Last weekend, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick gave details on what he believes represents the future of gaming—and managed to become the poster child for unhappy workplaces.
Kotick’s real bombshell of a statement didn’t hit until he stopped talking about gaming technology and started discussing his views on corporate culture. According to Gamespot, Kotick “pointed to changes he implemented in the past as being particularly beneficial, such as designing the employee incentive program so it ‘really rewards profit and nothing else.’”
According to the CEO, studio heads now regularly argue with CFO’s over the allocation of funds, each competing with the others for cash. If this doesn’t sound like much fun—and it doesn’t—that’s Bobby’s stated plan. “We have a real culture of thrift,” 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.”
The CEO’s long-term vision, in his own words, is to instill the corporate culture with “skepticism, pessimism, and fear…We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression.” You’d think the man might’ve learned his lesson when indivuals and press organizations decried his plan to strictly focus on games that “have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises.” Evidently not. In Bobby’s world, the best games are produced when every employee is in a constate state of fear, projects are always on the brink of being killed, the ability to generate profit is the only yardstick by which an employee’s value is measured, and—let’s not forget—making video games is not fun.
Great comment from reader GetSmart: “Industries are started by visionaries. And then finished off by douchebags.”
Scum like that always rises to the top.
Douches like this are the main reason why corporations are crumbling. I’d personally boycott anything Activision.
Whatanass. Getim a job @ Goldmann Sachs.
People like this destroy companies.
What a complete jerk. Activision / Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft” – see ya’ around.
Hello Aion! – a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) launching this month.
This little article is worth a look-see. Really!
And it even relates to this post!
Guys like this make a ton of money for themselves and shareholders, short-term. Long term, they bounce around to lots of different companies.
They are also the reason unions exist.
Industries are started by visionaries. And then finished off by douchebags.
He should listen to this-
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
Dan talks about how motivation by reward or fear DOES NOT WORK.
Not to worry, his bonuses are safe regardless of how poorly his company does, or how many people he has to exploit and then fire, they’re guaranteed by contract. Somewhere along the line it beccame necessary for corporations to become constant profit generators. As soon as they stop generating profits, investors start losing confidence and selling out. Now there’s very little room for innovation (innovation is expensive and bad for short term profits) and competition has turned into a kill or be killed game. Seems to me the problem is too many rich people think they have a right to make money without working for it, speculating, investing, and above all avoiding risk. Hey I’m all for the motivational qualities of the capitalistic system. But if they don’t figure out what’s wrong with it and soon, things are going to get much worse.
#9 That’s easy. The main problem is the previous and current generation of spoiled brat with sense of entitlement that permeates not only corps but governments. Once they get into power (corporation or country), they feel everyones owes them.
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism, just with this brand of douches “leading” us
WTF??? Screw this guy. I do have to admire his honesty. Most CEOs would just do this and deny that they were.
We all know that the best games come from people that are having no fun in a soulless, spirit crushing corporation. This is incredibly short sited and a great way to lose your best employees. I expect to see a renaissance in small gaming houses founded by ex-Activision employees.
#11 (echeola)
And the grandest irony of all is that Activision itself was founded by ex-Atari employees due to Atari’s stifling policies. http://tinyurl.com/epqpk
Also, is it just me, or does the grin on Bobby’s face, as well as his posture and pose, highly reminiscent of Jeff Dunham’s Peanut? http://tinyurl.com/nkwz4e
I know a hospital that’s run this way. Morale among employees truly sucks, but they work hard because they’re scared. Management is constantly threatening the possible outsourcing of entire departments (which they went through with in food services, security, radiology and ER areas), always laying off a few members of the present staff here and there, and relying on attrition to continually find ways to save money and make a profit.
Activision isn’t alone, sorry to say.
The sad part is these douchbags that run companies like this are more and more prevalent. They all don’t understand the primary rule of business: make your customer happy. If you can do that, you can not only make a profit, but your business will be sustainable. This starts by keeping up employee morale (after all, unhappy employees will take out their frustrations on the customer, which will make them unhappy), and focusing on customer service. Too many companies now are run by accountants. You cannot innovate because that will cost money. You can’t be good to the customer because that will cost money. Too many businesses are like this now (big content is a primary example – they will do anything to “protect” their IP, but don’t realize that they are pissing off the customer, as the customer that buys the content will do what they want with it anyway, regardless of law or DRM.)
#13 Sadly, you’re right. I know many a company that started by people with a great vision & ended up running that way either by those who started them and lost focus on what they started or got ousted by greedy shady morons like the one on the pic.
#7: Unfortunately, the ass running Activision would simply fire all union and non-union employees, and send all the jobs to a country where he can pay people 50 cents a day. It happens…
#10 Pedro, Hmmmn, I can see your point. But is there a brand of douche bag ‘leader’ that can make a difference? Far as I can tell, nope. I’m thinking maybe it’s time for human values to evolve from the the obsession to compete to the obsession to cooperate.
Sad. This crap will leave them vulnerable to small smart competitors who will eat their lunch.
This reminds me of the fall and decline of Ashton-Tate, once the top software company for PC databases (dBase III), and a top selling word-processor (MultiMate). Harvard MBA Ed Esber was appointed CEO and ran Ashton-Tate just like Kotick is running Activision.
Esber started obsessing about protecting Ashton-Tates IP and sales of existing products and failed to focus on developing better products. All the company’s energy was focused on suing people instead of making better products.
He sued anyone who developed adds on for their top-selling DBase product. So the developer community, who loved dBase, abandoned it, and more and more customers left for other database products (such as Foxbase).
He implemented PITA copy protection schemes for their word processing product in order to thwart piracy. This only succeeded in pissing off paying customers and did nothing to stop pirates. Nor did it convert pirates into paying customers. The customers left for Microsoft Word, which was getting better and better all the time.
I remember (mid 80′) Esber ranting a raving about those horrible pirates and rogue developers that were taking money away from Ashton-Tate. It sure sounds a lot like the same crap I hear from music and film executives today.
In the meantime Microsoft was quietly turning Word into the killer word processing app, stealing all of Esber’s paying customers. Database developers built better databases, leaving dBase in the dustbin with Esber ranting a raving about protecting what was now obsolete technology.
His Harvard MBA training failed to teach him that it is your paying customers that matter. It is not the pirates. It is not the young hacker that wants to make things work better, or different. Serve your customers by being better, and making their life easier.
Harvard’s MBA program must teach these bozos that customers are problems, not assets to be treasured. That is why so many companies like GM are either in the toilet, or circling the drain today.
#18 Agreed. Although actually is not an evolution what’s needed but re-evaluation. There was a lot of cooperation before corporate greed starting rearing its ugly face around mid 80′s.
Douchebags & so called “leaders” need to disappear.