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Post by Steve Farrelly @ 10:29am 28/09/10 | 11 Comments
In light of recent comments he made regarding game development and his "taking the fun out" of it, Activision CEO and resident industry comedian, Bobby Kotick, has told Edge Magazine that said comments were "a joke!" and that "the fact that there are people – and it's a small vocal minority – [who] actually think that I meant it - how do you combat that?".

I would say by not saying it in the first place.

He also delved into EA's internal studio model, suggesting that they don't nurture the creative side of game development in the same way Activision does, which sort of ironically came right after having derailed Tim Schafer's recent comments about Kotick being a "total prick".

"The guy comes out and says I'm a prick," Kotick told Edge. "I've never met him in my life – I've never had anything to do with him. I never had any involvement in the Vivendi project that they were doing, Brutal Legend, other than I was in one meeting where the guys looked at it and said, 'He's late, he's missed every milestone, he's overspent the budget and it doesn't seem like a good game. We're going to cancel it'. And do you know what? That seemed like a sensible thing to do. And it turns out, he was late, he missed every milestone, the game was not a particularly good game."

And on EA's current place.

"The core principle of how we run the company is the exact opposite of EA," he said. "EA will buy a developer and then it will become 'EA Florida', 'EA Vancouver', 'EA New Jersey', whatever. We don't have an Activision anything, it's Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer... there's not a studio at this company that will tell you: 'Activision is forcing us to get the game out.'

"It's like, if you have no other option, you might consider [working for] them... we have no shortage of opportunity to recruit out of EA – that's their biggest challenge: its stock options have no value. It's lost its way."

EA's response to all of this via corporate communications VP Jeff Brown to Gamasutra was pretty scathing.

"Kotick’s relationship with studio talent is well-documented in litigation," he said. "His company is based on three game franchises – one is a fantastic persistent world he had nothing to do with; one is in steep decline; and the third is in the process of being destroyed by Kotick’s own hubris."

Yikes.

Update: In response to comments about Brutal Legend not being a great game and his comments to Tim Schafer, the Double Fine studio head told Eurogamer that "it's sad that instead of just insulting me personally, he goes after the product of my hard-working team - a group of people he almost put out of work a while back", adding "what's even sadder is that it took him two months to think of a comeback".

Double yikes.



bobby kotickactivisioneainfinity wardtim schafer





Latest Comments
ravn0s
Posted 10:47am 28/9/10
haha EA's response is awesome.
Hogfather
Posted 10:51am 28/9/10
Call me a nub, but what are the three franchises he's talking about in the rebuttal? WoW? MW?
greazy
Posted 10:56am 28/9/10
guitar hero series?
Steve Farrelly
Posted 11:01am 28/9/10
it's wow, guitar hero and COD
Khel
Posted 11:26am 28/9/10
EA have lost their way? If anything, EA have been getting better lately, theres so many EA games I'm looking forward to like Dead Space 2, the new Need for Speed, Rock Band 3, Dragon Age 2, Battlefield 3, Bioware's Kotor MMO, American Mcgee's Alice 2.

I can't even think of an Activision game I give a s*** about outside the stuff Blizzard makes, and they'll never be Activision games to me :P
konstie
Posted 12:22pm 28/9/10
why don't they put their efforts into fixing their games instead of this petty s***.
FraktuRe
Posted 12:34pm 28/9/10
Man kotick is such a douche.
Pinky
Posted 12:36pm 28/9/10
I just turned off Days of our Lives to read this thread. Now I'm confused which one is the soap opera.

EA's response is top notch though - hard hitting, relevant. I think they should have just ignored the attack though. Actions speak louder than words.

And so what if there is EA Florida, EA Vancouver, etc!? I don't get why that is a negative thing. It's called 'branding' and if you create a quality brand then people know when you bring out a new product there is a high level of certainty that it will be a quality product. That's what branding is all about.
Eorl
Posted 01:37pm 28/9/10
Biggest troll of the century.
Dazhel
Posted 01:50pm 28/9/10
Heh from the response:
In a new interview with Edge Magazine, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said the key to his company's success is respecting the independence of his studios -- and in his typically-outspoken style, the exec specifically called out publisher Electronic Arts.


Haha good on EA for pointing out that Kotick's version of respecting the independence of his studios is that if the studio staff don't like being shafted, Kotick respects the right of staff to become independent of Activision.
Trauma
Posted 02:24pm 28/9/10
Hahaha EA 1: F**: 0.
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