The next issue of Edge contains an exclusive interview with Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick, with there still being a day to go until the magazine lands on store shelves the closest we can get to the source is Edge online. They are reporting that Kotick has said some less than complementary things about EA’s working practices.
“The core principle of how we run the company is the exact opposite of EA,” he says. “EA will buy a developer and then it will become ‘EA Florida’, ‘EA Vancouver’, ‘EA New Jersey’, whatever. We always looked and said, ‘You know what? What we like about a developer is that they have a culture, they have an independent vision and that’s what makes them so successful.’ We don’t have an Activision anything – it’s Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer.
“That, to me, is one of the unassailable rules of building a publishing company. And in every case except for two, the original founders of the studios are still running the studios today. The only thing that we try to do is to provide a support structure to make them more successful. If you do a really good job – and a lot of our studios do – you get to pick what is, in my view, the most difficult thing to pick in the industry: to make original intellectual property.”
This isn’t the first time that EA’s working practices have had the spotlight shined on them, all the way back in 2004 through the infamous ‘EA Spouse’ blog posting EA – The Human Story with its mention of 85hr working weeks and other almost inhuman working practices. Last week this story resurfaced when EA’s John Riccitiello admitted that EA’s past working practices were responsible for the decline in quality of one of their biggest franchises.
Coming back to Kotick’s interview, when talking about EA’s ability to change, he went on to say “The thing is, it doesn’t work that way – you can’t be a floor wax and then decide that you’re going to become a dessert topping,” he says. “That doesn’t work, it’s your DNA. [EA’s] DNA isn’t oriented towards that model – it doesn’t know how to do it, as a culture or as a company, and it never has… Look, EA has a lot of resources, it’s a big company that’s been in business for a long time, maybe it’ll figure it out eventually. But it’s been struggling for a really long time. The most difficult challenge it faces today is: great people don’t really want to work there.”
“It’s like, if you have no other option, you might consider them.”
Very damning indeed, but on the other side of the coin, it is interesting that Kotick should position himself in a metaphorical glass house whilst throwing stones by mentioning Infinity Ward. That studio itself imploded earlier this year, with studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella ending up being fired following a very public spat over Activision’s alleged desires for Modern Warfare 3 not fitting the direction that West & Zampella wanted to take it. I believe court action is still pending following this fall out so it’s too early to tell if Kotick should be more concerned with keeping his own house in order before criticising others.
aerobes
Interesting reading. Personally I feel like EA have done nothing short of a complete U-turn in recent times and I hold them quite high.
I share your sentiments in the final paragraph, Mr Kotick should really take care of himself and his own before he takes the fight to EA.