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Kotick: EA Is Suffocating Studios

DietRob

DietRob

i've been begging for over 5 years.
O-RLY-YA-RLY.jpg
 
D

Despera

Banned
All I see are happy EA employees. Look at codecow from Visceral Games in the Dead Space 2 closed beta thread.

EA in the past couple of years started to win me over... And look at how franchises like NFS and FIFA showed significant improvement quality-wise in recent iterations.

I won't pass judgment on the working environment because I don't know shit about that. But EA earned my respect with their new vision. Can't say the same about Activision.
 
S

StealthGoblin

Banned
Reminds me of the 'Good news sandwich' labour cabinet ministers used to tell Gordon Brown. Two peices of good news surrounding a piece of very bad news. In this instance however, its lots of hyperbole/lying surrounding a truth about Brutal Legend.
 
H

Hot Coldman

Banned
That interview sounds more honest and accurate than anything he's done before. The only parts I can really disagree with is the 'autonomy' stuff (after IW clearly weren't being treated like a free developer, although if I were in Kotick's shoes it'd probably look like they threw a tantrum to me too) and the whole 'IW screwed me over' thing, which is bollocks, and the reverse is true.

I have to side with Kotick on the Brutal Legend thing though :/
 
B

brandonh83

Banned
Interfectum said:
Then don't read his interviews?
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I don't. But it's hard to avoid your daily dose of Look what Kotick Said™

Anyway, it was just a quip, not really any different from other posts in the thread. He just seems to say a lot of things that people laugh at... which is why these get posted. Oh well, carry on! :lol
 
Philthy

Philthy

Member
I'm in and out of all the gaming news, but what exactly did those two employees do that was so illegal they they had to let them go?
 
D

Dyno

Member
Philthy said:
I'm in and out of all the gaming news, but what exactly did those two employees do that was so illegal they they had to let them go?
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I don't think it's ever been publicly said.
 
DryvBy

DryvBy

Member
BloodySinner said:
TeGA4.jpg
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His forehead scar healed up nicely.

OT, who wants to beat Kotick probably is a mainstream FarmVille gamer in real life, and by gaming since he was 18, he meant popping zits into the mirror for high scores. Business people don't have time for games. That's why they're business men.
 
S

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
Rated-Rsuperstar said:
They talked to EA.
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I think there was more. They were prototiping their new game on their engine and shopping it to EA. Being part of Acti it's clearly illegal because they were still using Acti resources - money and people - on this prototype. If they wanted to do it right they'd have quit and then shop it.
 
V

Vinci

Danish
DryvBy2 said:
His forehead scar healed up nicely.

OT, who wants to beat Kotick probably is a mainstream FarmVille gamer in real life, and by gaming since he was 18, he meant popping zits into the mirror for high scores. Business people don't have time for games. That's why they're business men.
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Iwata says hello.
 
S

Sipowicz

Banned
EA and activision are pretty much the same. they make the same types of games for the same systems . they both rely on their usual shit while investing in decent new ip's occasionally (blur, mirrors edge etc). They both try and rip you off, activision by overcharging you and EA by chargin you extra for second hand games and witholding content from games to sell as dlc.

they have differences though. activision isn't complete shit on the wii/ds and they're far more successful. EA have been much better about reaching out to independent devs
 
J

John

Member
"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.
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alright, now previously i'd thought that kotick was a smart guy who was just trolling people for attention because he's got no real reason not to, and it might convince some oblivious sharebuyers, but now i'm convinced that he just has no tangible mastery of the english language or its concepts i.e. analogies
 
H

HungryHorace

Neo Member
"EA will buy a developer and then it will become ‘EA Florida’, ‘EA Vancouver’, ‘EA New Jersey’, whatever. "
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EA haven't done that for quite a while & I know that the studios that it did happen to, now have the opportunity to rebuild their 'identity' if their management want it.
 
D

D4Danger

Unconfirmed Member
He has a point about the <publisher name><location> naming convention.

It's got to be a little demoralizing selling your company and then having it stripped of it's personality and just becoming another studio.
 
V

Vic

Please help me with my bad english
shuri said:
I fail to see anything wrong in what he said. I guess the gaf-sheep hive mind is in full effect?
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I don't disagree with everything he said, but him saying how he's passionate about videogames is a pretty big fucking lie.
 
T

theultimo

Member
subversus said:
I think there was more. They were prototiping their new game on their engine and shopping it to EA. Being part of Acti it's clearly illegal because they were still using Acti resources - money and people - on this prototype. If they wanted to do it right they'd have quit and then shop it.
Click to expand...
The truth is always somewhere in the middle. Maybe Activision wanted it to be a CoD deriavatve, but IW wanted to do a new IP. They should have quit before showing it though.
 
S

Shiggy

Member
"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, Brütal 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..."
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From a business perspective it wasn't a bad decision.
 
C

charlequin

Banned
Haunted said:
This is why I never got the saying "preaching water but drinking wine" (does that saying even exist in English? I just translated it ad hoc) to discredit someone's opinion. It does not make his statement any less truthful. Preaching water is a good thing.
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Broadly speaking, implicit in any legitimately advice is the idea that said advice works in practice -- that you can follow it and thereby come into possession of the supposed benefits espoused by the adviser. When that person's advice is based on the presumption that they are folowing said advice, and they aren't... well, then, what proof is there that the advice even works in the first place?

The Activision/EA split is a great example. Castigating EA for their business development practices by claiming the higher ground is offensive because Activision isn't profitable by doing a better job of managing talent than EA -- they're nearly as bad as EA at their worst now -- but because they've got a single ginormous cash cow and a number of other properties they aggressively run into the ground. It makes every single statement Kotick makes suspect because any success he can claim is based on different premises than those he presents in support of it.

John said:
alright, now previously i'd thought that kotick was a smart guy who was just trolling people for attention because he's got no real reason not to, and it might convince some oblivious sharebuyers, but now i'm convinced that he just has no tangible mastery of the english language or its concepts i.e. analogies
Click to expand...

Being able to reference SNL skits from 25 years ago is still more culturally relevant than I expected out of Kotick. :lol
 
N

Neuromancer

Member
He added: "This is my dream job. I've been playing games since I was 18 years old. I could have bought any company, but I bought a bankrupt game company, and I've been doing it for 21 years. This idea that I'm not passionate about videogames is ludicrous. But you say something and it gets taken out of context."
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I thought this was interesting. He's a douche but I don't think he's a liar necessarily.
 
B

Bizzyb

Banned
Wallach said:
Fuckin' love how much hate this guy gets. :lol
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It's like he's intentionally setting himself up as "the guy you love to hate"

Shit, I bet he's on GAF right now reading this thread, absorbing all the hate and laughing maniacally...what a douche
 
S

Shig

Strap on your hooker ...
Neuromancer said:
I thought this was interesting. He's a douche but I don't think he's a liar necessarily.
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It may have been true at a time, but multiple times the guy has said that he actively avoids playing games at all now. I understand he's got a busy schedule and all, but if you claim to like videogames while working for a company where they're all around you, yet have no interest in touching the things, that's a little suspect.

Reminds me of the saying, "never trust a skinny chef."
 
M

mj1108

Member
Bizzyb said:
It's like he's intentionally setting himself up as "the guy you love to hate"

Shit, I bet he's on GAF right now reading this thread, absorbing all the hate and laughing maniacally...what a douche
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I wouldn't be surprised if he has a GAF account....

TehOh said:
kotick.png
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:lol :lol
 
U

UntoldDreams

Member
You know...

At this point it doesn't matter what the reality is. He should just go with it because its not changing.

He should make himself a "hidden character evil boss" in all Activision games to be killed off.

At least he would be providing direct value back into the entertainment ecosystem and people would more likely just roll with it.
 
K

Kintaro

Worships the porcelain goddess
I don't care much at all for Kotick (as much one could without meeting with him personally) but...

"The guy comes out and says I'm a prick," Kotick told the latest issue of Edge magazine.

"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, Brütal 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..."
Click to expand...

This was pure ether.
 
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