyone else hates him because of something they read.
He probably has said something that I dislike at one point or another, but until I see a source word for word (which is difficult in the financial circles he moves in) I’ll be inclined not to believe what is probably a twisted half quote about him online
tantalus_blank
I understand your point – as I said I’m sure he has been misquoted. However, the point I am making is that you can’t treat an entertainment medium as cold hard business and not expect a backlash from those who love it. What Michael Bay does sells incredibly well, but many film fans will think he’s an idiot who is dumbing down the film industry. Yes, if you make a lot of money then you’re a good businessman, but to be a good businessman you generally have to be a dick. You can always get ahead in life by screwing people over, but that doesn’t mean you should do it